With Equifax shares having plunged by a third since the company announced a historic corporate cyber-breach, which released the personal records of over 143 million Americans to still unknown hackers, losing some $5 billion in market cap, today the company's CEO was the latest rat to leave the sinking ship, a move which failed to prompt a jump in the stock and was widely panned by the analyst community as indicative of further troubles ahead.
Last week, ahead of the FOMC, we reported that in the latest striking development involving volatility derivative products, the total outstanding Vega across the entire levered and inverse VIX ETP space had reached $375 million, an all time high.
This, as Bank of America showed, was the result of the highest positioning in levered long VIX ETPs since July 2016 offset by a record high exposure across short ETPs.
In a testament to the "buy the dip" mentality, or rather only remaining investing strategy in quasi-nationalized capital markets, BofA reports that the S&P 500 has closed at a new record high 37 times so far during 2017, the most in the Q1 to Q3 period since 1997, when the S&P closed at a new record 40 times before the start of Q4 (the most occurred in 1995 when there were 61 record closes).
By all appearances it seems the market has now reduced the half-life of global nuclear armageddon threats to around 20 hours as Gold's gains have been erased overnight and USDJPY retraced its losses...
"Gold prices to reach $1,400 before the end of the year" - GoldCore
by MarketWatch
Gold finished sharply higher on Monday, recouping roughly half of last week’s loss, as declines in the U.S. stock market and growing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea lifted prices for the yellow metal to the highest settlement in more than a week.