Wall Street Journal

Keys in the week ahead:  equity markets--still look lower; China--volatility likely to continue; Fed--market says no Sept hike

Thousands of investors with stop-loss orders on their ETFs saw those positions crushed in the first 30 minutes of trading last Monday, August 24th. Seeing a price blow right through your stop is perhaps the worst experience in all of investing because it seems like such a betrayal. “Hey, isn’t this what a smart investor is supposed to do? What do you mean there was no liquidity at my stop? What do you mean I got filled $5 below my stop? Wait… now the price is back above my stop! Is this for real?” Welcome to the Big Leagues of Investing Pain.

"The opening of the new units will feed an artificially created confrontation. [This is] the logic of the Cold War. It runs counter to genuine interests of the European and regional security." - Alexander Grushko, Russian ambassador to NATO.

Stocks in Asia and Europe have fallen sharply again this morning and gold remains robust on safe haven demand

• Charting the Market: New Month, Same China (BBG)
• China jitters send stocks tumbling (Reuters)
• Oil falls on weak China factory data (Reuters)
• Euro zone factory growth eases in August despite modest price rises (Reuters)
• Euro-Area Joblessness Falls to Lowest Level Since Early 2012 (BBG)
• Clinton friend advised on U.S. politics, foreign policy (Reuters)
• Korea exports slump as Asia's woes deepen (Reuters)

Demand Surge and Shortages of Bullion as Stocks Fall Sharply, Gold Outperforms All Assets In August

After forensically analyzing Morgan Stanley's balance sheet (which is very much like the rest of Wall Street's balance sheet) I can draw direct parallels to that of Lehman and Bear Stearns in 2007. It's a party!

"In a securities-based loan, the customer pledges all or part of a portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and/or other securities as collateral. But unlike traditional margin loans, in which the client uses the credit to buy more securities, the borrowing is for other purchases such as real estate, a boat or education..." The result was "dangerously high margin balances,' - the products became “the vehicle of choice for investors looking to get cash for anything.” Mr. Sica and others say the products were aggressively marketed to investors by banks and brokerages.

This time, it really is different. It's "Structural", not "Cyclical". It's actually a very big difference, and banking will never be the same.

With professionals proclaiming yesterday's meltdown "historic," and generously telling investors "don't try to overthink what you're seeing," it is clear that the real impact of the carnage wrought by a combination of Fed-indiced crowded trades and HFT illiquidity-providers is yet to be fully appreciated. While Financial advisers, almost unanimously, have cautioned clients not to panic... As one retail investor exclaimed, yesterday's open "was a life-changing 20 minutes."

Gold appears to have once again anticipated the crisis and is acting like a safe haven in recent days - just at the moment when western investors need a safe haven and wealth preservation most. 

A non-bombastic discussion of market forces and what to expect next

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and only a few obscure researchers would know how this was accomplished.

...Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins. The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the Obama administration...

HFT critics are crowing over the ITG confession. You see! HFT is front running, plain and simple! Told you! And HFT defenders are largely silent because... well, you can’t defend the indefensible. However, if history is any guide at all, the existence of a clearly identifiable small-v villain will forestall the unmasking of what we believe is a Big Bad... the subterranean influence, bordering on control, of human investment behaviors by firms controlling advanced inference machines.

Imagine a real estate market with the rate of interest on mortgages as high as it could possibly go.