B+

Headline hockey remains all that matters if one is "trading" European stocks, bonds, or FX. Today, so far,  no deal... and so Athens Stock Exchange and Greek bank bonds are plunging (for now)...

A state's economy is nothing without the businesses that call it home. However, these companies are not created equally - bigger businesses naturally have outsized influence, generating more revenue, employing more people and (at least theoretically) paying more taxes. So given that corporations are now 'people', who really runs your state in this crony-capitalist land of the free?

What’s a company with no revenue, seven employees, and a $5 million throwaway drug worth in Janet Yellen’s “substantially stretched” biotech market? Billions, apparently.

Are we QE'd out??? It was supposed to be about the quality of growth,not helping the oligarchy protect their collective arses

When forecasting how much oil will be available in future years, most agencies, including EIA, IEA and BP appear to adopt a similar 'work-backwards from GDPO growth expectations' method. It seems that this approach has a fundamental flaw. It doesn’t consider the possibility of continued low oil prices and the impact that these low oil prices are likely to have on future oil production. Hoped-for future GDP growth may not be possible if oil prices, as well as other commodity prices, remain low.

Taking heads and supposed market gurus bloviate enthusiastic comments about how it should be easy to benefit from volatility exchange-traded products. But how likely is it that these individuals are able to extract the divine trading signals, similar to what they have proposed? over the past 2 years that only less than 5% of users of these derivative products, such as mass-market available volatility ETFs, would have earned a skilled profit from it (as opposed to from haphazard guessing). So at best, only 1 in 20 people are making money on VXX and its kin.

The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com...

From Greek lobbyists to Silicon Valley VCs and from Goldman BSDs to FT reporters, The Bilderberg Group will meet later this week in Tirol to discuss what happens next to the rest of the world... here are the participants...

If Inventories down, then buy oil at the fastest pace in 2 months. That appears to be the algo logic as talking heads additionally blame Saudi airstrikes on Yemen for the over 6% surge in WTI in the last 2 days. However, as crude nears $62 (6 month highs) once again, we note that not only Saudi oil production just hit a new record high, but US production hit a new cycle high last week (DOE data today), and this is happening as China's energy demand grows at the slowest pace since 1998.

While investor behavior hasn't sunk to the depths seen just before the crisis, Oaktree Capital's Howard marks warns, in many ways it has entered the zone of imprudence. "Today I feel it's important to pay more attention to loss prevention than to the pursuit of gain... Although I have no idea what could make the day of reckoning come sooner rather than later, I don’t think it’s too early to take today’s carefree market conditions into consideration. What I do know is that those conditions are creating a degree of risk for which there is no commensurate risk premium."

After Bridgewater, and Goldman Sachs, today it is SocGen's turn, which overnight advised clients that with "US set to unwind QE", now is the time to "increase cash" and "reduce risk." This is how SocGen advises its clients to be positioned ahead of the end of QE...

European stocks (Euro Stoxx 600) are down 8.45% from their April highs, down 6.15% in the last 9 days and are down 6 days in a row for the first time since December... In other words, either a) Q€ is not working as Draghi et al. say it is; b) Grexit contagion risks are anything but contained; or c) The European economy is not recovering as per the talking heads and investors are being slapped into that realization.

Faustian bargain: An agreement in which a person abandons his or her spiritual values or moral principles in order to obtain wealth or other benefits. A deal with the devil.

The argument over the existence of an Elite, who plan to control the entire world under a New World Order like some great yo-yo, has been around for a long time. Not surprisingly, events created by world leaders of all stripes in recent years give rise to an increasing belief in the likelihood of the existence of such an effort.