Have you heard the one about the priest, the rabbi and China's deleveraging? We forget how it goes, but it's pretty damn funny, especially the last part after a Reuters report that following China's repeated vows by Beijing it would reduce the country's unprecedented sovereign, municipal, corporate and household leverage, China's debt is not only rising, but growing at the fastest pace in four years.
The race between stocks and cryptos who can hit new all time highs and keep climbing without even bothering to look back, continued on Saturday, when the two biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, bitcoin and ether, hit new all time highs, with Bitcoin breaking above the $8,300 resistance level around 0700 UTC, and hitting a high of $8,650 in early trading, up over 5% on the day, and rising at a pace that has put the $10,000 price target by both Mike Novogratz (and Jose Canseco) firmly in its sights.
In the days ahead of China's Communist Party Congress last month, which culminated with the crowning of Xi Jinping as the modern equivalent of a quasi-emperor, China’s securities watchdog made it clear to local companies that bad news would not be tolerated, and "advised" loss-making companies to avoid publishing quarterly results as authorities were desperate to maintain stock-market stability. As a result, as we reported at the time, at least 17 Shenzhen-listed companies announced delays to their earnings reports from Oct. 20 to Oct.
By the SRSrocco Report,
Early this month, we discussed whether the world’s longest running bull market – 55 years – in Australian house prices had come to an end. This was UBS’s view following the October 2017 monthly report on Australian house prices from CoreLogic suggested that measures to tighten credit standards and dissuade overseas buyers (especially Chinese in Sydney and Melbourne) have finally begun to bite. As CoreLogic’s summary table shows, Sydney prices fell in October, for the second month running, and poised to lead national prices lower.