Archive - Oct 28, 2015 - Story

No, Ben S. Bernanke will be someday remembered as the world’s most destructive battleship admiral. Not only was he fighting the last war, but his whole multi-trillion money printing campaign after September 15, 2008 was aimed at avoiding an historical Fed mistake that had never even happened!

"We have long lines, but they're patient with it because Illinois is not paying. They're all coming here and saying, 'I'm from Illinois, how do you play it here?'"

Trouble with 'Social Justice Warriors'? Who ya gonna call?

Every day when you flip on the media, there is someone telling you that now is the time to "buy" into the market. Of course, if you are buying, then who is selling? The only "net buyers" of equities this year have been "individuals," while "professional" firms have been "net sellers." This is the epitome of the classic "smart money/dumb money" analysis where individuals are used by institutions to offload positions that are no longer optimal. The question is with corporate profits and earnings declining, weak economic data, and the threat of tighter monetary policy - will individuals once again be left "holding the bag" while institutions derisk portfolios in advance of the next decline?

The exciting, if brief, life in the wild by the untethered JLENS blimp has come to a crashing halt. Moments ago, Norad told AP reported that the blimp is "on the ground and secure."

In a day in which the walking dead were on the verge of going green (Twitter nearly wiped out its entire loss following last night's earnings), there was some hope that momo stocks would finally make a come back. Alas, for the company which we first dubbed "camera on a stick" it was just not meant to be.

Deutsche Bank is going through a painful restructuring that began with the ouster of co-CEOs Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen and culminated in new CEO John Cryan’s move to eliminate a quarter of the workforce, or some 23,000 people. Well don’t look now, but just moments ago, Europe’s biggest bank eliminated the dividend.

Anyone else found to have obtained at least "35 confidential documents" from the Fed on at least "20 occassions" would be sent straight to jail with a prison sentence anywhere between several decades and life.  Goldman's punishment? 0.6% of its 2014 Net Income.

It is possible that we might witness the formation of two blocks within OPEC during the next December 4 meet in Vienna. One, led by Venezuela, Ecuador, Libya and Algeria that would want to reduce production levels and the other led by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait that would stick to the current strategy of defending market shar. In the end, it will come down to survival of the fittest. Players who have higher breakeven costs will be the ones who will blink first and thereby reduce their production levels.

"Australia and the U.S. should not light a fire and add fuel to the flames"...

Moments ago something even more disturbing than the Fed statement took place when a blimp used by NORAD in its surveillance of the east coast has become untethered from its mooring in Maryland and it's now flying somewhere over Pennsylvania, according to NORAD spokesman Lt. Joe Mavrocki.

"Fed officials suggested they had become less concerned in recent weeks about turbulent financial markets and uncertain economic developments overseas ... open[ing] the door more explicitly than they have before to raising rates at a final 2015 meeting in December."

With a 4% probability, it is no surprise that The Fed did not raise rates. Since The FOMC "folded" in September blaming global turmoil, stocks, bonds, and precious metals have soared as China (and EM) chaos has calmed while domestic data has declined. This has led to 'lift-off' expectations extending to April 2016, and so the question today is - how will The Fed convince the world it 'will' raise rates when it really can't...

• *FED REMOVES LINE THAT GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS MAY RESTRAIN GROWTH
  
• *FED SAYS U.S. ECONOMY `HAS BEEN EXPANDING AT A MODERATE PACE'

A definite hawkish bias but so we are left data-dependent (fundamentals bad, stocks good), and less economically optimistic, but are supposed to believe that December (34%) is still a live meeting (because of some hockey-stick expectation in data) because The Fed needs to raise to show that it can.