October is historically the most volatile month of the year, but in 2017 - the average volatility of US equity markets dropped to an all-time record low...
... And you know something's wrong when, just like in early 2007 when the crash in vol killed the swaptions industry - just before all hell broke loose - Goldman Sachs is pulling back from U.S. options market-making on exchanges.
November 8 will mark the one year anniversary of one of the biggest political shocks in US history: the election of Donald Trump. Since that improbable victory, which so many experts had said would lead to a market crash, the S&P 500 has soared by 21% according to Goldman which calculates that the Trump rally so far ranks as the fourth-best 12-month gain following a presidential election since 1936, trailing only Bill Clinton (1996, 32%), John F. Kennedy (1960, 29%), and George H.W. Bush (1988, 23%).
Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
Remember the original widow maker macro trade?
More than a decade before short China positions filled hedge fund portfolios. Way before the long VIX trade. And before Australian and Canadian real estate was even worthy of consideration by global macro traders, there was the JGB short.
We have another instalment in the investigation into the mind-boggling level of corruption at 1MDB, (1Malaysia Development Berhad), the Malaysian state-owned investment fund. Members of the Singapore police’s economic crime unit have interviewed current and former Goldman employees with respect to the 1MDB bond offerings arranged by the bank.
"This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.:
- from "Highlights of the Findings of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report", Nov. 3 2017