Business

Last month, Bank of America's survey of active investors revealed something striking: for the first time in history, the response to what the professional community perceived as the most crowded trade on Wall Street, was "Long Bitcoin" (according to 26% of respondents), followed by "Long Nasdaq", while "Short US Dollars" was in third spot. One month later, things are back to normal and the 179 participants with $516bn in AUM, have eased back on their cryptocoin euphoria, and for the 5th time this year, "Long Nasdaq" is back in top spot according to 29% of respondents.

Following August's storm-driven collapse in Industrial Production (-0.9%, worst since May'09), September was due for a bounce back and it did but only meeting expectations with a 0.3% rise on a surge in Utilities. However, aggregate industrial production for US remains 2% below its 2014 peak...

Manufacturing Surveys have all been soaring heading into today's IP print...

But, while August's tumble was revised slightly better to a 0.7% drop, September's print was only 'as expected'...

Authord by Chris Whalen via The Institutional Risk Analyst,

Almost as soon as it started, the excitement surrounding earnings for financials in Q3 2017 dissipated like air leaving a balloon.

Source: HedgeEye

Results for the largest banks – including JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) – all universally disappointed, even based upon the admittedly modest expectations of the Sell Side analyst cohort.

Global markets traded near all-time highs on Tuesday, with S&P futures, Asian shares and European stocks all flat this morning, while oil continued to gain on Kurdish geopolitical concerns while most industrial metals fell.  The euro extended its recent slide and stocks drifted as Spain’s escalating hard-line response to the Catalonian secession threat fueled concern the crisis may intensify.

After seemingly sending out trial balloons (via Bloomberg and Reuters simultaneously) on tapering last Thursday, which had almost zero impact (see “ECB Reportedly Considering Slashing QE in Half in January, EURUSD Shrugs), Draghi’s minions have been busy again.