Business

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Pop quiz: What country has the world’s best performing stock market?

It’s not the United States. Or Canada. Or China.

The answer is Venezuela, whose primary stock market index over the last year is up nearly SEVEN FOLD, from 11,700 last summer to a record 72,700 today.

It’s amazing that a country where people are literally starving because there’s very little food available is seeing record stock market performance.

As SocGen's Kit Juckes noted earlier in the week, "The ECB, not The Fed, is in the driving seat," and nowhere is that more optically obvious than in the massive divergence between US-EU bond risk premia and US-EU inflation surprises.

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

“It’s fear.”

During the first two weeks in May, according to preliminary data from Toronto Real Estate Board, home listings surged 47% from the same period last year even as sales plunged 16%. The average selling price dropped 3.3% from April – and this, after a 33% year-over-year spike in home prices in March and a 25% surge in April. Something is happening to Toronto’s blistering house price bubble.

While Bitcoin is still up 13% on the week (its 8th weekly ruse of the last 9), the dollar price of the virtual currency is collapsing again in US trading (after a big rebound during the Asian session)...

Just as with yesterday, there is no immediate news catalyst for the flush.

Meanwhile, the huge arb with South Korea bitcoin pricing remains, and as of this moment is still nearly $1000.

Today's drop is the biggest since January (for now)...

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,