Business

Three weeks ago when news of the dramatic gating and liquidation of Third Avenue's high yield debt focused fund first hit, we said that "now that the dreaded gates are back, investors in all other junk bond-focused hedge funds, fearing they too will be gated, will rush to pull what funds they can and submit redemption requests, in the process potentially unleashing a liquidity - and liquidation - scramble within the hedge fund community, which will first impact bonds and then, if the liquidity demands continue, equities as well."

When last we checked in on Marc Faber, the Gloom, Boom, and Doom seer was predicting that the market had reached a “tipping point”, as thanks to QE and incessant central bank interventions, there are no safe assets left.  

“It's ludicrous to believe that you will create prosperity in a system by printing money,” he said. “That is economic sophism at its best.” Or at its worst.

Shortly thereafter, Faber told Bloomberg that China's economy has most assuredly "landed hard."

Even before Glencore made a dramatic appearance on the world's distressed commodity trader stage in late August, Zero Hedge readers were familiar with its Asian cousin, Noble Group, also known as Asia's largest commodity trader, a name we covered in our August 18 report "Noble Group’s Kurtosis Awakening Moment For The Commodity Markets."

It appears $38 is the new strange attractor for WTI Crude oil as it coincides with the last two weeks' "opposites" inventory data releases. Brent and WTI continue to hug each other for the 3rd day in a row. We await tonight's API inventory data (expected to see a 2.5mm draw) for the next move in crude (and therefore US equities).

Via Seabreeze Partners' Doug Kass,

"I begin every day by asking three important questions. One among them is this: 'In a paperless and "cloudy" world, are we as investors and citizens as safe as the markets assume?