It has been another choppy, illiquid, volatile overnight session, which started with weakness out of China, whose Shanghai Composite dropped 20% into another bear market in early trading, then further slammed by news of a terrorist attack in Jakarta, only to rebound back over 3000 as the Chinese National Team decided to intrevene again, this time in the ChiNext small cap index, pushing it higher by 5.6%.
Since July the Israel Lobby and other opponents of the understanding reached by the White House and other parties to limit the Iranian nuclear program have been warning that any celebration would be premature, as the agreement is far from a done deal. President Obama survived initial attempts to create legislative hurdles hindering implementation of the pact, but there are clear signals that the battle is far from over.
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
If you’re not watching it purely for the entertainment value, sitting through a State of the Union speech ranks somewhere between a colonoscopy and a root canal.
Every year I opt for the former (entertainment value, not colonoscopy).
But because I live overseas, one of the added entertainment benefits is that I’m surrounded by foreigners who are seeing this highly ritualistic propaganda for the first time.
The absurdity starts almost immediately.
Update:
Couple of things: first of all, any discussion whether the US market is in a profit (or revenue) recession must stop: the US entered a profit recession in Q3 when it posted two consecutive quarters of earnings declines. This was one quarter after the top-line of the S&P dropped for two consecutive quarters, and as of this moment the US is poised to have 4 consecutive quarters with declining revenues as of the end of 2015.