Small Caps Surge On Short-Squeeze, Sloppy-Surveys; ETH Outperforms BTC As ETFs Launch
An ugly day for macro with hard data (US home sales) and soft data (regional Fed surveys) all puking…
Source: Bloomberg
…was just the bad news needed to spark good news in STIRs as rate-cut expectations rebounded…
Source: Bloomberg
After yesterday’s big exciting “everything’s awesome” day, stocks, broadly-speaking did nothing today though as only Small Caps showed any willingness to move. Late-day selling pressure did not help, pulling everything but Small Caps into the red with Nasdaq the biggest loser…
…but that looked like yet another big short-squeeze….
Source: Bloomberg
The NDX/RTY unwind resumed today…
Source: Bloomberg
MAG7 stocks went nowhere ahead of GOOGL/TSLA earnings after the bell…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasuries were mixed today with the short-end outperforming…
Source: Bloomberg
…which dragged the yield curve (2s30s) almost to being dis-inverted….
Source: Bloomberg
Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin on the day as ETH ETFs were launched…
Source: Bloomberg
This followed a huge net inflow day yesterday into BTC ETFs…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin was 3% lower back to $66k…
Source: Bloomberg
…as ETH ETF $ Volume soared to $1BN…
Source: Bloomberg
…which kept ETH around $3500 by the close…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold managed modest gains on the day, finding support at $2400…
Source: Bloomberg
Crude prices extended losses as CTAs pressed through technical levels but WTI found support at $76.69 intraday (its 200DMA) and bounced modestly…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, prediction markets have Trump still dominating Harris for the win in November…
Source: Bloomberg
…for now she remains below Biden’s pre-debate levels.
A recent graduate of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota is suing the university administration, alleging that she was forced to pay a fee that went to a liberal student activist group.
Tayah Lackie filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota in May, with assistance from the Liberty Justice Center and the Upper Midwest Law Center.
Lackie’s lawsuit contends that a mandatory fee going to a political agenda that she disagrees with violates the First Amendment because it compels speech.
“A state school can’t make you pay a political group just to be enrolled,” Liberty Justice Center President Jacob Huebert said.
“The Students United scheme violates students’ First Amendment rights, and we look forward to the courts saying so in our case.”
The lawsuit alleges that all students at St. Cloud State must pay “union dues” to a group called Students United, which “advocates for and takes positions on controversial policies and legislation, and which purports to speak on all students’ behalf.”
The lawsuit then proceeds to give examples of Students United making political statements and expressing potentially controversial political advocacy.
“For example,” the lawsuit details, “Students United has aggressively advocated for the abolition of student debt—including through a website called ‘Fck Student Debt’ and a Twitter/X account, @FckStudentDebt.”
“According to the website, Fck Student Debt is ‘a special project by Students United to eliminate all of the student loan debt created by higher education institutions in the state of Minnesota and to push federal legislators to cancel student loan debt,’” the lawsuit explains.
On Students United’s website, the group states that its “vision” is to “create the model of inclusive higher education policies and leadership.” The group currently has a “Director of Student Leadership & Equity,” and each of the group’s officers have pronouns following their names on their bios.
Yet, despite specific political arguments being made by Students United, the lawsuit states that “every” student in the Minnesota State Colleges and University system “is forced to associate with and subsidize Students United and its speech—even if the student disagrees with it.”
The state of Minnesota filed a motion to dismiss Lackie’s complaint on July 15.
Campus Reform has contacted St. Cloud State University, the Liberty Justice Center, and the Upper Midwest Law Center for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
Reuters ‘Shock Poll’ Finds Kamala Leading Trump, There’s Just One Catch…
With the Democrat corporate media machine in full swing behind Kamala Harris following President Joe Biden’s shock announcement on Sunday that he’s abandoning his 2024 presidential campaign, it was only a matter of time before a ‘shock’ poll had her beating Trump in a hypothetical matchup.
And here it is:
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found that Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll (with a 3% margin of error).
Yet, there’s a catch. As we noted in the 2016 and 2020 elections, pollsters had their thumb on the scale by oversampling Democrats.
Well, they’ve done it again – sampling 426 Democrat voters vs. 376 Republicans and 341 Independents.
Meanwhile, other polls have Trump smoking Harris.
The prediction markets (PredictIt) show Harris trailing Trump 43 to 58.
We can’t wait for PBS to come out with their latest…
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on July 22 asked a New York appeals court to overturn the $454 million New York civil fraud judgment that was handed down earlier this year.
In court papers filed with First Department of the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, the state’s mid-level court, his lawyers wrote that Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 finding, that claimed former President Trump made false statements to insurers, banks, and other entities about his wealth, was incorrect.
“Based on the ruling in this case, no company will want to come to New York to do business, and many businesses are fleeing,” his attorneys wrote.
“The economic aspects of this decision are a disaster for New York.“ The New York Attorney General’s office ”has used the statute in a way never seen before,” they added.
The lawyers said “there were no victims and no losses,” adding that the former president’s business partners “raved internally about their business with him and were eager for more.”
In their appeal, they contended that the judge made an “erroneous” decision and, during the case, “struggled to understand basic banking concepts” before he handed down the fine. They further said that he erred in rejecting an earlier appeals court decision regarding the statute of limitations for the case, arguing that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil lawsuit should have been dismissed.
The former president’s team also contended that after Justice Engoron’s decision, it gives the state attorney general’s office “limitless power to target anyone,“ including ”political opponents,” according to the 116-page filing.
“If Appellants’ conduct constituted ‘fraud’ […] then that word has no meaning, and [New York Attorney General’s] power to seize and destroy private businesses is boundless—and standardless,” the attorneys added.
Before the trial, Justice Engoron rejected many of the Trump attorneys’ objections as the case proceeded, at one point equating them to the plot of the movie “Groundhog Day” and fining some of the lawyers $7,500 each for “repetitive, frivolous” argument. The Appellate Division previously denied former President Trump’s bid to end the case on statute of limitations and other grounds.
After the judge handed down the judgment, former President Trump posted a $175 million bond in April to halt its collection and prevent interest from accruing. The move also blocked Ms. James from seizing some of his assets in New York City while he appeals the matter.
The Epoch Times contacted the New York Attorney General’s office for comment Tuesday.
In a statement to multiple news outlets, Ms. James’ office said that the appeal filed Monday repeats some arguments that were already rejected. “We won this case based on the facts and the law, and we are confident we will prevail on appeal,” a spokesperson said.
Former President Trump, the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election in November, has maintained his innocence in the fraud case, saying he’s being unfairly targeted.
Should former President Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, have to pay the entire judgment, it could imperil his cash reserves, although he might be able to recoup some of those losses due to his large stake in Trump Media, which owns his Truth Social platform.
Earlier this year, he was ordered in a separate case to pay nearly $84 million in damages after a New York jury found that he defamed a writer, E. Jean Carroll.
In May of this year, he was convicted by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to payments made during the 2016 campaign. Sentencing for that case is scheduled for September.
The Manhattan case may be the only one of four cases against former President Trump that goes to trial before the November election. A federal judge in Florida last week dismissed federal charges involving his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, arguing that the special counsel appointed in that case, Jack Smith, was improperly appointed by the Department of Justice. Mr. Smith has vowed to appeal the judgment.
Two other election-related cases brought against him in Washington and Georgia have been stalled, and it’s not clear when either will go to trial, if ever. The former president had pleaded not guilty to all charges in the four cases.
On Sunday, July 21, President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign via a text-only post on Twitter/X.
Less than an hour later, Biden – also via a text-only post on Twitter/X – endorsed vice president Kamala Harris for the presidency.
Thus, in just a few minutes, the ruling party in Washington completely erased the primary election process from one of the country’s major parties.
That is, the same Democratic party that tells us it is the party of “democracy” just completely cut ordinary voters out of the selection process for the Democratic nominee.
Instead, the Democratic nominee in 2024 will be chosen by a small group of elite party insiders. We’re told there will be an “open convention” in Chicago to choose the nominee, but all that means is that that there is no pre-determined nominee going into the convention. In any case, however, the nominee will be chosen by delegates and superdelegates (i.e., wealthy party elites like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) behind closed doors.
The Democratic party’s efforts to circumvent the primary process are quite remarkable for a ruling coalition that lectured the general public endlessly in 2020 about how Donald Trump was allegedly a “threat to democracy” and how “democracy is on the ballot.”
Yet, this is what we’ve come to expect from political elites who use the term “democracy” as a propaganda term. For these people, the term has no objective meaning, it just means “something we like.” “Anti-democratic,” in contrast, just means “something we don’t like.”
Moreover, its use as a propaganda term can be seen in the way that “democracy” is used in the same way as “revolutionary” by Marxist regimes. In such cases “revolutionary” is code for “in favor of the ruling elites” and “something we like.” Similarly, the opposite of “democracy” in a Marxist regime is “counterrevolutionary” or “bourgeois.” Those terms were essentially code for “against the ruling party” and “thing we don’t like.”
Such terms have no actual content in the usual sense of a word. Thus, the term “democracy” simply means “good” and “not democratic” means “evil.”
For example, President Joe Biden delivered two major speeches in 2022 on how “democracy” will supposedly be abolished if his opponents win. In November of that year, former president Barack Obama solemnly intoned that if Republicans win in Arizona, “democracy as we know it may not survive.” This is repeated among the party’s media allies. One writer at Salon chastised voters for daring to let their votes be influenced by economic concerns when “democracy is under threat.” One New York Times headline bemoaned the apparent reality that voters don’t seem interested in “saving democracy” when it’s supposedly all so clear that “democracy is in peril.” At no point in these jeremiads is it ever explained how a vote for the out-of-favor candidate will actually end elections or universal suffrage or any other event or institution associated with democracy.
In Biden’s September 2022 speech in Philadelphia, he went on for twenty minutes about an imagined threat to democracy, without ever actually defining what democracy is. One was reminded of Fidel Castro howling in his multi-hour speeches about the threat to “the revolution” from insidious imperialists and counterrevolutionaries—by which he meant anyone who opposed his regime. The term “revolutionary” had no connection to actual revolution in this context. It simply meant “something my regime likes.”
Meanwhile, the elites have gone to great lengths to ensure that no actual democracy—in the technical or traditional sense—has taken place in the nomination process. The Democratic Party made it clear that it would not allow any presidential hopefuls to challenge Biden to a debate. Early Democratic challengers Congressman Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were told to get lost. The most significant challenger within the party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was effectively expelled from the party in October 2023. He was forced to declare his candidacy as an independent candidate soon after.
So, after denying Democratic voters the chance to vote on Kennedy or anyone else, the party has now also denied the voters the chance to vote on Harris or whoever else the party elites will decide is the nominee in 2024.
I don’t mention any of this to burnish the reputation of the Republican Party, by the way. Those of us who remember the Ron Paul campaigns in 2008 and 2012 remember how the GOP conspired to torpedo his campaign, going so far as to change the convention rules, ex post facto, to deny Paul a prime-time speaking position and to disenfranchise his delegates.
Yet, it’s not the GOP that’s claiming to be the guardian of the vox populi while conspiring to undermine that vox at every turn.
Rather, the alleged protectors of democracy carry on the tradition of redefining the term “democracy” to serve the interests of the elites whenever it suits their purposes. We see this not only in America, but globally. Any time the “wrong” people win an election—”wrong” according to global elites—the outcome of the election is declared a “threat to democracy.” We see this repeatedly in European politics where “democracy” is defined as support for the unelected European commission. German political elites, meanwhile, have repeatedly declared the rightwing AfD party a “threat to democracy” because party members keep winning elections. In Latin America, “democracy” means to support the social-democratic left. When rightwing Jair Bolsonaro was elected in Brazil, that was denounced as anti-democratic. When leftwing Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was impeached by a democratically elected legislature, that was denounced as an anti-democratic coup. Democratically elected Javier Milei was denounced by uber-establishment magazine The Economist as “a danger for democracy.”
It is now clear that to be in favor of democracy in 2024 is to support whatever the ruling party elites want you to support. To be “pro-democracy” now apparently means to vote for the candidate selected for you by party elites in secret meetings. According to the ruling elites, in a true “democracy,” there’s no voting allowed.
‘I Lost My Son’: Musk Says He Was Tricked Into Approving Puberty Blockers
Elon Musk has condemned so-called “gender-affirming care” practitioners for effectively “killing” his son — by tricking the billionaire into authorizing puberty-blocking treatments out of fear the then-teenager would otherwise commit suicide. In remarks made Monday, Musk said the devastating experience fueled his commitment to “destroy the woke mind virus.”
Musk shared his candid thoughts about what happened to his son in a Monday conversation with psychologist and commentator Jordan Peterson, which was streamed live on X and the Daily Wire.
“It happened to one of my older boys, where I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier. This is before I had any understanding of what was going on. COVID was going on, so there was a lot of confusion and I was told Xavier might commit suicide if he doesn’t.”
The specter of suicide is frequently introduced by practitioners who recommend gender change therapies. When pressuring parents to go along, they often present a disturbing choice, typically phrased as “would you rather have a dead son or a living daughter?”
The assumed link between gender dysphoria and suicide, however, has come under fire — and not only from laypeople. “Gender dysphoria per se does not seem to predict neither all-cause nor suicide mortality in gender-referred adolescents,” wrote the authors of a Finnish study published in January. “[The] main predictor of mortality in this population is psychiatric morbidity…Medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk.”
“[The suicide threat] was a lie right from the outset,” observed Peterson. Musk replied, “Incredibly evil, and I agree with you that the people that have been promoting this should go to prison,” and added, “It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs.”
BREAKING: Elon Musk reveals that he vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after it killed his son. His son Xavier became transgender, he was talking about identity death, not physical death
“My son Xavier is dead, k*lled by the woke mind virus.”
Summing up the effect of the process on his life and his child, Musk invoked the term “deadnaming,” which is used to describe referring to a transitioned person by their previous name:
“I lost my son, essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Born as Xavier, Musk’s son now goes by Vivian Jenna Wilson. When petitioning for the name change, Vivian said it was sparked by “gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” Last year, Musk characterized the split as even more saddening than when his first son died as an infant.
I strongly supported Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists
Musk told Peterson the experience inspired his resolve to obliterate woke ideology in general: “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.” Putting his money where is mouth is, Musk has pledged $45 million to a Trump-backing super PAC that focuses on “get out the vote” efforts.
Earlier this year, the UK’s National Health Service barred private gender clinics from administering puberty-blockers to minors, declaring there is “not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness.” The move was part of a broader trend in Europe to emphasize psychotherapy over hormones and surgeries.
The Supreme Court refused on July 22 to rehear a lawsuit that was filed against three justices because they rejected a previous lawsuit aimed at lawmakers who certified the 2020 election victory of President Joe Biden.
In a rare move, all three justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – recused themselves from the case because they were named as co-respondents in it.
The new ruling follows the court’s decision on May 28 to turn away the longshot legal bid by Raland J. Brunson of Ogden, Utah, who has gained notoriety among supporters of former President Donald Trump for his legal activism.
Mr. Brunson has filed several lawsuits along with his brothers. He told The Epoch Times that he filed the latest lawsuit, which alleged the justices violated their oath of office, to draw attention to the importance of oaths of office.
In the case at hand, Brunson v. Sotomayor, Mr. Brunson, sued Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in their official capacities for voting on Feb. 21, 2023, to deny the petition for certiorari, or review, in his previous lawsuit known as Brunson v. Adams.
In Brunson v. Adams, he sued hundreds of members of Congress in 2021, claiming that they violated their oath of office by not giving time for investigations of election fraud in the 2020 election and by certifying the election victory of then-challenger Joe Biden over then-incumbent President Trump in a process that concluded in the early morning of Jan. 7, 2021, following the U.S. Capitol breach.
Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) appeared in the short title of the petition filed in that appeal because she was named first in the list of 388 respondents. Also included as respondents were President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Vice President Mike Pence. The lawsuit sought the removal from office of President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the members of Congress.
In the unusual lawsuit, Mr. Brunson argued that avoiding an investigation of how President Biden won the election “is an act of treason and an act of levying war against the U.S. Constitution which violated Brunson’s unfettered right to vote in an honest and fair election and as such it wrongfully invalidated his vote.”
In that appeal, the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari without comment in an unsigned order on Jan. 9, 2023. The court then denied a petition for rehearing on Feb. 21, 2023, also without comment in an unsigned order.
Later, in February 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit rejected the case of Brunson v. Sotomayor.
On May 28 of this year, all three Democrat-appointed justices being sued in the same case recused themselves as the Supreme Court denied that petition for certiorari.
The Supreme Court justices cited judicial disqualification mandates in the U.S. Code and the Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, which the nation’s highest court adopted in November 2023.
Mr. Brunson argued in his petition for rehearing filed on June 12 in Brunson v. Sotomayor that by voting to deny the petition for certiorari, the justices violated their oath of office.
The court has “a legal and binding duty under the law to grant” the petition, which “centers on their oath of office which cannot be ignored without it being a violation of their oath of office,” he argued.
“If the Justices cannot be checked by their oath through Brunson’s petition or others like … it, then our freedoms are subject to what they declare them to be instead of what they are,” the petition stated.
The justices’ oath requires them to be impartial, to administer justice and “do equal right to the poor and to the rich,” and uphold the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s laws.
The decision not to rehear Brunson v. Sotomayor came in an unsigned order on July 22. No justices dissented and the court did not explain its reasoning.
Again, the three recusing justices cited judicial disqualification mandates related to them being parties in the legal proceeding.
Mr. Brunson told The Epoch Times that the court’s decision not to rehear the case did not surprise him.
“I mean, we’re going after their own immunity,” he said.
For the Supreme Court to grant a petition, it has to qualify under the court’s criteria, he said.
“It has to be something that’s going to affect the whole nation, or something that’s a contradiction to something they’ve already ruled on before,” he said.
Mr. Brunson said he was “curious to see what they would do with it.”
“It was worth a try, and educational, and there was a chance in a million that maybe something could happen. And I knew the odds were against me from the beginning, but … I had nothing to lose on this,” he said, adding that he hoped the lawsuit created “awareness” about oaths of office.
“And the philosophy that the Brunson brothers have is this: It doesn’t matter who the president is or our leaders are. As long as they keep their oath of office, we’ll do fine.”
Mr. Brunson said more lawsuits are coming but he couldn’t discuss them because he is “still strategizing.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the three justices, for comment, but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.
Blinken Dubiously Hails Harris As A ‘Leading Voice’ Of US Foreign Policy
At a moment President Biden hasn’t been seen by anyone – or even photographed – in about a week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday is seeking to assure the public that the president will remain “intensely focused” on work that remains in the next since months, chiefly foreign policy issues.
Blinken cited Biden’s work on “bringing peace to the Middle East and dealing with Russia’s ongoing aggression” – though we can imagine the reality is that admin officials and a teams of staffers, and not Biden himself, will be handling these things.
The other dubious statement from Blinken concerned Vice President Harris’ supposed foreign policy credentials…
“Blinken, speaking to reporters, said Vice President Kamala Harris has been a leading voice for U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy, adding that she was a very strong, effective and deeply respected voice for the United States around the world,” as cited in Reuters.
This begs the question: is she a “deeply respected voice” around the world? A clip of Harris previously weighing in on the Ukraine crisis from 2022 has resurfaced and is going viral. We should look no further than this…
Is this something that Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping respects? Or are they laughing?
Blinken on Tuesday continued to claim that somehow she’s a foreign policy heavyweight. “I’ve seen her not only around the world, but I’ve seen her on the most critical foreign policy questions of our time, in the Situation Room at the White House, at the Oval Office with the president,” he told a press briefing.
And now the endorsements are rolling in from Democratic national security insiders, per The Washington Post:
Some of the most senior foreign policy leaders in the Democratic Party endorsed Vice President Harris’s bid for president on Tuesday, declaring in an open letter that she has more international experience than most recent incoming presidents and expressing confidence that she is the “best qualified person” to lead the country.
The more than 350 signatories to the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post, add to voices within the Democratic Party seeking to cement Harris’s role as nominee following President Biden’s withdrawal from his reelection bid on Sunday. They include former national security advisers Susan Rice and Thomas E. Donilon; former secretaries of state John F. Kerry and Hillary Clinton; former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta; and former top intelligence officials Michael Hayden and James Clapper.
Let the Democratic deep state’s crowning begin.
But Trump actually previously summed up her experience and ‘statesmanship’ more accurately in the following clip:
🇺🇸 Trump talks Kamala Harris with Tucker:
“She speaks in rhyme. It’s weird, the whole thing is weird”
“The bus will go here and then the bus will go there because that’s what buses do”
But we are being told she is going to “stand up to dictators” and command respect around the world. Perhaps more accurately she would serve as a useful puppet for the Washington foreign policy blob, in continuation of the same ole interventionist and neocon policies which have marked the past couple decades, much like Biden.
The Biden Administration’s Department of Defense (DOD) has announced that it will begin handing out “economic hardship bonuses” to members of the military, amounting to a mere $20 every month.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the $20 bonus will be given to troops between the ranks of E1 and E3. An anonymous defense official confirmed the bonus on Friday, speaking to Military.com.
“The monthly bonus amounts, on average, will total approximately $120 [over the six months] … and they’re based on the funding Congress has made available,” said the official.
The bonuses will be provided as a result of funds appropriated by the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress passed last year. The Pentagon calculated that it could provide such payments to around 266,000 members before the funds ran out. As such, the E6 rank will not receive the bonus. Although the funds were first authorized in December, they were not appropriated for the DOD until March.
“While it’s welcome news that the department will provide some junior enlisted service members with temporary bonus pay, as authorized by [last year’s] NDAA, more must be done,” said Justine Tripathi, a spokeswoman for the House Armed Services Committee.
“[This is] why the [2025] NDAA NDAA provides junior enlisted service members with a 19.5% pay raise.”
Concerns have arisen regarding troops’ pay and whether or not it is enough to sustain a family. A study was published in April by the Armed Services Committee, which found that “servicemembers, especially junior enlisted servicemembers and servicemembers supporting large families, struggle to afford housing and feed their families.”
The study also determined that troops within that rank range had received either minimal pay raises or no raises at all in eight of the last 40 years.
A similar study released in June by the Military Family Advisory Network revealed that over half of all military families, active service members, and veterans were in a poor financial state.
In the same study, just 57% of respondents said that they would recommend joining the military, compared to 74% who said they would do so in 2019.
“Increasingly Cautious Consumer”: Polaris Shares Crash As High Interest Rates Crush Demand For ATVs & Jetskis
A toxic trifecta of high interest rates, elevated inflation, and increasingly cautious dealers and consumers led Polaris to report dismal second-quarter results. The earnings miss and reduced full-year forecast for sales and profit indicate the once-thriving outdoor adventure market for ATVs, UTVs, jet skis, and snowmobiles is now in a deep freeze.
Polaris reported $1.96 billion in sales for the second quarter, missing the Bloomberg estimate of $2.17 billion. Sales for off-road, on-road, and marine all missed estimates, indicating that consumers are dialing back purchases of outdoor vehicles because of high interest rates.
Here’s a snapshot of second-quarter earnings (courtesy of Bloomberg):
Off Road sales $1.53 billion, -6% y/y, estimate $1.64 billion
On Road sales $293.3 million, -19% y/y, estimate $334.8 million
Marine sales $134.1 million, -40% y/y, estimate $203.9 million
Gross profit margin 21.6% vs. 22.8% y/y, estimate 23.1%
Cash and cash equivalents $322.7 million, -5.2% y/y, estimate $267.7 million
Adjusted EPS from continuing operations $1.38, estimate $2.23
“The second quarter proved challenging as our industry continued to contend with elevated interest rates, inflation, and an increasingly cautious dealer and consumer,” Chief Executive Mike Speetzen wrote in a statement.
Polaris now expects full-year sales to decline 17% to 20%, compared with previous guidance of down 5% to 7%. It expects adjusted EPS to slide 56% to 62%, compared with prior guidance of down 10% to 15%.
Polaris now forecast full-year sales to decline by 17% to 20%, a significant drop from the previous guidance of a 5% to 7% decrease. The company also expects adjusted EPS to plummet by 56% to 62%, compared to the prior forecast of a 10% to 15% decline.
Speetzen said, “We have lowered our full-year guidance to reflect the decision to cut shipments and our expectations that current industry challenges remain in place for the remainder of the year.”
In premarket trading, shares are down 14%, the largest intraday decline since early Coivd when government-enforced shutdowns closed the economy.
Polaris is a proxy of consumer health. Certainly, high interest rates and elevated inflation have crimped demand for ATVs, UTVs, and jet skis. The broad theme here is that a consumer slowdown continues to worsen.
