presidential elections

Last week, Bashar al-Assad celebrated one of the most significant (at least from a symbolic perspective) military victories in the history of his government’s campaign against opposition groups battling for control of Syria.

With the help of Russia and Hezbollah, Assad’s army liberated the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State. Palmyra is a UNESCO world heritage site and over the course of the last nine or so months, ISIS has obliterated a number of priceless artifacts on the grounds that they are monuments to paganism.

Just getting around to Nick Confessore’s piece in yesterday’s NYT, explaining how the GOP elites lost touch with their base. Some excerpts:

The Republican Party appears to be headed for its third consecutive loss in a presidential election and the sixth time in the last seven presidential elections that it will lose the popular vote. If Trump ends up as the nominee (still the most likely outcome at this point), the GOP seems doomed to lose by a wide margin thanks to defections, depressed turnout, and the nominee’s unprecedented unfavorability rating.

The New York Times reported over the weekend on the desperate lengths to which some anti-Trump Republicans are prepared to go. If they are unable to stop Trump’s nomination, some Republicans are thinking about launching an independent presidential bid for the general election:

JPM's head quant, Marko Kolanovic, who turned somehwat gloomy in the past few months, has seen some hits and misses in his recent forecasts. On one hand he did accurately predict the surge in gold one month ago, as well as the rebound in oil and Emerging Markets; however on the other he suggested that being long VIX and cash would be a good place to wait out the upcoming market volatility.