Archive - Dec 28, 2015

The last trading week of 2015 begins on a historic precipice for stocks: as reported over the weekend, the U.S. stock market has not been lower for any year ending in a “5? since 1875. That streak is now in jeopardy, because following Thursday's shortened holiday session which ended with an abrupt selloff, the overnight session has seen continued weakness across global assets in everything from Chinese stocks which tumbled the most since November 27, to commodities (WTI  is down 2.5%) to European stocks (Stoxx 600 -0.4%), to US equity futures down 0.4% on what appears to be an overdue dose of Santa Rally buyers' remorse.

How the SEC handed large banks a monopoly on short-term finance in 1998 by amending Rule 2a-7 and made the 2008 financial crisis inevitable

For a long time, we called for a big drop in the silver price. It stubbornly did not, or when it did drop it soon recovered. In the end, we were right and the silver bulls were wrong.

Update: *SHANGHAI B-SHARE INDEX PLUNGES 7.8% - MOST IN 4 MONTHS

We have seen this pattern before. In August, the first thing to tumble was Yuan FX rates, then money market rates exploded, and then the stock market tumbled. While it is a little premature, today's sudden plunge in Chinese stocks (as the afternoon session opens) following last week's spike in money market rates following the previous week's non-stop weakness in the Yuan does have a concerning smell of deja vu all over again.

More and more countries are jumping on the gold bandwagon...