Business

Back in April, we showed that according to a Goldman Sachs report, the current run of chronic active manager underperformance began shortly after the launch of QE in 2009.

As discussed earlier today by Matt King in his report on "one-way" markets resulting from QE and ETFs, this period has been marked by "stubbornly low volatility and dispersion", something Goldman first observed four months ago:

Which brings us to what we concluded back in April in "Dear Hedge Funds: This Is Who Is Responsible For Your Deplorable Returns", namely that:

Authored by Lakshman Achuthan and Anirvan Banerj via Bloomberg.com,

Two things bear most of the blame: external shocks and economic volatility.

The U.S. managed to avoid recession after the financial crisis, but Japan has succumbed to three contractions since 2009. Economic volatility is a key reason for this divergence, and that tells us a great deal about the risk of future U.S. recessions.

Echoing his predecessor Greenspan's shift to the 'dark side' (fully supportive of a gold standard after leaving office), former Fed Chair Bernanke now appears to be full-heartedly supportive of cryptocurrencies having warned in 2015 of "serious problems" with bitcoin due to its "instability" and "anonymity."

As CoinTelegraph reports, in an interesting turn of events, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, will be the keynote speaker at a Blockchain and banking conference in October hosted by Ripple.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The auto boom, one of the key components propping up consumer spending, has come to an end.

Dealers are wildly overweight SUVs just as the market turned.

As auto-industry growth stalls and family sedans go the way of the flip phone, one silver lining had been the trusty “crossover” SUV. Sales in the category boomed amid lower gasoline prices and higher demand for spacious wagons with all-wheel drive.

 

The 2017 edition of the  Jackson Hole symposium is officially over, and while central bankers disappointed markets by not providing any insight into their views on monetary policy (assuming they have any) they instead focused on market stability, and patted themselves on the back for creating a fake "risk-free environment" (which they justify by the record low VIX, even if ignoring the record high cost of crash insurance).