Business

2015's stock market range (from high to low) is among the narrowest since World War II. This 'compression' has led the horde of asset-gatherers and commission-takers to suggest that stocks are a "coiled spring" ready to burst higher from this newly-formed permanent plateau. However, as S&P Capital IQ's Sam Stoval notes, that is the exact opposite of what to expect based on history. In fact a narrow range year is typically followed by a low return year, not a high return year.

One month ago, Fidelity started a firestorm in the venture capital community when hot on the heels of recent downward revaluations of such pre-IPO unicorns as Dropbox, and Square, the world's second largest mutual fund (which had previously been accused of venturing where it shouldn't by buying stakes in private-stage companies and subsequently having to value them on its own) took an axe to some of its private company investments, in this case slashing the value of Snapchat, the fifth highest valued "unicorn", by 25%.

Submitted by Michael McDonald via OilPrice.com,

Puerto Rico governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla is set to address the island's debt problem at a press conference on Wednesday.

First thing this morning, when previewing the key event of the day, namely today's auction of $29 billion in 7 Year Treasurys, we said that "with the issue not anywhere close to trading "special" in repo, the risk for a big tail - like in yesterday's 5Y auction - is high."

Specifically, we were looking at the 0.45% repo rate on the 7 Year yesterday and today, which was the highest across the entire curve, suggesting absolutely no short covering would take place into today's auction.