Massive Search After Air Force Member “Fell Out” Of C-130 Into Gulf Of Mexico
A major combined Air Force, Coast Guard, and Army search is underway over the Gulf of Mexico after a training exercise went wrong.
The Air Force said an airman only identified as a staff sergeant “exited a C-130 aircraft” over the Gulf of Mexico during a parachute training exercise Tuesday, after which the crew member disappeared from the airplane’s view and couldn’t be relocated.
“Search and recovery crews were immediately called to aid in locating the Airman from the 24th Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field at approximately 11:30 a.m. Tuesday,” an official military statement said.
US Air Force file image of C-130 aircraft.
It’s unclear if the missing airman was meant to exit the aircraft at that location, perhaps accidentally falling out prematurely, or if it’s simply that relocation efforts failed after the jump.
A CNN report described that the airman “fell out” of the plane, based on a Coast Guard statement:
The US Coast Guard is helping with the search for a missing Air Force airman who fell out of a plane during a jump training mission, Coast Guard Mobile Sector spokesman Juston Lee told CNN.
The missing staff sergeant deployed his parachute and fell about 1,500 feet into the Gulf of Mexico, he said. His name and age have not been released.
“The crew aboard the C-130 plane said the airman hit the water and was treading water, but when they turned back around to find him, they couldn’t see him” the Coast Guard statement described further.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is also reported to be assisting in the rescue operation.
Rescuers have expanded their search of a broad area south of Santa Rosa Island, Florida based on shifting currents in the area, a follow-up Coast Guard statement said.
Bitcoin price highs in 2017 were not the result of a single trader on an exchange, the CEO of payment company Circle claims. In a series of tweets on Nov. 4, Jeremy Allaire disputed recent research which claimed Bitcoin’s bull run to $20,000 was the result of efforts by a single wallet holder.
Circle CEO: Research fails to understand exchanges
The findings are currently featuring as part of the $1.4 trillion lawsuit against stablecoin Tether (USDT). Its issuance, researchers argue, coincided with Bitcoin price jumps.
For Allaire, however, the idea that one Tether trader engaged in manipulation on an exchange had no logic.
“Exchanges use omnibus wallets that pool all customer balances and transactions on and off the exchange. So an analysis that shows that ‘a single wallet’ was involved in flows from Bitfinex to other exchanges is meaningless. All it shows is that traders were trading,” he summarized.
Others, meanwhile, including Cointelegraph contributors, followed Allaire in disagreeing with the conclusion that entire markets were swayed by a single wallet.
“Wake up call; every market is ‘manipulated’. Everybody tweeting something about the price of a certain asset is ‘manipulating’ the market. Doesn’t mean you can’t make money,” trader Michaël van de Poppe summarized in a Twitter post on Monday.
“The entire premise seems to misunderstand how markets and stablecoins work,” he responded, calling the research “bad science.”
More Tether does not mean higher BTC price
The dispute comes as curious movements in Bitcoin price continue. As Cointelegraph reported, several recent jumps have sparked speculation, including one which induced the second-biggest daily gains in Bitcoin’s history.
In December 2017, Tether’s market cap was around $1 billion. But while Bitcoin’s price is now 50% lower, Tether’s market cap has increased four times over to current levels of $4.1 billion.
Therefore, the issuance of new USDT thus does not directly correspond to BTC/USD staying higher.
Focus on China “breaking” exchanges
A further theory about the 2017 activity centers on China. According to Elaine Ou, a Bloomberg contributor formerly with Bitcoin mobile wallet app Abra, exchanges were unprepared for the consequences of Beijing’s ban on crypto trading.
Citing research from crypto industry startup Chainalysis, Ou said Chinese investors had stockpiled Bitcoin using yuan in advance.
“Once the ban was in effect, the traders had no way to trade crypto back to yuan, so they shifted to using Tethers on overseas exchanges as a substitute for fiat currency (after all, the yuan is roughly pegged to the dollar),” she summarized.
The result, along with the initial coin offering, or ICO, phenomenon for exchanges was conspicuous. Ou added:
“Coinbase saw so much trading activity that the exchange ‘broke.’ And the idea that a lone whale fueled this yearlong Bitcoin bull run is more than a little silly.”
Whistleblower’s Attorney Vowed To ‘Get Rid Of Trump’ In 2017
The Democratic operative attorney representing the anti-Trump whistleblower vowed to “get rid of Trump” in 2017.
Whistleblower attorney Mark S. Zaid
Mark Zaid, the John Podesta, Clinton and Schumer-linked attorney who founded the anti-Trump nonprofit ‘Whistleblower Aid’ in 2017, tweeted “It’s very scary. We will get rid of him, and this country is strong enough to survive even him and his supporters. We have to.“
He also bragged about his connections to John Podesta with an organization he set up for litigation.
Hilariously, Zaid describes himself as a “non-partisan” attorney “handling cases involving national security, security clearances, govt investigations, media, Freedom of Information Act, & whistleblowing, according to Breitbart‘s Aaron Klein, who noted that Zaid’s “Whistleblower Aid” organization is heavily tied to far-left activist organizations and Democratic policies.
Whistleblower Aid was founded in September 2017 in the wake of Trump’s presidency to encourage government whistleblowers to come forward.
The group did not sit around waiting for whistleblowers. Upon its founding, Whistleblower Aid actively sought to attract the attention of Trump administration government employees by reportedly blasting advertisements for its whistleblower services on Metro trains, using mobile billboards that circled government offices for 10 hours a day, and handing out whistles on street corners as a gimmick to gain attention.
When Whistleblower Aid was first formed, the main banner for the mission statement of its website contained clearly anti-Trump language.
“Today our Republic is under threat. Whistleblower Aid is committed to protecting the rule of law in the United States and around the world,” read the previous statement which can still be viewed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. –Breitbart
Going Against The Wall Street Crowd Has Never Been More Profitable
Six years ago, back in 2013, we presented what we then viewed (and still view) as the best trading strategy of the New Abnormal period, when we said that buying the most shorted names while shorting the names that have the highest hedge fund and institutional ownershipis the surest way to generate alpha, to wit:
… in a world in which nothing has changed from a year ago, and where fundamentals still don’t matter, what is one to do to generate an outside market return? Simple: more of the same and punish those who still believe in an efficient, capital-allocating marketplace and keep bidding up the most shorted names.
Fast forward to today, when Bank of America confirms once again that with just one exception, the historically unvolatile 2017, going long the most shorted names and shorting the most popular ones has continued to be not only the most consistently profitable, alpha-generating strategy, but that in 2019 YTD, the top 10 crowded stocks underperformed the 10 most neglected stocks by 23%, the most on record!
One simplistic reason for this – besides the ones we enumerated six years ago – is that the most overowned stocks are generally clustered in either high growth or defensive/yield/low beta, leaving a broad swathe of high quality cyclical and value stocks neglected and inexpensive.
In the aftermath of the September quant quake, which sent growth stocks tumbling and value stocks soaring…
… and subsequent divergence in this formerly ironclad pair trade, which has also seen momentum stocks tumble to their lowest level in over two years as the recent turmoiling whiplash below the market’s surface crucified any moomentum-chasing funds…
… legacy popular, i.e. “hedge fund dinner” longs have gotten crushed, while the most shorted names have seen a tremendous rally in the past 3 months. This has also resulted in Goldman’s Hedge Fund VIP and “most concentrated” baskets getting pummeled in 2019.
It’s also why yesterday BofA speculated that with most funds underperforming the market and 29% underperformign their benchmark, “we could see a beta-chase into year-end if fund managers essentially “shoot for the moon”, driven by value stocks, to wit:
The recent market rotation from Momentum into Value should continue if macro data stabilizes – note that valuation dispersion is the highest we have seen since the financial crisis: we are seeing cycle-lows in relative multiples for Value stocks. Moreover, the fact that only 29% of funds are outperforming benchmarks could amplify the rotation if funds chase the Value rally. Active funds are still underweight Value at 0.89x.
There is another, more credible reason why such a contrarian strategy continues to be the best performing one: technicals, specifically crowding, and massive lazy bets among Wall Street professionals which, when unwound once a poorly-researched thesis collapses, result in a major overshoot in the opposite direction that is a gift to those who had the trade on.
Indeed, never has the power of positioning been more important than in 2019, when as BofA recently calculated, the overlap between positioning by mutual funds and hedge funds reached an all time high, and as a result, “positioning has been a big driver of returns in 2019” (we discussed this topic far more extensively back in April in “BofA Finds The Secret Recipe How To Consistently Beat The Market“)
To be sure, BofA also lays out its own three reasons why it believes that positioning has never been more important, and these include:
crowding has become more extreme – the overlap between long-only (LO) funds and hedge funds (HF) is at record levels, and has been for much of this year; the relative valuation of momentum (what’s working) vs. forward P/E (neglected and inexpensive) is more than two standard deviations above average;
a violent rotation from Growth to Value surfaced a few months ago,
de-risking has been de rigueur: the aggregate net exposure of HFs has dropped from 56% to 40% this year as investors grapple with recession concerns. Add a few fund redemptions to the mix, and we can see the blueprint for a positioning-driven market.
And while BofA’s reasoning is correct, the big picture still stands: for anyone who wants to consistently make money in this broken market in which nothing is as it seems, and in which the vast majority is always wrong, the best way to do that is to do what we said back in 2013, namely to always bet against the crowd on both the long and short side.
The bottom line: when we said 6 years ago to buy the most hated names while shorting the most loved ones, we were right. As shown by BofA, this is how much alpha this strategy has returned in subsequent years:
2014: +17.8% (12.3% from shorts, 5.5% from longs)
2015: +12.6% (3.9% from shorts, 8.7% from longs)
2016: +7.5% (13.4% from shorts, -5.9% from longs)
2017: -10.6% (-9.5% from shorts, -1.1% from longs)
2018: +5.0% (0.4% from shorts, 4.6% from longs)
2019 YTD: 23% (10.1% from shorts, 13.3% from longs)
The question now is whether this apparently still obscure trade will finally stop generating alpha if more investors put it on. On the other hand, since by definition there will always be stocks that are “most crowded” and “most shorted”, this may be a strategy that is limited to those who are relatively small and nimble and can avoid moving the entire market. Which incidentally may be the latest reason why this is a market where smaller, contrarian traders will be rewarded even as the “whales” who trade based on idea dinner recommendations are doomed to fade into obscurity.
As The Hill notes, Taylor is viewed as a key witness who previously testified in meticulous detail about what he considered an effort by Trump and his allies to pressure Ukraine into opening investigations that would benefit Trump politically.
In leaked copies of his 15-page opening statement, Taylor voiced concerns that the Trump administration had withheld nearly $400 million in aid as leverage to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open investigations into interference in the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden, one of his leading 2020 political rivals.
Panicking Momentum Investors Capitulate In Record Outflow Scramble
After September’s quant quake, which saw the biggest shocks to factor-based traders since the financial crisis, October (and November) echoed the collapse (after a brief fake-out bounce).
Notably both the plunges in market-neutral momentum coincide with short-momentum gains…
Source: Bloomberg
In fact, it appears, October was just too much to handle after September’s chaos as investors capitulated, withdrawing almost $1.6 billion from momentum-focused ETFs in October, the most for any month on record, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data going back to 2012.
Source: Bloomberg
Most of the pain came from the $8.9 billion iShares Edge MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF, with investors pulling more than $1 billion from the long-only strategy, the fund also had its worst month ever…
Source: Bloomberg
“This very long bull market has been dominated by growth, and the last several years primarily by momentum,” said Craig Birk, chief investment officer at Personal Capital, which oversees $10 billion.
“Eventually, those cycles do always revert. It’s not uncommon for them to be very long and very strong.”
Simply put, betting on past winners being future winners (and past losers being future losers) has collapsed in the last two months.
The brother of dead disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein said he had unusual injuries on his wrists and shoulders.
Mark Epstein, 65, said there were two contusions on both of Jeffrey’s wrists, an injury to his left forearm, and muscle hemorrhaging of his left shoulder or deltoid.
“Those are unexplained. Was he handcuffed and struggled? Was someone holding his wrists? The marks on his wrist are unexplained,”he told Fox News.
His comments about his brother’s death in August—which the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office said was due to suicide by hanging—come after famed pathologist Dr. Michael Baden said there were questions about Epstein’s neck injury.
“Did the injuries happen a week before or at the time of the incident? We have to look at the microscopic slides to see when the injuries occurred,” Dr. Baden said of the injuries noted by his brother, according to Fox. “The brother requested this information three months ago and he still has not gotten it.”
Mark Epstein also said that he attempted to obtain his brother’s file from the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office in mid-August, but he was told that it has to be processed by the U.S. Department of Justice first.
A New York Medical Examiner’s car is parked outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center where financier Jeffrey Epstein was being held in New York City on Aug. 10, 2019. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)
“They’re playing games,” Mark told Fox on Wednesday. He explained:
“I’ve done the appropriate requests with Justice twice, and have heard nothing. I was told someone is looking into it.”
Baden said, however, that the unexplained injuries on Epstein’s body that were mentioned by his brother might have been caused by the July 23 incident, where he was discovered in the fetal position with marks around his neck at the Manhattan Correctional Center. He was put on suicide watch for a short period of time before being taken off of it weeks before his death.
Mark said that he’s unsure what happened to his brother, who was arrested and jailed without bail on sex trafficking charges in July.
“I have no standing to sue … people should know the truth about what can happen in a federal facility,” Mark said.
“My brother might have been murdered. This is not about me.”
In late October, Baden made the claims on Fox News, saying that he was hired by the brother of the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, is seen in a file photograph. (KRQE via AP)
Baden said that Epstein’s neck injuries were “extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation.”
“I’ve not seen in fifty years where that occurred in a suicidal hanging,” he said.
His comments drew a response from the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, which said it stands by the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide.
“Our investigation concluded that the cause of Mr. Epstein’s death was hanging and the manner of death was suicide. We stand by that determination,” Sampson told the Washington Examiner. “We continue to share information around the medical investigation with Mr. Epstein’s family, their representatives, and their pathology consultant. The original medical investigation was thorough and complete. There is no reason for a second medical investigation by our office.”
Weeks after Epstein’s death, a judge announced that the criminal case against him was closed.
“Because Jeffrey Epstein, the defendant, died while this case was pending, and therefore before a final judgment was issued, the Indictment must be dismissed under rule of abatement,” Judge Richard Berman wrote in late August.
SEC’s Clayton Slashes Investor Safeguards To Entice More Companies To Go Public
It looks as though the Securities and Exchange Commission isn’t happy enough just allowing CEOs like Elon Musk to retain their C-suite position after committing egregious frauds like faking the largest buyout in history. The commission, under Jay Clayton, continues to make life easier for corporations while making protecting investors a second priority.
Since Jay Clayton took over as head of the SEC, 17 changes have been made and 9 more have been proposed, that are part of a broad push to help “reverse a 20-year decline in U.S. public company listings”, according to Reuters. The changes include modernizing disclosures and cutting regulatory costs for companies – and just making life easier for public companies in general.
This, of course, is not without its down side: these new rules will weaken investor safeguards or diminish their rights.
Anna Pinedo, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown said: “Under Clayton’s leadership, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been quietly chipping away at an array of rules, many quite technical in nature. Although individually these haven’t gotten much attention, in aggregate the SEC’s rulemaking agenda under Clayton adds up to positive changes for public companies.”
SEC spokeswoman Natalie Strom responded: “The initiatives advanced under his leadership maintain or enhance investor protections, including by ensuring today’s investors receive the material information necessary to make investment decisions.”
Clayton was appointed by President Trump and presented with a mandate to entice more companies to go public. Clayton promised to boost jobs and pensions by making it more attractive for small companies to sell shares on public exchanges, while at the same time committing to protect mom and pop investors.
There has been a nearly 50% decline in the number of listed companies over the past two decades, which many companies attribute to increasing amounts of red tape.
Tom Quaadman, executive vice president of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness said: “Clayton recognizes that the decline of public companies is a threat to the long-term competitiveness of the American economy. Clayton has taken a holistic step-by-step approach to reverse this situation.”
But by cutting companies disclosure requirements, investors are privy to less information.
Robert Jackson, one of five SEC commissioners who has opposed several measures, said: “The deregulatory agenda now advancing at the SEC is too often driven by lobbyist intuition rather than hard facts about the markets we oversee.”
One of Clayton’s proposals, for instance, will relax a requirement created by Congress in 2002 following the Enron scandal that forced companies with less than $100 million in revenue to have to have an independent auditor sign off on their financials. Another of his proposals would cap financial rewards for whistleblowers, reducing the incentive for company insiders to come forward with evidence of wrongdoing. This proposal may be “softened” by Clayton, as it has been fiercely attacked by corporate governance advocates.
Clayton has also proposed changes that would limit the ability of shareholders to submit proposals on items like executive compensation to company management.
And he has added oversight in some areas of the market. For instance, some measures that aim to simplify financial disclosures make it easier for investors to identify material information and gives investors more information on how company employees deal in their stock. He has also passed a package of measures this year that require stockbrokers to disclose potential conflicts of interest and the commissions that they earn.
Cryptocurrency ventures have also slowed dramatically, as Clayton has said they should be regulated like stock offerings.
Companies have been primarily choosing to stay private due to the costs associated with going public. Investment bankers, lawyers and auditors can all rack up bills in the millions and ongoing compliance ensures that these costs continue as a company stays public.
At the same time, deregulation in the private market since 1996 has made it easier for firms to raise money from private investors, leaving most Americans out of the equation. Over the last 5 years, at least $150 billion has been raised in private equity and debt placements, compared to $90 billion in the 5 years prior.
And even though the total number of public companies is lower than 20 years ago, their total value has doubled, partly due to mergers and acquisitions. The IPO market has improved this year, as well. By the end of October, 37 small cap listings had generated between $300 million and $1 billion each from IPOs, on track to beat 2018’s tally of 39 listings. Many bankers have attributed this to a rising stock market.
Jim Cooney, head of equity capital markets for the Americas at Bank of America, said: “Although these new tools have been put in place and positively received, the continued strength of the broader market has been the primary factor driving IPO volumes.”
Clayton, who was seen as timid about making harsh changes upon his appointment, has been more inclined to push through measures despite Democratic dissent lately. Two of the five current commissioners are Democrats, while the rest were picked by Clayton.
Commissioner Jackson, a Democrat in the minority at the SEC, concluded by saying that Clayton’s changes during his tenure have come with “real costs for real people”.
Stellar 10Y Auction: Foreign Demand Surges; Biggest Stop Through In 12 Months
One day after a blockbuster 3Y auction, moments ago the US Treasury sold $27 billion in 10Y paper in what was a stellar auction of US benchmark paper.
Starting at the top, the high yield of 1.809%, while notably above October’s 1.5900% following the sharp selloff in the past few days, stopped through the 1.8200% When Issued by 1.1bps, the biggest “stop through” in one year, since November 2018.
The Bid to Cover also was a notable improvement, rising from 2.43 to 2.49, far above the 2.36 six auction average, and the highest bid to cover since April.
Finally, the internals were the piece de resistance, with the Indirect takedown surging from 58.5% to 64.5%, the highest since June, and leaving Directs holding on to 12.4%, the lowest since May, while Dealers were left holding 23.1% of the paper, the lowest since June.
Overall, a stellar auction, and one which pushed intraday 10Y yields to session lows, now that the selloff across the curve appears to be over, with the yield on the benchmark US Treasury sliding from 1.86% to 1.81% after the auction.
A video out of China shows a citizen being publicly shamed and having his photo and ID card flashed up on a big screen for crossing the road on a red light.
“Chinese facial recognition system to discourage minor traffic violations. Cross the road when you shouldn’t and a picture of you with your name, ID card number pop up on the big screen for everyone to see,” tweeted Matthew Brennan.
Chinese facial recognition system to discourage minor traffic violations. Cross the road when you shouldn’t and a picture of you with your name, ID card number pop up on the big screen for everyone to see. pic.twitter.com/M3uRILtYEG
The Communist country’s vast network of facial recognition surveillance cameras are being linked to citizen ID cards, producing the kind of dystopia that would make even George Orwell roll in his grave.
Under its social credit score system, China punishes people who criticize the government, as well as numerous other behaviors, including;
– Bad driving.
– Smoking on trains.
– Buying too many video games.
– Buying too much junk food.
– Buying too much alcohol.
– Calling a friend who has a low credit score .
– Having a friend online who has a low credit score.
– Posting “fake news” online.
– Visiting unauthorized websites.
– Walking your dog without a leash.
– Letting your dog bark too much.
Back in August, the Communist state bragged about how it had prevented 2.5 million “discredited entities” from purchasing plane tickets and 90,000 people from buying high speed train tickets in the month of July alone.
As we previously highlighted, Chinese citizens will also be forced to pass a facial recognition test to use the Internet.
Thank God here in the west, we don’t get publicly shamed, deplatformed and punished for our political opinions or perceived misbehavior.
Oh wait…
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