Archive - Apr 17, 2015 - Story

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We have never, ever, seen the US equity market so disconnected from underlying macro fundamentals.

Today, to our dismay, we find that the ECB has not only considered a "parallel currency" alterantive but for Greece this may be a reality before long. According to Reuters, the ECB "has analyzed a scenario in which Greece runs out of money and starts paying civil servants with IOUs, creating a virtual second currency within the euro bloc, people with knowledge of the exercise told Reuters." "The fact is we are not seeing any progress... So we have to look at these scenarios."

When the ECB is finally forced, by distortions of its own making, to dive into the corporate bond market, and when, after that, Mario Draghi goes full-Kuroda and throws the ECB’s balance sheet behind European equities, the central bank may want to check in the following places for relative value because according to Bloomberg, these are the countries where the “bargains” are to be found in equities and fixed income...

When Barry met Yanis... "honest broker" Barack Obama left Greek FinMin Yanis Varoufakis disappointed yesterday when, as Bild reports, US will not give financial aid to Greece (but will send advisers to Athens to compile a list of possible savings measures).

But bad news is good news, right?

Time Warner is down 5-8% on the news that the DoJ is "leaning against" the Comcast deal:

*DOJ LAWYERS SAID CLOSE TO RECOMMENDING SUIT TO BLOCK CABLE DEAL
*U.S. SAID GATHERING EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT BLOCKING TWC PURCHASE

This has dragged the broad market lower as Comcast hit back stating "there is no basis for a lawsuit to block the TWC merger."

Should Gary Gensler truly be Clinton's chief financial officer, and should Hillary become America's next president, then ladies and gentlemen, in the fine tradition started by Hank Paulson who nearly brought the entire wastern world to ruin, the next US Treasury Secretary will be the following fine former Goldman Sachs employee and "champion for everyday Americans."

Let’s talk about idiots. Somewhere out there, some absurdly well-paid banker just placed his investors’ capital in yet another financial instrument which is guaranteed to lose money: Australian government debt. For the first time in Australia, every single one of the 47 bidders offered a price so high that it implies a negative interest rate. Sadly, there are plenty of similarities between today’s negative interest rates and the early 2000s housing bubble. Only a fool believes that this time is different.

Rig counts fell for a record 19th week in a row. Total rigs dropped 34 to 954 and oil rigs dropped 26 to 374. This means the total rig count drop is now greater than 50% - the fastest drop since 1986. Crude prices had slid into the rig count announcement and popped afterwards.

The severe limitation of human robot jobs is that they rarely offer much opportunity to learn a wide variety of skills--precisely what enables us to create more value with our labor.

Apple's market capitalization of $730 billion may now be more than double that of Exxon Mobil, but when it comes to taxes paid to the US government, it's no contest: the company with record profitability that so many progressive hipsters adore and for whose products they line up with annual regularity is billions of dollars below its "fair" contribution to the US Treasury. Ironically, it is eclipsed by that other company that so many progressives love to hate: Exxon Mobil, which paid $4 billion more in tax than Apple, yet whose valuation has been cut by 15% over the past year as a result of the collapse in oil prices.

President Obama and Italian PM Matteo Renzi have been deep in discussion for minutes... here's the press conference...