Business

Submitted by Eric Bush via Gavekal Capital blog,

The S&P 500 is currently down a little over 7% YTD and 11% of the May 2015 high. Unfortunately, all signs coming out of the bond market are signalling a further fall in equity prices.

The spread between AAA rated corporate bonds and the 10-year treasury bond has blown out to 213 basis points over the past couple weeks. This is the widest spread since September 2011, during another period of market turmoil.

You know the world is turning to shit when a retired baseball star can (relatively eloquently) explain the sheer folly of negative interest rates.

In a torrent of tweets, the Cuban-American "Bash Brother" started to rage after BoJ's NIRP decision...

Negative interest rates in Japan is blowing my mind

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) February 4, 2016

Then questioned their sanity...

It would be a lot easier to be bullish today if the entire financial system wasn’t based on fraud and BS.

Every explanation we see regarding the bull market in stocks is really just a cover for the fact that Central Banks spent $14 trillion propping up the bond bubble.

All claims that stocks went up because of the “recovery” or because of “expansion” or whatever really translate to “stocks went up because TRILLIONS in liquidity went into the system and a lot of it ended up in stocks.”

Here’s the reality of things.

The volatility in crude oil trading has reached the highest levels since Lehman's systemic crisis in 2008. Intraday swings of 5-10% are now de rigeur with OPEC and geopolitical headlines jockeying for narrative amid collapsing fundamentals.. but there is another, much bigger driver of this sudden chaos. As Reuters reports, the sudden liquidation of a $600 million triple-levered fund bet on falling prices wreaked havoc through the entire crude complex.

Intrday volatility in oil has been incredible to say the least...

The one catalyst many Glencore bears have been eagerly waiting for, is the downgrade of the troubled independent energy trader to junk status, a catalyst which as previously explained, will likely spring various, heretofore unknown margin calls and collateral "waterfalls" a la AIG.