Business

2015 was supposed to be another double-digit growth year for the market, instead as showed yesterday, it was the "year when nothing worked."

In the words of BMO's Lowell Yura, "this year is a wake-up call to think about lower returns for the next several years," warning that "investor expectations for both equities and bonds have been [mistakenly] elevated by recent history." Jim Bianco added that 2015 could be the worst for asset allocation funds since World War I: "for the first time since 2001, none of the major asset-classes returned more than 10%."

While it is two months delayed (and home sales have tumbled since) and before The Fed raised rates, Case-Shiller reports that home prices rose 0.84% MoM in October, beating expectations and the biggest monthly rise since March. While the YoY gains barely missed expectations at +5.54%, Miami, Tampa, and San Francisco all saw the biggest gains as Chicago, Cleveland, and San Diego saw the biggest drops in home prices.

It appears we are playing out the same seasonally-adjusted pattern as 2014...

Charts: Bloomberg

From stocks (Dow up 460 points from pre-Christmas lows), to FX (total craziness in EUR and GBP); and from Bonds (2Y underperforming this morning!) to Commodities (Copper soaring almost 3%, Crude spiking), it appears markets have gone nuts this morning...

Stocks - buy 'em, you'll love 'em...

VIX futures getting crushed...

FX markets - dump Cable, dump EUR

Treasuries - Short-dated bonds getting monkey-hammered...

And commodities are spiking... (despite USD strength)

Charts: Bloomberg

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

The S&P 500 closed at 2052 on November 18,2014. That was 405 days ago, and despite the rips and dips in the interim the broad market average has gone nowhere.

While the straws have been building on the camel's back of Apple's "no brainer" status over the past few months, today's news from DigiTimes appears to be the most damning yet on the 'peak Apple' phenomenon. Apple share are fading off early market highs as demand for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus appear to have slowed down recently, shipments of iPhone devices from production lines in the fourth quarter of 2015 are likely to be 5-10% lower than originally expected, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers.

As DigiTimes reports,