Business

In the aftermath of the recent Valeant and Allergan stock price fiascoes, one month ago we showed that when it comes to 2016 hedge fund performance, it has been an abysmal year for the "smartest money" - something even Warren Buffett touched upon during the weekend - primarily due to the residual clustering effect as over the years hundreds of hedge funds ended up being long the same handful of stocks following numerous self-reinforcing "idea dinners" and quasi-collusive attempts to push up stock prices with coordinated buying.

Submitted by Rakesh Upadhyay via OilPrice.com,

Ship tracking data from Bloomberg shows that 83 supertankers carrying around 166 million barrels of oil are headed to China, which has stockpiled an impressive 787,000 barrels a day in the first quarter of 2016 - the highest stockpiling rate since 2014.

While the world was speculating about oil prices plunging to $20 and $10 per barrel, China was busy stockpiling its reserves.

A lack of intervention in the Yen and strength in EUR have combined to weigh on the US dollar. Bloomberg's USD Index is back at one-year lows as, while overnight chaos sent stocks higher, it has driven investors into the safety of bonds (Treasury yields down 2-3bps) and precious metals. Gold topped $1300 and Silver $18 as EURUSD pushes above 1.1500...

USD Index getting clubbed..

On the back of EUR strength...Topping 1.15 for the first time since August

Gold tops $1300...

Following what was one of the most volatile Q1’s on record, Q2 kick started the second quarter on a positive note in April. According to DB (whose stock has failed to meaningfully rebound from recent lows) while performance didn’t quite match those lofty gains made in March, in the face of a number of key central bank meetings and also the commencement of earnings season in the US and Europe – for which expectations were low – risk assets in particular have shown a reasonable degree of resilience on the whole.

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