Business

• Headline of the day: Oil prices fall as investors' faith in rally wanes (Reuters)
• Europe shares, dollar gain as investors look to Yellen (Reuters)
• Chinese Bidder for Starwood Has Mysterious Ownership Structure (WSJ)
• Germany wants refugees to integrate or lose residency rights (Reuters)
• BlackRock Joins Pimco Warning Investors to Seek Inflation Hedge (BBG)
• Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns: A Financial-Crisis Mystery Is Solved (WSJ)
• Contract Workforce Outpaces Growth in Silicon-Valley Style ‘Gig’ Jobs  (WSJ)

With Europe back from Easter break, we are seeing a modest continuation of the dollar strength witnessed every day last week, which in turn is pressuring oil and the commodity complex, and leading to some selling in US equity futures (down 0.2% to 2024) ahead of today's main event which is Janet Yellen's speech as the Economic Club of New York at 12:20pm, an event which judging by risk assets so far is expected to be far more hawkish than dovish: after all the S&P 500 is north of 2,000 for now.

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Gold, the Misery Index and Insanity

Posted with permission and written by Gary Christenson, The Deviant Investor (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

In late September, during the peak of fall borrowing base redetermination , many oil and gas companies got their first glimpse of just how bad their liquidity would get when as a result of collapsing commodity prices, the value of their collateral crashed when PV-10s plunged by up to 80% Y/Y as of December 2015...

... and resulted in plunging access to secured liquidity as borrowings bases were eviscerated as much as 38% (for those unfamiliar with the basics of the semiannual redetermination process, the WSJ has a handy and brief 101).

Just one more cut in rates more negative and just a little more ETF buying and bond purchases and we are sure the Japanese will start spending as wages rise...

4th monthly decline in a row and absent the tsunami and tax-hike reaction, this is the worst drop since Dec 2010...

At what point do you just admit failure?