Reports indicate that some of the stolen funds were traced to the Philippines, but given what we know about the "Cyber Axis of Evil," we can only suspect it was Iranians, Chinese, or the criminal/military mastermind Kim Jong-Un who was behind the scam, but whatever the case, someone, somewhere, hacked into Bangladesh's central bank on February 5.
US equity markets are soaring once again and two things are driving it: CTA-driven short-covering in commodities and the algo-driven squeeze of the most-shorted stocks. Having risen 13 of the last 16 days, "Most Shorted" stocks are now unchanged since The Fed rate-hike, soaring 25% in that time - the biggest squeeze in history. And Credit Suisse warns, it could get worse as the dash for trash goes on, and on, and on....
Behold: the biggest short-squeeze on record:
And here's why:
Something strange happened on Friday: as a result of the 20% YTD surge in the price of gold and "surging demand", BlackRock announced it had temporarily suspended the creation of new shares of its $7.8 billion gold Exchange Traded Product IAU "until additional shares are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission."
The "berserk" iron ore market has created a tsunami of utter idiocy and short-covering across many sectors, most egregiously - dry bulk shippers. DRYS is up 18%, DSX up 20%, and NM up 25%, but Eagle Bulk (EGLE) is the big winner as the mania underlying iron ore combined with an earlier filing said to amend forebearance as the company tries to find financing alternatives, spiked the stock up 340% in 2 days.
Up 340% in 2 days... back to unchanged on the year...
Shortly after JPMorgan's historically correct forecasters unleashed their "short stocks" prognostication, we joked that if only Goldman would go "long" the S&P500, then the confusion about what is really going on would be eliminated instantly. And so the alarm bells on this bounce should be ringing loud and clear as Goldman just told its portfolio manager clients that "S&P 500 calls are more attractive now than at any time on record."