Business

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

With most global markets closed for Christmas, the only overnight action was in Asia, which saw Chinese equities fall with tech stocks and names linked to Apple the worst performers after a report that Apple cut forecast iPhone X sales forecasts, while property firms surged on speculation of coming consolidation. As a result, after opening higher, the Shanghai Composite Index closed 0.5% lower on the day, the blue-chip CSI 300 Index fell 0.3%, the Shenzhen Composite Index retreated 0.9%, while the ChiNext small-cap and tech Index dropped 1.3%.

Many others had done it, but nobody quite as blatantly as beverage maker Long Island Iced Tea Corp, which on Thursday became the latest to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, bizarrely but profitably changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp, which sent its shares soaring by 500%.

In an ironic twist, we previewed LTEA's hilarious "pivot" just one day earlier when - discussing a similar surge in microcap stock Net Element - we said:

The dollar’s hegemony over the global financial system can’t last forever. Like all things, it will eventually come to an end.

The only question left, as MacroVoices' Erik Townsend puts it, is whether we’re in the second inning and there’s going to be another hundred years of the dollar serving as the world’s global reserve currency? Or whether we’re in the bottom of the ninth and it’s all about to fall apart? Or maybe somewhere in between.

A month ago, we highlighted a disturbing new record in the Hong Kong real-estate market – a market that received a ranking of “high” from Algebris Investment’s Alberto Gallo in his annual ranking of the world’s biggest asset bubbles.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post, the record price per square foot for a residence in Hong Kong was obliterated when a mystery buyer purchased two apartments in “The Peak” – an exclusive district.