Archive - Jan 2015

There are still those who still follow every up and, so very rarely, down-tick with morbid fascination. It is for their benefit that we present what in our, and Nanex's, opinion was the absurd chart topping an absurd year of the most absurd "bull market rally" in history. Presenting the Top 10 WTF moment of the broken market of 2014: the last second December 18, 2014 flash smash in the SPY. Because for all those who think 2094 was the all time high in the S&P, think again: according to whatever algo was trading the SPY 4 seconds before the close on December 18 the real all time high was actually 2130: appropriately enough, a fake "all-time high" attained only thanks to a algorithmic glitch.

Forget targeted US airstrikes, ISIS faces a new existential threat. Citing an unnamed source in a Mosul hospital, Iraq's official pro-government newspaper, al Sabaah, said Ebola arrived in Mosul from "terrorists" who came "from several countries" and Africa. Mashable further confirms, three outlets reported that Ebola showed up at a hospital in Mosul. For now, it's unclear if any disease experts or doctors in Mosul are even able to test for the Ebola virus; but it would mark the first time the virus had been detected in an area controlled by ISIS, a group that doesn't embrace science and modern medicine.

The goal is always the same: if they can't have the run of the place, they make sure that nobody else can either, by setting up a conflict scenario that nobody there can ever hope to resolve. And so if you see Anglo-imperialists going out of their way and spending lots of money to poison the political well somewhere in the world, you can be sure that they are on their way out. Simply put, they don't spend lots of money to set up intractable problems for themselves to solve - it's always done for the benefit of others.

2014 was a challenging year, and perhaps for nobody more than the marquee hedge fund names of the past several years, which for the 6th year in a row underperformed the S&P 500 despite once again raking in billions in "performance" fees.

We are once more in the hands of Occam’s Razor, namely that oil prices are falling hard because demand is falling hard. The scale gives us insight into the nature of the slowing of the global economy, to which the US is a full part, meaning that comparisons only with past and serious downslopes is not a welcome development; nor should it be “unexpected.” Mainstream commentary seeks to reject this simple and basic argument because it cannot fathom, predicated on its penchant for nothing but parroting economic “authority”, that the world could fall so deeply into recession once more drowning not just in oil but also “stimulus.” Once you get past the idea that “stimulus” isn’t, logical sense is restored.

It appears that when North Korea's Kim Jong-un isn't personally hacking Sony Pictures' 40-some firewalls, he is busy flying planes.

I've never loved listening to music.--Casey Kasem