Bond

Yesterday morning, when previewing the day's tumultuous events, we said that "Futures Are Firm On Hope Draghi Will Give Green Light To BTFD." And boy did Draghi give a green light, that and then some, when his press conference unleashed one of the biggest one-day US equity rallies in 2015. This morning it has been more of the same, with global market momentum on the heels of Draghi's confirmation that Europe's economy is again backsliding (it's a good thing, if only for stocks), leading to momentum for US equity futures, which together with soaring tech/cloud, earnings if no other, are on their way to take out recent all time highs.

Property prices in Copenhagen have risen 40-60 percent since the middle of 2012, when the central bank first resorted to negative interest rates to defend the krone’s peg to the euro.

listening to the ECB panel trying to justify more stimulus of bond buying in their herculean fight to save ‘low’ inflation from damaging European citizens was just pure comedy beyond a Monty Python skit.

"Puerto Rico is not Greece"... but it increasingly looks like it will be in a few weeks, thanks to US taxpayers who are about to foot the bill for yet another creditor bailout.

The only certain outcome from the melodramatic debt ceiling fight over the next several days, is the following: the US is about to have a brand spanking new debt ceiling, one that should last it until March of 2017: $19,600,000,000,000.

In what amounts to a slap in the face for a coalition of Leftist lawmakers who are opposed to the austerity programs that some believe are responsible for painful economic adjustments, Portugal has reappointed PM Pedro Passos Coelho. This sets the country up for an intractable political stalemate and will serve to embed an enormous amount of uncertainty in markets going forward.

Complacency seemed ready to set back in, with Glencore stock recently rising as high as its recent equity offering price of 125p. And then today we noticed that not only is Glencore's CDS back above 700 bps, the widest it has been in three weeks, but that another mining company has fallen into the market's crosshairs, this time Belgium-based (with Zurich HQ) Nyrstar NV, Europe's largest refined-zinc producer, whose stock crashed the most since its initial public offering in 2007, while it bonds tumbled to a yield of 19%, suggesting a default may be imminent.

Presented with little comment aside to say... WTF!!!

Already, the big banks (the ones with the closest ties to the Federal Reserve) have begun turning away deposits OR charging them.

As always happens after shocking events like yesterday which "nobody could have possibly predicted", watching the Penguin gallery reel in its humiliation is absolutely worth the price of admission.

Moments ago the US Treasury promptly removed any latent optimism that this latest debt ceiling crisis will somehow be magically fixed on its own after it announced that it would postpone the two-year note auction previously scheduled for Tuesday, as the impasse over the debt limit constrains the nation’s borrowing. “Due to debt ceiling constraints, there is a risk that Treasury would not be able to settle the two-year note”

America is not Greece, but judging from the Obama administration's just-unveiled plans to bailout Puerto Rico's disastrous debt situation, the American territory may have to sacrifice a little more sovereignty to get some relief. Obama is pressing for Congress to give Puerto Rico (PR) sweeping powers to reduce its $73 billion debt burden through a form of bankruptcy protection not now available to American territories and will also ask lawmakers to establish an independent body to monitor the island’s fiscal affairs (a la Troika).

Tomorrow morning Mario Draghi is widely expected to if not announce an extension, or expansion, of the ECB's QE program, than to at least jawbone sufficiently, and push the EURUSD lower from its recently anchored level in the 1.10-1.20 range. But what are the specifics of Draghi's announcement: will he merely expand the monetization limit per security, as he did in early September, will he increase the universe of eligibile securities, or will he simply extend the maturity of the non-open ended QE from September 2016 to some indefinite date? The following list, courtesy of Bloomberg, summarizes what the sellside universe believes Draghi will unveil in just under 12 hours.

Paul Volcker announced his intention to squeeze inflation out of the system soon after he became Fed chairman. Too bad he didn’t save a better system. Not many men can resist the appeal of free money. Americans proved they were no better at it than others. Falling interest rates and the paper dollar gave them a way to impoverish themselves – by spending money they hadn’t earned. They took the opportunity offered to them. They borrowed and spent... and drove the entire world forward at a furious pace. But now that stage is over.

Global Capitalism is trapped in its own Prisoner’s Dilemma; fourty four years after the end of the Bretton Woods System global central banks have manipulated the cost of risk in a competition of devaluation leading to a dangerous build up in debt and leverage, lower risk premiums, income disparity, and greater probability of tail events on both sides of the return distribution. Truth is being suppressed by the tools of money. Market behavior has now fully adapted to the expectation of pre-emptive central bank action to crisis creating a dangerous self-reflexivity and moral hazard. Volatility markets are warped in this new reality routinely exhibiting schizophrenic behavior. The tremendous growth of the short volatility complex across all assets, combined with self-reflexive investment strategies, are creating a dangerous ‘shadow convexity’ that will fuel the next hyper-crash.