Archive - Oct 2015

Two years after the controversial appointment of Saudi Arabia to the U.N. Human Rights Council, leaked diplomatic cables have revealed the U.K. was a key player in the election of the Gulf State - despite the Saudis’ appalling human rights record. What is surprising is the next chapter in the farcical saga...

As Bloomberg reports, "German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government signaled it will step up expulsions of economic migrants after the influx of asylum seekers reached a record in September."

Those paying close attention to the geopolitical chess game unfolding in the Middle East might have noticed a rather amusing contradiction in Riyadh’s foreign policy stance of late...

But the question remains whether financial condition concern should manifest itself through unemployment and inflation dual mandate forecasts or be a separate consideration all together? To me, the danger in the latter is it turns central bankers into traders and market timers and that is something they are unlikely to have trained for

"Under U.S. law - the law that, not coincidentally, governs most of the world’s largest online platforms - intermediaries such as Twitter and Facebook generally can’t be held responsible for what people do on them. But the United Nations proposes both that social networks proactively police every profile and post, and that government agencies only “license” those who agree to do so." Interestingly, it appears Apple and Facebook want to get ahead of the curve and begin censoring news the U.S. government might find embarrassing right away.

Hedge fund manager looks under the hood of the current oil price collapse

Ever since The Fed began to taper QE, global manufacturing growth (as ascribed by JPMorgan's global PMI) has been falling almost incessantly. August's 50.6 print is the weakest 'expansion' since June 2013 as output fell to its lowest since April 2013 with New Orders falling.

It was all looking so good...(thanks to Dennis)

Yesterday, when the Atlanta Fed boosted its Q3 GDP tracker from 1.4% to 1.8%, the permabulls were crowing how the global recession has been called off. We are confident they will be mysteriously mute, however, following today's dramatic revision lower which cut the number for the current quarter by half to just 0.9% as a result of the previously reported tumble in the advance report on U.S. international trade which slashed the Atlanta Fed's model contribution of net exports to third-quarter real GDP growth by 0.7 percentage points to -0.9%.

In August, hedge funds blamed risk-parity funds for their dramatic underperformance. In September, the underperformance continued however this time, with risk-parity funds supposedly buying stocks, one can't blame them. To be sure, some such as Ackman whose 20 million shares of Valeant are hurting badly, will blame the Martin Shkrelis of the world for the biggest biotech tumble in years, but others may have to bite the bullet and admit it is their own lack of ability to come up with alpha in a centrally-planned "market" that is the reason.

Germany's DAX has given back all of yesterday's exuberant month-end gains and more to suffer the worst start to Q4 since 2009 (and actually worse than 2007 and 2008)...

"He deliberately tries to do things to throw opponents off balance and he’s always trying to get some sort of element of surprise and tactical advantage over people, that’s sort of what keeps him going is this constant springing surprises and flipping events in his favor."

It’s no coincidence that consumer sentiment stumbled at the same time that the stock market plunged. Coming back from Summer vacations, households saw:

• The deepest drop in 401K wealth in years
• The most prolonged drop in years

It has been a shock because investors have been conditioned to ignore the dips; or better still, to buy the foolish dips (BTFD) because time-after-time the dips reverse within a few weeks and the market plows onward and upward. In July last year, the market tumbled 3% and then fully recovered within four weeks.