Archive - Aug 14, 2015 - Story

When things that are supposed to happen once every 3 billion years (statistically speaking) start happening once every three months, or every three weeks, then something is definitively broken.

There is a major problem brewing the US Auto industry... and therefore the US economy.

One of the most disturbing and recurring themes highlighted on this site over the past year has been the ever greater disconnect between the worlds of equity and fixed income, whether in terms of implied volatility, or actual underlying risk.  It turns out there is be an even more acute, and far more concering divergence, which was conveniently pointed out overnight by Bank of America and which suggests that a Bear Stearns type event may be just a few days ahead.

The Hamptons. Beverly Hills. Greenwich, CT. These places are the stomping grounds of the rich and famous. Today’s infographic, courtesy of Visual Capitalist, maps out all of the richest zip codes in America, leaving no country club or gated community unturned.

While making its devaluation announcement, Beijing said that it wanted its currency "to reflect fundamentals" and to no longer simply mirror the movement of the dollar. It acknowledged the fact that its peg to the dollar was problematic and that it wanted a better, more natural mechanism. This is the key to understanding the announcement: The Chinese are preparing for a time in which the financial world does not spin in orbit around the dollar. Such a reality must make us think about the future.

It has hardly been a secret that the unprecedented level of pollutants in the Chinese air would impair life expectancy and lead to extensive health problems, but even we were surprised to find out the quantification of China's air problem: according to one study, an average of 4,000 people a day are killed in China, as a result of the dense smog.

Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly understood, amounts to.

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the Western world are being forced to admit an obvious, yet uncomfortable reality. Democracy is dead. Your vote and your voice doesn’t matter. Not at all. No group of people understand this as intimately as the Greeks. They voted for one thing, got something else, and in the process were unceremoniously reminded of their political irrelevance. The Greeks are now in a position to show the rest of us how it’s done. Communities need to take matters into their own hands and tackle challenges at the grassroots level. Nowhere is this more impactful and necessary than in the monetary realm, and some Greeks are already leading the charge.

Previously we reported on Horseman Capital's uncanny ability to generate market-beating returns (outperforming 98% of peers since 2012) despite having a net -50% short position offset by treasury longs. Now, we take a quick detour into one of the prop investment bets used by Horseman's CIO, Russel Clark, namely Hollywood's ability to pull a Dennis Gartman, and make a dramatic appearnace at all the key market inflection points.

Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. corporate fraudulent government can legally lie to you every single day to get you to believe whatever they want you to believe and then turn around behind closed doors and laugh at you for believing their legal lies. Try telling that to most Americans and see how they look at you. This is another example of a hard-to-handle lie that is pushed on Americans every day; and the average working American has no time to truly wrap their heads around this stunning fact so they bury their heads in the sand instead, unwilling to look at the issue because they fear they won’t know what to do with the information.

Though transparency was a cause he championed when campaigning for the presidency, President Obama has largely avoided making certain defense costs known to the public. However, when it comes to military appropriations for government spy agencies, we know from Freedom of Information Act requests that the so-called “black budget” is an increasingly massive expenditure subsidized by American taxpayers.

"The U.S. is investigating what it believes are 'credible' reports that ISIS fighters used mustard agent in an attack against Kurdish Peshmerga this week," CNN reports. "Did ISIS find some mustard? We think they did. We think they have used it."

How did Tepper do in Q2? In a word: lousy. In another word: the man who recently was on CNBC pitching a 20x P/E multiple as the new normal, may have just called the market top.

The ongoing deterioration in fundamentals, economics and technicals suggest that risk currently outweighs the potential reward for now. With respect to the technical front, the ongoing deterioration in relative strength, momentum, and breadth, combined with a compression of price action, have only been witnessed at more important market peaks in the past. "Bull markets" do not die on their own. Their death is generally dictated by the onset of an unexpected catalyst that creates enough "panic selling" to spark a liquidation cycle. Does the current situation in China rise to such a level? Maybe. It is an issue we began discussing this past June, and there may be a danger in dismissing the issue too quickly.