Archive - Nov 2015 - Story

Authorities in Belgium have extended threat level 4 (the highest) for Brussels on Monday which presumably means that a "serious and imminent" threat still exists. One of the 15 people arrested over the weekend was charged in connection with the Paris attack and the going assumption is that police are still looking for two unidentified men, one Jihadi John accomplice, and Salah Abdeslam. 

As usual, S&P was late, but just over three months after our explicit warning, the rating agency finally came out with the catalyst we have been expecting when moments ago it said that it had "placed its 'BBB-' long-term corporate credit rating on Hong Kong-based supply-chain management service provider Noble Group Ltd. and the  'BBB-' issue rating on the company's senior unsecured notes on CreditWatch  with negative implications." In other words, Asia's Glencore is about to be junked.

Since 20 March 2015 a new gold price fixing organized by the London Bullion Market Association has been in operation. It has replaced the previous price determination process, which was in place for more than a century and became subject to criticism as it was highly vulnerable to manipulation. Has manipulation now ceased?

Treasury yields are at the lows of the day (despite relative equity strength) as this morning's triple whammy of weak data (CFNAI, PMI, and Existing home sales) confirms fears of Fed policy errors. The extreme short-positioning across the entire Treasury complex is likely making a few nervous as 30Y yield breaks back below 3.00% for the 3rd time in 3 days... and the 2s30s curve breaks to 7-month lows.

Just an hour after Bernie Sanders exclaimed that the Pfizer/Allergan merger would be a disaster for Americans who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, Hillary Clinton has come out swinging in her most populist manner lambasting Republicans for "enabling tax inversions" and vowing to "crackdown" on companies moving abroad to "avoid paying their fair share."

Perhaps at a yield of just under 1%, the highest since May 2010, there is an increase in relative value demand. Nowhere is this more visible than when looking at the German 2 Year Bund, which earlier today hit a new record low, just shy of -0.40% (yes, negative).

Amid all the singing and dancing over Spain's miraculous recovery and Europe's renaissance on the back of Draghi's money-printing machine, it appears - just like in America - that below the glossy veneer of engineered equity and bond prices, all is not well. As Xinhua reports, the average wage in Spain has fallen to its lowest level since 2007, according to figures released by the Spanish Ministry of Finance, and after peaking at 19.3 million in 2009, the number of workers is also collapsing. It appears Catalan is righty to want out...

The American people have been forced to pay untold millions for a ten-year CIA and Pentagon program to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government, and now we are supposed to pay millions more to provide welfare for the refugees Obama created. If Obama wants to take in refugees from the chaos in Syria, there are probably plenty of vacant rooms in the White House.

From an intraday high of $97.64, Valeant shares are down 10% this morning as the last few days' short squeeze and hope-fueled stability in the hedge fund hotel has given way to more 'first mover advantage' across the levered trading community. As we noted here, this is what hedge fund panic looks like.

Just as we warned was possible, KBIO is going full Volkwsagen up another 150% today alone (up from $1 last Wednesday to over $45 today), the stock has just been halted.  And here is the punchline: According to Markit, the short interest of float is now 38%. Why is this a problem? Because Shrekli's investor "group" bought 70%.  This means that if Shkreli pulls all the borrow, there will simply not be enough shares for the shorts to cover.

EURUSD just broke to a 1.05 handle, its lowest since April. With EURUSD now down 9 big figures from Draghi's mid-October jawboning, the US Dollar index (heavily-weighted to EUR) is soaring, reaching back above to its highest since March. Bearing in mind that Fed's Fischer says that the worst of USD's impact on the US economy is yet to come, we may have a problem.

Presented with no comment (if confused, don't worry - you are not alone)

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is investigating a report that the U.S. government has been spying on executives of the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, over the past decade. “The oil industry is the backbone of the Venezuelan economy,” Maduro said on state television. “The U.S. empire for a long time … has intended to sabotage [Venezuela’s] oil industry and defeat the [Caracas] government in order to steal the oil.”

On Friday, we previously reported that "Europe Cracks Down On Bitcoin, Virtual Currencies To "Curb Terrorism Funding." That was the appetizer because today we read, again with little surprise, that "as part of a push to clamp down on the financing of militant groups" French Finance Minister Michel Sapin European said that authorities need to be able to tap into data from the SWIFT bank payments network.