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Draghi could go nuts, as sinking oil prices are pushing inflation towards zero in Europe...

U.S. + EU will begin lifting nuclear-related sanctions, expanding the horizon of opportunity for the Iranian people.

— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) January 16, 2016

At the start of September last year, as stocks began to ramp aggressively off the Black Monday crash lows, we unveiled a rather discomforting "decoupling" that suggested strongly "don't believe the hype." Four months later, and able to remain strongly convicted of the trade, the inverse VIX ETF (XIV) and the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) have recoupled back at the lows from August 24th. We await the recoupling of equity exuberance to credit curmudgeon-ness...

Thus we are treading water for about a year at this 9.2 million barrels per day level, but that just isn`t going to cut it considering the drop in spot prices of crude oil.

There is a game that goes on in the market with IPOs, and I will lay it out here.

European shares tumbled, wiping out gains from a two-day rally, Asian stocks slid and the cost of insuring corporate debt rose as investor concern over global growth prospects resurfaced. U.S. equity-index futures pared gains of as much as 0.9 percent. Government bonds rose, with yields falling to records in Japan and China amid anxiety over the world economy. U.S. crude prices stabilized after dropping below $30 a barrel on Tuesday to touch the lowest since 2003 as Iran moved closer to boosting exports.

Don’t look now, but Renault may be pulling a Volkswagen. The French company’s shares fell by as much as 23% on Thursday after an apparent raid on what a union official described as “sites that have to do with standards testing and engine certification.”

*POLICE SAYS ABT. 10-14 GUNMEN SEEN IN CENTRAL JAKARTA: METRO TV

Two months after the Paris explosions of November 13, it appears terrorism has struck again, this time in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta where moments ago, at least six bomb explosions, gunfire and casualties were reported (AFP is reporting three dead but this is unconfirmed), with at least one of the explosions taking place near the local UN office.

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.

John Hathaway, respected authority on the gold market and senior portfolio manager with Tocqueville Asset Management has written an excellent research paper on the fundamentals driving the gold market today.

As President Obama prepares to unleash his final State Of The Union speech, The White House has conveniently focused attention on the following six "success stories": The Economy (record low number of men in workforce), The Climate (too hot for retail, too cold for construction), Foreign Policy (bwuahahaha), Health Care (record number of Americans cutting back to afford medical costs), and Social Progress (record high racial tensions, police state, surveillance state,  and record low trust in government). But apart from that, Americans have The Kardashians, iGadgets, record levels of syphillis, and, of course, a record surge in national debt during any President's "reign."