Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
Do you remember the opening scene of the movie Trainspotting? Renton tries to give up heroin. He decides to kick his junk habit cold turkey, and boards himself in his room. Even before he starts to feel the symptoms of withdrawal, Renton has ripped off the boards and is desperately searching the streets of Edinburgh for another hit.
The day after Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, stocks are set for new all time highs with S&P futures up 0.2%, boosted by green markets across Europe and Asia, where the Nikkei rose above 20,000 for the first time since 2015. World stocks are set for new record highs, having already gained 11% so far this year, ahead of today's US nonfarm payrolls which are expected to increase by 185,000 jobs after surging 211,000 in April.
The latest blow to the mainstream media’s misleading narrative about the relationship between gender and compensation has been delivered by the Wall Street Journal’s annual report on CEO pay, which revealed that - country to popular perception - female CEOs of S&P 500 companies actually earn more than their male peers.
A recurring theme on this website has been to periodically highlight the tremendous build up in US corporate debt, most recently in April when we showed that "Corporate Debt To EBITDA Hits All Time High." The relentless debt build up is something which even the IMF recently noted, when in April it released a special report on financial stability, according to which 20% of US corporations were at risk of default should rates rise.
Over the past three years, gold has found itself in an odd place: while it still remains the ultimate "safety" trade and store of value should everything go to hell following social and monetary collapse, when it comes to "coolness" it has been displaced by various cryptocurrencies, all of which have vastly outperformed the yellow metal in recent months. Meanwhile, central banks continue to pressure the price of gold to avoid a repeat of 2011 when gold nearly broke out above $2,000, putting the fate world's "reserve currency" increasingly under question.