Bank of America

As we approach the Fed meeting expect markets to get more volatile. While the odds favor a move, it isn’t a sure thing until it is actually done. We found out last week what happens when forward guidance turns out to be forward misdirection. All those traders who thought they had a sure thing, who assumed that Draghi wouldn’t dare disappoint the market, got whipped. Whipped good.

The system is beyond the point where it is merely showing stresses and fractures. Things are now falling apart and there may well be no way of putting them back together again. The media will continue to claim everything is fine, until the day of panic and reckoning when it will suddenly be the "next Greece" or "2008 all over again"... but worse.

There is a high hurdle following October's surprisingly strong gain of 271,000 jobs. On the other hand, Wall Street is confident we would have to see a significantly lower number, somewhere in the 100,000 range or even lower, — and weakness in other parts of the report, such as the unemployment rate, hourly wages and weekly hours — for the FOMC to postpone a rate hike into next year.

Researchers at Duke University and the University of California at Berkeley point to quantitative evidence that The Fed consistently leaks non-public information about its meetings, driving an investment pattern that has led to market gains.

Yesterday's market swoon which unwound all of Tuesday's gains on concerns about a hawkish Fed and fears about terrorism in the US, are now completely forgotten, and have been replaced with the latest daily round of pre-ECB euphoria, driven by hopes that Mario Draghi will announce even more dovish details to Europe's Q€ 2 than just a 10 bps rate cut and a boost to QE more than €10 billion, both of which have been already priced in.

There isn’t much as far as confirmation, but it increasingly appears as if “something” just hit the triple hooks (CCC) in the junk bond bubble. At least as far as one view of it, Bank of America ML’s CCC implied yield, there was a huge selloff that brought the yield to a new cycle high (low in price) above even the 2011 crisis peak.

It's official: the start to the holiday shopping has been a disaster, and it's not simply due to a shift to online spending.

We are talking of course, about the infamous RRR-hike of 1936-1937, which took place smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

Everyone has heard the phrase "this is the most important jobs report ever", and virtually every time this has been an exaggeration. However according to an analysis conducted by BofA's Vadim Iaralov, the nonfarm payrolls report on December 4 may just really be the most important jobs number. Ever.

According to Bank of America there sill be no recession until 2027, if ever, and the S&P will hit 3500 by 2025. Just one thing we would like to know: does Bank of America anticipate another bailout of Bank of America during this upcoming golden age a la 2008, or is that also impossible to predict.

When buy the dip doesn't work. "Most distressed situations have not worked out in 2015," exclaims one distressed hedge fund manager facing significant losses on the year, "It wasn’t just energy. It was anything with loads of leveraged debt on it." As Bloomberg reports, distressed hedge funds dropped 5% in 2015 through October, putting them on pace for their worst year since 2008, when they lost 25%... and November isn’t looking like it will be much better.

Power? Power! You can't handle POWER!!! Most people are still busy counting coin prices....

According to Bank of America, the smart money is taking advantage of this latest rebound in stocks to sell to who else: the traditionally biggest sucker in the room - retail investors.

For the latest bit of evidence that global trade is indeed in free fall, look no further than the container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif. and around New York harbor which handle more than 50% of seaborne freight coming into the US. As it turns out, “peak” season turned out to be anything but.

Prepping has not only gone mainstream, it's infected even the billionaire culture as referenced recently on a ZH article: