Business

As noted earlier, the stocks of both Rite Aid and Fred's are tumbling this morning, after Walgreen's terminated its long-running merger agreement, instead opting to buy over 2,000 RAD stores outright. For those who missed it, here is pain trade for Fred's shareholders this morning...

... and Rite-Aid.

However, besides regular retail and vanilla institutional investors, one class that is being hit especially hard on today's news are hedge funds, who according to Bloomberg own ~32% of Fred’s shares and ~26% of Rite Aid. 

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Yesterday, in response to alleged “progress” on Obamacare I penned Mish’s Rule of Progress.

Today, I am pleased to announce even more amazing budget progress in the state of Illinois.

First, let’s recap progress at the national level.

Following the previously noted ongoing rise in yields around the globe on the back of this week's unexpected and coordinated central bank hawkish jawboning which sent 10Y Bunds as high as 0.43%, double where they were earlier in the week...

Remember when Warren Buffett anecdotally "took a bath" when he decided to effectively rescue Bank of America with a $5 bilion equity injection in 2011? He may be due for another bath any minute.

Walgreens, Boots Alliance and Rite Aid terminated their $9.4 billion merger agreement, amid heavy anti-trust concerns, and unveiled on Thursday a new deal to buy more than 2,000 of Rite Aids stores for $5.2bn. RAD shares tumbled as much as 20% on the news.