In what may be one of the few sane policy recommendations to emerge out of Japan in years, Nobuyuki Nakahara, an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and an influential former Bank of Japan board member said the BOJ should make a "clean break" from its current policy
Authored by Kevin Muir of The MacroTourist
Way back in the 4th quarter of 2015, GMO’s Jeremy Grantham wrote a piece titled “Part II: 2015 and 2016, U.S. Equity Bubble Update, and Yet More on Oil.”
It is easy to forget, but at that point, the S&P was trading around 2,000 and everyone was bearish. QE had ended, the Fed was fumbling with their first hike and “fully valued” were the buzz words used to describe US equities.
Two weeks ago, Reuters reported that due to "unexplained" reasons, the Venezuela central bank had stopped publishing its M2, or money supply, data. The M2 money supply was up by nearly 180% in mid-February from a year earlier, according to the central bank before it halted the release of the weekly data without explanation in February.
As U.S. equity markets continue their march back toward all-time highs, courtesy of the latest BTFD binge trade, at least one 'small' segment of the U.S. economy does not seem to be participating in the rally as 9 brick-and-mortar retailers have already filed for bankruptcy protection in 1Q 2017 alone. That volume of filings matches the total number of retail bankruptcies for all of 2016 and puts the industry on pace to exceed even the 'great recession' highs. Per CNBC:
While not surprising - her departure had been floated previously - moments ago ReCode confirmed that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer "will not be continuing with the new company that was announced today prematurely in a tweet by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong today."
Perhaps what is more surprising is the name of said pro forma company, which according to Kara Swisher will be called "Oath", and will be headed by Armstrong.