Dow Jones Industrial Average

All you need to read and some more.

All you need to know.

All you need to read and some more.

Regular readers know that since the beginning, Zero Hedge has been vehemently opposed to the official SEC explanation of the chain of events that brought upon the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1000 points in a span of seconds, and during which billions were lost when stop loss orders were triggered catching hapless victims unaware (unless of course, one had a stop loss well beyond a reasonable interval of 20%, in which case the trades were simply DKed). It is no secret that one of the main reasons why the retail investor has since declared a boycott of capital markets, which lasts to this day, and manifests itself in hundreds of billions pulled out of equities and deposited into bonds and hard assets, has been precisely the SEC's unwillingness to probe into this still open issue, and not only come up with a reasonable and accurate explanation for what truly happened, but hold anyone responsible for the biggest market crash in history in absolute terms. Instead, the SEC, naively has been pushing forth a ridiculous story that the entire market crash was the doing of one small mutual fund: Waddell and Reed, and its 75,000 E-mini trade, which initially was opposed to being scapegoated, but subsequently went oddly radio silent. Well, if they didn't mind shouldering the blame, the SEC was likely right, most would say. However, as virtually always happens, most would be wrong. Over the past few days, Nanex has one again, without any assistance from the regulators or any third parties, managed to unravel a critical component of the entire 104 page SEC "findings" which as is now known, indemnified all forms of high frequency trading (even as subsequently it was found, again by Nanex, that it was precisely HFT quote churning that was the primary, if not sole, reason for the catastrophic chain of events) with a finding so profound which in turn discredits the entire analytical framework of the SEC report, and makes it null and void.... The only open question is whether the SEC, which certainly co-opted the authors of the paper to reach the desired conclusion, real facts be damned, acted out of malice and purposefully fabricated the data knowing very well the evidence does not support the conclusion, or, just as bad, was the entire supporting cast and crew so glaringly incompetent they did not understand what they were looking at in the first place.

Further confirmation of gold’s continuing but gradual renaissance as a safe haven asset was given by the IMF yesterday who warned that a “growing shortage of safe assets” poses a threat to “global financial stability.”  The IMF identified $74.4 trillion of potentially safe assets today, including gold, investment grade government and corporate debt, and covered bonds. Sovereign debt crises are reducing the number of governments that investors trust to issue "risk-free" bonds just as new financial regulations are increasing demand for safe securities from banks. Importantly, the IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report’s introduction finds that  "In the future there will be rising demand for safe assets, but fewer of them will be available, increasing the price for safety in global markets.” “Both the lack of political will to reshape fiscal policies at times of rising concern over debt sustainability and an overly rapid reduction of fiscal deficits limit governments’ capacity to produce assets with low credit risk.” The IMF has warned regarding illiquidity in “safe haven” markets. Gold remains one of the most liquid markets in the world and the illiquidity in bond markets would see increased safe haven demand for gold.  The IMF is warning regarding deteriorating public finances. As many governments see themselves being downgraded - safe haven bonds may become less safe.

Now that the world is covered in at least $707 trillion in assorted unregulated Over the Counter derivatives (as of June 30, the most recent number is easily tens of trillions greater) and with at least one JPMorgan prop|non-prop trader exposed to having a ~$100 billion notional position in some IG-related index trade, pundits, always eager to score political brownie points, are starting to ruminate over ways to put the half alive/half dead cat back into the box. Unfortunately they are about 20 years too late: with the world literally covered in various levered bets all of which demand hundreds of billions in variation margin on a daily basis, the second the one bank at the nexus of the derivative bubble (ahem JPMorgan) starts keeling over, it will once again be "the end of the world as we know it" unless said bank is immediately bailed out. Again.

All you need to read and more.

All you need to read and more.

All you need to read and some more.

All you need to read and more.

All you need to read and some more.

All you need to read.

All you need to read.

All you need to read.

All you need to read.