Business

Back in February, we wrote that over half a year after we first reported last August that foreign official institutions - central banks, sovereign wealth funds and reserve managers - are liquidating US Treasurys in record amounts, a process that only accelerated into year end when official entities sold a record $405 billion in US paper in the LTM period, Bloomberg decided to catch up to the topic with "America’s Biggest Creditors Dump Treasuries in Warning to Trump."

Social-media company Foursquare has crunched the data generated by its 50 million active monthly users and determined that America’s share of the international tourism market has fallen sharply since October.

According to data published on the company’s blog, visits by foreigners to the U.S.  started to decline in October, when they fell by 6% year-over-year. The decline has continued through March 2017, the latest month for which Foursquare has data, when visits declined by an astounding 16%.

To the list of 'rigged' markets (e.g. Libor, FX, Silver, Treasuries...) we can now add VIX (which explains a lot) as two University of Texas at Austin finance professors find "large transient deviations in VIX prices" around the morning auction, "consistent with market manipulation."

It appears the Fed's balance sheet "trial balloons" using primary dealers as intermediaries have begun.

Confident anchors across the media have been proudly proclaiming the rise above $50 as proof that the oil market is heading toward equilibrium again and OPEC's production cut deal extension will be awesome... except the market seems to be disappointed as it's clear no other non-OPEC nations will join the agreement (cough US shale cough) and "sell the news" has sent crude back below $50...

The full details are as follows: