WTI Crude has legged down for the 3rd time today, crashing to a $47 handle… the lowest since Sept 2017…   And as energy tumbles, high yield credit markets and the canadian dollar are suffering the collateral damage… As we noted previously, having learned little from the 2015 near death experience for many shale companies,… Read More

Earlier today, president Trump prompted confusion in the market, when in his latest tweet urging the Fed to stop hiking, the president also said “Stop with the 50 B’s.” In the absence of other hints, this was taken to suggest that Trump also wanted the Fed to not only stop hiking but also end the… Read More

President Trump’s charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, has agreed to dissolve amid allegations from the New York Attorney General’s office that it engaged in a “shocking pattern of illegality.”  However, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced on Tuesday that her office will continue to pursue its lawsuit against the foundation.  As WaPo reports, the attorney… Read More

The West – and in particular Western elites, have taken to blaming Russia for everything from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, to Brexit, to their latest target of Putin’s “nefarious designs”; the Yellow Vest movement.  To that end the New York Post‘s Sohrab Ahmari has penned an intriguing Op-Ed on the phenomenon of the West uncritically accepting tales… Read More

It’s ugly out there. While the headlines suggest things are dicey with all the major US equity indices in the red year-to-date, and in correction; under the surface things are going from worse to worserer… Forced VaR-down, retail outflows, and institutional pile-ons, early Oct / Nov fund redemptions building into tax-loss selling into YE, pension… Read More

Xi’s speech did not help (with no growth measures revealed) but oil markets seem extremely fragile this morning having broken below $50 and flash-crashed for the second time in a few hours. “The oil market has come under renewed pressure” and “a large part of the move is due to a broader market sell-off,” said Warren… Read More

Authored by Patrick Buchanan, Kim Jong Un, angered by the newest U.S. sanctions, is warning that North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization could be imperiled and we could be headed for “exchanges of fire.” Iran, warns Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is testing ballistic missiles that are forbidden to them by the U.N. Security Council. Turkish… Read More

So much has changed in the past year (at least according to respondents in Bank of America’s latest Fund Manager Survey). This time in December 2017, FMS investors were super bullish and long Bitcoin (which hit $19,611 on Dec 19th 2017), global stocks, banks, and short bonds and defensives. One year later, everything has been… Read More

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, Last Friday morning, we adjourned the blog in anticipation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller handing over certain FBI documents in the General Flynn matter demanded by DC District Federal Judge Emmett G. Sullivan no later than 3:00 p.m. that day. Guess what. Mr. Mueller’s errand boys did not… Read More

It has been an annus horribilis for housing markets in 2018 as affordability collapses on the heels of a hawkish Fed which has sent the US Housing data surprise index to a record low… But, to stoke last minute hope, housing starts and building permits surprised to the upside (helped by some notable downward revisions).… Read More

As the legal scrutiny facing the infamous “Vampire Squid” intensifies (and the bank’s shares languish at two-year lows), slowly but surely, more details about the compliance shortcuts and – in some cases, outright negligence – countenanced by Goldman’s most senior employees during the bank’s pursuit of the 1MDB bond offerings that have landed Goldman at… Read More