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With China now "murdering" Yuan shorts, markets are content that the Chinese debacle seems to be contained if only for a while, and so the attention of both traders and algos alike has focused on oil, which earlier in the session dragged global equities lower as it dropped by 3%, just shy of the $30 level, a new 11 year low, before staging another dramatic rebound in minutes, wiping out all losses in the aftermath of what appears to have been a deadly suicide bomber terrorist explosion on a square the middle of Istanbul's historic district.

The half-life of the latest "market supporting" intervention by the Chinese government: just about 12 hours.

As go the markets, so go the movies. According to the WSJ, Hollywood just had its biggest-ever year at the box office in 2015, collecting $11.1 billion in ticket sales, up 7% from the previous year and surpassing the record of $10.92 billion set in 2013. All of the growth, however, occurred at the top of the heap, or in other words, 2015 was a record year "thanks to a handful of blockbusters that left a whole lot of duds in the dust." In other words, just like in the stock market, a record high portion of Hollywood "gains", or rather box office ticket sales, came from just five movies.

Comcast is penny wise, pound foolish.

For those eager to cut to the chase and curious if overnight we have had another standard USDJPY ramp levitating US equity futures on low volume, the answer is yes. And since the USDJPY carry was patient enough, it managed to trigger the 2100 ES stops and as of this moment the futures were comfortably on the politically-correct side of 2100.

The most entertaining overnight story has to do with the latest farcical development in the Chinese "market" when just after open, it was reported that PBOC Governor Zhou said a trading link with Shenzhen will start this year which promptly sent all Chinese brokerages soaring, and the Shanghai Composite jumped over 3%. And then, out of the blue, the PBOC said the undated comments were actually as of May. As Bloomberg put it, "China’s central bank unintentionally sparked a surge in the nation’s stock market by publishing five-month-old comments from governor Zhou Xiaochuan that said a link between exchanges in Shenzhen and Hong Kong would start in 2015."

Based on the overnight market prints which are an oddly reddish shade of green, it took algos about 12 hours to realize that the reason they soared for most of October, namely hopes of an easier Fed which were launched with the terrible September jobs report and continued with increasingly worse US economic report in the past month, can not be the same reason they also soared yesterday after the announcement of a more hawkish than expected Fed statement which envisioned a stronger US economy and a removal of foreign considerations, which even more curiously took place on even worse data than the Fed's far more dovish September statement.

Despite the arguably undemocratic, obfuscating nature of our nation’s campaign finance laws and the blatant corporatist agenda mandated by the Supreme Court, let’s attempt to break down the major sources of political spending so far in the 2016 presidential election. You may be surprised to find out who is donating money to your candidate — and how that contribution may affect future policy positions.

• Fed is out so...BOJ brainstorms stimulus overhaul as options dwindle (Reuters)
• And... Yellen Pause Ups Pressure on Draghi as Global Pessimism Mounts (BBG)
• But... Eurozone Nears Limits of What Monetary Policy Can Do (WSJ)
• Global shares struggle on global growth concerns (Reuters)
• VW's Emissions Cheating Found by Curious Clean-Air Group (BBG)
• David Cameron allegedly fucked a dead pig's head (Mirror)

If you find that you are pointing to yourself on 5 or more of the bullet items below... please delete your Twitter account immediately.

During the most recent quarter debt issuance by US companies reached an all-time high, raising a question as to why companies still need to borrow so much after selling $7 trillion of U.S. debt securities since 2008. This weeks S&P Media index swoon leaves no doubt as to the answer. Companies have not been borrowing to grow; they have been borrowing in order to flush cash into the casino. Charles Ponzi once had a scheme that was not essentially different. Yes, and it worked until it didn’t.

“People are shooting first and asking questions later...this indiscriminate selling, to me, is just nuts," exclaims on billion-dollar AUM hedge fund CIO as media stocks faced a bloodbath this week. Small (illiquid) doors and large crowds do not mix well as Bloomberg reports, hedge funds own an average 9.7% of the 15 companies in the S&P Media Index - which has tumbled over 8% in 2 days - its biggest loss since 2008. Exuberant return chasing on merger speculation has reversed into panic-selling as Disney, Time Warner Inc., Fox, CBS and Comcast Corp. erased almost $50 billion of value in two days.

What many have tacitly known for a long time was finally confirmed overnight when an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by Vocativ and The Daily Beast found that of the 60 or so ultra-rich Americans - aka the mega-donors - who have contributed to both Jeb Bush’s and Hillary Clinton’s federal campaigns, seventeen of those contributors have gone one step further and opened their wallets to fund both Bush’s and Clinton’s 2016 ambitions.