notional value

Surely, The PBOC will step in at some point and save the collapsing currency? Nope - not if options traders (and Kyle Bass) are to be believed. The odds of the yuan breaking beyond 7 to the greenback by the end of March more than doubled to 12% (from 5.8% at the start of December). Ironically, Bloomberg reports only 1 of 39 analyst predicts Yuan to trade beyond 7 by the end of 2016. The market's extremely strong conviction, and apparent PBOC loss of control is "a dangerous situation for policy-makers" according to one Asian economist.

Another day, another "crackdown" by the CFTC on an "evil spoofing mastermind."

In the end, whatever the Feds announce at 2PM NY time today should not affect your long-term outlook on markets as neither of the two possible decisions will significantly alter the future fate of global markets. Instead, the most important thing to understand is the massive fraud that is systemic in the global financial system and to allow a deep and complex understanding of this fraud to drive your investment decisions.

Chinese stocks are opening lower: SHANGHAI COMPOSITE INDEX FALLS 4.6% TO 3,020.84 AT OPEN as PBOC fixes Yuan stronger for the 4th day in a row - the most in 5 years.

China credit risk has spiked to 2-year highs as traders increase positions dramatically.

Luckily we didn't hear anything more about Vomiting Camel formations but there was certainly an ample amount of "it's priced in" blaring in the background.

Deutsche Bank’s derivatives position is truly enormous. It was recently estimated to be around $54 trillion. Germany's GDP, the 4th largest in the world, was a mere $3.64 trillion in 2015. Were Deutsche Bank caught off-side in its derivatives positions there is not a government or institution on earth that could bail it out and it could lead to contagion in the German financial system and indeed in the global financial system.

We need to wake up....and FAST!!!

"Defendants' use of the Layering Algorithm and the 188/289-Lot Spoofing intensified throughout the day. At 11:17 a.m. CT, Defendants turned the Layering Algorithm on for more than two consecutive hours, until 1 :40 p.m. CT. During this cycle, Defendants utilized the Layering Algorithm to place five orders, totaling 3,000 contracts. A sixth order was added at around 1:13 p.m. CT, increasing the total to 3,600 contracts.... Between 11:17 a.m. CT and 1:40 p.m. CT, Defendants' actions contributed to an extreme order book imbalance in the E-mini S&P market. This order book imbalance contributed to market conditions that caused theE-mini S&P price to fall361 basis points."

This is why Bernanke said rates won’t normalize in his lifetime: any normalization means a crisis magnitudes larger than the 2008 crash.

The amount of non-GAAP addbacks boosting the S&P "earnings" to their latest quarterly high has never been greater. In fact, the last time the absolutely notional value of pro-forma addbacks was anywhere near this close was in the Lehman "kitchen sink" quarter, when companies took advantage of the biggest bailout in capitalist history, to square their fudged income statement and balance sheet with accounting reality, resulting in an addback that was greater than the actual GAAP print!

The availability and cost of floating storage, and the magnitude of the crude oil contango will be critical in helping form the price path of oil," Soc Gen says. If that's the case, we could see crude go far lower over the coming months.

Warren Buffett once famously chided that all the gold in the world would form a cube of 67 feet (20 meters) on each side. In doing so, he was attempting to argue that there was no point in owning gold since all the gold in the world would be an unproductive, useless hunk of metal. What’s ironic (and completely lost on the venerable Mr. Buffett) is that you could make the same argument about the paper-based financial system.

The financial system is lurching towards the next round of the Great Crisis that began in 2007.

Is It Fair to compare this sell off to the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009?

In a secular rally, pullbacks will inevitably arise. Market participants, though, should not view all drops in the same light. In addition to the differences in the depth of the collapse, the magnitude of the changes of critical investor sentiment statistics may differ greatly. Assessing the current retracement is a difficult prospect as we may have yet to reach its terminus.  Based on the initial sentiment statistics, the current decline has more similarity to the most significant historic collapses.