Extending its overnight safe-haven buying within Asia, gold has spiked above recent highs - to its highest since early June - following President Trump's latest tweet on America's nuclear arsenal...
At the same time every effort is being made - by crushing VIX - to save stocks from a more perilous drop.
One of the recurring themes of broad market complacency has been traders' unwillingness to price in, or even react, to surging geopolitical risk.
US futures are set for a sharply lower open (at least in recent market terms) following a steep decline in European stocks and a selloff in Asian shares, following yesterday's sharp escalation in the war of words between the U.S. and North Korea. In a broad risk-off move U.S. Treasuries rose, the VIX surged above 12 overnight, while German bund futures climbed to the highest level in six weeks.
Authored by Chris Whalen via The Institutional Risk Analyst,
"It is not down in any map; true places never are."
"Moby Dick"
Herman Melville
News reports that prosecutors have dropped their case against Bruno Iksil, the former JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) trader many know as the “London Whale,” comes as no surprise to readers of The IRA. Iksil, who resurfaced earlier this year, has been living in relative seclusion in France for the past few years.
When one strips away the lies about central banks' "inflation and employment" mandates and focuses on what they really do - which is to keep asset prices artificially supported and volatility suppressed - the motive behind virtually every central bank act becomes readily apparent: preserve (and increase, if possible) confidence in the market and economy, while saying anything and everything that helps achieve this, or in other words, lie but don't get caught.