Business

Whether this week's market surge was catalyzed by two consecutive "technical problems" in the bond market, first the unexpected failure of the Fed's MBS POMO on Wednesday and then the 7 Year Treasury auction's last minute cancellations yesterday, and quite clearly it was...

... is irrelevant as the short squeeze has not only returned with a vengeance...

... but the critical 1,950 resistance and 50 DMA in the S&P500 was taken out...

For the first time since Gold suffered a "death cross" in 2014, the largest 3-week inflows into gold funds since June 2009 have set up a so-called bullish "golden cross" pattern in the precious metal.

On the week, BofA's Michael Hartnett reports big precious metals inflows of $2.6bn as investors flee from stocks (equity outflows of $2.7bn).

Last April, China had an idea about how to boost the country’s dying credit impulse.

As we’ve been at pains to explain for more than a year, China is attempting to do the impossible. They need to deleverage and re-leverage all at the same time. Efforts to rein in the mammoth shadow banking system after years of expansion put pressure on an economy that was already decelerating and by the end of 2014, Beijing was struggling to figure out how to keep credit flowing without embedding more risk into the system.

Make no mistake, there are any number of landmines that threaten to send global markets into a veritable tailspin. There’s the risk of further weakness (and volatility) in crude, there’s the risk that China suddenly decides on a one-off RMB deval, there’s the risk that someone makes a “mistake” in Syria and triggers a global conflict, etc.

You know the drill.

Earlier this week, we were amused but not at all surprised to learn that Japanese citizens are buying safes like they’re going out of style.