United States

European stocks were flat after starting off strongly earlier, dragged lower by energy stocks. Asian stocks, U.S. futures little changed as oil tumbled with Brent tumbling as low as $45.85/bbl to the lowest intraday since November 30 and taking out a 38.2% Fib support, after a one-minute spike in volume to a day-high 5,208 lots just after 6am, with WTI mirroring Brent's momentum, and falling as much as 98c to $43.22, lowest since November 14.

The US hedge fund industry is in rough shape as the Federal Reserve’s lift-all-boats monetary policy has made it increasingly difficult to beat the market. US hedge funds endured nearly $100 billion in redemptions last year, as only 30% of US equity funds beat their benchmarks.

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Back in April, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request for documents related to the unmasking of “the identities of any U.S.

In a unexpectedly gloomy note from BofA's Chief strategist David Woo, titled "Sell before it's too late", the analyst writes that this is "a market with risk off written all over it" largely as a result of a string of weaker-than-expected US data over the past week, which "has only strengthened our view that the US economy is losing momentum" and adds that the culprit is the lack of progress in tax reform in Washington.