Archive - Aug 5, 2015

18 of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20% from recent closing highs, meeting the common definition of a bear market. As Bloomberg details, that’s the same number as at the end of October 2008, when deepening financial turmoil sent global markets into a swoon.

Will there be a financial collapse in the United States before the end of 2015?  An increasing number of respected financial experts are now warning that we are right on the verge of another great economic crisis.

The Fed’s zero interest rate policy has provided a subsidy to investors for the past 7 years.  The lure of easy profits from cheap money was wildly attractive and readily accepted by investors. The Fed “put” gave investors great confidence that they could outperform their exceptionally low cost of capital.  These implicit promises by central banks encouraged trillions of dollars into ‘carry trades’ and various forms of market speculation. Complacent investors maintain these trades, despite the Fed’s warning of a looming reduction in the subsidy, and despite a balance sheet expected to shrink in 2016.  It has been a risk-chasing ‘game of chicken’ that is coming to an end.  Changing conditions have skewed risk/reward to the downside.  This is particularly true because financial assets prices are exceptionally expensive...There are warning signs and visible market stresses beyond those mentioned yesterday.

We were amused to learn that in the quarter in which AAPL stock almost hit a new all time high, the Swiss Central Bank, which reported a record $20 billion loss in the second quarter, and a record $52 billion in the first half, added another 500,000 AAPL shares, bringing its new grand total to a whopping 9.4 million shares, equivalent to $1.2 billion as of June 30 (well below that now following the recent 10% correction).

It wasn’t until the Americans were free to issue unlimited amounts of ‘dollars’ that these claims lost their soundness in a rambunctious belief in the never-ending global supremacy of US manufacturing. Now the damage is done. The gross misallocations that have plagued the world economy for well over four decades cannot be corrected without a cataclysmic event that will dramatically change living standards as the US realign their manufacturing and service sectors. But it cannot continue indefinitely either. Something will have to give.

A sample of charts currently on our radar

"The wealth management arm of Bank of America Merrill Lynch is liquidating its clients’ money from one of Paulson & Company’s funds and has put another fund under "heightened review,'" NY Times reports. As it turns out, this was not the year to be long Greece and Puerto Rico. 

Hillarinochio strikes again as The FBI unleashes a probe into her email server...

Another talking-head myth destroyed: there has never, ever, been a higher percentage of IPOs that are are unprofitable! It really is different this time, it's worse.

Low oil prices and the battle against Islamic State (IS) are pushing Iraq toward a financial crisis. Only fundamental reforms, especially decentralization of power, can resolve the challenges facing Iraq today.

Just two days after a jury agreed that Colorado theater shooter James Holmes could still face the death penalty for the tragic July 2012 mass shooting which killed 12 and injured 70, and a month after another shooter killed two and injured 8 before killing himself, moments ago WSMV reported that another active shooter situation had emerged in Nashville with the Nashville Fire Department confirming that shots were being fired at the Carmike 8 Cinemas on Bell Road at 1:55 p.m.

In the weeks before AAPL's adition to The Dow, the stock soared over 13% (for no good reason). In the almost 4 months since - after some sideways trading - AAPL shares have plunged. The announcement on March 6th, that AAPL would be included in The Dow on March 19th marked the end of exuberance and has now turned into a "no brainer" trade as the curse of The Dow strikes again. Ironically AT&T - which was replaced by Apple - has surged since its removal from the venerable index.