Business

Investment managers are warning that markets probably have further to fall as China’s growth slows, oil prices plunge and central bankers lack tools to prop up economies. As Bloomberg reports, from the largest asset manager in the world to the most niche investment expert, many of the best known 'gurus' are warning there is more to come just as Morgan Stanley's James Gorman warned this morning "the size of the correction suggests it's not temporary," adding that "it might be too soon to step back into the market."

WalMart’s attempt to pacify the living wage crowd by giving the company’s lowest paid employees a tiny, across-the-board raise has been nothing short of a disaster.

The fiasco started early last year when the world’s largest retailer decided to spend some $1 billion to appease those who claim the company’s hourly workers don’t make enough to live with some semblance of dignity.

A week ago we warned of some insane movements and mysterious bid in OIL (the Barclays iPath oil tracking ETN) as it traded a stunning 36% rich to its underlying NAV. Well with oil resurgent today, as contracts roll, something just imploded in OIL...

As Barrons noted, the sharp performance divergence stems from the ETN’s massive price premium over the value of the index it tracks.

The U.S. may not be in an official technical recession yet (and it won't be until the NBER retroactively opines at some point in the next few years) but what about a half-recession? After all, nobody debates any more that the U.S. manufacturing sector is now contracting and it is only the services sector which is, at best, still growing (just ignore the last few Service ISM and PMI reports confirming that the manufacturing recession is rapidly spilling over).

When it comes to picking a poster child for everything that’s wrong with Wall Street and the financial industry in general, it’s sometimes difficult to decide just who gets the blue ribbon for “most nefarious.”

Indeed, since 2008 we’ve learned that virtually every systemically important financial institution on the face of the planet has at one time or another engaged in some manner of chicanery be it the manipulation of the world’s most important benchmark rates, the peddling of worthless mortgage bonds, or the rigging of FX markets.