Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist,
I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time. As an ex-ETF trader, I have watched with bemusement as investors have both embraced and shuddered at the wide adoption of ETFs. But most pundits are missing the larger picture. ETFs are just a symptom of the bigger phenomenon. The true battle lies in the passive versus active debate.
For today's moment of volatility zen, we go to BofA's Nikolay Angeloff who drew the short straw to be the (un)lucky pundit whose comments on record complacency, low volatility, etc publicized.
Angeloff starts with pointing out what we noted over the weekend , namely that we have now recorded 334 days without a 5% or more pullback (and 335 after today's close), the fourth longest period on record since 1928.
In the U.S., equity markets have officially reached the phase in the bubble where fundamentals are almost entirely irrelevant and stocks trade up irrespective of whether company earnings are positive or negative...in technical terms you could say we're in the later stages of the BTFD phase of the economic cycle.
Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,
I just got back from a trip to Washington, or what I call “New Rome” because Washington’s relationship to the rest of America is the same as Rome’s relations with the agrarian and plebeian citizens of its vast domains in late antiquity.
Back on July 13, when the BOC hiked rates by 25bps to 0.75% - its first rate hike in 7 years - followed by another unexpected rate hike in September, we documented some troubling trends among Canadian households, including the record household debt-to-income ratio...
... the sliding average hourly wages...
... as well as the unprecedented Canadian housing bubble which puts US home prices to shame...