United States

Following the latest escalation in South China Sea territorial tensions, which culminated with China refusing to grant the Stennis aircarrier group access to the Hong Kong port, overnight the US decided to provoke some more Chinese anger when it sailed the guided missile destroyer the USS William P. Lawrence within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-occupied Fiery Cross Reef, according to U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Bill Urban said. This was the third warship the US has sent into contested waters in the South China Sea in less than seven months.

A day after oil tumbled to the lowest level in weeks, it has once again started to climb, ignoring the changing dynamic in the oilsands region where the fire has now moved away from critical Canadian oil infrastructure, and is instead focusing on concerns about supply disruptions not just out of Canada but also a series of attacks on Nigeria's oil infrastructure which pushed the country's crude output close to a 22-year, cumulatively knocking out 2.5 million barrels of daily production.

"Symbolizing how far the United States and Japan have come in building a deep and abiding alliance based on mutual interests, shared values and an enduring spirit of friendship between our people," according to The White House official statement, The Hill reports that Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, later this month. Is this merely continuing Obama's apology tour?

Remember how the Fed claimed it was embarking on a tightening cycle?

Well, the Fed failed to hike interest rates in January, March AND April despite the “data” hitting levels at which the Fed said it would hike. There is now talk of a potential hike in June… but the Fed futures indicate less than half of traders expect another hike before February 2017.

Over two years ago, and just days after Michael Lewis released Flash Boys focusing attention on the ongoing criminal practice of orderflow frontrunning by such Fed intermediaries as Citadel (and many other now entrenched and recently IPOing names), none other than Citadel's head of "Execution Services" which we supposed is the internal name of the firm's client-facing HFT group, Jamil Nazarali, proclaimed that small investors have never been so fortunate and said, with regard to Michael Lewis' now infamous book Flash Boys, "The most important thing that the market c