Authored by Chris Whalen via The Institutional Risk Analyst,
“The great wheel of circulation is altogether different from the goods which are circulated by means of it. The revenue of the society consists altogether in those goods, and not in the wheel which circulates them”
Adam Smith, 1811
With VIX ending Friday at its lowest weekly close ever, lowest monthly close ever, and lowest quarterly close ever - after the quietest September stock market in history - SocGen warned last Friday that the current situation is a "dangerous volatility regime" citing the strong mean-reverting tendency of uncertainty as a big reason for investors to brace themselves for trouble ahead.
Submitted by Stock Board Asset
Previously unreported Pentagon data shows how much the average U.S. taxpayer has paid for combat operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. According to the two page report summary, the cumulative estimated cost of the 16 year war in the Middle East has cost each taxpayer $7,500.
Having raged against President Trump's '1500-word-airball' of a tax reform plan, the Reagan administration's director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman told CNBC this week that Wall Street is "delusional" for believing it will even be passed.
"This is a fiscal disaster that when they [Wall Street] begin to look at it, they'll see it's not even remotely paid for. This bill will go down for the count," said Stockman.
Authored by Mark Melin via ValueWalk.com,
The notion that investors are “reaching for yield” when investing in risky sovereign bonds has become too much of a cliché for Macquarie’s Victor Shvets. The problem is that concept provides easy cover, a limp excuse for bond investors making obviously flawed decisions, as was the case during the Petrobras 100-year bond offering. Those same set of circumstances appear to again be taking hold across the emerging market landscape, and institutional investors are falling into the same trap.