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In late December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it would conduct a briefing on January 16 regarding the “public health response to a nuclear detonation” over the skies of the United States. Now, the CDC has canceled the nuclear briefing and focused on something much more important: the flu epidemic across the continental United States.

The agency announced the switch in topics late Friday, citing the ‘out of control’ flu cases as the main reason for the shift.

 

“To date, this influenza season is notable for the sheer volume of flu that most of the United States is seeing at the same time which can stress health systems,” according to a CDC statement. “The vast majority of this activity has been caused by influenza A H3N2, associated with severe illness in young children and people 65 years and older.”

A weekly Influenza Surveillance Report prepared by the Influenza Division Weekly Influenza Activity Estimates reported by State and Territorial Epidemiologists warns of a “widespread” breakout across the entire United States for the week ending Jan 06, 2018.

The originally scheduled event, titled “Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation,” was supposed to provide an educational framework for Americans of what do in the event of a nuclear bomb detonation.

Earlier this month, the hysteria around nuclear war flourished when President Trump tweeted about the his “nuclear button” size while comparing it to North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un’s button. In response, Americans panicked and bought anti-radiation pills in droves, as drug sales skyrocketed for potassium iodide tablets.

 

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018

 

The decision to cancel the nuke talk came before a false nuclear attack alert– ‘triggered by human error’- sent people in Hawaii into a panic on Saturday. Further,  another false nuclear attack alert occurred in Japan on Tuesday, which officials quickly reversed in 5-minutes. The nuke talk is a workshop that educates civilians on what to do before and after a nuclear bomb explodes.

And lastly, as the United States government wastes time and energy on psychological operations conditioning citizens for nuclear war; a far more significant concern is developing, which can no longer be ignored, and that is the “widespread” breakout of influenza.

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In an exclusive interview with Reuters, President Trump said on Wednesday that Russia is helping North Korea get supplies in violation of international sanctions and that Pyongyang is getting “closer every day” to being able to deliver a long-range missile to the United States. As a result, Trump said he hoped the standoff with Pyongyang could be resolved “in a peaceful way, but it’s very possible that it can’t.”

Having learned his lesson from his recent WSJ interview, Trump declined to comment when asked whether he had engaged in any communications at all with Kim, with whom he has exchanged public insults and threats, heightening tensions in the region. He did, however, blame Moscow:

“Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said during the Oval Office interview. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.”

Which is ironic because it was a Chinese, not Russian ship, that was recently observed  illegally selling oil to North Korea. It’s even more ironic that in the interview, Trump praised China for its efforts to restrict oil and coal supplies to North Korea but said Beijing could do much more to help constrain Pyongyang.

In any case, with North Korea still the major global challenge facing Trump this year, the president cast doubt during the 53-minute interview whether talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be useful. In the past he has not ruled out direct talks with Kim.

“I’d sit down, but I‘m not sure that sitting down will solve the problem,” he said, noting that past negotiations with the North Koreans by his predecessors had failed to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

“They’ve talked for 25 years and they’ve taken advantage of our presidents, of our previous presidents,” he said.

The remarks come after Trump’s statement earlier in January, in which he said he is “absolutely” willing to talk on the phone to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un if certain conditions are met.

* * *

In addition to slamming Russia, Trump said Pyongyang is steadily advancing in its ability to deliver a missile to the United States. “They’re not there yet, but they’re close. And they get closer every day,” said Trump.

Trump also said he welcomed talks between North and South Korea over the Winter Olympics to be held in the South next month and said this could be an initial phase in helping defuse the crisis.

He would not say whether the United States has been considering a limited, pre-emptive attack to show the North that the United States means business.

“We’re playing a very, very hard game of poker and you don’t want to reveal your hand,” he said.

U.S. officials had spoken of Trump’s willingness to weigh a pre-emptive strike despite the risk of touching off a war. But in recent days Trump has appeared to signal more of an openness toward diplomacy.

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Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

Private investment (yellow line in the chart below) makes up just under 17% of US GDP, government consumption about the same, and the remainder of GDP is private consumption (mostly services…detailed HERE).  But it is the year over year change in private investment that seems to offer the greatest insight into the economic health of the nation.  It turns out that private investment mirrors federal debt creation with about a twelve to eighteen month lag time (red arrows showing peak YoY federal debt creation…yellow arrows showing subsequent peak YoY private investment growth).

Simply put, the cost of new debt is rising, the cost of rolling over record quantities of existing debt is rising, and the quantity of deficit spending projects and activities is decelerating (not exactly a recipe for growth).  So, this time is really no different.  Record quantities of federal debt creation spurred private investment post ’09 (still with about a years lag)…and vice versa now with decelerating debt creation.  Based on this, in the coming quarters, a deceleration and outright decline in private investment is an odds on event.

 

If we focus solely on year over year change in private investment, same for federal debt creation, plus the federal funds rate…every period of rate hikes since ’81 has coincided with decelerating federal debt creation…and resulted in a decline in private investment which concluded with a recession.  The chart below highlights the same circumstances that led to the ’91, ’01, and ’08 recessions is again presently underway in ’18.  Absent a reversal in deficit spending or a u-turn on the FFR…is there any reason to believe the result be different this time?

Finally, the chart below offers some perspective where we are in this cycle.  Household net worth as a % of disposable income has clearly exceeded any previous period (asset prices rising far in advance of income to support them).  Federal debt creation (YoY on a quarterly basis) has decelerated by almost 75% from the ’09 peak.  However, during each downturn, yoy debt creation has doubled or tripled from the previous cycle (something to ponder as the next downturn is on the horizon).  The federal funds rate is rising but at a snails pace and not likely rising for much longer.

This particular set of circumstances has been a losing play every time since ’81 and each rise and fall in household net worth as a percentage of disposable income has been greater than the last.  A 30% to 50% fall in net worth appears the most likely outcome (particularly with the Fed’s inability to lower rates significantly from current levels in response to this likely slowdown).

Just two big questions remain.  Will the Federal Reserve allow this outcome?  Can the Federal Reserve stop this outcome?

My two cents on much of what has brought us to this point…domestically HERE…and globally HERE or HERE.

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As discussed earlier, one of the major concerns about Steve Bannon’s closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, is that he kept silent about the things that were of most interest to his interrogators.

As we reported, Bannon invoked executive privilege during his meeting to avoid sharing details about his time in the Trump administration, where he served as chief strategist, or during the presidential transition. In fact, Bannon reportedly stopped answering questions once his lawyers had alerted the White House that the scope of the House panel’s questions would be expanded to include his time in the White House.

However, as Axios reports, Bannon made one conspicuous slip up: he admitted that he’d had conversations with Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and legal spokesman Mark Corallo about Don Junior’s meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016. As a reminder, this is the meeting that Bannon allegedly told Michael Wolff was “treasonous”, and led to the violent fallout in relations between Trump and Bannon.

This matters because the meeting — and the subsequent drafting of an allegedly misleading statement on Air Force One — has become one of the most important focal points of the Russia investigations, both on Capitol Hill and within Robert Mueller’s team, because it provides the closest thing that exists to evidence that the Trump campaign was willing to entertain collusion with Russians, Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports.

Bannon immediately realized he’d slipped up and disclosed conversations he wasn’t supposed to discuss, because they happened while he was chief strategist in the White House. Throughout the rest of the session, committee members — in particular Republican Trey Gowdy and Democrat Adam Schiff — hammered Bannon over the fact that he’d mentioned those conversations but refused to discuss anything else about his time in the White House.

This is also why the pressure on Bannon to disclose all he knows will only grow, and also why Mueller will be especially interested in what he has to say.

Aside from this once incident, Axios reports the following “insider-the-room” moments:

• After the hearing started, the New York Times dropped its story about the grand jury subpoena of Bannon. Nobody in the room had their phones — it’s the protocol in closed-door intelligence hearings — but an official walked in to inform the committee and Bannon’s team of the story.
• At that point, the committee paused its proceedings and there was a scramble to figure out how to proceed, and how to ensure they did everything properly insofar as the Mueller probe went. (The committee informed Mueller’s team several days earlier that it was calling Bannon in as a witness, and they didn’t hear back from Mueller’s team so viewed that as a green light.)
• Trey Gowdy, who led the Republican questioning, pressed Bannon hard on his description of Don Junior’s Trump Tower meeting as “treasonous.” Gowdy asked Bannon whether he would consider it treason for somebody close to him to approach Wikileaks’ Julian Assange to get opposition research on Hillary Clinton. Bannon replied that such a scenario would be bad judgment. Then Gowdy produced emails from a Cambridge Analytica employee — the Trump campaign data firm closely affiliated with Bannon — boasting of just such contacts with Assange. Bannon claimed this was the first time he’d seen these emails (though they’ve been in the news.)
• Bannon attacked the Republicans running these congressional committees for choosing to investigate the Trump campaign and Russia. He said it was part of an “establishment” plan to try to “nullify” the election result. Gowdy challenged him on that, asking Bannon who is this establishment you refer to who is trying to nullify Trump’s victory? Bannon answered: Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Gowdy countered that Bannon couldn’t have it both ways. Was he also referring to Trump confidant Kevin McCarthy — the leader of the Republican House conference — who is surely part of the same Ryan-McConnell “establishment?”
• Another pointed question to Bannon: When he told author Michael Wolff there was a “zero” percent chance that Don Junior didn’t bring the Russians up to see his father after their meeting, how did he know that happened? I’m told Bannon all but conceded he was purely speculating.
• Throughout the hearing, Bannon kept telling the committee members: “I really want to answer this question,” and “I really wish I could answer these questions.” That became a sore point with members. They kept asking him why he felt liberated to abandon executive privilege and leak prolifically about the White House to journalists and author Wolff, but wouldn’t talk to Congress.
• Bannon, at one point, praised the committee members for the professionalism and preparedness. (But a source familiar with Bannon’s thinking told me he made the compliment “tongue-in-cheek.”)

 

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Authored by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

The Mother of All Blow-Offs

We didn’t really plan on writing about investor sentiment again so soon, but last week a few articles in the financial press caught our eye and after reviewing the data, we thought it would be a good idea to post a brief update. When positioning and sentiment reach levels that were never seen before after the market has gone through a blow-off move for more than a year, it may well be that it means something for once.

 

Sloshed as we are…   a group of professional investors prepares for a day of hard work on Wall Street. The tedium of a market that goes up a little bit every day, day in day out, is taking its toll.

 

Interestingly, the DJIA has fully participated in the blow-off this time, contrary to what happened at the end of the 1990s bull market and the first echo boom that ended in 2007. On the monthly chart the venerable Dow Industrials Average now sports on RSI of roughly 90, which is really quite rare.

 

The “slightly overbought” DJIA sports an RSI of 89.59 on its monthly chart in the wake of the blow-off move over the past year.

 

If you think this looks like the exact opposite of what we have seen at the lows in 2009, you are entirely correct – it is indeed the opposite in every conceivable respect. In 2009 the news were uniformly bad; nowadays, we are flooded with good news on the economy and corporate earnings. In 2009 stocks were cheap  – if not really historically cheap – now they are in many ways at their most expensive in history, particularly if one considers the median stock rather than  just the capitalization-weighted indexes.

 

Singing From the Same Hymn Sheet

We recall that the reading of the Daily Sentiment Index of S&P futures traders stood at just 3% bulls on the day of the March 2009 low. Looking at sentiment data today, there are probably 3% bears left. What prompted us to take a closer look at the data was an article at Marketwatch about the positioning of Ameritrade customers – in other words, self-directed retail investors. The article is ominously entitled “Retail investor exposure to stock market is at an all-time high”. An all time high? Isn’t this supposed to be the “most hated” bull market ever? That hasn’t been true for quite a while actually. Ameritrade helpfully provided a chart of its “Investor Movement Index” (IM Index), which measures the aggregate stock market exposure of its clients.

 

At the height of the Fed’s QE3 operation in 2014, retail investors were almost “pessimistic” compared to today. The Ameritrade IM Index is currently above 8, but it already established a new record high when it crossed 7.0 for the first time last summer.

 

On the day we looked at the article, we quickly jotted down the titles of other articles Marketwatch suggested to its readers via embedded links. We suspected these might at least partly change after a while and wanted to preserve what we saw. The headlines were quite telling:

 

Read: Why Monday is a ‘big day for bulls’—and could suggest gains of nearly 20% in 2018

See: Stock-market investors should ‘brace for a possible near-term melt-up: Jeremy Grantham

Read: Stock optimism swells as S&P 500 hits most overbought level in 22 years

Retail investors — according to a Deutsche Bank analysis of consumer sentiment data — view the current environment as “the best time ever to invest in the market”.

And the “most popular” article on Marketwatch that day was:

Here’s what could trigger a 30% stock-market melt-up, says investor Bill Miller

This is of course not what the people quoted in these articles said in previous years – least of all in 2009. The main point is of course their unanimity, which emerges only after a relentless march higher. For all we know, they could well be right – take for example the call for yet another 30% “melt-up”: it sounds crazy to us, but in a blow-off even a mere handful of weeks can make a big difference. One only has to recall the explosive run in the Nasdaq from November 1999 to March 2000 (it rose by 80% in that brief time period).

 

Investors Large and Small – All Are on the Same Page

So is this now the stage when “professionals” are distributing stocks to retail investors? Not really, actually. If anything, they are even more in love with stocks. Mish pointed out last week that hedges have become quite unpopular among fund managers – which is funny, because hedges have also become quite cheap. But it seems that few fund managers want to “risk” underperforming their benchmarks even by a few basis points, as that could well cost them customers (and bonuses).

If the market crashes, they will all be in the same boat and will collectively point to the fact that “no-one could have seen it coming”. Also, it is after all OPM they are supervising – and isn’t it anyway a tradition that the customers shall remain yacht-less?

This lack of demand for hedges was recently noticed by a quantitative analyst at Morgan Stanley as well, as Zerohedge reports. The man audaciously recommends buying a few puts for a quick pullback. It is well worth looking at the charts that go with the report – we rarely see all thoughts of downside potential abandoned so thoroughly.

For instance, customer holdings of SPX calls reached the 100^th percentile, and holdings of puts fell to the zero percentile. No further escalation is possible in this case – that’s it, basically. In other words, a new boundary for the bullish consensus among the firm’s clients has been set – it has never been where it is now. Customer demand for long S&P futures positions concurrently hit a new record high at Morgan Stanley as well.

We want to keep our focus on individual investors though, mainly because they are normally rather cautious. If one looks at a long term chart of the AAII survey (American Association of Individual Investors), it usually shows a fairly sizable proportion of skeptical investors. They rarely go overboard collectively with foaming-at-the-mouth bullishness, but that has clearly changed. The chart below is from a Bloomberg article that appeared last week, entitled “Signs of Euphoria Are So High Investors Are ‘Having a Hard Time Imagining a Decline’”. We imagine that their imagination will soon be jolted back to life.

 

The bullish consensus according to the AAII survey has reached a 7.3-year high (as of January 03).

 

Readings in the 60% to 70% area are traditionally peak levels for the AAII consensus. However, a somewhat deeper analysis shows that this reading masks the fact that the exposure to stocks among the survey respondents in terms of a percentage allocation is actually at a 17-year high (i.e., the highest since 2000).

The next chart has appeared in the monthly Elliott Wave Financial Forecast and depicts the gap between the stock and cash allocation of AAII respondents, as well as the 13-week average of the bullish consensus among investment advisors. The latter has reached a 40-year high. Note the contrast to the survey results recorded at the 2009 low, when the most popular stocks could be bought for a fraction of the prices they trade at today.

 

A tale of two surveys: the AAII stock/cash allocation gap and the 13-week average of the percentage of bullish advisors in the Investors Intelligence survey. These readings represent rare extremes as well.

 

In Part 2 we take a closer look at the “other side of the trade”, namely bears and short sellers, or rather, what is left of them. It is a sorry sight.

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Hot on the heels of the news that Apple will create some 20,000 jobs in the US over the next 5 years, came the latest Beige Book report from the Federal Reserve, according to which it’s not jobs that are missing in the US, it’s qualified employees.

As it usually does, the Beige Book – which collects data from the 12 Federal Reserve Districts – found that the economy continued to expand from late November, with the various Fed districts reporting “modest to moderate” gains while Dallas was the sole outlier, recording a “robust increase.” it also said that most districts reported “modest to moderate price growth since the last report; exceptions were Chicago, which noted that prices increased only slightly while San Francisco noted price inflation was down slightly.” There were also reports of rising home prices across most of the country.

The Beige Book said that the outlook for 2018 remains optimistic “for a majority of contacts across the country” and that some retailers highlighted that holiday sales were higher than expected. Meanwhile, most manufacturers reported modest growth in overall business conditions.

To be sure, the one thing the Beige Book has been closely watched for in recent quarter, are its observations on the state of labor market, and here it once again reiterated that most districts cited on-going labor market tightness and challenges finding qualified workers across skills and sectors, which, in some instances, was described as constraining growth.

Curiously, despite the pervasive inability to find skilled workers, most districts said that wages increased only at a modest pace. Perhaps if employers are so short staffed, they would consider rising wages?

And while the Beige Book noted that only a few Districts observed that firms were raising wages in a broader range of industries and positions, some districts reported that firms expect wages to increase in the months ahead.

Below are some of the most notable anecdotes from the various regional Feds, courtesy of Bloomberg:

• Boston: An industrial firm had 20 unfilled openings in a plant with 100 employees and said they were making up for it with significant overtime; An industrial-firm contact said that when a worker leaves, they typically end up paying the replacement 10 percent more than the departing worker
• New York: An employment agency contact noted that recent New York City legislation restricting employers from asking about job candidates’ salary histories may boost salary offers overall
• Philadelphia: On balance, wage growth held steady at a modest pace, although the percentage of non-manufacturing firms reporting increases slipped below 40 percent.
• Cleveland: A professional services contact reported boosting wages for select low-skills jobs by up to 20 percent, while a fast food executive said that wages at her restaurants are now up to $11 per hour. Higher labor costs were difficult to pass through to customers because of competitive markets; A fast food chain observed that the average revenue per transaction from recently installed self-service kiosks was higher than transactions generated by cashiers
• Richmond: Trucking companies expressed concerns that the newly mandated use of electronic logs could lead to an even greater shortage of drivers and lead to more mergers and acquisitions in the trucking industry
• Atlanta: To find and retain workers, firms continued to broaden their geographical search for candidates and develop or expand training programs
• Chicago: Almost all contacts thought that the Federal tax bill would have a positive impact on their firms. Most respondents expected to spread the tax savings across outlays for capital, labor, debt repayment, and profit distributions to owners
• St. Louis: A contact in Louisville reported increasing starting salaries multiple times a year to attract new hires, as well as increasing wages to retain skilled employees in information technology
• Minneapolis: A transportation union in Minneapolis-St. Paul agreed to a three-year contract with annual 2.5 percent increases
• Kansas City: Abundant supply continues to weigh on natural gas prices, but several respondents stated that increasing LNG exports could help push up prices; Energy sector respondents expected spending in all categories to increase in 2018, with the largest increases for exploration and development capital spending
• Dallas: Homebuilders generally did not report concern about the changes in the mortgage interest and property tax deductions in the new tax bill, but they did note ongoing pushback from buyers on new home pricing;
• San Francisco: Contacts reported increasing deflationary pressures for generic drug prices partly due to a rise in FDA drug approvals; Animal boarding and health service activity increased as pet owners traveled over the holiday season

All of the above, of course, is strange considering the US has nearly 100 million work eligible people currently not in the labor force. Maybe if US employers are truly so short of workers, they will consider – gasp – raising wages to attract talented employees…

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As the World Economic Forum scrambles to accommodate the additional security measures necessitated by president Donald Trump’s decision to break with presidential tradition and attend Davos this year, the organization has released what’s become an annual tradition: Its report of what it believes are the top global risks for 2018.

The most prominent theme is the shift in perceived risk factors: conflict and war, natural disasters, extreme weather and cyberattacks have supplanted social polarization and the rise of populism as the biggest global risk for 2018.

As the report summarizes, last year’s Global Risks Report was published at a time of heightened global uncertainty and rising popular discontent with the existing political and economic order. The report called for “fundamental reforms to market capitalism” and a rebuilding of solidarity within and between countries.

The survey of nearly 1,000 experts from government, business, academia and non-governmental organizations showed 93% expect a worsening of political or economic confrontations between major powers in 2018, including 40% who believe those risks have increased significantly.

One year on, the WEF authors notes that the urgency of facing up to these challenges has, if anything, intensified. Economic growth is picking up, but 2017 was a year of widespread uncertainty, instability and fragility—and the latest results of the Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS) suggest respondents are pessimistic about the year ahead: in a new question gauging expectations for 2018, only 7% of responses point to a reduction of risk, compared with 59% pointing to an increase.

The report highlights four concerns: (1) persistent inequality and unfairness, (2) domestic and international political tensions, (3) environmental dangers and (4) cyber vulnerabilities.

The visual summary of the global risk landscape is shown below:

While technological and climate-related risks topped the tables in terms of the most likely risks, Reuters  pointed out that perceived risk of a geopolitical crisis – particularly a nuclear one – had also risen after a year of escalating rhetoric between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that has arguably brought the world closer to a nuclear conflict than it has been in decades.

A historical summary of the main risks facing the world according to the WEF.

 

The report notes that some 79% of respondents see a heightened risk of state-on-state military conflict. In addition to the threat of a conflict on the Korean peninsula, the report pointed to the risk of new military confrontations in the Middle East.  It cited a rise in “charismatic strongman politics” across the world and said political, economic and environmental risks were being exacerbated by a decline in support for rules-based multilateralism.

The table below shows the sharp increase in concerns about geopolitical conflicts and economic confrontations between superpowers:

 

The report also pointed to Trump’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and the TPP trade agreement and his threat to pull out of a deal between Western powers and Iran designed to curb its nuclear program.

“The risks we are trying to grapple with here require multilateral solutions but we are moving in the other direction,” said John Drzik, president of global risk and digital at the consultancy Marsh, which helped compile the report.

* * *

With global growth recovering, concerns about the economy were down sharply. Still, the report described income inequality as a “corrosive problem” in many countries and warned against complacency over the economic environment given high debt levels, low savings rates and inadequate pension provisions.

“A widening economic recovery presents us with an opportunity that we cannot afford to squander, to tackle the fractures that we have allowed to weaken the world’s institutions, societies and environment,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

“We must take seriously the risk of a global systems breakdown.”

And while the report notes the reduced prominence of economic risks, it asks “whether this swing to optimism suggests the possibility of complacency and a developing blind spot around economic risks?”

There are certainly reasons to be cautious: one does not have to look far for signs of economic and financial strain. The report suggests that greater attention should be paid to the risks of another crisis erupting.

Even without another crisis, economic risks can be hugely disruptive, and last year brought fresh evidence of chronic economic problems, particularly related to earnings and inequality. In its latest Global Wage Report, the International Labour Organization highlighted that worldwide earnings growth has been decelerating since 2012. It called, among other things, for the increased use of collective bargaining to reverse this trend.

Meanwhile, even as global inequality is reportedly down, “within-country inequality is an increasingly corrosive problem in many places,” the WEF notes. According to the IMF, over the past three decades 53% of countries have seen an increase in income inequality, with this trend particularly pronounced in advanced economies. Furthermore, today’s economic strains are likely to sow the seeds for longer-term problems. High levels of personal debt, coupled with inadequate savings and pension provisions, are one reason to expect that frustrations may deepen in the years ahead.

As another WEF chart shows, increasing dependence on cyber infrastructure could lead to a massively disruptive attack or widespread data fraud and identity theft. Meanwhile, the changing climate can lead to food and water shortages and, eventually, the collapse of entire ecosystems.

While geopolitical worries rose sharply, the environment topped the list of concerns, with extreme weather events seen as the single most prominent risk in 2018 after a year of unusually frequent Atlantic storms, including Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico.

Read the report in its entirety below (link):

 

Trump is due to give a speech on the closing day of the WEF. The annual event, which takes place at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, runs from Jan. 23 to Jan. 26 and will attract 70 heads of state and government, as well as celebrities, CEOs and some of the world’s top bankers.

 

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Another day, another drop for the dollar index…

 

The Bloomberg Dollar Index is down for 6 days straight…

To its lowest level since Dec 2014…

 

 

The dollar weakness has sent EURUSD to its highest since Dec 2014…

 

And cable strongest since Brexit…

 

Bloomberg’s Cameron Crise asks, when will the dollar bounce?

Even trending markets sustain corrections, and it’s starting to feel like dollar weakness is getting a bit tabloid. While the Bloomberg dollar index is trying hard to rebound at the time of writing, that could change in the blink of an eye. Next week’s ECB meeting is an obvious catalyst for a proper reversal if Draghi pushes back on euro strength and the market responds to him. Neither of these is certain, however.

For now, gold is winning…

 

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