Archive - 2015 - Story

The most bizarre story from the past weekend was the shocking murder of Tom Gilbert, 70, founder of the Wainscott biotech-focused hedge fund, who was shot dead in his Sutton Place apartment on Sunday Afternoon: shocking because the alleged shooter was none other than his Millennial 30-year-old son. What was certainly unclear at the time was what would be the motivation of a son to kill his successful and wealthy father, especially in such dramatic cold blood. We now know not only the motivation, but also the alleged psychopath's background: "Gilbert Jr. attended Princeton, graduating in 2009 with a degree in economics. Authorities said he had no recent work history."

"...we believe the current low crude oil price could be overkill and result in the next “Energy Crisis” by early 2016. Enjoy these low gasoline prices while they last."

Remember when shortly after ISIS' stunning and rapid ascent to power it was revealed that a key reason for the terrorist organization's blistering success were the M-1 Abrams tanks, armored transport trucks, Howitzers and countless Humvees made in the US, sold to Iraq and subsequently captured by ISIS? It appears that the US has decided to restock ISIS, if only indirectly. As Matthew Aid's Strategypage.com discloses, the US is now selling a whopping 170 M-1 tanks to Iraq in order to restock the 40 lost to ISIS last summer, and then some. And since ISIS will promptly recapture a substantial portion of this latest batch, the US now appears to have found a fully covert, backdoor ISIS-restocking supply channel: one where Iraq pays to US military contrators (using US taxpayer aid money) such as General Dynamics, and subsequently the inventory mysteriosuly finds its way to barbaian, headcutting terrorists.

Some are thinking that 2015 will be a repeat of 2014 with a few incremental changes, However, the interesting question to ask is, how has the ground shifted in 2014, if indeed it has? To our mind, the really interesting development of 2014 is that the world as a whole (with a few minor exceptions) has become quite lucid on the topic of what the United States, as a global empire, is and stands for. Another major shift we have observed is that a significant percentage of the thinking people in the US no longer trusts their national media. In case somebody out there in the media realm is tired of playing it safe and printing stuff that's only fit for wiping your Kardashian with, here are a some points for you to try to refute...

Christmas Bills...

Over the past couple of years there has been a rising chorus of individuals warming to the idea of a new secular bull market. This is not surprising given the seemingly unstoppable rise of asset prices since the financial crisis despite a litany of geopolitical and economic headwinds. But are the "ingredients" that spurred the previous two secular bull market periods in existence today?

Presented with absolutely no biased, judgmental, cognitively dissonant comments at all...

Albuquerque police officer Lou Golson was shot by a motorist during traffic stop. According to criminal complaints, Golson suffered a gunshot wound in the abdomen. A gunshot to the chest and two other gunshots to his left side did not penetrate his bullet proof vest, the complaint said. However, Golson broke a left femur and suffered a broken wrist during his fall.

It’s no longer about which factors bring down oil prices, that’s old news; it’s about what oil prices bring down. The oil price drop is a much bigger event than the US subprime housing crisis, it’s bigger than everything put together that happened in 2008. And this time, central banks are lame sitting ducks. Omnipotence is a harsh mistress. She tends to backfire.

Just a few short hours after a series of deep, if not very strong, eartquakes shook north-central Oklahoma, moments ago the ground zero of the US energy industry, the city of Dallas, TX, felt the ground shaking. According to the USGS, this was due to a 3.5 magnitude quake, which stuck at a depth of some 3.2 miles below the Texas city.

From Bill Gross: "I’ll leave the specific forecasting for a few weeks’ time and sum it up in a few quick sentences for now: Beware the Ides of March, or the Ides of any month in 2015 for that matter. When the year is done, there will be minus signs in front of returns for many asset classes. The good times are over....  Be cautious and content with low positive returns in 2015. The time for risk taking has passed."

Another quarter down, which means we can once again assess where the forward P/E multiple of the S&P stands relative to the previous two market bubble peaks.

It was less than a week ago when Zero Hedge broke the news that for CNBC, 2014 Was The Worst. Year. Ever. Much to the embarassment of CNBC, its staunch defender David Rosenberg, and not to mention its advertisers who realized they overspent substantially for the reach they were promised and received instead, the report promptly went viral. Five days after our Nielsen-sourced report before the Comcast-owned channel announced it would no longer be subject to the humiliation of Zero Hedge periodically revealing its crashing viewership and, as WSJ revealed today, "CNBC will no longer rely on TV ratings specialist Nielsen to measure its daytime audience, beginning later this year. Instead, it has retained marketing and research firm Cogent Reports for the task."

Hope springs eternal that 2015 is the year that the US economy stretches its escape velocity growth as consensus growth expectations at 2.9% are still at their highest since 2005 (although world GDP expectations are falling rapidly). However, as Bloomberg's Rich Yamarone explains, with 5 of the Top 10 economies in the world in or near recession, the wall of worry can be constructed as follows...

Earlier today, a small Denver-based precious metals dealer AmagiMetals announced something curious: it would paid its staff in Bitcoin. As it reported in its press release, "its entire staff will voluntarily accept a portion of individual employee paychecks in Bitcoin in 2015 through a new service called Bitwage. CEO of Amagi Metals Stephen Macaskill said the company is taking this action to advance its ability to function fully in Bitcoin going forward. Macaskill will accept $40,000 of his annual salary in bitcoin to demonstrate his support of Bitcoin." Whether it is a marketing gimmick, or the PM dealer is one of the few companies to put its (electronic) money where its ideological mouth is, and press for a world without dollar intermediation remains to be seen, however, for the sake of its employees we hope they did not put any part of their bonuses in the Bitstamp exchange which as we learned overnight, was the next big Bitcoin exchange to suffer a major hack following the now defunct Mt. Gox, and where a little over $5 million in bitcoins were stolen.