B+

Precisely 24 hours ago, in an attempt to pre-empt the panic-selling open, the NYSE invoked the little used Rule 48, which was to be expected: the Nasdaq 100 has just tumbled limit down and the S&P and DJIA would follow shortly. Today, however, it is unclear just why the NYSE decided to once again invoke Rule 48 as futures are set to open about 3-4% higher, and yet that is precisely what the NYSE did. As a reminder, what this means is that mandatory opening indications are not required, which in theory should make it easier to open stocks.

News That Matters

The status quo must be maintained...

NYSE granting "triple width opening quote relief in all option classes for August 24, 2015", Invokes Rule 48

The last time this was invoked was in Jan 2015 (during the blizzard), in June 2012 (amid a dramatic drop in pre-open futures) and in Sept 2011 amid the chaotic 400-point swings in The Dow. Funny they do not use this "Rule" when futures indicate massive upside opens?

"Regional buyers need a lot of conviction to step in front of this speeding train [especially] in context of a rapidly changing economic environment."

"It is an old saying in commodities that the best cure for low prices is low prices. Market participants are now asking how much further prices need to fall and how long they need to stay there to bring supply and demand back in to balance and halt the price declines across a broad swathe of different raw materials markets. The fear is that just as the upside of the supercycle brought an unprecedented and long period of historical price highs, the plunge to the downside is shaping up to be equally dramatic and may yet have a way to run."

TLDR: Bitcoin XT proposes a premature fix to a potential problem; let's first wait and see how market forces react

Well, we have a winner - Oil broke to a 3 handle before 10Y rates hit a 1 handle (just - 10Y at 2.04%) following the 5th weekly rise in rig count (+2 to 674). Energy credit risk is soaring to record highs as investors realize 'there will be blood' in all those highly-levered loans.  This is the first time the front-month crude contract traded below $40 since March 3rd 2009... just before QE was unleashed in all its asset-inflating, malinvestment-driving, zombifying glory.

In the past, readers have been alerted to numerous “impossible” trends in our markets and economies, all manufactured by the Western banking crime syndicate. Here are just a few of those highlights (low-lights?)

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and only a few obscure researchers would know how this was accomplished.

...Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins. The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the Obama administration...

Husbands and wives across the world are waking up to their partners' extramarital affairs after, as AP calls it, a catastrophic leak at adultery website Ashley Madison spewed electronic evidence of infidelity across the Internet. Online forums were buzzing Thursday with users claiming to have found evidence that their significant others were on the site. But it's not all doom and gloom... as Reuters notes many professions stand to benefit from the unfolding saga, from lawyers to therapists to cyber security firms. Prominent divorce lawyer Raoul Felder said the release is the best thing to happen to his profession since the seventh Commandment forbade adultery in the Bible, "I've never had anything like this before." So hey, those cheating spouses are now helping the economy grow...

HFT critics are crowing over the ITG confession. You see! HFT is front running, plain and simple! Told you! And HFT defenders are largely silent because... well, you can’t defend the indefensible. However, if history is any guide at all, the existence of a clearly identifiable small-v villain will forestall the unmasking of what we believe is a Big Bad... the subterranean influence, bordering on control, of human investment behaviors by firms controlling advanced inference machines.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record we'd like to say a bit more about economists' tendency to get their monetary history wrong; in particular, the common myths about the gold standard. If there's one monetary history topic that tends to get handled especially sloppily by monetary economists, not to mention other sorts, this is it. Sure, the gold standard was hardly perfect, and gold bugs themselves sometimes make silly claims about their favorite former monetary standard. But these things don't excuse the errors many economists commit in their eagerness to find fault with that "barbarous relic." The point, in other words, isn't to make a pitch for gold.  It's to make a pitch for something - anything - that's better than our present, lousy money.

But Not There Yet...

The Colorado Appeals Court ruled that the owners of a bakery do not have any right to control their property, and that they shall be forced to provide bakery services to a couple that the owner would rather not do business with. In other words, they have no property rights.

Follow the plunge protection.