Business

An Australian Bitcoin company called the Bitcoin Group is about to be listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The cryptocurrency company could be your next investment opportunity. Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that comes with a built in ledger and safety, based on the encryption techniques used in its creation. It is in contrast to a central bank based fiat currency, that is under the control of politicians and bankers. Bitcoins are created by masses of computing power worldwide and are for the privileged few who hold them.

The name of $2.8 billion Horseman Capital is familiar to regular readers for two main reasons: not only has the fund, which some have called the "most bearish in the world", generated tremendous returns ever since inception except for a 25% drop in 2009 (after returning 31% during the cataclysmic 2008), but more notably, it has been net short - and quite bearish on - stocks ever since 2012. In that period it has consistently generated low double-digit returns, a feat virtually none of its competitors have managed to replicate.

"You see a big destruction in the income of the oil and commodity producers," exclaims on analyst but, as Bloomberg notes, while oil prices flashing across traders' terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is considerably deeper. Adjusted for inflation, WTI is its lowest since 2002 and worse still Saudi Light Crude is trading at below $17 (in 1998 dollar terms) - the lowest since the 1980s...

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Who's going to buy the tens of millions of empty flats held as investments?

I've been writing a lot about China recently because it's becoming increasingly clear that China's economy is slowing and the authority's "fixes" are not turning it around. That means the engine that pulled the global economy out of the 2009 recession has stalled.

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

Despite recent stock market carnage, the reaction by the VIX has been a relative yawner.