Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Those betting on a fourth bubble of even greater extremes will find their time at bat has come to an end.
The conventional investment wisdom holds that central banks will never let markets decline. This is an interesting belief, given that two previous asset bubbles based on central bank "easy money" both imploded, impoverishing believers in central bank omnipotence.
A few days ago we first showed a chart of a dramatic divergence between the price of gold and bitcoin...
... which together with a recent unscientific poll showing that more Ron Paul followers prefer bitcoin to gold...
A wealthy person wants to gift you $10,000. You get to choose in which form you'll take the gift. But there's a catch: You must keep the gift in the form that you choose, and you can't touch it for 10 years.
In which form would you take the gift?
E-mini futures are modestly in the green this morning, though net of fair value the S&P index is poised for another record high open as the FOMC begins its last meeting for 2017 in which it is expected to raise rates by 25bps. European stocks gain while Asian equities slide led by weakness in Chinese airplane stocks.
The market expected Mark Carney to avoid it but it was just not meant to be.
The BoE Governor will suffer the ignominy of a bizarre tradition of having to write a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer explaining why UK inflation is more than 1.0% above the target of 2.0%. The market had expected the UK CPI to rise by a modest 0.2% month-on-month, taking the year-on-year rate up to 3.0%. Instead the month-on-month rate hit 0.3% pushing the annual rate to 3.1%, its highest rate since March 2012.
We like to highlight that although Sweden’s property bubble is not the longest running (that accolade goes to Australia at 55 years), it is probably the world’s biggest, even though it gets relatively little coverage in the mainstream financial media.