Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,
Well, that clears that up. In case you missed it, back on June 27 Mario Draghi triggered the latest declared BOND ROUT!!! with what was characterized as a very upbeat economic assessment for Europe. And if things are moving forward there, they just have to be everywhere else.
In the latest Sunday Start report from Morgan Stanley's Andrew Sheets, the bank's chief cross-asset strategist looks at the current state of the market - "the S&P 500, Russell 2000 and NASDAQ have hit all-time highs. Volatility has plunged back down near all-time lows. Credit is tighter and yields have been stable" - and asks the same question posed by virtually everyone else in recent weeks : "what rattles this market. What breaks the egg?"
Some Sunday thoughts from the CIO of One River Asset Management, whose latest Weekend Notes starts off in traditional Eric Peters style, namely a mockery of the Fed...
“Wait, that’s not even part of your model?” asked the private sector, imagining itself in the presence of the Fed.
“You seriously don’t even consider the crushing weight of the pension avalanche that is bearing down on us?” And the governors shrugged.
Authored by Peter Tchir via Brean Capital,
VIX ETFs and ETNs
We take a deeper dive into the strange world of VIX ETFs and ETNs. We take a quick look at the incredible short interest in both the long VIX products and the short VIX products. This massive short interest in both long and short products seems unique to the VIX world (it reflects a re-balancing trading strategy that works in the VIX space because of the high volatility of the VIX products) (VIX ETFs seem to run 5 to 10 times the realized volatility of the S&P 500).
Dr. Pippa Malmgren, a US policy analyst and former member of the Working Group on Financial Markets, a government entity better known by its nickname, the “Plunge Protection Team,” appeared on Erik Townsend’s MacroVoices podcast to discuss bitcoin and the European refugee crisis, while also offering some clues about how the PPT, famous for its secrecy, operates.
On The Financial Implications of Europe's Refugee Crisis