United States

Another day, another shot across the bow from Donald Trump aimed squarely at China.

Having already participated (and in the case of one, precipitated) two mini diplomatic snafus with Beijing in just the past two weeks, Trump is sending a clear message to Beijing that US-China trade under his administration will be anything but business as usual, by creating a National Trade Council inside the White House to oversee industrial policy and has decided to appoint a hard core China hawk to run it.

It appears not everyone is convinced that "the 30 year bond bull is dead." A quick glance across US equity options today shows TLT (the long-end Treasury Bond ETF) is the most active with call volumes (bullish bonds, lower rates) more than double their average, with over $1.3 billion notional in February $126 Calls (which will payoff if rates drop to around 2.00% by then).

With come big blocks in the Feb $126 today...

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

In response to the latest imposition of US sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin said on Wednesday that the new sanctions would further damage relations between the two countries and that Moscow would respond with its own measures. "We regret that Washington is continuing on this destructive path," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

As a reminder, on Tuesday the United States widened sanctions against Russian businessmen and companies adopted after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine.

We were surprised to note yesterday that even some of the legendary market "bears" appear to be throwing the towel in light of the relentless Trumpflation rally which will not stop until 20K is in the rearview mirror, when we noted that even Bob Janjuah said that "the trends over H1 2017 should be higher (especially US) equities and yields, steeper curves, a stronger USD, and mixed performance in credit (especially in the IG sphere) and EM....