Business

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

In what seems a lifetime ago, I was the equity index trader at a big bank on Bay Street. Although a lot has changed since then, there are parts of the game that are timeless. So I am putting my old hat back on to analyze VanEck’s recent problems arising from the success of their GDXJ ETF (Junior Gold Miners). And lest you think this will be a boring ETF specific piece, I urge you to suffer through the details as I believe the market is missing the bigger picture message.

No macro today but excuses galore for Goldman's weak quarter and why we should just ignore IBM... Fed's Rosnegren talked up the reduction of the balance sheet and that didn't help...

One of the horses we have beaten to death starting in 2013 (with Why The TBAC Is Suddenly Very Worried About Market Liquidity) is that the relentless growth in ETFs in particular, and passive investing in general, is one of the greatest threats facing the US equity market for one main reason: "phantom liquidity", and specifically the thought experiment, conducted back in March 2015 by Howard Marks, of what happens if and when the ETF selling begins.

This is what we said one week ago:

Despite the second slam in as many days into the London Fix...

Gold is trading near the highest in five months, and, as Bloomberg notes, at least one measure suggests the rally is gaining momentum.

Open interest, a tally of outstanding contracts in Comex futures, this week climbed to the highest since January as global tensions ranging from the U.S.-North Korea rift to European elections fuel demand for haven assets.

The much anticipated Tesla Model 3 has yet to be released and already a groundswell of electric car competition is forming to challenge Elon Musk's upcoming offering. Start in China, where the Model 3 is not due to arrive until next year, but already Chinese-funded, smart, connected plug-in car start-ups are scrambling to launch "Tesla killer" cars to go head-to-head against Tesla "mass market" sedan.