In an ironic twist of fate, it appears the catalyst for many of the biggest and most incomprehensible market ramps of the last few years is a fund called "Catalyst." With around $4 billion under management (before the latest collapse), the levered options fund is run by Edward Walczak who "uses options to create a better risk/return profile."
Via The Daily Bell
While having been gradually relegated to B-grade economic data status, today's housing starts and building permits report from the Commerce Department, painted a mixed picture, with January starts declining 2.6%, from 1.279million to 1.246 million, below expectations of a 0.1% increase, however due to the upward prior revision, today's absolute print beat expectations of 1.222 million units started (forecast range 1168k - 1320k from 77 economists). Looking inside the data, single family starts rose to 823k, while multifamily starts fell to 423k in Jan.
While typically uneventful, this morning the release of minutes from the ECB's January 18-19 meeting prompted a spike in both French and Spanish bonds, with yields dropping between 6 and 8 bps after the ECB said that “limited and temporary deviations” from the capital key “were possible and inevitable.” As Bloomberg explains, the gains in these countries are due to their larger overall outstanding debt, as deviations from capital key suggests the ECB may end up buying a more bonds from these countries.
Specifically, this is what the ECB stated::
Gold Is Undervalued Say Leading Fund Managers