Business

Yesterday morning, after the biggest ever crash in Valeant stock, we showed that "When Ackman Gets A Valeant Margin Call Today, This Is What He Will Be Selling" and laid out his top (and only) concentrated holdings as follows:

We didn't have long to wait for the liquidity-sapping margin calls to come in and to force Ackman, whose positions are so concentrated he can only unload them via block sales, to proceed with liquidation.

The most amusing moment of today's Janet Yellen press conference occured when none other than Steve Liesman asked Yellen a question, one which he may regret as it is dangerously close to "Pedro da Costa" territory, which goes to the heart of the matter: "does the Fed have a credibility problem?"

Submitted by C.Jay Engel via The Mises Institute,

The endgame of monetary side manipulations is upon us. Since 2008, central banks have done what they thought was needed to bring the markets back from the pain they experienced during the crash. The problem, of course, is that these Keynesians and Monetarists placed the high level of stock markets as the goal of “policy” and confused booming asset levels with economic growth.

Watching the markets' reaction and listening to Yellen's incomprehensibe drivel brought to mind two Gladiator clips...

Pre-Fed...

and Post-Fed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs

Goldman's Robin Brooks has to be a sadist: that is the only way we can explain his ability to crush the greatest number of Goldman clients at every possible opportunity.

First, of course, it was his call to go very short the EURUSD ahead of the December ECB meeting, which however led to the biggest EURUSD surge since the announcement of QE1.

Then, last week, ahead of the ECB meeting he "doubled down" on calls to short the EUR ahead of the ECB, the result again was a EUR super surge, the biggest since December.