Business

Before yesterday's brief curfuffle, markets remained entirely care-free; climbing walls of worry, shrugging off every and any potential pitfall (from the collapse of American retail to global armaggedon) as new high after new high, on an ever-decreasing base of mega-cap stocks had become ubiquitous. Like many rational investors looking asconce at this 'market', former fund manager Richard Breslow wants to know "why are equities bid?" ... and he has an answer...

Via Bloomberg,

The market value of bonds yielding less than zero percent has jumped by a quarter over the past month to $8.68 trillion, the highest since October... which is odd given the mainstream narrative that everything is awesome and global growth is heading for escape velocity?

"probably nothing"

As Bloomberg notes, slower-than-forecast inflation data and haven demand on geopolitical risk have revived bond bulls around the world.

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

Yesterday, a few different readers emailed to ask my opinion about the European Junk Bond versus US Treasury yield chart that Tiho Brkan from The Atlas Investor Blog recently published.

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Visa recently unveiled its own offensive in the war on cash. Visa is offering certain merchants a $10,000 reward if they refuse to accept cash in the future.

Not surprisingly, Visa’s competitor is also part of the war on cash. Mastercard is increasing its efforts to encourage merchants to refuse cash. Here’s Bloomberg, quoting the CEO of Mastercard:

Buried deep in today's FOMC Minutes was a warning to the equity markets that few noticed...

This overall assessment incorporated the staff's judgment that, since the April assessment, vulnerabilities associated with asset valuation pressures had edged up from notable to elevated, as asset prices remained high or climbed further, risk spreads narrowed, and expected and actual volatility remained muted in a range of financial markets...