New Normal

While equities do tend to be lower one-, two-, and three-months after a Fed rate hike, S&P 500 realized volatility and VIX levels have been fairly well contained. However, Goldman Sachs warns not to expect VIX to calm down and settle back into the low teens like it was from 2013 to mid-August 2015. New normal trend VIX levels should now be 4-5 points higher than the average level of 14 experienced in 2013-2014 given the current state of the economy.

Never go full Krugman...

The EM FX carnage continues unabated heading into the FOMC as the Kazakh tenge plunges for a seventh consecutive day and the beleaguered Turkish lira slides to a new low as an obstinate central bank and an extraordinarily unstable political situation conspire to undermine confidence ahead of elections scheduled for November 1.

In the seven years since the world’s central banks responded to the financial crisis by slashing interest rates, more than a dozen banks in the advanced world have tried to raise them again. All have been forced to retreat.

Forget Risk-Parity... ignore volatility-targeting... Risk management is for losers, value-investing is for dummies, and chasing momentum is for suckers... The path to successful trading in the new normal is easy... and involves just 4 simple steps...

Once welfare spending and subsidies of Elites collapses, the social and political stability of oil exporters becomes extremely fragile. The leadership of oil exporters without a stash of USD to tide them over as oil prices crash would be wise to start building their bug-out island fortresses.

Thanks to the new normal world of extremely loose monetary policy and extraordinary accumulations of financial assets by Central Banks, Deutsche Bank finds that we live in a period not of selectively expensive global asset prices, but of record "expensiveness" across developed market bonds, stocks, and real estate.

The last time we looked at Chinese stocks, just a few hours ago, they were on pace to close back under 3000, following the latest collapse in trade, where in August exports dropped 5.5% (last -8.3%) while imports tumbled -13.8% in dollar terms (worse than the -8.1% prior). As the Reuters chart below shows, this was the 10th month in a row of declines and the worst stretch since the 2008 crisis, confirming China will need far more currency devaluation to stabilize the trade pain. And then Chinese authorities intervened with gusto, waiting until the start of the afternoon session, at which point a massive buying orgy ensued, and pushed the SHCOMP from down more than 2% to close at the day highs, up some 2.9%!

Whether it is due to thin holiday liquidity, due to the BOJ intervening just ahead of its usual time, because Japan's "legendary" Twitter trader "CIS" just went bullish (again), because prime minister Abe just learned he would be reinstalled as head of his ruling LDP party because no challenger had emerged unleashing three more years of unchallenged Abenomics, because Japan's Q2 GDP was just revised modestly higher (to a less negative number) or just because this is how the New Normal rolls, moments ago the Nikkei flash smashed higher some 400 points higher, in a well-choreographed algorithmic frenzy, to take out Friday's high stops.

News That Matters

In a stunningly honest admission from a member of the elite, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, exclaimed multiple times this week to his G-20 colleagues that a bubble in his country had "burst." While this will come as no surprise to any rational-minded onlooker, the fact that, as Bloomberg reports, Japanese officials also confirmed Zhou's admissions, noting that "many people [at the G-20] expressed concerns about the Chinese market," and added that "discussions [at the G-20 meeting] hadn't been constructive" suggests all is not well in the new normal uncooperative G-0 reality in which we live.

Europe's refugee crisis just took a dramatic turn for the worse, and strikes at the very hear of Europe's Shengen customs union which has allowed borderless travel within Europe for decades. As Bloomberg reports, the Italian Province of Bolzano in Northern Italy said in a statement that it agreed with the Italian government on request by German Federal State of Bavaria by "communicating a willingness to restore border controls at Brenner and temporarily suspend the Schengen agreement."

For the last few years, US equity traders have become conditioned to expect the miraculous arrival of some heavy-handed levitation in stock markets as 330pmET rolls by. This became ubiquitous enough to inspire a Twitter account. Well, it appears the Chinese have learnt a thing or two from the American manipulators... behold China's 2pm Ramp Capital at work.

It is undeniable; the final collapse triggers are upon us, triggers alternative economists have been warning about since the initial implosion of 2008. You would think that the more obvious the economic collapse becomes, the more alternative analysts will be vindicated and the more awake and aware the average person will be. Not necessarily... In fact, the mainstream spin machine is going into high speed the more negative data is exposed and absorbed into the markets. If you know your history, then you know that this is a common tactic by the establishment elite to string the public along with false hopes so that they do not prepare or take alternative measures while the system crumbles around their ears. At the onset of the Great Depression the same strategies were used.