Market Crash

Earlier today, one of the biggest farces of 2015 was remedied when a UK judge granted Sarao a bail reduction from £5m to £50,000 and was allowed to leave prison as soon as today. As profiled before, Sarao had been at the infamous Wandsworth prison - Britain's worst - since his arrest. As the FT reports, at a court hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in London today, a lawyer for the US said he would not oppose the bail reduction.

As we hurtle toward the absolutely critical months of September and October, the unraveling of the global financial system is beginning to accelerate.

The significance of these developments cannot be overstated. Central Banks will be increasingly acting against one another going forward. There will more surprises and more volatility across the board. Eventually it will culminate in a Crash that will make 2008 look like a picnic.

We would like to believe that a period of peace and prosperity lies ahead of us. Unfortunately, the facts do not support this panglossian assertion. If history  repeats it is more likely that we see hyperinflation and the sharp devaluation of paper and digital currencies in the coming years, given that no experiment with money printing has ever had a positive outcome.

Curious why after its massive drubbing yesterday, which led to the second highest volume day for AAPL stock in 2015, the phone market is down another 1.3% this morning? The reason: Wall Street's momentum chasing penguins have re-emerged, and moments ago Bank of America, right on time as in just after the stock broke its 200 DMA and entered a correction, decided to downgrade AAPL from Buy to Neutral, lowering its price target from $142 to $130.

Will the Japanese “monetary perpetuum mobile” ever get questioned by financial markets?

We have argued that it is a perilous myth that central bankers these days control a general price level. They instead incentivize massive financial flows into securities markets and fashionable sectors. Over time, ramifications and consequences reach the profound. For one, excess liquidity promotes over/mal-investment. It’s only the scope and nature that remain in question. If major Bubble flows inundate new technology investment, the resulting surge in the supply of high-margin products engenders disinflationary pressures elsewhere. Policy responses to perceived heightened “deflation” risks then only work to exacerbate Bubbles, mounting imbalances and structural fragilities. This was a critical facet of “Roaring Twenties” analysis that was lost in time.

Things are unfolding in textbook fashion for another major global financial crisis in the months ahead, and yet most people refuse to see what is happening.  In their blind optimism, they want to believe that things will somehow be different this time.  Well, the coming months will definitely reveal who was right and who was wrong.  The following are 11 red flag events that just happened as we enter the pivotal month of August 2015...

At the end of the day, both China and Greece are signaling that a new round of deflation has begun in the markets. Stocks are bouncing today, but a tectonic shift has begun.

"I have lost everything. I don't know what to do... I trusted the government too much... I won't touch stocks again, I have ruined everyone in my family." "I will sell all my shares tomorrow if there is a chance." ... "I am pretty sure that if the government does not come to rescue us, the situation will get much worse," ...  "I managed to sell them all at a loss today, and so I lost 320,000 yuan in two days. I don't have confidence on the market any more. I don't want to get into the market again."

The Chinese stock market crash has hit the world’s largest auto-market hard. For now, China is a dream turned sour for the Michigan-based Ford and General Motors and Germany’s Volkswagen. The risks are enormous and will become greater with time.

On the heels of a veritable bloodbath in Chinese equities overnight which saw the SHCOMP slide a harrowing 8.5%, the entire world is now beginning to take a hard look at the notion that dramatic bouts of selling pressure are aggravated and perhaps triggered by an unwind in the multiple backdoor margin lending channels that allowed investors to skirt official restrictions on leverage and helped to drive the market’s world-beating rally. Here is the complete guide to China's CNY4 trillion shadow margin edifice.

If you are looking for a “canary in a coal mine” type of warning for the entire global economy, you have a whole bunch to pick from right now.

After a modesly positive open, Chinese stocks have pushed back into the red after Chinese business sentiment collapsed in July. The MNI China Business Indicator fell a straggering 8.8pts to 48.8 in July (below 50 signifying pessimism) - the lowest since January 2009. It appears the encouraging bounce after the massive creduit injections into June has been eviscerated and future expectations also dropped 6.4 to 54.1 in July (below the long-run average). While bad news is good news for much of the rest of the world, for China, as it continues to try to project a strong underlying economy to sustain its still extremely rich stock market, bad news is bad news.

Is China (or the US) the next Greece?