Archive - Jan 2016

Though "another Lehman Brothers" isn't likely to happen with banks, it is very likely to happen with commodity firms and countries that depend directly or indirectly on commodity prices.

As go the markets, so go the movies. According to the WSJ, Hollywood just had its biggest-ever year at the box office in 2015, collecting $11.1 billion in ticket sales, up 7% from the previous year and surpassing the record of $10.92 billion set in 2013. All of the growth, however, occurred at the top of the heap, or in other words, 2015 was a record year "thanks to a handful of blockbusters that left a whole lot of duds in the dust." In other words, just like in the stock market, a record high portion of Hollywood "gains", or rather box office ticket sales, came from just five movies.

"Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things."

Main Street is vulnerable to leveraged trading algorithms and Brazilian bonds because it’s not just exotica that is overleveraged. Risk-off, in short, is no longer just a temporary swing of the pendulum, guaranteed to reverse in a year or two. As amazing as this sounds, we’ve borrowed so much money that as hedge funds go, so goes the world.

The amount of wasteful over investment on companies and ideas that should have never seen the light of a ledger book, let alone day, has been astounding. Without the intervention of the Fed’s QE (quantitative easing) free money enabling risk taking to supersede business fundamentals to fund and fuel speculative investments in ways that mirror the dot-com days: there would be no "Valley" as it currently stands. Unicorns, Non-GAAP, IPO’s, and more were the terms bandied or used to encapsulate what it was to be a "disrupter." Now with iconic Silicon Valley impresarios such as Theil or others being reported that to be looking for ways to cash out without an IPO, a nuclear winter pertaining to the world of Unicorns may be as '1' is said to represent: imminent.

As reported previously, in addition to celebrating the new year, starting January 1, Texans also celebrated a new open-carry gun law which took effect in the new year. As a result, Texans should get accustomed to sights such as this one which over the coming weeks and months will become increasingly recurring.

Comcast is penny wise, pound foolish.

With hedge fund short positions near record highs and speculators at their least bullish in almost five years, oil prices have spurted higher in the early trading as the diplomatic gloves come off in The Middle East. Despite record levels of crude inventory around the world, WTI Crude is trading above $38, up over 3% from its $37.07 close on New Year's Eve. Algos ran the stops above last week's highs ($38.32) but for now prices are not as excited as many would have expected. Brent, for now, is outperforming and trade 45c rich to WTI.

Growing debt faster than your energy supply has hard limits. Gail Tverberg explains the tight correlation between the rates of GDP growth and growth in energy supply. For decades, energy has been becoming more costly to obtain, and instead of accepting lower GDP growth, we have been using debt to fund further energy exploration and extraction. That strategy has diminishing returns, Tverberg warns. And we are close to the moment of reckoning: "I’m afraid what it means is that at some point there’s got to be a discontinuity. Something has got to break."

"We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences and we will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions," US officials said on Sunday on the heels of Saudi Arabia's decision to cut diplomatic ties with Iran following the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric and the firebombing of the Saudi embassy in Tehran. The response from Riyadh: "enough is enough."

What happens when radioactive byproduct from the Manhattan Project comes into contact with an “underground fire” at a landfill? Surprisingly, no one actually knows for sure; but residents of Bridgeton, Missouri, near the West Lake and Bridgeton Landfills - just northwest of the St. Louis International Airport - may find out sooner than they’d like. For now, it’s startlingly apparent no one knows exactly what’s happening - though the smoldering below the surface doesn’t cease and floodwaters continue to rise.

Status Quo means Hillary. Financial Mayhem means Bernie. Fear means Trump.

Outspoken UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who has received numerous death threats during his tenure as a European parliamentarian, spoke for the first time last night about being the victim of an assassination attempt after his car was sabotaged, causing a terrifying motorway crash. As The Daily Mail reports, Farage careered off a French road after a wheel on his Volvo came loose while he was driving from Brussels back to his home in Kent. When the police arrived at the scene, they told him that the nuts on all of the wheels had been deliberately unscrewed...

If 2015 was the year in which no investment strategy worked, 2016 is looking like the year in which all economic policies fail.