Business

Soaring junk bond redemptions; rising investment grade (and high yield) yields pressuring corporate buybacks; record corporate leverage and sliding cash flows; Chinese devaluation back with a vengeance; capital outflows from EM accelerating as dollar strength returns; corporate profits and revenues in recession; CEOs most pessimistic since 2012, oh and the Fed's first rate hike in 9 years expected to soak up as much as $800 billion in excess liquidity. To Wall Street's strategists none of this matters.

Submitted by Michael Pento via Contra Corner blog,

Wall Street’s proclivity to create serial equity bubbles off the back of cheap credit has once again set up the middle class for disaster. The warning signs of this next correction have now clearly manifested, but are being skillfully obfuscated and trivialized by financial institutions. Nevertheless, here are ten salient warning signs that astute investors should heed as we roll into 2016.

Yesterday, when futures were at the lows somewhere below 2000 and just above the Fib 50 retracement, we said that "bulls may have one final trump card up their sleeve: Gartman is now actively adding to shorts."

Just hours before the FOMC sits down in the Marriner Eccles to discuss just how it will announce the first rate hike in 9 years, 7 years to the day after it cut rates to zero, it got the best gift from the BLS it could have asked for: core inflation rose precisely the amount the Fed wanted from a year ago, ot 2.0% on the dot, the highest annual core CPI increase in the past year. Why the jump? "About two-thirds of this increase is accounted for by the shelter index, which rose 3.2 percent over the span."

Oil has given up all the overnight gains as we head towards the open and algos wake up to the reality that Russia's deputy FinMin believes...

Submitted by Andy Tully via OilPrice.com,

“Lower for longer” is becoming the catch phrase of the global oil industry, as an increasing number of energy executives and government officials alike see no opportunity for prices to rebound to their levels of mid-2014.