Archive - Dec 2015

You know the one thing Mark Zuckerberg with all his Billions can’t do today without causing a media sensation throughout Wall Street? Hint: Sell. If we were in fact at the edge of a bubble in the Valley – how would one be able to sell at the top without bringing on some negative feedback loop in their stock price? With this newly formed “Initiative” any selling is now wrapped into a wonderful meme of “We’re not selling to profit. (or preserve) It’s for charity. And we’ve stated openly we were going to do just that. So, nothing to see here, please move along, thanks so much." Remember, also, this year is the first year that the once Holy Grail of “IPO’s to the promised land” have been mired in quicksand.

"When US officials say they don't see how the terrorists' oil is smuggled to Turkey... it smells badly of a desire to cover up these acts."

"Deteriorating market breadth and herding into an ever-narrower number of stocks is classic market top behavior. Currently, there are many other warning signs that are also being ignored. The merger mania, the stock buyback frenzy, the year-over-year declines in corporate sales and falling earnings for the entire S&P 500 index, the plunges this year in the high-yield and leveraged loan markets, the topping and rolling over of the massive (record) level of stock margin debt... and I could go on."

A Lufthansa crew and passengers overpowered a Jordanian man with a US passport, who tried to open the cabin door on a Frankfurt-Belgrade flight on Sunday, while screaming that he wished to join Allah along with all the passengers, according to Serbian TV RTS.

Perhaps the best way to show what a mess Europe is in is the €3 billion deal they made with Turkey head Erdogan, only to see him being unmasked by EU archenemy Putin as a major supporter, financial and who knows how else, of the very group everyone’s so eager to bomb the heebees out after Paris. But Brussels thinks it’s found a whipping boy for all its failures. Greece. It’s fast increasing its accusations against Athens’ handling of the 100s of 1000s of refugees flooding the country. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of Greece, not Brussels. The EU has so far given Greece €30 million in ‘assistance’ for the refugee crisis, while the country has spent over €1.5 billion in money it desperately needs for its own people. But somehow it’s still not done enough.

"Very much in evidence, once more, has been the perennial contrast between the hectic rhythm of markets and the slow motion of the deeper economic forces that really matter. Markets can remain calm for much longer than we think. Until they no longer can."

Inequality of wealth is inequality of power. A study just released finds that "America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet — now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households.” How much political power do the people who would be inside that jet — and their friends — actually have?

This is Vichy America...

And will Yellen keep yellin'?

Less than a week after the San Bernardino shooting, the ghost of ISIS terrorism has finally landed in London, where moments ago news broke that a man wielding a machete screamed "this is for Syria" before slashing a person's throat at London's Leytonstone subway station, and attacking up to three people.

Almost 2 years after being fined for falsifying safety records, and 7 months after a transformer exploded at the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor (just 30 miles from midtown Manhattan), Entergy - the plant's operator - has 'safely' shutdown the Unit 2 reactor due to a major outage cut power  to several control rods. Despite the company's reports that no radioactivity was released to the environment, NY Governor Cuomo has sent investigators to the site to 'monitor' the situation.

We all like to know what’s happening in the world, and for good reason... understanding our surroundings is essential to survival. We instinctively seek information... we need information. There is, however, a problem that we face: No matter how much “news” you consume, you won’t really know what’s going on in the world. We can’t know, because ‘the news’ is half illusion, provided by government-dependent corporations that are paid to keep you watching and to keep you joined to the status quo. That’s the truth about news, my friends. The newspapers are where the yokels get informed, presidents flatly lie, and legislatures are massively corrupt.

Turkey's most notorious Twitter personality predicted the downing of a Russian warplane a month in advance in the lead-up to November's fraught elections.

...and a trader who doesn’t pay attention to the modern realities of market structure and liquidity provision is not long for this world.