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One outlier in Wall Street’s monster rally since mid-March is that the “Most Shorted” Stocks Index is still well off its peak while the broad-market (led by mega-techs) has shot to the moon, powering overall main equity indexes to record highs, or at least to near all-time-highs. 

A handful of mega  stocks in S&P500 now account for 22% of market cap have been responsible for the latest melt-up in main equity indexes. 

This week’s massive squeeze in “most shorted” stocks appears to confirm conventional wisdom that the latest recovery-ignorant (as the shape of the economic recovery is quickly transforming from a “V” to a “U” or even “L”) parabolic move higher in stocks is yet another engineered short-cover rally…

An index constituent analysis of the Most Shorted Index reveals, on a market cap by sector basis, most of the bearish bets are in consumer cyclicals (47.48%), healthcare (13.89%), technology (12.72%), and financials (7.80%). 

Here’s the latest leavers and joiners of the index since the start of July.  

A complete list of all constituents in the Most Shorted Index (as of Saturday, Aug. 8). 

And this week’s surge leaves The Most Shorted Index back at the upper-end of its multi-year down-channel, where historically it has been violently rejected. 

With short-covering responsible for major bounces in the main equity indexes earlier this year, did this week’s surge cause the ‘squeeze’ ammo to run out?

Authored by Claudio Grass via The Mises Institute,

After intense negotiations, long days and nights of clashes, and a distinctly sour note underlying the entire summit, European Union leaders finally agreed on an unprecedented €1.82 trillion ($2.1 trillion) budget and covid recovery package. This agreement provides €750 billion in funding meant to counter the impact of the pandemic and also includes €390 billion in nonrepayable grants to the hardest-hit EU members, with Italy and Spain being the main recipients.

The harsh negotiations brought to the surface once again the deep economic, structural, and cultural divide between north and south. This divide has been at the core of every serious political and economic crisis in the bloc so far, and its reemergence served as yet another reminder of how unnatural, forced, and unsustainable the integration vision of the Europhiles really is. Their wider strategic aims, much like this covid relief package itself, are nothing more than a massive redistribution of wealth and a vain effort to impose uniformity on a radically diverse group of national identities, economic profiles, and local political realities.

As we have seen so many times in past crises, the main sticking point in these most recent “rescue” talks were the legitimate grievances and concerns of the richer countries in the north, including the Netherlands and Austria, about having to foot the bill yet again and bail out their cash-strapped southern neighbors. In this case, the disagreement centered on the question of loans vs. grants, as the richer members initially insisted that the immense sums of money they were forced to give away should at least be repaid at some point in future. And so, in the name of “solidarity,” the nations that put up some opposition, the “frugal four”—Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands—were named and shamed in the media, portrayed as heartless, Dickensian misers. Naturally, the fact that the chief beneficiaries of all that free money were in deep, chronic financial trouble long before the coronavirus even emerged was conveniently left out of the debate. Instead, the “frugal” were put under immense pressure to “do the right thing,” namely to agree that the majority of the support funding would be in the form of pure cash gifts. Apparently, these “persuasion” tactics also included histrionic outbursts: according to the BBC, “at one point French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly banged his fists on the table, as he told the ‘frugal four’ they were putting the European project in danger.”

The main problem with this record-breaking stimulus package is essentially the same one of all its predecessors over the last decade. Not only does the EU like to redistribute wealth from the north to the south with clockwork regularity, but all these plans also fail to incorporate any kind of serious checks and balances about where and how the money is spent. As a result, we keep seeing massive waste and levels of corruption that are normally associated with developing economies. The scale of this most recent package alone brings this issue into sharper focus, especially as it is underlaid by a joint borrowing scheme that enables poorer EU countries to take out cheap loans using the creditworthiness of their richer neighbors, which act as guarantors.

This brings us to the very practical shortcomings of the mechanics of this relief plan.

All these loans and handouts will be financed through an unprecedented amount of debt, which is unsustainable and myopic in and of itself. The fact that this debt is shared, however, makes this “historic deal” all the more insidious, intensely political, and dooms it to failure. This deal signaled the official adoption of the idea of debt mutualization as a funding tool, which clearly paves the way for far deeper EU centralization, even greater powers of taxation and, Brussels’s much more direct political power over national governments. This is already evident in the early drafts of the terms and conditions of the loans and grants in the package. There no real strings attached when it comes to transparency and the all practical aspects of how the funds will be used, but there are heavily political requirements. For example, 30 percent of the aid must be spent on a “green” agenda and on combating climate change. There’s also clear language in the agreements that ties the distribution of the aid to compliance with “the rule of law.” That’s a thinly veiled threat against conservative member states like Poland and Hungary, where the democratically elected national governments are known to pass laws that the EU frowns upon. There is, therefore, clear and purely political conditionality attached to that great “unifying” plan.

It might be wrapped in idealistic and melodramatic language, e.g., “rescuing our shared European future,” but what this deal is really about is a blatant power grab. The self-inflicted damage caused by the shutdowns and the lockdowns has been effectively misattributed to the coronavirus itself, which has allowed politicians and Eurocrats to present this recession, that was already evident since the end of last year, as a natural disaster and therefore nobody’s fault. In turn, the resulting economic fallout and the deep financial crisis affecting countless households has been used as an excuse to usher in policies geared towards more centralization. Thus, the answer to all our current problems is “a stronger EU,” even though it was that exact mindset that caused them in the first place.

In this light, the “cure” that is forced upon all Europeans now is not just worse than the disease; it is the disease.

1,058,547,236…

Back to school season is just around the corner and, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy reports, that’s the number of learners who still aren’t able to attend class (as of early August) due to the pandemic. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to UNESCO, that figure represents 60.5 percent of all learners worldwide though it is an improvement on the 1.4 billion students kept out of school in mid March.

At that point, there were national school closures in 138 countries and that has now fallen to 105.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A British YouTuber was arrested after he tried to live stream footage of boat migrants being loaded onto coaches in Dover before they are taken to be accommodated in hotels at taxpayer expense.

A citizen reporter who goes by the name Active Patriot was recording the scene from a public car park when he was aggressively approached by police.

“I’m showing the world what is going on mate,” says the reporter, to which the officer responds, ” I think the world knows.”

“Do they really? They don’t know what extent, though do they?” Active Patriot responds.

At first the officer claims he is arresting the man for trespassing but then suddenly changes the reason to “breaching the peace.”

After the man complains that his arm hurts even though he is not resisting arrest, the officer responds, “Give me your arm, or I’ll put you on the ground.”

Steve Laws, another citizen reporter who has been documenting the migrant arrivals, told Politicalite, “I saw 74 illegals being toed into port by the border force from 8am to 11am.”

“They were so busy they didn’t get the time to unload one boatload before another arrived,” he added.

“My sources told me it as over 100 after I had left. I saw 3 coaches parked waiting since 8am. It almost seems like it was pre planned.”

French navy vessels are escorting migrant boats into British waters, where they are then handed over to British border authorities who provide the illegal aliens a de facto taxi service and free residency while they prepare asylum claims. Migrants pay criminal people smugglers thousands of pounds to reach Europe, dispelling the idea that they are destitute.

“More than double the number of migrants have landed in the first eight months of 2020 (nearly 3,950) than the whole of 2019 (1,850). Migration Watch UK has warned that more than 7,500 could land by Christmas,” reports Breitbart.

The alarming migrant crisis on the south coast of England has finally started to receive attention following months of former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage drawing attention to it.

First it was a taxi service into Dover.

Then it was free coaches and Four Star Hotels.

Now it’s guided tours of Anfield Stadium for illegal migrants.

When will this madness end? pic.twitter.com/OR0pHya9z2

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) August 6, 2020

After exposing how a packed hotel was being used to house illegal migrants in Bromsgrove, Farage revealed yesterday how others got VIP tours of Anfield Stadium after Liverpool’s Premier League title win.

Farage revealed how at least four hotels in the north west of England were full of migrants, with Brits being unable to book them.

“It’s completely one-sided,” said Farage.

“I’m doing my best to get this out because the Government don’t want you to know about it; Serco, who’ll be paid two billion quid over the next ten years [to accommodate migrants] certainly don’t want you to know about it.”

“All these people will be sending selfies and pictures back to their countries, wherever they come from, and the message is: ‘Come on down, get into the country, hotels, 40 quid a week spending money, full board, trips to Anfield… It’s stone bonkers,” Farage said.

The taxi and hotel accommodation service for migrants is being overseen by the same “conservative” government that just announced Brits currently on holiday in Spain and other countries would have to quarantine for 2 weeks upon their return, a de facto house arrest which will strip many of two weeks unpaid wages.

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