In just a few short months, companies – many of dubious legitimacy – have raised more than a billion dollars through ICOs. Some of the better-hyped offerings in the field of 900 new coins that have been created this year managed to raise tens of millions of dollars in minutes. Investors, who were eager to throw money at the new coins, blindly hoping they would land on the next bitcoin or Ethereum.
Last summer we declared that "China's favorite offshore money laundering hub is officially no longer accepting its money" after the city of Vancouver slapped a 15% tax on foreign real estate buyers. The tax was intended to curb a massive real estate bubble which had resulted from an influx of Chinese money over the preceding years. The move seemingly worked as it resulted in a staggering and immediate 96% drop in foreign buyers (see: Foreign Buying Plummets In Vancouver: Sales To Foreigners Crash 96%).
To much fanfare, President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, best known for making the iPhone, will build a new plant producing LCD panels in Wisconsin that will bring thousands of jobs to the state. On the surface it's a great deal: in what's being called the largest economic development project in state history, Foxconn plans to build a $10 billion plant that will eventually employ as many as 13,000 people, according to the White House and Gov. Scott Walker.
On Monday we reported that Anadarko, which previously had been lamenting the egregious amount of liquidity in the energy sector, became the first company to slash its full year capex budget by $300 million from a previous range of $4.5-$4.7 billion. As noted in our discussion, this was a material event not only for APC but the entire sector as "the Anadarko news is clearly negative for its shale peers, most of whom are set to announce similar capex declines."
Back in March 2015, Howard Marks was among the first to sound the alarm on the encroaching danger posed by both ETFs in particular, and passive investing in general, when he memorably asked (rhetorically, for now), "what would happen, for example, if a large number of holders decided to sell a high yield bond ETF all at once?" and answered his own question: