Gundlach

After all, in yesterday’s oil trading there were over 600,000 contracts trading hands on the Globex exchange Tuesday with over 1 million in estimated total volume at settlement.

"Oil goes below $40, it’s frightening for geopolitical behavior. Guess what, folks? It’s below $40 and this frightening political behavior is upon us.... We could be looking at a really ugly situation during the first quarter of 2016... I think we're going to take out the September low of the S&P500."

"Crude oil prices, finally, have stabilised, and we shall go our far upon a limb here this morning suggesting very strongly that when nearby February WTI traded to $29.93 at its low yesterday amidst a great deal of very vocal consternation on the national business television channels that crude had “TRADED BELOW $30 PER BARRELL” that that was what we in the past had referred to as the “obscene number” and may well have been the low."

China = Japan: China, like Japan in the early-1990s, has entered a secular period of significantly slower economic growth, compounded greatly by debt deflation; like Japan in the 1990s, Chinese asset prices, currency, banks (Chart 5) and capital flows will periodically cause severe disruptions to global financial markets, even if China does not itself cause a global recession.

In yet another hit for the energy complex, EIA just cut their global oil demand forecast to 95.19 million barrels a day this year (down from 95.22 million in December’s outlook). The energy agency also increased its forecast for global production to 95.93 million barrels a day (up from 95.79 million last month). This pressured WTI Crude back off a brief bounce and pushed it to a 20-handle at $29.97 for the first time since December 2003.

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey

The hard part now is how to ween the market away from the old narrative, the one which has pushed the S&P to record highs over the past 7 years on bad economic news, and to renomralize the market's own "reaction function" to that of the Fed. The problem is that from day one there is a major discrepancy between the two: as previouslly observed, the Fed did not deliver the desired dovish hike, and kept its 2016 year-end fed funds rate unchanged at 1.4% suggesting 4 rate hikes in the coming year, and which as Breslow notes means "being less dovish than the meeting previews suggested is now a sign of bullishness on the economy." This sets the Fed on a collision course with the market because "with the market pricing fewer hikes than the Fed suggests, someone is going to end up being wrong."

Because when your year-end bonus depends on you not seeing it coming, you don't.

Jim Cramer - of all people - warned about this in 2007: watch the video inside!

Overnight market action has largely been a continuation of Tuesday's key themes with European stocks falling as a selloff in mining companies extended to a 7th day, even as metals prices rose and crude oil rallied modestly from a six-year low after yesterday's API crude inventory draw. U.S. equity futures have rebounded from modest declines, as emerging-market shares extended their losing streak to a 6th day while Asian stocks dropped to 2 month lows.

The entire Treasury curve is getting battered with 30Y +13bps, back above 3.00%. The belly is the most dramatic with 7Y yields up over 11bps - the biggest single-day surge in 7 months. 5Y yields are up over 9bps pushing back to the "wall" of resistance...

Importantly, while the "bias" of the market is to the upside, primarily due to the psychological momentum that "stocks are the only game in town," the mounting risks are clearly evident. From economic to earnings-related weakness, the "bullish underpinnings" are slowly being chipped away.

The odds of a December rate hike have slipped in recent days from over 70% intraday to 64.0% today as, while economists remain convinced that rates will rise in December, traders appear a little less confident. One of the most outspoken - having doubted The Fed (and questioned the economy's ability to handle even a 25bps rate hike) since Spring - DoubleLine Capital co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach said on Sunday that the Fed may hesitate to raise rates given rocky economic and financial conditions making it clear, as Reuters reports, "certainly [a Fed] No-Go is more likely than most people think. These markets are falling apart."

The ongoing failure of China to achieve any stabilization in its economy, after already cutting interest rates six times in the past year, and the prospect of a U.S. interest rate hike in December, had made markets increasingly jittery and worried which is not only why the S&P 500 Index had its biggest drop in a month, but thanks to the soaring dollar emerging market stocks are falling for a fourth day - led by China - bringing their decline in that period to almost 4 percent, and the global stock index down for a 5th consecutive day.