Business

While the financial industry remains divided over what precisely is the cause of the malaise that affects modern markets, characterized by plunging volumes and trading activity, record low volatility and dispersion, a relentless ascent disconnected from fundamentals, and generally a sense of foreboding doom, manifested by an all time high OMT skew - or record high price for crash insurance - as discussed previously...

In what we believe to be a first for the global fast-food industry, Burger King Russia has reportedly created a virtual currency called the “Whoppercoin.”

The company has reportedly issued one billion of the tokens using the Waves blockchain platform. According to Fortune, the coin was launched alongside a new loyalty program: For every Whopper purchased, customers will receive one Whoppercoin. However, it’s unclear if the company will accept the digital tokens as payment.

Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

You have to hand it to the Donald. He speaks his mind. This week he dropped an unwelcome stink bomb on Capitol Hill during his Phoenix rant Tuesday night. If Mexico won’t pay for my wall, he seemed to say, than Congress will—-even if I have to shutdown the Imperial City to extract the first $1.6 billion of seed money:

“We’re going to get our wall,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Phoenix. “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.”

In this week's MacroVoices podcast, Erik Townsend and Joe McMonigle, former chief of staff at the US Department of Energy, discuss the state of the global energy market, and OPEC’s rapidly diminishing ability to control oil prices. McMonigle believes investors will be hearing more jawboning from the Saudis, OPEC's de-facto leader, over the next two weeks as they try to marshal support for extending the cartel's production-cut agreement past a March 2018 deadline.

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

My friend James Montier, now at GMO, and his associate Matt Kadnar have written a compelling piece on why passive investors should avoid the S&P 500.

Their essay argues that the forward growth potential of the S&P 500 is significantly lower than that of other opportunities, especially emerging markets.

Let’s look at a few of their charts.