Archive - Aug 15, 2015 - Story

Central bankers are beginning to see what it has been like for their colleagues in Japan, where for twenty-five years with zero interest rates nothing tried seems to work. Welcome to Keynes's world of euthanized savers and state-sponsored funding. Welcome to the world of ZIRP zombies.

Chinese authorities ordered the evacuation of residents within a 3km radius of the Tianjin blast site “over fears of chemical contamination” according to BBC. According to a tweet by The People's Daily, anti-chemical warfare troops have entered the site to handle highly toxic sodium cyanide which had been found there.

In case last week’s deadly chemical explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin wasn’t enough to satisfy your thirst for black swan-ish disasters that could serve to accelerate the ongoing global currency wars, Japan is now warning that Sakurajima, one of the country’s most active volcanos which sits just 50 kilometers from a recently restarted nuclear reactor, is poised for a "larger than usual" eruption.

"This is exactly what fairgoers want, to meet Donald Trump. That is what they’ll get."

This week saw The Dow encounter its first "death cross" - when the 50-day moving average crosses below the 200-day moving average - in 4 years. The indicator, often used to signal trend changes (down in this case) has yet to be witnessed in the S&P 500 though, but has been a useful signal at major market turning points in the past (e.g. late 60’s, early 70’s, the dot.com crash and recently the GFC). However, while breadth in this 'market' remains weak by any measure, we note that a stunning 50% of the S&P 500 components are now in the 'death zone'.