SPY

On the heels of the unprecedented proximity of 5 Chinese naval ships in the Bering Sea, U.S. military satellites have been tracking a Russian spy ship - capable of cutting undersea communications cables and other sensors - since it was spotted in the north Atlantic last month off the coast of Kings Bay, Ga., home to the U.S. Navy’s East Coast ballistic missile submarine fleet. As FOX News reports, The Pentagon says the ship is transiting toward its next destination - Cuba.

With Crude ramping, dragging stocks with it (as USDJPY is dead now) but not really gaining much ground, it was only a matter of time before the manipulators turned to their oldest-trick-in-the-book:

*NASDAQ, NYSE EXCHANGES DECLARE SELF-HELP AGAINST CBOE

VIX is gapping lower... Mission Accomplished

You can't say Nassim Taleb didn't warn you: the outspoken academic-philosopher, best known for his prediction that six sigma "fat tail", or black swan, events happen much more frequently than they should statistically (perhaps a main reason why there is no longer a market but a centrally-planned cesspool of academic intervention) just had a black swan land smack in the middle of the Universa hedge fund founded by ardent Ron Paul supporter Mark Spitznagel, and affiliated with Nassim Taleb. The result: a $1 billion payday, translating into a 20% YTD return, in a week when the VIX exploded from the teens to over 50, and which most other hedge funds would love to forget.

Pentagon Goes Barbarian

"Price insensitive" flows are starting to materialize, and our goal is to estimate their likely size and timing. These technical flows are determined by algorithms and risk limits, and can hence push the market away from fundamentals.  The obvious risk is if these technical flows outsize fundamental buyers. In the current environment of low liquidity, they may cause a market crash such as the one we saw at the US market open on Mondaay"

In spite of all the attention the nation has received in recent years, SCMP reports that thousands of so-called "politically exposed persons”, or PEPs - a category that includes heads of state and other top officials - hold Swiss bank accounts, a Swiss foreign ministry official said. But, perhaps not for much longer as Bern aims to finalize a law aimed at simplifying the process of freezing and unblocking such funds.

... or why the number 119.00 is the most important in the world right now...

There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry. Americans must break free of the apathy-inducing turpor of politics, entertainment spectacles and manufactured news. Only once we are free of the chains that bind us—or to be more exact, the chains that “blind” us—can we become actively aware of the injustices taking place around us and demand freedom of our oppressors.

The reason given by our rulers for suppressing cash is to keep society safe from terrorists, tax evaders, money launderers, drug cartels, and other villains real or imagined. The actual aim of the ?ood of laws restricting or even prohibiting the use of cash is to force the public to make payments through the financial system. This enables governments to expand their ability to spy on and keep track of their citizens’ most private financial dealings, in order to milk their citizens of every last dollar of tax payments that they claim are due.

Apparently, someone at the Pentagon thought that between the four-year civil war in Syria, the heightened violence in Turkey, the proxy war in Ukraine, and the threat of a new war in the Korean Peninsula, the geopolitical situation wasn’t unstable enough, because on Thursday the DoD issued a report entitled "Asia Pacific Maritime Security Strategy," in which a considerable amount of space is spent discussing China’s land reclamation efforts in the Spratlys.

Curious why someone just pulled a trapdoor from under the market? JPM's Marko Kolanovic, head of quant strategies explains. "Given that the market is already down ~2%, we expect the market selloff to accelerate after 3:30PM into the close with peak hedging pressure ~3:45PM."

"Music streaming market leader Spotify has decided that it wants to know a lot more about you. It wants to be able to access the sensor information on your phone so it can determine whether you’re walking, running or standing still. It wants to know your GPS coordinates, grab photos from your phone and look through your contacts too. And it may share that information with its partners, so a whole load of companies could know exactly where you are and what you’re up to."

"When does the statute of limitations on blaming President George W. Bush for the record of the current administration finally expire? Obama [has become] the president who, to use one of Rose’s baseball metaphors, called his shot only to strike out."

"After roughly matching the S&P 500 through most of 1H 2015, funds lowered net exposures as the market declined in late June and failed to benefit as the index rebounded in July. The typical fund has returned +0.5% YTD, with equity long/short funds rising 1.3% and event-driven funds falling by 2.0%."