Crude is at the lows of the day. Credit markets are at the lows of the day. Treasury yields are near the lows of the day. So it makes perfect sense that as Europe closed, "someone" would take the monkey-hammer to VIX ETFs (in particular UVXY - the Ultra-VIX ETF) and that rips stocks higher. What is most odd is that VIX (the underlying index) is not falling (as the ETFs appear driven more by futures out-months shifts and position-squaring).

We are lost in raptures of techno-narcissism. We’re convinced that all the unanticipated consequences of our brief techno-industrial orgy can be solved by… more and better technology! Notice that this narrative is being served up to a society now held hostage to the images on little screens, by skilled people who, more and more, act as though these screens have become the new dwelling place of reality.

While Americans anxiously prepared for their Christmas festivities, anti gun proponents in Congress were hard at work drafting a new bill. If passed H.R. 4269 would literally redefine the Second Amendment as evidenced by the bill’s description, which in no uncertain terms clarifies its ultimate goal: “To regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.”

It becomes ever more tempting to conclude that the timing of the Fed’s rate hike was really quite odd, even from the perspective of the planners...

After a Q1 collapse, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Outlook managed a bounce for a few months (though never got back above zero). It appears, Dallas Fed's aptly-named 'Dick' Fischer was entirely wrong when he progonosticated that "on net, low oil prices are good for Texas." December's Dallas Fed print crashed to -20.1 (from -4.9) massively missing expectations of -7.0 and back at the lows not seen since June 2009.

If it takes more than $126,000 to fund a qualitatively defined middle class lifestyle, what sense does it even make to call this "middle"?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what "trading" has become.