Archive - 11769 - Story

"Your fund made 5.6% net last month, to finish the year up 20.45% net. Gains came from the short book.... Your fund remains long bonds, short equities."

"You see a big destruction in the income of the oil and commodity producers," exclaims on analyst but, as Bloomberg notes, while oil prices flashing across traders' terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is considerably deeper. Adjusted for inflation, WTI is its lowest since 2002 and worse still Saudi Light Crude is trading at below $17 (in 1998 dollar terms) - the lowest since the 1980s...

Santelli rages "the notion that a small group of people should control the price of money should be under review," adding that "if stocks are rallying because The Fed is retreating, we certainly will turn into Japan."

Following a comprehensive review of China's housing market, we now realize it's much worse than the consensus understands.

On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that sought to force the Department of Homeland Security to release details of a secret “killswitch” protocol to shut down cellphone and internet service during emergencies.

President Obama's "Empty Seat" appears to have raised the ire of many...

It appears - for now - that the machines are losing control. Amid the chaos of the last few days in US equities, Johnny 5 and his ilk have been quote-stuffing in desperation at the highest rate in history... but it's not working!!

Despite recent stock market carnage, the reaction by the VIX has been a relative yawner. All we really care about are the cold, hard numbers. And if history is any guide, investors, who have demonstrated a rather complacent reaction to the decline so far, may very well get a wake up call before this slump has run its course.

"The new Portuguese administration is not the first government to resort to asset confiscation and populist expediency. Venezuela and Argentina also belong to this club. The important distinction is that Portugal is a eurozone member state, and its systemically important banks are regulated by the ECB."

The tragic irony of all this is that Hillary Clinton led the charge for a war in Libya based on a claim of a potential massacre in Benghazi. The massacre in Benghazi never occurred (and was likely overblown), but real ethnic cleansing and massacres did occur when the US and NATO empowered the Libyan rebels to overthrow Gaddafi and use their weapons beyond the war zone. Today, Libya is a failed state infested with the Islamic State and other Islamic terrorist groups thanks to Clinton and friends. Quite a liberation.

Credit Schmedit...

With Erdogan calling (loudly) for lower rates and 5 of 7 MPC seats opening up between April and November, some fear Turkey may eschew policy normalization leading directly to what Morgan Stanley calls "a vicious cycle" of a depreciating currency, rising inflation, and lower real policy rates.

Since 2011, when the E/P ratio for those with less than a high school diploma bottomed, that metric has regained almost two-thirds of its recessionary losses (orange line in chart). But the E/P ratio for high school or college graduates – i.e., eight out of nine American adults – has not recovered any of its recessionary losses, and has barely budged in four years (purple line). This data underscores how the jobs recovery has been spearheaded by cheap labor, with job gains going disproportionately to the least educated — and lowest-paid — workers.