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A defensive trading idea that appreciates during a sell-off and is even better than holding extra cash!

The week that passed has left many of the so-called “smart crowd” flummoxed, disheveled, dismayed, and disrobed from their expensive facades of “expert insightful analysis.” It seems all that “expert” as well as “insight” wasn’t all it was made out to be. In less than a week: historic records weren’t only broken – they were smashed to smithereens. And the one’s that were the most historic? They weren’t set for positive things.

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Overnight's start attraction was as usual China's stock market, where trading was generally less dramatic than Thursday's furious last hour engineered ramp, as stocks rose modestly off the open only to see a bout of buying throughout the entire afternoon session, closing 4.8% higher, and bringing the gain over the last two days to over 10%. This happens as China dumped a boatload of US paper to push the CNY higher the most since March, strengthening from 6.4053 to 6.3986, even as Chinese industrial profits tumbled 2.9% from last year: this in a country that still represents its GDP is rising by 7%. Expect much more Yuan devaluation in the coming weeks.

Update: China readies new bailout mechanism - pooling CNY2 Trillion of Pension funds for "investment"

A busy night in AsiaPac before China even opens. Vietnam had a failed bond auction, Japanese data was mixed (retail sales good, household spending bad, CPI just right), Moody's downgrades China growth (surprise!), China re-blames US for global market rout, and then the big one hits - China's bailout fund needs more money (applies for more loans from banks) - in other words - The PBOC just got a margin call. China margin debt balance fell for 8th straight day (although the short-selling balance picked up to 1-week highs). China unveiled some economic reforms - lifting tax exemption and foreign real estate investment rules. PBOC fixesds the Yuan 0.15% stronger - most since March, but even with last night's epic intervention, SHCOMP looks set for its worst week since Lehman.

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Crash waves are notoriously volatile – several of the biggest one day rallies in history have occurred before and during crash waves. This makes short term forecasting even more of a coin flip than it normally is. However, we believe it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees; stock markets around the world have been in bubbles driven by extremely loose monetary policy, which ipso facto allows us to identify them as an example of artificial price distortion. Such bubbles always collapse sooner or later – unless the monetary authority decides to simply destroy the currency it issues, as has happened in Zimbabwe and is currently happening in countries like Venezuela and to a slightly lesser extent Argentina. We don’t expect the central banks of the developed nations to follow suit, at least not yet.

After a 5 day tumbling streak, which saw Chinese stock plunge well over 20% and 17% in just the first three days of this week, overnight the Shanghai Composite was hanging by a thread (and threat) until the last hour of trading. In fact, this is what the SHCOMP looked like until the very end: Up 2.6%, up 1.2%, up 2.8%, up 0.6%, up 2%... down 0.2%. And then the cavalry came in: "Heavyweight stocks like banks and insurance companies helped pull up the index, and it’s possibly China Securities Finance entering the market again to shore up stocks," Central China Sec. strategist Zhang Gang told Bloomberg by phone. Net result: the Composite, having been red just shortly before the close, soared higher by 156 points or 5.4%, showing the US stock market just how it's down.

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It seemed like finally China's relentless and increasingly futile attempts to have a green stock close would work: interest rate cuts, liquidity injections, direct stock interventions, even threats on the Prime Minister's head, and just to make certain moments before the close news very deliberately broke that government funds are buying large financial stocks, especially state-owned banks, to support the index, in the latest clear signs of government support, the Shanghai Composite seemed on pace to end an unprecedented series of consecutive tumbles which have dragged the composite down nearly 1000 points, or 25% in one week, and then... red close, with the SHCOMP down 1.3% to 2927, and a stunned China watching in horror as the central bank and government lose control, and everything they throws at the biggest market bubble of 2015 does absolutely nothing.

Following the most recent Chinese market rout, Deutsche's Jim Reid updates a chart he used back in early June comparing the Shanghai Composite recent performance with that of the NASDAQ back in 1999-2000.

Following the biggest (and only) market correction in years, the biggest weekly surge in the VIX ever, the second wholesale market flash crash in history coupled with the first ever limit down trade in the Nasdaq and the E-Mini, not to mention the biggest intraday bearish reversal since Lehman, it would appear that the "smart money" actually was aptly named.