Business

With pensions around the world increasingly reallocated funds to equity markets in a desparate effort to close funding gaps amid recklessly low central banking rates, and traditional banks tapped out by regulatory restrictions on their balance sheets, struggling Euro Zone countries are increasingly being forced to turn to hedge funds to fill their debt issuances.  As Reuters points out, struggling nations like Spain, Italy, Belgium and France have seen a 3x increase in debt issuance allocations to hedge funds.

In the words of the great philosopher Buzz Lightyear, "to infinity and beyond." Oil's incessant liftathon - on hopes that a production freeze at record highs will seriously impact a record seasonal glut - appears to have sparked more panic-buying in stocks overnight as no news whatsoever has the machines incessantly bidding futures, pushing Dow futures over 19,000 and S&P futures over 2,200. Bonds are flat, USDJPY is flat, and offshore yuan is modestly weaker once again.

Donald Trump's election taught politicians several valuable lessons, including, but certainly not limited to, the following:

Despite speculation over the past year that Canada may join Japan and Europe in the NIRP club and launch negative interest rates, so far the BOC has stood its ground. However, starting on December 22, for the broker dealer clients of one of Canada's most reputable financial institutions, BMO Nesbitt Burns, it will be as if the Canadian bank has cut its deposit rate on most currencies, to match the deposit rate of Switzerland.

Just a month after dodging a default bullet thanks to a last-minute bond swap, Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA missed coupon payments due on its bonds, according to JPMorgan. However, PDVSA president Del Pino raged on Twitter that "the information about a PDVSA default spread by the enemies of the fatherland is totally false," but the bonds saw prices tumble despite his statement.

PDVSA in October swapped $2.8 billion in bonds due in 2017 for new bonds maturing in 2020... but that bounce is now dead...