Business

Much of this morning's interview between CNBC's Steve Liesman and Dallas Fed's Robert Kaplan was pre-scripted and uneventful, representing the latest canned discussion of the Fed's rate hike and normalization plans. Specifically, the former Goldman partner and current Dallas Fed preident once again laid out a noted course for a fairly aggressive path of rate hikes coupled with reductions in the central bank's balance sheet for the remainder of the year.

Still, there were two notable highlights.

Since 2007, Emerging markets (EEM) have under performed the broad market by nearly 80%. Below compares the performance of the S&P 500 to Emerging markets ETF EEM, since the highs back in 2007.

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

Usually when CFTC data shows a big speculative position, it is easy to spot the corresponding mood amongst traders. For example, take the current situation with the Canadian dollar. There are record net speculative shorts, and that bias is obvious amongst hedge funds and other professional traders.

However, over the past few years, I have been puzzled by the building of a massive record net long speculative position in the WTI crude oil market.

In late April, the Venezuela opposition slammed attempts by the Maduro regime to liquidate some/all of the nation's gold in order to buy his crumbling regime some additional time with much needed liquidity.

Since 2009, royalty and streaming companies have gained 230% while gold and the TSX Venture have returned 50% and 1%, respectively.

Royalty and streaming companies are able to sign advantageous deals during poor market conditions, at times when equity investments become less accessible. Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the troughs of a bear market, issuers seeking development and production capital often times must sell away future production at a discount.