Business

This morning, BofA has released a humongous, nearly 200-page "primer" on the global sharing economy which in the eyes of Wall Street and Silicon Valley is the biggest disruptor behind virtually all 21st century business models. Since it is impossible to summarize the report, which will be largely ignored by most of BofA's clients who will instead focus on the hundreds of charts scattered throughout, we will simply summarize the basics as laid out by BofA, and then present some of the more interesting charts, with the remainder to be published in subsequent thematic posts.

Bullish traders who insist that US economic fundamentals remain rock-solid despite tepid growth, inflation and other signs the postelection “Trump bump” in consumer confidence is already beginning to fade should take a look at the International Monetary Fund’s latest batch of quarterly forecasts for global growth.

The fund left its all-world forecasts for 2017 and 2018 unchanged from its previous quarterly update, which was released in April: It anticipates 3.5% and 3.6% growth, respectively.

Via King World News,

Today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, warned King World News that we are now in the frightening endgame.

Fear And Propaganda

Egon von Greyerz: 

Earlier today, the ECB updated the list of corporate bonds it bought in the latest week. While no individual bond purchase amounts were given, the ECB has bought into 980 issuances with a total of €683bn in amount outstanding (from 245 issuing entities). For the week ending 21st Jul, bond purchases stood at €0.7bn across sectors, bringing total Corporate Sector Purchase Program holdings to €101.1 Billion, an increase of €720MM in the past week. The complete list of ISINs can be found here courtesy of UBS.

It seems Morgan Stanely was right when they said "the debt ceiling worries us most," as today's 3-month T-Bill auction surprised the market with its highest yield since the fall of 2008, as investors continue to price concerns that the U.S. government will exhaust its borrowing authority around mid-October.

As SMRA details: