Business

Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,

If you invest your money, you will have to deal with numerous risks. For instance, if you buy a bond, you run the risk of the borrower defaulting or being repaid with debased money. As a stock investor, you face the risk that the company's business model will not live up to expectations, or that it, at the extreme, will go bankrupt. In an unhampered financial market, prices are formed for these and other risk factors.

Following 'disappointing' (to some) producer price data, consumer prices missed expectations for the 5th month in a row with a mere 0.1% rise MoM (0.2% exp). Year-over-year growth in core consumer prices also slowed for the 7th straight month dropping to just 1.7% - the slowest since Jan 2015. Amid this dismal report, there is a silver lining for Americans, the cost of shelter rose just 0.1% - the smallest rise since March.

The breakdown by components

Source: @SmithEconomics

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The real demand for bitcoin will not be known until a global financial crisis guts confidence in central banks and politicized capital controls.

I've been writing about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin for many years. For example: Could Bitcoin Become a Global Reserve Currency? (November 7, 2013)

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

Recently noted deterioration in market internals appears to be getting worse, as evidenced by this rare divergence in the Nasdaq market.

While so far the rout from the North Korea crisis has impacted global volatility first and foremost, with the VIX surging 50% (a rather pointless metric considering where the VIX was just days ago) on a modest drop in the S&P which earlier this week was making new all time highs, as massive short vol positions have been rapidly unwound, one trader believes the next place of impact is the sector which has so far emerged, so to say, largely unscathed from rising risk concerns: emerging markets, the clear outperformer so far in 2017.