North America

Aside from the legitimate, but largely irrelevant for the sake of this post, reasons including this morning surprisingly weak service data, in which both the ISM and the Markit PMI reports confirmed that the "malaise in manufacturing has spread to services", JPM's recommendation to sell stocks and buy gold, and the fact that slowly but surely the world is being flooded by negative rates, here are the two most actionable reasons why gold just broke out and soared to $1,260, and is fast approaching levels not seek since January 2015.

Yesterday, there was some confusion as algos and humans tried to explain to themselves why they are buying at such a furious pace that yesterday's torrid surge resulted in the biggest March 1 S&P500 surge in history. The truth is that there should be no confusion: as we previews, and explained, first thing yesterday, "Gartman Is Again "Selling The Markets Short" Just Two Days After Turning Bullish."

Authored by Brett Redmayne-Titley via ActivistPost.com,

“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.” – Aristotle

The American Quran is a new English translation of the Muslim holy book, that believers believe was dictated by god to his prophet Muhammad in a serious of visions. The book aims to explain Islam to the world in a way that is not confined to the rigid Wahhabi interpretation of a typical Saudi version. The Daily Beast reports: A new translation of the Quran, with commentary, is causing a stir—and maybe something of a revolution—in the world of English-speaking Muslims. Why’s that?

It had been a volatile day for nat gas traders.

As we reported this morning citing Bloomberg, "it’s almost time to put that snow shovel away and get out the gardening tools", because as the following weather forecast shows, March temperatures are expected to be considerably higher than expected across the entire US.

This led to some abnormal moves in natgas this morning:

The moves even prompted rumors that another commodity hedge fund had blown up: