United States

Less than two months ago, on November 16, Goldman released its list of top trades for 2016, #1 of which was the infamous long USDJPY, short EURUSD equial-weighted basket which has led to massive losses for anyone who has since put it on. At the current rate of carry trade unwinds, we expect that this trade will be closed out shortly, and may have been overnight when the USDJPY plunged to the lowest since the ETFlash crash.

But while we wait, here is a reminder what the #6 top trade for 2016 was:

Once again, China was faced with the unpleasant task of deciding which asset class to intervene in: its plunging stock market, or its currency. It chose the latter, and as a result after a turbulent start the Shanghai Composite sank by 5.3% to close just above 3000 and down 15% in just the past 11 days, suggesting that the PBOC is increasingly seeing the CNY1.8 trillion (at least) spent to stabilize stocks as a sunk cost.

A Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating the Kremlin states that one of the United States top Navy commanders, Admiral Rick Williams, was fired after he sent out an email detailing plans by President Obama to purchase a multi-million dollar villa in Dubai.  Admiral Williams emailed a query on 8 January to the US Naval Institute’s “Readiness Kill Chain” “recipients/responders” list asking why Navy security and intelligence personal had been dispatched from Camp David to Dubai on what he termed an “Obama house hunting mission”.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The Proof Is In: The US Government Is The Most Complete Criminal Organization In Human History

In late 2014 and early 2015, we tried to warn anyone who cared to listen time and time and time again that crashing crude prices are unambiguously bad for the economy and the market, contrary to what every Keynesian hack, tenured economist, Larry Kudlow and, naturally, central banker repeated - like a broken - record day after day: that the glorious benefits of the "gas savings tax cut" would unveil themselves any minute now, and unleash a new golden ago economic prosperity and push the US economy into 3%+ growth.