Archive - Apr 22, 2015

Ask yourself: where do you think this is going? Do you really think your home country will be more free and more prosperous in five years? If not, it’s time to come up with a Plan B...

The reason one can't help but wonder just how much of FB's "users" are merely robotic autoclicks and/or originate at various clickfarms somewhere in Asia, is that taking the Google Trends chart posted above, and represented as of today, reveals something troubling.

Hence, if and when a genuine price for risk reappears, the effect may be greatly magnified as it was in the US housing market a few years back under not dissimilar circumstances. As Karl Popper noted, volatility can be suppressed in a capitalist system, but it must ultimately reappear. Sooner or later, we will face a good deal of fireworks.

The put/call ratio of open interest on S&P 100 (OEX) options has historically been a "smart money" indicator. The stock market peaked (anbd has drifted sideways for the last 6-7 weeks) since March 3rd saw an unprecedented string of bearish readings. The bearish OEX put/call readings have not relented, however. In fact, the bearishness has accelerated to an extreme level never seen before.

"Listening to Goldman for advice on how to run the economy is like listening to Dracula on how to run a blood bank,” a prominent British economist says, in response to the bank's assessment of the dangers inherent in a "leftward shift" in the UK government. "Their real aim is to avoid 50p tax rates for high earners, the Mansion Tax and other small impositions which shift some of the burden of austerity onto the shoulders of the rich, the likes of Goldman Sachs bankers and their clients," another economist notes.

"To find the real source of the system's excessive fragility, the regulators will need to look much closer to home... The Federal Reserve remains the largest market manipulator ever, and the desperate yield-chasing, hair-trigger markets that it created were the primary cause of that crash and the inevitable ones yet to come."

Appalled doesn’t cover it. Disgusted won’t do either. Angry doesn’t come close. Maybe we have yet to learn of a word that would express our feelings on the following topic. There’s a disease, an epidemic, that spreads through out the western world. We are all turning into accomplices to murder. And we still believe we are better than that. Just perhaps not all of us.

Less than 24 hours after Yemen announced an end to Operation Decisive Storm and its airstrikes on Yemen - in hopes of initiating Operation New Hope aimed at resuming a political process - The NY Times reports, warplanes from a Saudi-led military coalition conducted airstrikes in the southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz on Wednesday. Mission Dis-accomplished or Operation 'Empire Strikes Back'?

"Where are the defaults?" UBS asks, referring to the highly leveraged US shale complex. "They're coming," is the answer, as current bond prices assume oil prices in the 60s and 70s. 

Simple...

Copper prices are now down almost 6% from the top 2 days ago on China's RRR cut. As 266.40, this is the lowest price for the perhaps-economically-sensitive commodity in over a month. Not exactly the picture of 'stimulus' the PBOC was hoping for...

One must understand that the easy money via QE from the Fed and zero interest rates allowed many shale players to burn free cash flow while showing operationally net of capital expenditures (which were funded by cheap flowing monies via FED) cash generation. To be clear, that model is now broken as the era of free Fed money appears to waning as both QE, and soon, zero rates become a thing of the past. The cost of capital is no longer falling but is now rising through higher bond yields and/or lower stock prices. The madness that is occurring in financial markets on discounting these events despite very weak, almost recessionary economics, boggles the mind.

There have been precious few actual glimpses of the infamous flash crash mastermind who has seemingly kept a very low public profile, but moments ago the first sketch emerged of him during his court appearance.  As the NYT reports, "appearing in court in London dressed in a canary yellow sweatshirt and white track suit pants, the trader, Navinder Singh Sarao, a British national, sat behind a glass wall looking dazed by the proceedings around him." We, too would be dazed by the stupidity of the CFTC, if faced with the same ridiculous charge. And moments ago, the Telegraph ran the first actual photo of the "criminal mastermind."