Business

With "risk" in most of the developed world seemingly a long forgotten four-letter word, as seen by today's plunge in the VIX to a level not seen in 34 years, traders hoping for some "risk event" have been confined to the recent turmoil in China, where overnight not only did trade data disappoint, with both imports and exports missing, but bond yields jumped to the highest level since 2015, dragging stocks lower even as the local commodity crash slammed iron ore and copper to new YTD lows.

Buying stocks, bonds, and generally printing money willy-nilly is hard work according to BoJ Governor Kuroda who remarked tonight that "the job of a central banker is challenging." Perhaps the reason for his emotional outburst is the fact that Japanese wages just plunged in March - the biggest drop since June 2015 as the economic rebound that we are constantly told about has evaporated once again.

While the hedge fund world finds itself in a time of crisis, with a "great rotation" of capital away from active management which continues to largely underperform the broader market, and toward cheaper, passive strategies, nothing could spoil the mood at one of the industry's biggest events held today at the Lincoln Center, the 22nd annual Ira Sohn conference, where a dozen of the hedge fund industry's most prominent names presented their best ideas.

Excerpted from The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, March 2017, authored by Mark Faber; via MauldinEconomics.com,

Writing for https://www.dailybeast.com (February 4, 2017), Joel Kotkin opines under the title “The High Cost of a Home Is Turning American Millennials Into the New Serfs” that