I don’t Know What’s Happening in the American Staple Sector, but I’m Not Sticking Around to Find Out.

It occurred to me this morning while I sat drinking five fingers of Fernet-Branca and stabbing my way to the osteo end of a tomahawk ribeye, attending to a rather involved red wine hangover, that I hadn’t checked the action at Goldman Sachs in like a month. It’s been a freak earnings season, having bounced off this first quarter with the best US economy in years and yet we’re contending with a stock market the likes of which we haven’t seen since like the Bush administration hammered checks to rouse the sales of flat-screen TVs and Carnival cruises. I’m sitting there going over The Journal, checking my skin in the tech markets, currency swaps, I sunk a few racks into consumer staples this year and I can’t seem to round out my book with a win in anything like Proctor & Gamble (PG), Coca-Cola (KO), even Phillip Morris is doing jack shit under the cow and whimper of a gutless investor pool.

I’m asking myself: Self, what the fuck is wrong with an ostensibly risk-free and resilient NYSE market too afraid to fork it up to the guys who put the US economy on the map. I call my boy, Derek, over at Goldman and he gives me the whole bit about growth rates, revenues, the headwinds of an infant tax reform and the point and click economy that’s going to send retail into its death spiral. I’m looking through the table of a relatively stable market ticker and now I’m wondering what’s going to happen here. Do I need to liquidate the entire score of my assets, start shoeing away gold bars, or put everything I have into a mutual fund and make good with the middle class?

I told Dereck to cash me out of anything blue chip that shows no signs market evolution. GE was a huge mistake and I refuse to follow any more of these all-American pseudo-staples into obscurity. No more PepsiCo (PEP), Coca-Cola (KO), Phillip Morris (PM), Nestle (NESN), Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA), even Koch (GP). High time I start rewiring the whole motherfucking schematic. There might be more to come on this.

Dow opened this morning at 24,760 to a weary start, shedding like 30 points right off the bell. Retail’s looking good this morning: Walmart (WMT) up a point, Macy’s even, Best Buy up half a point. If these guys can find a way to be the Amazon drones to your doorstep and do it for free they might actually stand a chance in 2020.

S&P winners this morning: ENSCO (ESV) up a half point, Valero (VLO) up six points, Chesapeake Bay Energy (CHK) up 5%, Teradata (TDC) up two points.