Archive - Aug 25, 2015 - Story

Most of you will be familiar with the concept of jury nullification. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are not. This is precisely why Mark Iannicelli set up a “Jury Info” booth outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver. When you recognize the vast power that such a concept holds, you recognize why it would be so hated by statists and authoritarians across the land. That is precisely why Mr. Iannicelli was arrested and charged with handing out information.

"Given the size of foreign holdings of Asian equity and debt, should foreigners reduce their portfolio holdings by 2-3% over the course of a month, it would broadly offset the region’s current account surpluses, leaving their external balances in a shakier position. During the 'taper tantrum' period, foreigners sold markedly more than 3% of their portfolio holdings through June and July 2013, highlighting the risk that portfolio outflows could cause further Asian currency weakness."

Update: Chinese Police arrested managing director Xu Gang of China's No.1 brokerage CITIC Securities

The Asia morning begins mixed in stock markets, The PBOC explains itself "this is not a shift in monetary policy," - except it is the first such set of measures since 2008, further deleveraging as China margin debt drops CNY1 Trillion from June peak to lowest since March, Regulators begin probing securities firms (and their malicious short sellers), Index futures trading fees will be raised and trading positions restricted. Stocks are limping only modestly higher (after the rate cuts) as Yuan is fixed at 6.4043 - the lowest since August 2011.

Though the Saudi Arabian government publicly declared its tentative support for the widely-praised Iran nuclear deal last month, new reports reveal it is secretly funding propaganda efforts to undermine it. A new group called the American Security Initiative has spent over $6 million on advertisements criticizing the deal — using money supplied by the Saudi monarchy.

Whether it’s intentional or accidental. The more Mom and Pop tunes out – the less to feed on for the HFT’s till eventually there’s no one left to feed on except for themselves – and I believe you are witnessing in real-time this exact phenom which will be brought on not only quicker, but with more ferocity moving forward. For Mom and Pop are not coming back to either the “markets” or CNBC. They’re done.

Although we've talked plenty about the impact of the yuan deval on Asia-Pac and LatAm, we haven’t yet mentioned India where yesterday, in the midst of the turmoil, central bank governor Raghuram Rajan sought to calm nervous markets by reassuring the world that India is not, for now anyway, in any danger thanks to ample FX reserves and a low CA.Be that as it may, economic realities are economic realities and a currency war is a currency war, which is why, we suppose, the Indian government’s chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian thinks the country might just have to hit back.

... in the past two weeks alone China has sold a gargantuan $106 (and over) billion in US paper just as a result of the change in the currency regime!

Well... Maybe it was the US economy all along?

UN Privacy Chief Joseph Cannataci says we are dealing with a world even worse that anything Orwell could have foreseen..."there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined. So the situation in some cases is far worse already"

"Some Chinese agencies involved in economic affairs have begun to assume in their research that the yuan will weaken to 7 to the dollar by the end of the year, said people familiar with the matter. [Their] projections suggest a depreciation of more than 8 percent by Dec. 31 and about 20 percent by the end of 2016."

A half-century ago, America - and then the world - was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time. Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it - except that now, with gold abandoned and each nation able to print currency ad lib, we are likely to wind up, not with a repeat of 1929, but with something far worse...

Following the biggest (and only) market correction in years, the biggest weekly surge in the VIX ever, the second wholesale market flash crash in history coupled with the first ever limit down trade in the Nasdaq and the E-Mini, not to mention the biggest intraday bearish reversal since Lehman, it would appear that the "smart money" actually was aptly named.

Because no discussion of global dollar pegs and entrenched FX regimes would be complete without mentioning the Hong Kong dollar...

One of the fallacies being propagated about yesterday's flash crash, is that somehow HFTs came riding in as noble white knights and rescued the market from a collapse instead of actually causing it. This particular lie is worth a few quick observations and explanations of what really happened.