The market is down 1+% this morning.
Here’s the past two years. Not pretty recently. Not clear where it’s going next.
Hillary messed up the biotechs and pharma with this silly tweet yesterday:
No one knows where markets are going, but there are clearly some tips:
1. You shouldn’t be in anything that’s fallen 10% from where you bought it.
2. Think shorts. Think commodities, minerals, oil, etc. My two shorts – BHP and KMI — are making money. I should have more.
This thing this is probably going a little lower. I’ve mentioned it before:
3. I wouldn’t be too greedy with shorts. Most of these commodity/mineral/oil stocks have already been beaten down.
What’s wrong with car companies?
First, GM, now VW. They don’t seem to have conscience about lying, cheating and killing people. It’s truly mind-blowing.
Volkswagen executives told environmental regulators for more than a year that discrepancies between pollution tests on its diesel cars and the starkly higher levels out on the road were a technical error, not a deliberate attempt to deceive Washington officials.
But this month, the executives made a startling admission: The diesel vehicles it sold in the United States used software meant to cheat on the tests.
VW made the admission only when the Environmental Protection Agency took the extraordinary action of threatening to withhold approval for the company’s 2016 Volkswagen and Audi diesel models, according to letters sent to company officials by the E.P.A. and California regulators.
Since that deception became public on Friday, Volkswagen has scrambled to conduct damage control. The chief executive apologized and the company said it would stop selling diesel-powered cars from the 2015 and 2016 model years.
But none of this would have happened except that environmental regulators had tools and powers at their disposal that another area of enforcement — auto safety regulation — does not have, despite the efforts of lawmakers, consumer advocates and, more recently, auto safety regulators themselves. Often, the auto industry has beaten back more stringent laws.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, can impose a maximum penalty of $35 million on an automaker that flouts safety regulations — a relatively low sum for a company like General Motors, which last year paid such a fine for a defect that has now been linked to at least 124 deaths.
By contrast, under the Clean Air Act, Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, could be fined as much as $37,500 for each recalled vehicle, for a possible total penalty of as much as $18 billion.
VW’s stock is down nearly 50% since this scandal surfaced this week. Why is it necessary to kill people to sell more cars? For the New York Times’ full story, click here.
Fun stuff:
Harry Newton, who’s eyeing some investment properties. Takes huge time. That’s why we’re a little short this morning.
