Archive - Oct 13, 2015 - Story

Since inception in June 1998, UBS' Managed High Yield Plus Fund survived through the dot-com (and Telco) collapse and the post-Lehman credit carnage but, based on the press release today, has been felled by the current credit cycle's crash. After 3 years of trading at an increasingly large discount to NAV, and plunging to its worst levels since the peak of the financial crisis, the board of the Fund has approved a proposal to liquidate the Fund. While timing is unclear, this is the worst case for an increasingly fragile cash bond market as BWICs galore are set to hit with "liquidty thin to zero."

Russia “received no answer” when it asked its international partners to provide information on terrorist targets in Syria, or to say at least where its planes shouldn’t bomb, Putin said. “It’s not a joke, I’m not making any of this up,” he said.

Sanders by a landslide...

AsiaPac stocks are extending losses in early trading asit appears our fears about the Chinese coporate bond market bubble are also on the minds of Chinese regulators as they look to "boost reforms." After the PBOC has fixed the Yuan stronger for 8 straight days, the onshore and offshore Yuan has weakened appreciably in the last 24 hours and PBOC has devalued Yuan by 177pips  - the biggest in 2 months (as PBOC researchers push to "speed up Yuan internationalization" and implicitly inclusion in the SDR basket).

Every day, there are a set of messages broadcast to the population. These messages are projected to replace what people would think on their own, if left to their own devices. What they’re supposed to think about nuclear weapons, pesticides, medical drugs, vaccines, presidential elections, major media, the CIA, US foreign policy, mega-corporations, brain research, collectivism, surveillance, psychiatry, immigration... It seems today that the main attribute of the individual is "perceiving what is." Perceiving Reality.

To Protect and Serve? When Whitehill resident Andrea accidentally cut her arm on glass, her sister frantically called 911, "I need a paramedic." Columbus Police Officer Jon Thomas responded to the house where he pulled out his gun and shot toward the family's dog (which he claims ran toward him), missed, and hit Andrea's four-year-old daughter Ava in the leg, shattering her bone. As The Columbus Dispatch reports, Andrea also revealed that the cop never apologized or asked if Ava was okay and immediately left after shooting her.

Admittedly it's not Mayweather-Pacquiao, but Las Vegas is buzzing ahead of tonight's rumble-in-the-jungle between Bernie and The Battle-axe. While Joe Biden remains the most notable absentee (or will he?) there are three other 'debaters' to carry water and towels for Hillary and Bernie as they drag one another left-er and left-er and more populist-er. In the pre-fight Sanders has lobbed some awkward Iraq War questions at 'hawkish' Hillary but as Clinton's 2008 campaign manager notes, "she's rolled out Latinos for Hillary, Women for Hillary, and met the leadership of Black Lives Matter; she has checked a lot of boxes walking into this debate."

Two weeks ago, using Macquarie data, we found something disturbing at China's micro level: a quarter of Chinese firms with debt are unable to cover their annual interest expense currently. Over the weekend, Hong-Kong based CLSA decided to take this micro-level data and look at it from the top-down. What it found was stunning. According to CLSA estimates, Chinese banks' bad debts ratio could be as high 8.1% a whopping 6 times higher than the official 1.5% NPL level reported by China's banking regulator!

The stage is being set for World War III, but most Americans are completely and totally oblivious to all of this because they are so wrapped up in their own little worlds. Most Americans still seem to assume that the Russians and the Chinese are our "friends" and that any type of conflict between major global powers is impossible. Well, the truth is that conflict has already begun in Ukraine and Syria, and tensions are rising with each passing day. It won’t happen next week or next month, but we are on the road to World War III.

A confluence of circumstances have conspired to make asset allocation a somewhat vexing task these days. The so called “tricky trinity” is comprised of the following three factors: decelerating global growth, the absence of a policy put, and risk premia offering but a limited buffer. For HSBC, this means "remaining highly risk averse" going forward.

Want to create a gun-free America in 5 easy steps? Here’s all there is to it...

"Underproduction, undercapacity, deflation, currency wars, demographics, falling birth rates" - those are the biggest fears which Fourth Turning author, and head of Saeculum Research Neil Howe, lays out in this interview excerpt courtesy of RealVision TV.

It is America the Herd that is keeping America the Civilization from feeling and being prosperous and safe. For too long, we have let our rulers ride us roughshod, using us to trample the economy and global tranquility with its economic and military interventions. Make America good again, and the kinds of greatness actually worth having will naturally follow.