Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
What Does Today’s “Rate Hike” Mean?
The Federal Reserve raised the interbank borrowing rate today by one quarter of one percent or 25 basis points. Readers are asking, “what does that mean?”
Via Bryce Coward of Gavekal Capital blog,
As of today’s closing the S&P 500 index is quite literally in spitting distance of its all-time high as the markets cheered the first rate hike in a decade. Yet, as we noted here and here, most stocks are not quite acting as ebullient as one might expect given former.
Here is more evidence of just that. The below chart shows the average stock’s distance from its own 1-year high, which at 19% implies the average stock is just outside the threshold of being in a bear market.
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The inescapable conclusion is that Fed policies have effectively crashed the velocity of money.
That the velocity of money has been crashing while the money supply has been exploding doesn't seem to bother the mainstream pundits. There is always a fancy-footwork explanation of why whatever is crashing no longer matters.
Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,
Micro-cap stocks have suffered a key breakdown relative to mega-cap stocks, suggesting a “risk-off” shift on the part of investors.
The “most hated man in America” just got arrested for securities fraud.
"Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martin Shkreli was arrested by the FBI on Thursday," Reuters, whose reporters apparently witnessed the arrest, says.