CFTC Fines Bitfinex, Tether $43MM For “Misleading” Claims About Reserves Years ago, several anonymous accounts on twitter, reddit and other social media platforms complained that tether, one of the original stablecoins, and Bitfinex, the crypto exchange that helped create tether, were conspiring to drain the reserves from Tether’s bank accounts, something that Bloomberg appeared to confirm in a report published earlier this month. The SEC […]

Buchanan: Are The Good Times Over For Joe? Authored by Pat Buchanan, “When sorrows come,” said King Claudius, “they come not single spies but in battalions.” As the king found out. So it seems with President Joe Biden, who must be asking himself the question Merle Haggard asked: “Are the good times really over for good?” Consider the critical issue with voters today: the state […]

Friday “Humor”: Vaccine Efficacy ‘Science’ Explained From 100% effective, “no deaths, no hospitalizations” to the imminent need for a 4th, 5th, 6th, semi-annual, bi-monthly “booster” dose and counting, here is the devolution of COVID vaccine efficacy exposed for all but the willfully blind to see… Devolution of COVID vaccine efficacy. pic.twitter.com/Tlm3SAG0OT — Kelly Bee 🐝 (@ke11ybender) October 15, 2021 …and don’t forget “follow the science.” […]

Pete Buttigieg Enjoys 2nd Month Of Paternity Leave As Supply Chain Crisis Worsens US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is on his second month of paid paternity leave – leaving an empty post as the Biden supply chain crisis spirals further out of control. According to Politico, “Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend […]

Ford Halts Production At Mexico Plant Amid Snarled Supply Chains  The Ford Motor Company Hermosillo assembly plant in Hermosillo, the capital city of the Mexican state of Sonora, temporarily suspended operations Friday due to a shortage of materials, according to Reuters, citing the plant’s labor union.  The Hermosillo assembly plant currently assembles the Bronco Sport SUV and Maverick compact pickups for the North American market. Production […]

Traders Are Pushing Oil, Rates, & The Dollar. Are They Right? Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, With inflation fears getting stoked by the mainstream media, traders are pushing oil, interest rates, and the dollar higher. Are they right? Or, are they about to get smacked by a slower economy and deflationary headwinds? Once a quarter, I dig into the Commitment of Traders data to […]

Goldman Lost $820MM Trading Stocks In Q2 As It Quietly Liquidated Billions In Equities While most analysts and traders were digging through Goldman’s Q3 earnings report and focusing on the investment banking and markets (i.e., commission-based flow trading ) results – all of which came in stellar especially on the banking advisory side and equity trading… … there was something odd in the bank’s Asset […]

Moderna Slides After FDA Delays Youth Vaccine Decision Due To Heart Inflammation Issues Following the same ‘science’ as the four Nordic nations that either banned completely or selectively, the FDA has decided to delay a decision on authorizing Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine for adolescents to assess whether the shot may lead to heightened risk of a rare inflammatory heart condition, according to people familiar with […]

As Retailers Shaped Holiday Hiring Plans In August, A Record 721K Retail Workers Picked Up And Quit By Daphne Howland of RetailDive, Brief: Retail workers in August walked out on their jobs at one of the highest rates in the nation, with a total 721,000 quitting that month, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their quit rate — which the […]

Toymaker Slams Biden: “Too Little Too Late” To Save Christmas A top toy executive joined Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” Thursday and warned President Biden’s port directive this week to operate 24/7 to alleviate snarled supply chains is “too little, too late” to save Christmas.   MGA Entertainment CEO Isaac Larian said, “whether the ports are open 24 hours a day or 48 hours a day, you cannot get labor. If you […]

Empty Christmas Stockings? Don’t Blame COVID, Blame California Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com, The conventional wisdom from the left is that COVID is the reason that shipping containers are in the waters off California with no stevedores or truckers available to take care of them. The implication, of course, is that if people would stop being selfish and take the vaccines, the whole problem […]

Monday Vol Spike On Deck? Goldman Finds A Bizarre Op-Ex Volatility Quirk As discussed previously, some $703BN of single stock options will expire today, the 3rd highest notional for a non-January expiration, which in turn will unlock a substantial amount of gamma and could lead to further volatility next week. The significant increase in options trading activity since early 2020, has prompted many investors to […]

Biden Supreme Court Commission Appears To Reject Court-Packing, Favor Term-Limits Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, President Joe Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court issued draft documents Thursday showing members are divided on the question of whether to add seats to the nation’s top court. The commission spent 30 pages, with another 16 in footnotes, exploring the issue. More words were devoted to the potential […]

Bitcoin Surges Above $60k For The First Time In 6 Months Cryptos are all rallying this morning but Bitcoin is making headlines as it broke back above the $60,000 level for the first since April… Source: Bloomberg This has extended a recent run from around $40,000 which has been driven by increasingly optimistic signs of a Bitcoin ETF being imminent… Source: Bloomberg This has pushed […]

“The Revenge Of The Fossil Fuels” Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com, What have the climate alarmists been screaming about for the past 40 years or so? Their agenda is well-known. They want to close nuclear plants; shut down coal electric generators; eliminate natural gas and oil-fired electrical plants; and substitute wind, solar and hydropower in their place. According to the fanatics, this substitution of […]

Russian Warship Chased ‘Intruding’ US Destroyer After Breaching Joint Russia-China Drills: Kremlin According to breaking reports in Interfax and Reuters based on Russian defense ministry statements, there’s been a major incident involving a US vessel during Friday’s joint Russia-China military drills in the Sea of Japan. A Russian warship has “chased a US destroyer out of Russian territorial waters,” Interfax is reporting, citing a Russian military statement. The Kremlin […]

S&P’s Line-In-The-Sand For Today’s OpEx The last few days have seen US equity markets explode higher on a relief rally that perhaps, just perhaps, stagflation is not in the near future (despite The Fed’s imminent taper and rate-hike trajectory looming). The real driver has been short-covering and gamma-squeeze but today’s options expirations suggests a shift in that move is imminent. SpotGamma points out that its […]

Surprise! New WHO COVID Origin Investigation Team Includes Another Peter Daszak Minion Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News, The World Health Organisation recently put together a new team of researchers to ‘investigate’ the origins of COVID-19, pertaining specifically to the lab leak theory, and declared that this time conflicts of interest would be avoided. However, one of the leading members is a scientist who […]

Washington Finally Abandons International Travel Restrictions Imposed By Trump After more than 18 months of barring the vast majority of travelers from crossing into the US (the bans started with Chinese and Europeans imposed by President Trump, before expanding on to other high-risk countries) the US will finally open its borders to vaccinated foreign travelers (provided they have received an ‘approved’ vaccine, ie not the […]