Business

• Fight night: Rubio, Cruz gang up on Trump in debate ploy (Reuters)
• Laid Bare in Shanghai: G-20 Tensions Over How to Spur Growth (BBG)
• China Flags Scope for Policy Stimulus, Tweaks Monetary Stance (BBG)
• Global Stocks Rise With Commodities as China Sees Room to Ease (BBG)
• Greece seeks to stem migrant flow as thousands trapped by border limits (Reuters)
• SocGen Swings From Biggest Bull on Europe Stocks to Most Bearish (BBG)
• How the Fed's Cold War With Congress Could Harm the U.S. Economy (BBG)

“I haven’t found any nuggets of good news.”

That’s from Investec’s Ian Gordon, who isn’t particularly enamored with RBS, which on Friday reported its eighth consecutive annual loss.

The bank - which was bailed out to the tune of $64 billion by British taxpayers during the depths of the crisis - lost $2.77 billion last year, which was actually a marked improvement from 2014. Pre-tax profit which strips away all of the bad things like litigation plunged by nearly a third to £4.4 billion, just shy of consensus.

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.