United States

After years of being oil's biggest cheerleader, "oil god" Andy Hall, who starting with the OPEC Thanksgiving massacre in 2014 has had several abysmal years, in the process losing the bulk of his AUM, finally threw in the towel last week when in a July 3 letter to investors, he admitted that "the facts have changed" and that "fundamentals have deteriorated significantly" adding that "demand growth seems to be somewhat less than anticipated while supply keeps surprising to the upside...

While it may come as a surprise to the current crop of 17-year-old hedge fund managers, the current period of persistently low long-term interest rates and plunging, near reocrd volatility in the face of a  hawkish Fed and rising short-term rates, is hardly new: exactly the same happened from 2004 through 2006, despite the Fed's continued rate hikes and jawboning. Alan Greenspan, the Fed's Chair at the time, called this phenomenon a "conundrum" and blamed it on many things, including the global savings glut. 

Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

The US sent two B-1B Lancer strategic bombers from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base base to the Korean Peninsula, to practice “attack capabilities” with South Korean jet fighters and hold live-fire drills on Saturday, Yonhap News reported, the latest show of force by the US military after North Korea’s first-ever ICBM test launch on July 4. The pair of US bombers flew conducted a simulated destruction of an enemy ballistic missile launcher and underground facilities, the South's air force said, sending a strong hint to its northern neighbor.