Real estate

Yesterday Doi and Gina were back at 7 Little Bloomfield Street, Surry Hills. Their fingers crossed for greater fools because Doi was keen to offload his March purchase. The reason? Like most of us who've bought $800k crack shacks, Doi had a healthy dose of buyers' regret and came to his senses "after realising just how small the property was he decided to sell." How lucky was Doi? This is Australia! Doi found a plumber willing to go 60k higher than he'd paid six months earlier

This is also why the debt ceiling needs to be raised every year, and the US has doubled the national debt over the last 8 years.

Just a few months ago, Hamptons 2nd home-hunting was an elitist's dream. Home sales were surging (highest sicne 2007's peak) even as home prices soared (in the face of bad weather and economic angst). But that has all changed. As Bloomberg reports, sales of luxury homes in the are have tumbled 16% YoY in Q3, prices have plunged 18% YoY, and inventories are surging (up 34%). The reason is simple, as one realtor notes, "the international buyer has been absent."

Americans in their 20s and 30s are facing a retirement crisis that could plunge them back into the Great Depression, Blackstone President and COO Tony James said Wednesday. Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box, James exclaimed "Social Security alone cannot provide enough for these people to retain their standard of living in retirement, and if we don't do something, we're going to have tens of millions of poor people and poverty rates not seen since the Great Depression." According to James, the solution is simple - government-imposed mandatory savings through a Guaranteed Retirement Account which employers are mandated to match (whose assets would be managed by?).

From the bowels of Australia’s iron ore mines to the top of Dubai’s pointless 100 story office towers, the entire warp and woof of the global economy has been distorted and bloated by the central bank money printing spree of the last two decades, led by the red credit machines of Beijing. Everywhere economies have succumbed to over-building, over-consumption, over-financialization and endless dangerous, unstable speculation. Stated differently, China’s red capitalism is the new black swan. There is nothing rational, stable or sustainable about it.

A beleaguered Deutsche Bank is set to slash the investment bank bonus pool by some $566 million as John Cyran's effort to right a sinking ship continues. As Bloomberg reports, "no decision has been taken and the biggest reductions are likely to impact employees in the fixed-income business. Some managing directors may have their entire bonus scrapped, according to the person."

• ECB Haunted by Paradox as Draghi Weighs Risk of QE Signaling (BBG)
• At odds with Republicans, Hillary Clinton to testify on Benghazi (Reuters)
• House tees up conservative plans to raise debt limit (Hill)
• U.S., Russia to Meet at Syria Conference to Discuss Crisis (WSJ)
• Putin Gains Record Support Among Russians Over Syria, Poll Shows (BBG)
• China Plans 2020 Deadline for Dismantling Capital Controls (BBG)
• Nyrstar Drops the Most on Record as Mining Hit by Metal Rout (BBG)

We have ceased to live in a free market economy a long time ago. The only sector of the economy that has managed to remain relatively free in many ways is the technology sector, because it innovates so rapidly that it tends to stay a step or two ahead of politicians and the oligarchies giving them their orders. They simply cannot catch up quickly enough with regulating all these innovations to death. Lately technology has begun to invade the turf of a number of established service businesses... and that appears to be a problem for the crony 'capitalist' crowd.

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.

• Global Stock Markets Edge Higher Though Global Growth Concerns Weigh (WSJ)
• Nikkei up 1.9% because Japan export growth slows sharply, raising fears of recession (Reuters)
• Saudis Risk Draining Financial Assets in 5 Years, IMF Says (BBG)
• Syria's Assad flies to Moscow to thank Russia's Putin for air strikes (Reuters)
• US Prosecutor Preet Bharara Probing Daily Fantasy-Sports Business (WSJ)
• Syrian army denies Russian ground forces fighting in Syria (Reuters)

Are you a yield-starved investor? Joshua Siegel has a deal he wants to sell you and it involves subordinated loans originated by "35 community banks, some of them so small they don’t have credit ratings." 

Whether one calls it the latest glitch in the matrix, or yet another "market peak" indicator, the outcome will be the same.

Rising rents have been cited as a reason millennials aren’t moving out of their parents’ basements. But higher rents could force some boomers to move in with their children... it is shaping up to be a crisis for some boomers for the following reasons...

Investors are too complacent (the Minsky-Moment).  Too many are still trying to profit from the Fed subsidy of past stimulus. Investors remain loaded in risk assets, incentivized by the need to beat peers and benchmarks and comforted into complacency by the Fed ‘put’. The true level of risk is being ignored. The pervasive mentality of seeking maximum risk has become a terrible risk/reward trade for two main reasons...

• Canada's Trudeau topples PM Harper in shock election win (Reuters)
• Where Canada’s Harper Hit Hurdles (WSJ)
• Pugnacious Trudeau Steps Out of Father's Shadow and Into Power (BBG)
• European Stocks Decline, Euro Rallies as ECB QE Optimism Fades (BBG)
• Valeant, Under Pressure About Price Increases, Plans Changes (WSJ)
• Syrian rebels say they receive more weapons for Aleppo battle (Reuters)