Yahoo’s annual Christmas party this year was a Roaring 20s / Great Gatsby theme, complete with champagne towers and a vintage Rolls Royce. The party itself, right down to the theme, was a symbol of waste, indulgence, and excess; it reported costly between $7 and $10 million to stage. The good old days are long gone. This is no longer a company that can afford such largess. And everyone seems to realize it... except Yahoo. Frankly, this seems like the perfect metaphor for the United States of America.

The market is well aware the price of risk is not correct, but they can’t fight it, and everyone is forced to crowd into the same trade by central bank (CB) intervention. By manipulating markets they have also reduced investors’ inherent conviction by rendering fundamentals less relevant, creating a highly unstable (fragile) situation that breaks violently when a sufficient catalyst causes risk to rise – overly crowded positioning meets a market with little conviction. Catalysts From BofAML's global equity derivatives desk's vantage point, it becomes clear that the biggest visible risk to financial markets is a loss of confidence in this omnipotent CB put.

"Many Europeans have sold their values ??against petrodollars.You have Wahhabi organizations from Saudi Arabia allowed to bring their dark and extremist ideology to Europe. Therefore from there terrorists now are exported to us. We have no export, all came to Syria and then go back to Europe.The three criminals who are responsible for the attacks in Paris have all lived in Europe and not in Syria."

In an unexpected turn of events, the disappearance of not just synthetic but very physical dollars has hit one region much harder and much faster than we expected. Africa.

As the status-quo-sponsored mainstream media continues to desperately try to point out all of Donald Trump's flaws (and apparently wash over all of Hillary's), the actual electorate appears unimpressed by their efforts. Despite "Schlong-gate" (more press), the latest poll from CNN/ORN shows The Donald adding 3 more points since the last debate to 39% of Republicans, with Ted Cruz a distant second at 18%.

After a surprise surge last week, the US oil rig count resumed its decline this week (dropping 3 to 538). Gas rigs dropped 6 in the last week (as the Nattie glut continues). Crude oil prices fell very modestly on the rig count data (having run stops to FOMC day gaps).

Now what?