Archive - Nov 12, 2015

A major Russian TV channel just aired a report about Putin meeting with his top military commanders, and pointed out what the Kremlin said was a mistakenly leaked secret document, which showed drawings of a "new nuclear submarine weapons system." This so-called “leak” of “secret documents” is, of course, no leak at all.  This is a completely deliberate action. 

Some First World governments have taken a decidedly Third World turn.

The video that emerged this week of Yale students screaming down one of their professors might make for a good laugh, if its implications were not quite so serious. It’s a scene we’ve seen played out far too often at college campuses in recent years, and it deserves to be called by what it is: a nascent form of fascism.

“The bubble may already have burst” for the most expensive homes, Barber said. Now, "36 percent of all properties currently on the market across prime central London are being marketed at a lower price than they were originally listed at, with the average reduction in price being 8.5 percent."

On the heels of Washington's move to send a guided missile destroyer to The South China Sea to counter Chinese "aggression," the US reportedly flew two B-52 strategic bombers "near" Beijing's man-made islands last weekend. There are competing accounts as to what took place, but this certainly looks like the latest escalation in an increasingly dangerous game of chicken.

China has given the green light to more than 150 coal power plants so far this year despite falling coal consumption, flatlining production and existing overcapacity. Modelling this expansion, Greenpeace EnergyDesk suggests that this would cause 6,100 premature deaths a year — that’s 150,000 over a 24-year operating life.

Oil storage problems are so severe that traders asking ships to go slow, and that is where we see something very strange occurring off the coast near Galveston, TX.

The Fed goes 6 for 6 today as Bullard, Yellen,Lacker, Evans, Dudley, and Fischer (respectively) all manage to jawbone a looming rate hike without any confirmation of the "well everything must be awesome" meme to satisfy increasingly doubtful stock market worshipers...

Looking back at the build up and the let down on the Theranos story, the recurring question that comes up is how the smart people that funded, promoted and wrote about this company never stopped and looked beyond the claim of “30 tests from one drop of blood” that seemed to be the mantra for the company. While we may never know the answer to the question, Aswath Damodaran offers three possible reasons that should operate as red flags on future young company narratives...

We wonder: just how much "more exponential" will China's "strike chart" have to get before everyone else finally notices?

The incentive structure throughout government, Wall Street, and big business generally is that “crime pays,” which is exactly why we’re seeing more and more of it. It will only get worse, until we grow up as a culture and demand accountability.

The recent new highs on the Nasdaq accompanying the surge off the August and September lows have been accompanied by bullish headlines, and it is true the action in some stocks is truly awe inspiring. Yet all the action has an oddly familiar ring to it and it may not be bullish. While most traders today haven't really lived through the 2000 bubble, older hats have institutional memory.

“In metros with high-income growth, unaffordable mortgage payments can become affordable within a few years. For millennials, buying an unaffordable Home isn’t always a bad idea."

Perhaps those accusing Bridgewater of being the market-moving catalyst did have a point, because after posting a total AUM of $10.8 billion at June, this total declined by a whopping 31% to just $7.5 billion as of September 30.