Wall Street Journal

HINT: Monitor Russia for more clues...

"A handful of these so-called unicorns will become the great, enduring companies of tomorrow. But a good number seem the flimsiest of edifices. There is also a false sense of security provided by the private markets... some of these valuations are illusory ...Most of the leaders of the subprime unicorns who continue to enjoy the fruits of the private market delude themselves..." -Michael Moritz, Chairman, Sequoia Capital

"Since Washington doesn't understand what went wrong in 2007 and 2008, so the Fed, the White House and Congress are recreating the very same conditions for another financial bubble. If it pops, we could replay the same devastating effects as occurred during the first bubble in 1999 and 2000.”

Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. The evidence, after all, is largely in.  In these years, for what now must be approaching three-quarters of a trillion dollars, the national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system.  Welcome to the fog of everything.

The reason these articles are so important, is not because they are based on intel leaked by an additional whistleblower (i.e., not Snowden), but because you can’t read the information without concluding quite simply that the U.S. empire is completely and totally out of control. That the plethora of American military adventures overseas are not only not making us safer, but are in fact making us far more vulnerable.

Back on September 28, when the specialty biotech drug scandal was just getting started and leading to a biotech bear market, Valeant stock suddenly plunged $50 leading to massive losses for its top holder Bill Ackman when it was revealed that House democrats had requested a Valeant subpoena. To be sure, the company promptly made it clear that an official subpoena had not actually been sent, just that some politicians were demanding one. That changed overnight when Valeant issued a press release providing an "update regarding government inquiries", in which we learn that the subpoena is now official.

In the face of stubbornly low crude prices, it's starting to look like the end of the road in the O&G space. As WSJ reports, all of the proverbial fat that can be trimmed has already been trimmed in terms of layoffs and capex. This means further cost savings will have to come from salary cuts because going forward, cutting jobs altogether would imperil companies’ ability to operate.  

After losing 7% in September, and down 20% for 2015 as of Oct. 1, the question is will Andy Hall be the only hedge fund manager with the distinction to have blown up not once but twice in one year, on the very same bet?

"In the nuclear arms race, the acronym was MAD—mutually assured destruction—which kept everything nice and tidy. Here you have the same acronym, but it’s ‘mutually assured doubt,’ because you can never be sure what the attack will be." Fortunately, the US has the most advanced operations and the NSA is "the crown creator of cyberespionage." Which is great. Unless they're spying on you...

“Tis the part of the wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket” - Cervantes in Don Quixote in 1605

The key to successful long term investing is diversification and owning a range of different quality assets.

Gold has been shown to enhance returns and to reduce overall volatility over the long term. This was clearly seen during the financial crisis when gold was one of the very few assets to surge in value.

The Fed needs to extricate itself from manipulating the financial markets. It needs to end backstopping market liquidity. It must never again print Trillions of new “money” out of thin air. Because so long as the marketplace perceives that the markets are "too big to fail", there will be speculative excess, major securities markets mispricings and Bubble fragilities. No one – average investor or sophisticated financial operator – has a clue as to the degree Fed policies have distorted asset prices.

Austerity: Also known as “sado-fiscalism”. A forlorn attempt to stave off government bankruptcy.

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Keynesians: Economists “who hear voices in the air (and) are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” (John Maynard Keynes).

Even with the drop in oil prices, the $7 trillion invested in Sovereign Wealth Funds makes them important participants in global capital markets; what they do, even at the margin, matters.

The warnings are getting louder.  Is anybody listening?

This is the story of a veteran NYSE specialist who noticed manipulation in the NYSE market open Imbalance, loudly complained to the NYSE, was ignored, then decided to profit from said manipulation himself... and got busted.  And that's where the story begins...