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• Gloomy mood prevails despite calmer commodities (Reuters)
• A Strong Dollar Hurts China More Than the U.S. (BBG)
• China Sets Yuan at Four-Year Low in ‘Stress Test’ (WSJ)
• Dow Chemical and DuPont Are in Advanced Talks to Merge (WSJ)
• Yahoo scraps plan to spin off Alibaba stake (Reuters)

FANGs are tumbling, seeming to have 'peaked' as ISM Services tumbled last week. But before you rush to buy the dip on these "gems" we thought it would be helpful to review some basic fundamental data in order to clarify exactly what investors are assuming when they purchase these stocks.

"Invest for the long-term," "buy-and-hold," "stay diversified," are the mantra of every asset-gathering commission-taking 'manager' out there... However, as JPMorgan notes, empirically that is a loser's bet. In fact, investors owning just the top 10 performers of the S&P 500 has never suffered a single rolling 12 month period loss (lowest was April 2009 +0.24%).

Until pro-growth, low taxation and less regulation policy changes are enacted, we don’t foresee any changes to central bank policy nor the unsustainable market divergences and asset price distortions. Expect more media propaganda on how great the economy is while the reality is another story. Early signs are that retail sales this holiday season are poor. Nobody can predict when reality will set in and equity markets revert back to pre QE levels in 2008/09. The longer this charade continues, the lower equity markets will eventually go, and in the short-term so will commodities. Then the super cycle in commodities will begin anew. Much this will hinge on next fall’s election cycle.

A Lufthansa crew and passengers overpowered a Jordanian man with a US passport, who tried to open the cabin door on a Frankfurt-Belgrade flight on Sunday, while screaming that he wished to join Allah along with all the passengers, according to Serbian TV RTS.

We all like to know what’s happening in the world, and for good reason... understanding our surroundings is essential to survival. We instinctively seek information... we need information. There is, however, a problem that we face: No matter how much “news” you consume, you won’t really know what’s going on in the world. We can’t know, because ‘the news’ is half illusion, provided by government-dependent corporations that are paid to keep you watching and to keep you joined to the status quo. That’s the truth about news, my friends. The newspapers are where the yokels get informed, presidents flatly lie, and legislatures are massively corrupt.

Year end 2015, we go from Ponzi scheme to failure to the thing every major global bank desires. The dilemma is, the ingenuity to excel in this space lies in scrappy young startups, not trillion dollar mega banks. Let me prove this to you, step by prior art step.

Too Bad Our Government Isn't Serious About Stopping Terrorism ...

Did Big Brother Really Pull the Plug?

The third stock market collapse of this century is near at hand. The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented commodity deflation and CapEx depression - the payback for 20 years of lunatic monetary stimulus and credit expansion. Yet the central banks are powerless to stop the payback. When the Fed announces a rate increase after 84 months of dithering next week in the face of GDP growth that has already decelerated to barely 1% this quarter the jig will be up. Monumental money printing has failed. Soon there will be no place to hide - not even in the Tremendous Ten.

For all intents and purposes, the National Security Agency has supposedly ceased its bulk collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, but read the fine print: nothing is going to change.

Apparently taking a page out of the Spanish government's playbook, Argentines in the Santa Cruz region were surprised yesterday afternoon when at least five bright yellow armored trucks accompanied by heavily armed police paraded through the city. Just weeks after Kirchner's Peroniost government lost the election, and coming after five office fires (destroying banking and economic files from the current regime), local press reports the trucks loaded up with $130 million of banknotes at the airport and driven to banks in the region where outgoing President Kirchner's sister-in-law is governor. Amid comments by the central bank that there are no reserves left, and ongoing discussions of larger banknote denominations and (implied 50% devaluations), one could only speculate where the officially "business-as-usual" transfer of $100s of millions of banknotes will end up.

While the S&P languishes unchanged in 2015, these small groups of overwhelmingly propagandized stocks are up on average over 60%, but with a collective P/E of 45, they are not cheap (and perhaps should remember that when buying this momo, we are all Thanksgiving turkeys).

"If you play with fire, you get burned," apart from if you are an official in the Argentine government it would appear. Just days after Argentina threw out the Peronists, who have ruled almost non-stop in the three decades since the end of military rule, The Ministry of Finance suffered a mysterious fire in its computer center, catastrophically (and coincidentally) destroying the prior-regime's files. This is not the first time a fire has destroyed government records - or second, or third, or even fourth...

• Russia Takes Aim at Turkish Economy Amid Fighter-Jet Spat (WSJ)
• ‘Commercial scale’ oil smuggling into Turkey becomes priority target of anti-ISIS strikes (RT)
• Russia-Turkey Ties Are Headed Into a Deep Freeze (WSJ)
• France signals softer stance on Assad after Russia talks (FT)
• China Calm Shattered as Brokerage Probe Sparks Selloff in Stocks (BBG)
• China Stock Bulls Hit Breaking Point as State Dials Back Support (BBG)
• China's Bond Stresses Mount as Two More Companies Flag Concerns (BBG)