United States

As tensions between the U.S and North Korea continue to escalate, with the most recent provocation coming from Kim Jong Un last night, the Wall Street Journal has just reported that Federal prosecutors are building potential cases that would accuse North Korea of directing the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year.

The charges, if filed, would target alleged Chinese middlemen who prosecutors believed help North Korea orchestrate the theft, the people said.

 

The FBI’s Conspiracy Theory of a Trump/Putin Collusion Has No Clothes

Paul Craig Roberts

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banker we know, for example, is no longer worried about his eponymous rule prohibiting bank principal trading being repealed.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."