Business

It's Sunday morning, and as is customary for this time of the week, we present the best excerpts from the latest weekend note by one of our favorite market commentators, Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management. Today we focus on what is currently the most controversial topic in capital markets, namely China, and how it could - and willl - impact not only the global reflation trade but risk assets across the world. Or rather, how it may, because as Peters puts it in the simplest possible terms, "no one has a model for this."

In the latest Sunday start from Morgan Stanley, the bank's co-head of economics, Elga Bartsch looks at - what else - the eerie, record calm gripping capital markets despite the daily bombardment, so to speak, of deteriorating geopolitical news, US and European political upheaval, deteriorating economic data, and confusion about China's credit impulse.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has published gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the fourth quarter of 2016 by state. According to the BEA data released on Thursday, real GDP increased in every state and the District of Columbia for that time period.

GDP by state growth ranged from 3.4 percent in Texas to 0.1 percent in Kansas and Mississippi. Finance and insurance; retail trade; and professional, scientific, and technical services were the leading contributors to U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter.

When we looked at subprime auto delinquencies most recently, we found some troubling trends: first, in February, we showed that 61+ day delinquencies in General Motors' subprime securitization book would support a rather bleak thesis for future auto sales, and specifically the demand side of the equation, with January 2017 delinquency rates soaring to the highest levels since late 2009/early 2010. 

Sound money advocates scored a major victory on Wednesday, when the Arizona state senate voted 16-13 to remove all income taxation of precious metals at the state level. The measure heads to Governor Doug Ducey, who is expected to sign it into law.

Under House Bill 2014, introduced by Representative Mark Finchem (R-Tucson), Arizona taxpayers will simply back out all precious metals “gains” and “losses” reported on their federal tax returns from the calculation of their Arizona adjusted gross income (AGI).