United States

Having staged a dramatic reversal at the end of 2016, when the world's formerly most bearish hedge fund - it was net short over 100% in late 2016, which in turn led to a -24% return last year...

... rerisked, turning flat in just a few months, Horseman Global - now short developed markets and long emerging markets, and having lost 8.31% through the end of June - is once again dipping its toes in shorting stocks in general, and shale producers in particular. And, in Russell Clark's latest letter, the Horseman CIO explains why.

Authored by Darius Shatahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is reportedly closing a decades-old office in the State Department that has helped pursue justice for victims of war crimes.

The “Office of Global Criminal Justice” advises the secretary of state on issues surrounding war crimes and genocide. It was established by Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, a woman who barely batted an eyelid while overseeing the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.

For only the second time in the last 27 weeks (and 4th in the last 56 weeks), the number of US oil rigs fell last week (down 1 to 764 rigs). There is a growing concern that the rising rig count has now outpaced the lagged response to pricing and is due to rollover further...

Notably the Canadian oil rig count rose by 12 last week.

WTI tumbled to a $45 handle heading into the data after tanker-tracker data suggested OPEC supply was the highest in 2017...

Two Salafi-jihadi factions in Syria's Idlib province have been engaged in a brutal inter-"rebel" (or rather inter-jihadist) war this week, prompting Turkey to prepare a potential invasion to protect its favored factions on the ground. On Thursday, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS/Al-Qaeda) continued to capture towns in Idlib's countryside from rival Ahrar al-Sham and Turkish backed FSA groups after an uneasy truce between the rebel factions quickly collapsed days prior, causing the weaker Ahrar al-Sham to call in Turkish support.

Dennis Rodman will be disappointed to learn that the US is set to ban all citizens from traveling to North Korea, according to two agencies that operate tours there. Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours said the ban would be announced on 27 July to come into effect 30 days later, the BBC reported. "After the 30-day grace period any US national that travels to North Korea will have their passport invalidated by their government." The ban comes one month after US student Otto Warmbier died following his imprisonment by the Kim regime.