S&P

Ugly end...

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But on the year, the dollar tanked (worst since 2003), stocks and bonds (the long-end) soared higher, commodities rebounded dramatically, cryptocurrencies exploded, and gold had its best year since 2010 as VIX saw its lowest average in history...

and all that driven by the biggest increase in central bank balance sheets since 2011... anyone else feel like this... (our estimate is we are at around the 30 second mark currently)

Spanish stocks and the euro fell, while Spanish government bond yields hit their highest levels in over a month after Catalan secessionists delivered an unexpected blow to the government of Spanish PM Rajoy by winning the Catalan regional election. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, U.S. equity futures and the dollar rose on the last trading session before the Christmas holiday. The MSCI index of world stocks was flat.

U.S. equity futures are little changed with the GOP Tax Plan now a done deal and no more daily "pricing in" of tax reform possible, as traders nerviously look to see if others will now be "selling the news", a preview of which we got yesterday when US equity indexes closed red across the board despite Trump's biggest legislative win to date, while bonds were spooked by the blowout in government debt needed to fund the giveaways.

Dow futures are up some 80 points this morning after early on Wednesday morning the Senate passed the Tax Reform bill in a party-line vote, and is now set to become law after a follow-up vote in the House and Trump's signature some time on Wednesday afternoon. The good news is that the biggest political drama of 2017 will then be over. The bad news is that once the bill becomes law, the market will no longer be able to "price it in" every single day as it has for the past year.

Authored Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners Management,

"The missing step in the standard Keynesian theory [is] the explicit consideration of capitalist finance within a cyclical and speculative context . . . finance sets the pace for the economy. As recovery approaches full employment . . . soothsayers will proclaim that the business cycle has been banished [and] debts can be taken on . . . But in truth neither the boom, nor the debt deflation... and certainly not a recovery can go on forever. Each state nurtures forces that lead to its own destruction. "