United States

Less than a month after the US Air Force successfully test fired two Minuteman ICBM missiles from California's Vanderberg Air Force base, which hit a target approximately 4,200 miles away at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, today Pentagon officials said that the US will try to shoot down an intercontinental-range missile for the first time in a test next week, in "preparation for North Korea's growing threat." According to AP, the stated goal is "to more closely simulate a North Korean ICBM aimed at the U.S. homeland."

As SocGen's Kit Juckes noted earlier in the week, "The ECB, not The Fed, is in the driving seat," and nowhere is that more optically obvious than in the massive divergence between US-EU bond risk premia and US-EU inflation surprises.

A day after China confronted a US warship that came within 12 miles of one of China's artificial reefs in the South China Sea, Reuters is reporting that Beijing decided to respond by sending two Chinese fighter jets to intercept a US military surveillance plane near Hong Kong, with one plane coming within 200 yards of the American aircraft.

Authored by Stephen McBride via MauldinEconomics.com,

“I’m telling you right now, the US is going to have a crash and it will be massive,” asserted Mark Yusko at Mauldin Economics’ Strategic Investment Conference.

In his keynote speech, Mark Yusko, CIO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, outlined where he sees the biggest opportunities and risks for investors are today.

Bitcoin has rebounded to $2600 this morning (after touching $2200 late yesterday, and $2760 highs yesterday) as Korean prices and US prices are converging (Korbit still trading at around $3200)

Bitcoin is trading around $2600 on US exchanges...

And $3200 on Korea's Korbit...