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The entrance to The CME has been blocked for most of the morning by "Soros-paid Morons" according to one trader. Rick Santelli has a few opinions on the apparently ill-informed protesters' actions, and concluded, "It would be sad commentary - based on what the politicians have done with the budget - to chase more companies out of Illinois."

Dennis Gartman, author of the institutionally well followed ‘The Gartman Letter,’ has asked questions about gold’s peculiar price action last week and raised the question as to whether there was official central bank manipulation of gold prices.

Ironically, it would only exacerbate the pressure and you can handsomely profit from it

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR RUSSIAN PLANE CRASH IN EGYPT

In other words, a proxy organization of US "shadow government destabilizing operations", trained in U.S. ally Turkey, and openly funded by both U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, just took down a Russian plane.

These banks, 6 years after the global financial crisis, are still facing shortcomings on their balance sheets... How scary is that?!

It appears President Obama, not wanting to provide every alternative-media site with a perfect 'compare and contrast' from September 2014's "putting U.S. troops on the ground would be a profound mistake,"  has handed the responsibility for announcing American "boots on the ground" in Syria to his Press Secretary. "If you like your boots on the ground, well, you can keep them.. in Syria."

Gold is up 3.1% in October and had even larger gains in other currencies. Entering gold’s “seasonal sweet spot” in November, December, January and February.

Back in September we explained why, contrary to both conventional wisdom and the BOJ's endless protests to the contrary, neither the BOJ nor the ECB have any interest in boosting QE at this - or any other point - simply because with every incremental bond they buy, the time when the two central banks run out of monetizable debt comes closer. Since then the ECB has jawboned that it may boost QE (but it has not done so), and overnight as reported previously, the BOJ likewise did not expand QE despite many, including Goldman Sachs, expecting it would do just that.

Those were just excuses, it’s not like any of those factors suddenly changed and were fixed magically on October 1^st.

A bursting of property bubbles in London and New York would be expected to have an impact on national economies and indeed on national property markets. Sentiment would be badly impacted. Caution should be the order of the day.

While China had previously hinted that it's one-child policy is being phased out, most notably in 2013 when sources close to the National Population and Family Planning Commission said China may relax its one-child policy at end-2013 or early-2014 (read end) by allowing families to have two children, moments ago, during the Fifth Chinese Plenum, this 37 year old policy was formally scrapped and China will henceforth allow two kids for all couples in what is a clear bid to boost growth.