Business

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Well, they got that right. Detecting that “parts of the U.S. jobs report for January seem fishy”, MarketWatch offered this pictorial summary:

Having long mocked the sheer idiocy of using organic cash or worse, debt proceeds, to fund buybacks just so management can eek out a few more million in equity-linked compensation while activists enjoy a few extra points in P&L on the back of naive bondholders managing 'other people's money', we were delighted to see the buyback bubble begin to burst in the middle of 2015 starting with Michael Kors (as detailed in "When Stock Buybacks Go Horribly Wrong") and Monsanto ("When Buybacks Fail..."), when each respective stock plunged far below the average buyback price.

Submitted by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

Last Sunday (31 January) Zero Hedge ran an article drawing attention to the big names in the hedge fund community who are betting heavily that the yuan will suffer a major devaluation any time between the next few months and perhaps the next three years.

The impression given is that this view is universal, almost to the exclusion of any other.

Instead of allocating capital to expensive tail risk bets on direct asset class collapse (in equities, credit, and commodities), it appears, just as we detailed previously, the 'smartest money in the room' is "betting" indirectly on a stock market crash through eurodollar options.

As we previously detailed, the costs of tail risk protection in credit and equity markets are soaring (and perhaps the crash in global financial stocks and spike in systemic credit risk supports that concerning possibility).

By EconMatters 

The China currency debate in financial markets is rather interesting right now with many market ramifications. A rapid depreciation in the Chinese currency could lead to an Asian currency market crisis. I can see both sides of the current debate of a rapid devaluation versus a prolonged drawn out devaluation of the currency.