United States

Today is quad-witching opex Friday, and according to JPM, some $1.3 trillion in S&P future will expire. Traditionally quad days are associated with a rise in volatility and a surge in volumes although in light of recent vol trends and overnight markets, today may be the most boring quad-witching in recent history: global stocks have again rebounded from yesterday's tech-driven losses as European shares rose 0.6%, wiping out the week's losses.

Two days ago, JPM's head quant made a striking observation: "Passive and Quantitative investors now account for ~60% of equity assets (vs. less than 30% a decade ago). We estimate that only ~10% of trading volumes originates from fundamental discretionary traders." In short, markets are now "a quant's world", with carbon-based traders looking like a slow anachronism from a bygone era.

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investments,

Authored by Jared Dillian 'The 10th Man' via MauldinEconomics.com,

A little bit of paranoia is always healthy.

In the 1980s, the totalitarian fear was that some overenthusiastic government agent would go to the library and pull your library card to see if you were reading seditious texts.

Seems a bit quaint now, doesn’t it? 

It didn’t at the time.

Of course, the East German Stasi went to those lengths to spy on its citizens, but there was never any real danger of it happening in the US.

As if Illinois didn't have enough to worry about between an imminent downgrade to junk (as soon as July 1), soaring debt costs, insolvent pension funds, and roads that may soon resemble the lunar surface, today in the latest insult to a relentless series of injuries, the lottery itself is about to dump Illinois.