Business

A few weeks ago, we wrote a note about how European auto lenders are becoming just about as ridiculously undisciplined as their counterparts in the United States.  Apparently an ever-growing reliance of European millennials on lease financing has auto ABS investors worried about a potential crash in used car prices at some point in the not so distant future...that sound familiar to anyone?  (See: It's Not Just Americans, Europe's New Obsession With Auto Leases Is "Catastrophic For Used Car Prices")

A Singapore startup called TenX has designed a Visa card capable of debiting users’ cryptocurrency wallets, allowing them to pay for goods at brick-and-motor merchants with bitcoin, Ethereum and a handful of other digital currencies, according to Bloomberg.

The question now is: Will anybody use it?

TenX’s business model is straightforward: It allows its users to pay for goods in a given fiat currency, then “instantly converts” cryptocurrency from their wallet into the amount needed to cover the transaction.

Janus Portfolio Manager and purported “bond king” Bill Gross appeared on “Bloomberg Markets” to discuss his latest investor letter, in which he criticized loose-money policies of the world’s central banks, comparing them to gluttons who’ve feasted on bonds.

The unprecedented stimulus measures adopted by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and others have created distortions in markets, rendering widely followed historical models like the Philips Curve and Taylor rule useless, Gross said.

US stock indexes remain at record highs, and volatility near its lows, despite signs that their recordsetting run is losing steam as it becomes increasingly dependent on a narrow band of stocks. Indeed, signs that the rally is running on fumes have convinced portfolio managers and Wall Street strategists that the second-longest bull market of all time will be over in less than 18 months, while a similarly longstanding rally in bonds is also nearly ready to roll over, according to a Bloomberg survey of fund managers and strategists.

As we're all well aware by now, once Trump was elected on November 8th the Fed suddenly decided it was no longer necessary to prop up asset prices in the United States with artificially low interest rates.  As such, they've embarked on their first rate-hiking spree since the last one ended just over a decade ago.