Two months ago, we observed the record plunge in Hong Kong home sales when according to Land Registry data, a paltry 2,826 registered residential transactions were record, down 14.4% from October and what we thought was an amazing 41.7% less than in November last year. This was the lowest print in the history of the series.
Little did we know just how bad it would get just two months later.
Last week's obvious silver market fix manipulation will not go quietly into the night, as we are sure LBMA would prefer.
But it will not, as BullionDesk.com's Ian Walker reports, the world’s largest producer of silver, KGHM, has weighed in on last week’s hugely controversial silver price benchmark, which was set some six percent below the prevailing spot price on Thursday.
Jeb Bush turned out to be such a bad investment for bankers at Goldman Sachs that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they threw at him has become a company joke, according to Bloomberg. After donating almost $900,000 in the first half of 2015 to four favorite candidates and their fundraising committees, the firm’s bankers gave about $243,000 in the second half, Federal Election Commission filings released Sunday show.
As Bloomberg continues,
With an ever-increasing horde of hedge fund "speculators" daring to confront The PBOC, here is how they are placing theirs bets on Yuan devaluation...
Spot trades are simple but less levered and prone to direct interventionist manipulation. So traders turn to derivatives (more capital effective with their prime brokers) to place their bets.
In the forward FX market...
The FX forwards market has shown significantly more selling pressure than spot as traders place bets on timing and expectations of a devaluation.
Authored by Michael Meyer, originally posted at Project Syndicate,
The idea that oil wealth can be a curse is an old one – and it should need no explaining. Every few decades, energy prices rise to the heavens, kicking off a scramble for new sources of oil. Then supply eventually outpaces demand, and prices suddenly crash to Earth. The harder and more abrupt the fall, the greater the social and geopolitical impact.