Business

Besides the hilariously fabricated economic data and the whole central planning bit - both of which are now everywhere these days - the one most notable feature about China's economy and capital markets are the constantly rolling, bursting and resurrecting asset bubbles: from housing, to stocks, to bonds, to commodities, to cryptocurrencies, to pretty much anything that isn't nailed down and can be traded, and back to housing again, the lifecycle of a Chinese assets is best expressed in terms of its "tulipness": how long before the swarming horde of Chinese bubble-chasers, armed wi

Via FFWiley.com,

It seems every bank, including central banks, publishes a financial conditions index these days. And because financial conditions typically lead the economy, it makes sense to track them. In fact, they might contain even more information than they get credit for. They might offer the elusive “crystal ball” that foretells our economic fortunes.

While virtually nobody expects anything market shattering, or even moving, to be released during either Janet Yellen's or Mario Draghi's speeches tomorrow (recall from our preview what UBS said: "Don't expect news at Jackson Hole. Chair Yellen has told us what she wants to about normalization, for now.

In the first two weeks of August, shares of publicly-traded bitcoin firm First Bitcoin Capital, exploded almost 800% higher on dramatic volume as cryptocurrency headlines began to hit the mainstream.

This surge in interest appears to have got the attention of The SEC, who just halted trading of the Canadian firm.

Yesterday afternoon ar around 1450ET, someone placed a huge 10,750 contract bet on the eurodollar strip - hoping that Janet Yellen will flip-flop back to her hawkish side and reignite expectations for a faster pace of interest-rate increases when she speaks tomorrow in Jackson Hole.

The notional size of this trade is almost $11 billion. The last time such a huge bet was placed was into the US election in November.