Morgan Stanley

Canary... meet coalmine. While the divergence between US financial stock prices and their credit risk has been significant since Fed's Bullard saved the world in mid October. In fact the divergence really began when oil prices peaked and began to accelerate lower but really picked up this week after the Swiss National Bank news. Between energy-sector-based structured notes, massive short Treasury positions, and the potential for contagion from Swissy's massive moves, it would appear - judging by the major decompression in US bank credit risk this week to its worst since Feb 2014 - that counterparty risk is on the rise again.

What we see now is the recovery of price discovery, and therefore the functioning economy, and it shouldn’t be a big surprise that it doesn’t come in a smooth transition. Six years is a long time. Moreover, it was never just QE that distorted the markets, there was – and is – the ultra-low interest rate policy developed nations’ central banks adhere to like it was the gospel, and there’s always been the narrative of economic recovery just around the corner that the politico/media system incessantly drowned the world in. That the QE madness ended with the decapitation of the price of oil seems only fitting.

Remaining fully invested in the financial markets without a thorough understanding of your "risk exposure" will likely not have the desirable end result you have been promised. All five of the charts below have linkages to each other, and when one goes, they will all go. So pay attention to the details.

"The biggest bubble out there is central bank credibility. If Draghi was a stock he'd be on a P/E of 200! Yellen's on 100. When that bubble pops, all hell will break loose again, and there you really just want to be in cash."

• Earnings Pessimism Jumps as Oil Threatens S&P 500 Growth (BBG)
• It’s Amateur Hour in the Booming Chinese Stock Market (BBG)
• France mobilizes 10,000 troops at home after Paris shootings (Reuters)
• European Stocks Gain With S&P 500 Futures While Oil Drops (BBG)
• Nasdaq Looks to Operate Dark Pools for Banks (WSJ)
• This Guy Called Bonds in ’14. You Listening This Time? (BBG)
• Paris attacks boost support for Dutch anti-Islam populist Wilders (Reuters)
• OPEC price war in Asia intensifies as oil falls below $50 (Reuters)

Having previously warned that The Fed's "fixation with the markets has created a deadly trap," and recently noted that "Central Banking has lost its way," Stephen Roach unleashed a few minutes of painfully honest truthiness on an unsuspecting Kelly Evans at CNBC. The brief interview reiterates Roach's previous comments, as Tim Iacono notes, that "it didn't have to be this way." The Fed "is in total denial," Roach rants, adding that it "hasn't learned the lessons of what it put the world through a decade ago."

• French policewoman killed in shoot-out, hunt deepens for militant killers (Reuters)
• The Bold Charlie Hebdo Covers the Satirical Magazine Was Not Afraid to Run (BBG)
• Evans Says Fed Shouldn’t Rush Rate Rise as Inflation Undershoots (BBG)
• Oil holds above $51 as traders search for floor (Reuters)
• Gross Helps Fuel New Fund With His Own Cash (WSJ)
• ECB warns Greek funding access hinges on keeping bailout (Reuters)
• Greece Jolts QE Juggernaut as ECB Gauges Deflation Risk (BBG)
• Analysts Say There's No Telling How Low Oil Prices Could Go (BBG)
• Scientists find antibiotic that kills bugs without resistance (Reuters)

After subdued trading in the overnight session until a little after 8pm Eastern, algos went into overdrive just around the time the Fed's 2015 voting member and uberdove Charlie Evans told reporters that "raising rates would be a catastrophe", hinting that the first rate hike would likely be - as usual - pushed back from market expectations of a mid-2015 liftoff cycle into 2016 or beyond (but don't blame the US, it is the "international situation's" fault), in the process punking the latest generation of Eurodollar traders yet again. Whatever the thinking, S&P futures soared on the comments and were higher by just under 20 points at last check even as Crude has failed to pick up and the 10Y is barely changed at 2.00%.

History literally appears to be repeating. The mainstream media and our politicians are promising Americans that everything is going to be okay somehow, and that seems to be good enough for most people. But the signs that another massive financial crisis is on the horizon are everywhere.

Is the world's biggest hedge fund going all-in on HFT and Dark Pools? We ask because Ray Dalio's Westport, CT-based Bridgewater, which at last check manages around $160 billion between its Pure Alpha and All Weather fund products, and which according to preliminary data had a solid performance in 2014, has just hired Jose Marques, the former global head of the quant and algo-heavy electronic trading at Deutsche Bank, to become Bridgewater's new head of trading.

• Twelve shot dead in Paris (Reuters)
• Eurozone Consumer Prices Fall for First Time Since 2009 (NYT)
• Euro's Drop is a Turning Point for Central Banks Reserves (BBG)
• How $50 Oil Changes Almost Everything (BBG)
• Mercedes-Benz Moving U.S. Headquarters to Atlanta (WSJ)
• Greek 10-Year Bond Yields Exceed 10% for First Time Since 2013 (BBG)
• How Even Dairy Farmers Get Squeezed by Rigging in the $5.3 Trillion Currency Market (BBG)
• AirAsia jet tail found underwater, black box may be close (Reuters)
• Italy Unemployment Rises to New High (Bloomberg)

• Average 10-year yield of U.S., Japan and Germany dropped below 1% for the first time ever: Free Money in Bond Markets Shows Global Economy Still Struggling (BBG)
• Brent falls below $52 as oil hits new five and a half year lows (Reuters)
• China Fast-Tracks $1 Trillion in Projects to Spur Growth (BBG)
• Saudi Arabia Raises Price of Main Oil Grade for Asian Buyers (BBG)
• Oilfield Writedowns Loom as Crude Slump Guts Drilling Values (BBG)
• Biggest Oil-Rig Drop Since 2009 Spells Tough Year Ahead (BBG)
• CIA says its inspector general is resigning at end of month (Reuters)
• Pipeline IPOs Climb on Demand for Returns Immune to Oil (BBG)
• Natural Gas No Savior for Investors Seeking Oil Refuge (BBG)
• Euro zone economy ended 2014 in poor shape (Reuters)

“Don’t look back - something might be gaining on you,” Satchel Paige famously warned. For connoisseurs of civilizational collapse, 2014 was merely annoying, a continued pile-up of over-investments in complexity with mounting diminishing returns, metastasizing fragility, and no satisfying resolution. So we enter 2015 with greater tensions than ever before and therefore the likelihood that the inevitable breakdown will release more destructive energy and be that much harder to recover from.

In what can only be described as a puiblic relations disaster, Morgan Stanley has just admitted that an employee (former) had stolen partial client data for around 900 high net worth Wealth Management clients and briefly posted it on the internet. Overall, around 10% of all the accounts (as Bloomberg reports - 350,000 wealth-management clients) data was stolen. While social security numbers and bank account data was not released, we can only imagine the anxiety-ridden outflows the firm will suffer from this security breach.

• Economists sceptical ECB bond-buying would revive eurozone (FT)
• Indonesia naval captain says may have located missing plane's tail section (Reuters)
• Oil hits five and a half year low under $55 (Reuters)
• Samaras Warns of Euro Exit Risk as Greek Campaign Starts (BBG)
• The death of active investing: Vanguard Sets Record Funds Inflow (WSJ) - thank you Fed
• Oil Downturn Has Many Wondering How Lone Star State Will Weather a Bust (WSJ)
• Hollande Says France Must Exceed 1% Economic Growth to Spur Jobs (BBG)