United States

Yesterday's sharp S&P selloff, the largest of 2017, and the first time the market dropped by more than 1% in 110 trading days, may be just the beginning: that is the troubling thesis presented by JPM's quant Marko Kolanovic, who as we quoted yesterday, warned that "following Friday's option expiry, the gamma imbalance shifted towards puts for the first time in ~5 months and the market was ‘free’ to move again. Hence, it should not be a surprise that today, for the first time in ~5 months, we have a meaningful down move and intraday acceleration."

As the euphoria generated by the election of Donald Trump subsides, ebbing away like a strange and fantastic dream, the financial markets are coming to realize that the promises of tax cuts, spending hikes and deregulation are empty.  One very tall central banker we know, for example, is no longer worried about his eponymous rule prohibiting bank principal trading being repealed.  Thus we all mentally reset the quantum monetary clock back to the week prior to the November ’16 election and ask: what next?

"Warning! US equities can occasionally go down as well as up a lot."

Authored by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Kagan family, America’s neoconservative aristocracy, has reemerged having recovered from the letdown over not gaining its expected influence from the election of Hillary Clinton and from its loss of official power at the start of the Trump presidency.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Listening yesterday to the broadcast of testimony by FBI Director Comey and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers before the House Intelligence Committee (an oxymoron) made it clear that the Democrats, Comey, and Rogers intend conflict with Russia.