Tag: news

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Yesterday, the alternative media purge was boldly advanced in a coordinated effort to silence people who dissent from establishment views.

It’s just one more step toward a monopoly on information by those who hate freedom. At this rate, they’ll soon have unquestioned access to the minds of more than 2 billion people. And this should terrify everyone who wants to be free to question the status quo and to seek a wide range of information.

Hundreds of alternative media site administrators logged onto Facebook to discover that their accounts had been removed. Soon after, many of these sites and their writers found that their Twitter accounts had also been suspended.

Popular pages like The AntiMedia (2.1 million fans), The Free Thought Project (3.1 million fans), Press for Truth (350K fans),  Police the Police (1.9 million fans), Cop Block (1.7 million fans), and Punk Rock Libertarians (125K fans) are just a few of the ones which were unpublished.

Why were these alternative media accounts removed?

The reason given doesn’t really add up.

Facebook told the LA Times that these pages had violated the company’s spam policies.

“Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a blog post. “People will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here.” (source)

But this isn’t actually what their spam policy says. Here’s the policy.

We work hard to limit the spread of commercial spam to prevent false advertising, fraud, and security breaches, all of which detract from people’s ability to share and connect. We do not allow people to use misleading or inaccurate information to collect likes, followers, or shares.

Do Not:

• Artificially increase distribution for financial gain

• Create or use fake accounts or compromise other people’s accounts to

• Impersonate or pretend to be a business, organization, public figure, or private individual

• Attempt to create connections, create content, or message people

• Restrict access to content by requiring people to like, share, or recommend before viewing

• Encourage likes, shares, or clicks under false pretenses

• Maliciously use login credentials or personally identifiable information by:

• Attempting to gather or share login credentials or personally identifiable information

• Using another person’s login credentials or personally identifiable information

• Promise non-existent Facebook features

(source)

The Washington Post originally said that these pages were purged for “pushing political messages for profit” as you can see by their URL:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-purged-over-accounts-pages-pushing-political-messages-profit/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.fa1a364488b3

But of course, since they too push political messages for profit (waaah, Trump!) as do all the other corporate media outlets out there, they changed their headline to “Facebook purged over 800 U.S. accounts and pages for pushing political spam.”

The fact that many of these accounts were also suspended by Twitter shortly thereafter should tell you that this is a coordinated effort to silence large swaths of the population.

Of course, the best coverage of this is from…Russia.

Sputnik News contacted many of the alternative journalists who were purged to get their take on what happened. You may recall that basically every blogger outside the establishment media was accused of being secretly Russian during the 2016 election by the Washington Post, so perhaps actual Russians have a vested interest in the truth coming out on this topic.

My friend John Vibes is an amazing person who contributes to The Free Thought Project. He said:

This signifies a re-consolidation of the media. Cable news media controlled the narrative for most of modern history, but the internet has lowered that barrier to entry and allowed the average person to become the media themselves. This obviously took market share and influence away from the traditional media, and it has allowed for a more diverse public conversation. Now it seems the platforms that have monopolized the industry are favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices. So now, instead of allowing more people to have a voice, these platforms are creating an atmosphere where only powerful media organizations are welcome, just as we had on cable news.

People think that we are just providing an activist spin on the news, but they don’t see the families struggling to have their voice heard. For example, when someone is shot by police, mainstream media sources often just republish the press release from the police department, without presenting the victim’s side of the story. We give the victims and their families a voice, which is essential to keep power in check. This also goes for bigger issues like foreign policy as well; multiple full-scale invasions of Syria have been prevented because of information that the alternative media made viral. (source)

Nicholas Bernabe of The AntiMedia is another alternative journalist I consider a friend and support wholeheartedly. He’s worked tirelessly to be a voice of truth in a world of lies. He told Sputnik:

Our approach generally is to cover stories and angles that corporate media underreport or misreport and to amplify activist and anti-war voices and stories. All of our content is professionally fact-checked and edited.

I got into this line of work because I felt there was a need for media that challenged mainstream assumptions and biases in politics. I wanted to shed light on corruption and wrongdoing against oppressed peoples and cover the harsh truth about American foreign policy.

Over the last 28 days, we reached 7,088,000 people on Facebook.

The timing of this purge is rather dubious in my view, coming shortly before the midterm elections. This could be an attempt by Facebook itself to affect the outcome of the coming elections. The Twitter suspension caught me by surprise. I can only speculate that these suspensions were a coordinated effort to stifle our message ahead of the coming elections. (source)

Remember, this is coordinated, across multiple platforms.

Remember when this happened to Alex Jones?

Back in September, an assault was led by YouTube, Google, and Facebook against Alex Jones of Infowars fame. All of his accounts were shut down in quick succession, followed by his credit card processing companies and his newsletter service providers. I wrote at the time, “Alex Jones is just the beginning of this purge. It’s going to get much worse.”

Meanwhile, other dissenting voices were being silenced on social media with limited reach and “shadow banning.”

Infowars is a massive profit machine. But what happens when similar attacks are launched on smaller alternative media outlets? It hits us right in the wallet. And if they’re hit hard enough, they’ll cease to be able to function.

Jones has a lot of money so this may not be the end of him, but for most website owners, this would be the absolute end of our ability to do business. And to be able to bring the information we bring, we do have to run our websites as businesses. It’s far more expensive than most people realize to run a site. I know that my own operating costs every month are more than $2000. A site as big as Jones’s would be many times that amount. When all your avenues of monetization are cut off, it wouldn’t be hard for a site – and the dissent and information they share – to cease to exist. (source)

This is not just about Facebook or Twitter. It’s about the ability to find dissenting information, period. Google is in on it too. A leaked document from Google supported the idea of censorship.

Another Google document has found its way into the public domain, this time through Breitbart. The news publication reports that an 85-page briefing entitled “The Good Censor,” advises tech companies to “police tone instead of content” and to not “take sides” when censoring users…

Google might continue to shift with the times – changing its stance on how much or how little it censors (due to public, governmental or commercial pressures). If it does, acknowledgment of what this shift in position means for users and for Google is essential. Shifting blindly or silently in one direction or another rightly incites users’ fury…

The Google “internal research” even quotes outside experts like George Soros who express justification of censorship in non-U.S. markets, noting that Google should police “tone instead of content” and “censor everyone equally,” as Breitbart put it. (source)

There are 2 trillion Google searches per day. PER. DAY.

That should give you an idea of the power of something like Google. Combine it with billions of Facebook and Twitter users and you can easily see the influence wielded here. This is where free thought goes to die.

Ron Paul reminds us that truth is treason.

Ron Paul, former senator and the libertarian voice of reason, said when Jones was purged:

“You get accused of treasonous activity and treasonous speech because in an empire of lies the truth is treason,” Paul told the Russia-based news outlet. “Challenging the status quo is what they can’t stand and it unnerves them, so they have to silence people.”

“Some of us tell the truth about our government, they call us treasonous and say we’re speaking out of line and they’d like to punish us, and I think that’s part of what’s happening with social media,” Paul told RT, adding that he hopes anti-government or anti-war voices can eliminate their “dependency” on the current social media platforms.

“I’m just hoping that technology can stay ahead of it all and that we can have real alternatives to the dependency on Twitter and other companies that have been working hand in glove with the government,” Paul added. (source)

Here’s a video from last month with Dr. Paul’s thoughts about the social media purge. In it, he reminds us that Facebook is a private entity so they do have every right to remove the pages they wish. The danger – and the area in which this treads on the First Amendment – is their direct ties to the government.

This affects everyone.

If you’re reading this and you shrug because you, personally, don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account, you’re missing the bigger point.

Consider the fact that the “population” of Facebook is bigger than the populations of the US, China, and Brazil combined.

That’s how many people will now only receive one side of the story on things like war, politics, guns, and current events. People will believe what they’re told because there is no alternative information presented. There are no questions asked. It’s literally the textbook definition of brainwashing.

Definition of brainwashing

1: a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas

2: persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship (source)

(Here’s an article from Psychology Today that discusses how Facebook is, in fact, brainwashing people for profit.)

Social media is a massive source of information and influence today. If the information is rigged by entities that support socialism, gun control, and the end of privacy, we’re doomed. 2.2 billion active users will be bombarded with these messages without any real option for the other side of the story.

So regardless of whether you, personally, participate, this will color popular sentiment to a massive degree. It will grow the cognitive dissonance that assures people of things like “the government is your friend” and that “you don’t need to protect yourself, the police will take care of you.”

People who hate freedom will get unfettered access to the minds of 2 billion people. That should scare the crap out of you.

What can you do about the alternative media purge?

It’s possible but unlikely that social pressure on Facebook and Twitter will push the outlets into restoring the accounts of these alternative media networks. But even if they are restored, I suspect their reach will dwindle even further.

Here are a few things you can do:

• Subscribe to the newsletters of websites you enjoy. Don’t count on seeing their work on social media. (You can subscribe to my newsletter here, incidentally.)

• Support them financially if you can. Many sites have Patreon accounts or donate buttons

• Bookmark them and visit regularly – if they have ads, your visits help them to make the money they need to stay afloat.

• Share their articles on your own social media accounts. If they can’t get their work out there, we can help.

• Join alternative social media outlets like Gab and MeWe.

The truth is getting harder and harder to find. You’re going to have to dig for it.

We’re watching the biggest campaign against freedom of speech and thought that has ever occurred in our part of the world.

The alternative media purge is just the beginning. And we should all be very concerned.

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A battle royale of Wall Street quants has erupted.

In one corner, we have JPMorgan’s chief quant, Marko Kolanovic who moments ago said that the selling pressure from systematic, vol-targeting strategies such as risk-parity, CTAs, and trend following is mostly over and that the “current setup favors buying the dip.“

In the other corner, Barclays’s quant Manesh Deshpande completely disagrees with Kolanovic, and overnight wrote that while “some signs of capitulation are emerging” he thinks that “more selling is yet to come.“

A lot more.

Deshpande, like so many others in recent days, writes that Thursday’s sell-off was similar to the Feb 2018 liquidation, in that there was indiscriminate selling across equities and the ratio of put to call volume increased significantly.

However, unlike Kolanovic who is confident that the selling has now been mostly exhausted as we discussed earlier, Desphande warns that there are no signs of ETF selling which accompanies sell-offs.

In fact, over the past few days ETF flows have not turned negative yet and in fact have been mildly positive ($0.59 and $0.34 billion for the 10th October and 11th October, respectively). Thus this class of investors has not capitulated yet, according to the Barclays quant. Looking at history as a guide, ETF outflows between Feb 1st and Feb 9th earlier this year was ~$35Bn or 1.7% of AUM. Given the higher AUM currently, ETF investors are likely to sell ~$40Bn over the next few days.

It’s not just ETFs. Compared to the sell-off during February 18, 2018 which was driven by the VIX complex, the current sell-off options complex has been relatively orderly. In particular the SPX Skew as shown below has not steepened significantly despite the sharpness of the sell-off.

Meanwhile, Desphande notes that the market activity in SPX Put/Call option volume ratio has spiked “and is showing some signs of capitulation among investors as they scramble to buy protection.”

So in light of the recent surge in the VIX, which as Goldman calculated overnight was the 25th largest one day spike…

… the spike in equity volatility is likely to drive further systematic selling from Volatility Control Funds according to Barclays. How much?

To answer that question, Deshpande first estimates that the AUM in the Volatility control/Targeting strategies is ~$355Bn.These funds decrease their overall leverage to maintain fixed portfolio volatility (the higher the VIX, the more the selling), creating a positive feedback loop:

Since the forecasted volatility increases during market declines, these funds sell risky assets that would exacerbate the selloff. The precise details of how portfolio volatility is forecast are likely to vary across funds but we use the S&P Daily Risk Control 10% index (ticker: SPXT10UT) as a benchmark strategy. This index rebalances between S&P exposure and cash to maintain a 10% volatility target.

Next, the Barc quant calculates allocation trigger points, and writes that until the past week the allocation according to the benchmark strategy was 100% to equities. However, with the sell-off, the allocation has been reduced to ~65%.

Putting it all together, Barclays reaches a conclusion that is diametrically opposite that of Kolanovic, i.e., “we expect further systematic selling to the tune of ~$130Bn from these funds to reduce allocation to equities over the next couple of days.“

Putting this number in the context of the February 2018 VIXtermination crash, back the systematic volatility control funds sold over $150Bn exacerbating the volatility and lead to a second leg lower. So between the $80BN or so already sold, and the $130BN still left to sell, by the time the systematic selling is over, the aggregate vol-targeting deleveraging (selling) will be substantially higher than what was experienced in February when the S&P tumbled as much as 10%.

So in this Wall Street battle royal of quants, who will be victorious: JPMorgan’s cheerful Kolanovic or Barclays’ gloomy Deshpande? Considering that the Dow opened 400 points higher and shortly after noon turned negative, if this selling accelerates, especially into the critical last hour of trading, it may well be a technical knock out.

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Russia is attempting to woo European countries like Germany into a program of reconstruction cooperation in Syria, where broad swathes of the country have been destroyed through seven years of grinding proxy war; however, Pentagon officials have charged Russia with wanting to “seize” Syria’s oil and gas resources. 

This comes as the United States has resolved to keep its over 2,000 troops in the east of Syria while vowing zero reconstruction aid so long as Iranian troops and advisers are present in the country. This week a top US military official even went so far as to accuse Russia of seeking “to take advantage in any way they could” and that a “great power competition” for Syria will continue to shape its post-war future. 

Air Force Brig. Gen. Leah Lauderback, who served as director of intelligence for Operation Inherent Resolve until June, told an Army conference that “Great power competition was an objective by Russia,” and that specifically they are looking to “seize” oilfields in Syria. But a Russian official has slammed the US and Europe as living in a “fantasy land” if they still have removal of Assad on the table as “radicals will take over that will slit people’s throats’’ should regime change happen.

Gen. Lauderback said of Russia in the context of discussing US anti-ISIS operations at an Army conference in D.C. this week: “Economically, they wanted to seize oilfields, they wanted bids and contracts to develop Syria for infrastructure in order to stabilize Syria over the long term,” she said according to Al-Monitor news.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has reportedly been personally lobbying German Chancellor Angela Merkel over Syria reconstruction, especially as the two met outside Berlin last August, as the vital link solving or at least greatly reducing the migrant crisis which has become a political bombshell across Europe of late.

Russia says, simply enough, that if Syria is rebuilt then Syrians can go home — a process that’s already begun in a number of government-held major cities like Aleppo after their liberation from jihadist forces. But many European leaders, including in Germany, remain on the fence over European demands for a transition away from Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Russia meanwhile appears to be arguing that neither the US nor Europe can do anything to make this happen as the long push for regime change has utterly failed and Assad is “here to stay” — as even the Washington Post reluctantly acknowledged recently. 

According to a new Bloomberg report, Russia’s latest diplomatic efforts to woo Europe toward reconstruction include “efforts to organize a Syria summit in Turkey with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.” Vitaly Naumkin, a top Russian aide on Syria policy, told Bloomberg the Europeans shouldn’t follow the dictates of Washington on an issue that’s more directly impacting European shores. 

Naumkin questioned, “I don’t see why Europe should always bow down to Washington,’’ and added “If Europe thinks we can get rid of Assad and some moderate opposition forces will come to power, they’re living in fantasy land. Radicals will take over that will slit people’s throats.’’

Bloomberg noted that “the bill for postwar reconstruction is estimated at $250 billion by the United Nations, and Western powers are rejecting Russian appeals to chip in.”

“Why don’t you want to help people returning to Syria, even in government-held areas?’’  Naumkin questioned further in the Bloomberg interview. 

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has recently said Germany will pitch in for Syria post-war reconstruction only if there’s a political transition away from Assad that will include free elections. France has also indicated it won’t engage in reconstruction talks or attend the proposed summit in Turkey without similar guarantees. 

However, Naumkin pointed out something that’s been demonstrated time and again in Syria: that “there are no alternative figures’’ to Assad, who would win any election even if held tomorrow. 

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Earlier today, we discussed how after the last 2-day furious selloff, the human-machine-human fingerpointing blame game had begun, with carbon-based traders accusing such systematic and risk-targeting quant strategies as risk-parity funds, CTAs, volatility targeting funds, and trend followers (which account for about $1.5 trillion in assets) for being behind the sharp selloff. This followed our own take on how much selling CTAs were responsible for on both Wednesday and Thursday, after selling triggers were hit.

Of course, any time there is a discussion of systemic, and quant, trading – and especially selling – JPM’s head quant Marko Kolanovic can not be far behind. Unfortunately, just like during the February selloff, which Kolanovic failed to predict, so this time Marko’s value added is only from the perspective of a post mortem of what everyone else has already observed.

Furthermore, it was Kolanovic who just a few weeks back said that there was no pressure from systematic selling, and instead the only driver of significance was corporate profits which is why he predicted smooth sailing ahead.

Oops.

So a few moments ago, having failed to predict this week’s selling, the JPMorgan quant released his latest market update and wrote that Wednesday’s selloff was largely technical in nature, “with systematic strategies following the same selling template as in the Feb 5th selloff”, a template which Kolanovic had failed to notice then too.

Discussing the catalyst behind the selling, Kolanovic said that fundamental fears were about rising yields and the Fed’s more hawkish stance, while noting that “in terms of systematic strategies that drove the selloff – by far the biggest selling pressure was from option gamma hedging on Wednesday.“

But don’t worry: the same option gamma hedging risk that Kolanovic failed to warn about, is now supposedly gone or rather, as he puts it “balanced”, and “can turn into a positive impact, i.e. option hedgers buying equities.”

For instance, if the market were to hold its gains during the day, it could result in a squeeze higher by end of the day from gamma hedging flows.

On the other hand, one can counter that with the Dow wiping out most of its gains (at least until the Kolanovic note made the rounds), the selling can accelerate.

According to Kolanovic, other large selling flows were from the same CTAs – which we cautioned about on both Wednesday and Thursday, yet which JPMorgan failed to mention even once – that started in indices such as Russell 2000 and Nasdaq last week, eventually spreading into the S&P 500 on Wednesday.

CTA selling tends to be relatively fast and is likely largely behind us given the already low CTA equity beta, and the fact that 12M momentum on S&P 500 will most likely hold positive (>2550). The remaining part of systematic selling is from volatility targeting (insurance, parity funds, etc.) which will go on for several more days.

In any case, with the market suffering its biggest weekly selloff since February, one which Kolanovic not only did not foresee but instead called for further upside, he is now predictably, optimistic:

Looking at these three groups of sellers, CTAs have already executed the bulk of their selling, option hedging risk is now symmetric, and Volatility Targeters will sell over a longer period of time. As such, we think that the majority of systematic selling is behind us (~70%).

Additionally, Kolanovic notes that since volatility targeting funds tend to sell over a number of days (e.g. 3-10 days for various models), “these flows should be easier to digest by the market”… unless of course they aren’t.

In addition to model buying, the JPMorganite also hopes to boost trader bullishness by noting that flows that may counter selling are “buybacks (e.g. ASR programs not subject to blackout), fundamental buyers attracted by cheap valuation (P/E below historical average), as well as fixed weight portfolio rebalances (e.g. pensions rebalancing on triggers).”

Kolanovic then correctly notes that the amount of systematic assets and leverage was smaller heading into this week than in February (estimate 10-30% smaller); after all most of the February gamma was concentrated amid inverse VIX ETFs, most of whom mercifully blew up after February 5.

So what is Kolanovic’ advice? Simple: buy the dip…

Given that equity indices already experienced comparable declines to February (and e.g. Russell 2000 even a bigger drawdown), we think that the current setup favors buying the dip.

On the other hand anyone who bought the Dow when it opened some 400 points higher was probably not too happy when it dipped in the red shortly after noon. Which is also why Kolanovic felt the urge to hedge his latest rosy forecast:

A risk to the thesis is that market volatility continues to move higher which would result in further outflows from Volatility Targeting funds.

Why does Kolanovic continue to push such a surprisingly optimistic agenda when most of his peers, including Goldman and Morgan Stanley have turned increasingly bearish? For the following simple reason: “We still expect the market to go higher into year-end, and maintain our S&P 500 price target of 3000. We expect a net positive earnings season in October, strong buyback activity in November, and positive seasonal effects in December.“

Hopefully this prediction will be more successful than the one Marko did not make about this week’s option gamma hedging-linked selling. As for what’s really taking place behind the scenes, it appears that JPMorgan still has some stocks to dump to retail hands, while Goldman and MS are largely done liquidating.

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Much is being made of the modest bounce (a couple hundred Dow points ain’t what it used to be), but while this week has been extremely volatile, as former fund manager and fx trader Richard Breslow notes, “the big moves this week actually tell us very little.”

With so many ill winds blowing, Breslow notes that it makes some sense that traders don’t want to be caught out on a limb. Watching today’s price action and these, almost, end- of-week levels it all smacks of traders trimming back positions that have been working the last few days. I wouldn’t read more into it than that. Other than to note that if asset prices don’t go out at any of the extremes we’ve seen this week, it implies that these latest moves haven’t created new themes that investors just can’t bear to live without.

Via Bloomberg,

Given the noise level we’re experiencing and the conflicting headlines buffeting assets and emotions, I get the strong sense that traders would like to put this one in the history books early. Fridays, after a busy week, can go either way. Render traders impervious to the latest whatever, or make them hyper-sensitive. Today feels like it’s the former that is the hoped for outcome. Now we’ll see if events allow that to happen.

You’ll hear a lot about equities and their 200-day moving averages. Which have mostly been under threat this week.

Dow futures have bounced back above theirs. As has the much maligned Nasdaq 100. S&P 500 futures have spent the day pirouetting around the level, which interestingly enough is pretty much in the middle of the day’s range. The Russell 2000 is unambiguous. It broke below earlier this week with brio, and is trying to look for support. Which, perhaps significantly, is very close to yesterday’s lows. Although, that’s putting it on a pretty tight leash.

Where these indexes finish the week will have significance for traders. Right up until we open on Monday.

Traders hoping we hold these lines will do their best to ignore how weak other global equity markets continue to look, despite today’s bounces.

Chinese shares will be scrutinized from the get go next week, but keep an eye on the DAX. Especially to see how it reacts to however this weekend’s Bavarian State elections turn out.

Ten-year Treasury yields are back near a no-man’s land. But yesterday’s move looked to be positioning panic rather than a convincing rejection of recent highs.

Watch 3.20% and 3.12% to give an indication of where sentiment will lie going into next week. Just for the fun of it, I’m using 3.19%-3.15% for the close touch.

As for the dollar, it is simply not in play at the moment. It has so many conflicting forces working for and against it that it has chosen to be exactly in the middle of the range that has existed since the end of the second quarter.

Anyone claiming there are significant technical signals pointing to its direction are torturing the data. However, if I was forced to, and I can’t resist, I’d say that it’s easier to make a technical case for it to go up from here.

And just as a reminder, if you are tempted to trade oil futures today, use the S&P 500 as your guide, not some unhelpful guesses about supply and demand.

Have a good weekend.

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As Jean-Claude Juncker famously admitted (perhaps after one too many bottles of Margaux), “when it gets serious you have to lie.”

And so it appears AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson may have felt the same way last year amid the pressure to get a deal done with Time Warner.

In November 2017, as the battle escalated with antitrust officials over the $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, Stephenson – amid enormous pressure from uber-liberal executives demanding he stand up to Trump’s CNN ‘fake news’ attacks – was adamant that “throughout this process, I have never offered to sell CNN and have no intention of doing so.”

At the time, Bloomberg reported – and it was continuously rumored – that discussions of individual assets, including the division that includes CNN, had come up in talks between the companies and Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

Today, October 2018, during a deposition in the government’s appeal of the deal’s judicial approval, recounted the conversation he had with the government in Nov 2017:

According to a transcript, he was questioned by a Justice Department lawyer about the meeting with Delrahim.

“And during that meeting, you raised the subject of CNN?” the Justice Department lawyer said.

“I did,” Stephenson said.

“OK. And you were the first one to raise the subject of CNN?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Stephenson, who went on to say, “I asked Mr. Delrahim, I think my language, this will be pretty close: ‘If I were to walk in here tomorrow and tell you I had gotten my head around selling CNN, would that allow you to wave this deal through?’ And he said, unequivocally, ‘No.’”

Of course this is not lying or ‘fake’ news – it is alternative facts as Bloomberg reports that this clash with Stephenson’s public statements at the time is a misunderstanding:

• To the Justice Department, that was a proposal to sell, the government said

• Stephenson wasn’t offering to sell CNN in the meeting with Delrahim, according to a person familiar with the case. Instead, he was trying to understand the Justice Department’s core problem with the proposed merger given that similar deals had been resolved in the past without requiring asset sales, the person said.

Finally, we note that Stephenson said in the deposition there were reasons to wonder whether Trump’s animus toward CNN was driving the Justice Department’s opposition to the deal.

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After surging more than 40 points at the open, the S&P 500 has just printed new session lows, with the index now just 0.2% higher on the day; banks, utes, energy, industrials and staples are all lower on the day while tech and discretionary continue to lead the day’s gains but are also paring their advance.

Meanwhile, the Dow has just turned red, having dropped over 400 points from the open, with small caps well red by now.

And all the major US equity indices are now below their 200DMAs.

And Treasuries are bid.

One likely reason: the catalyst for yesterday’s attempted ramp, the report that Trump would meet with China’s president Xi Jinping at the November G-20 summit was just put in doubt by Larry Kudlow:

• KUDLOW SAYS `NOT 100 PERCENT DECIDED’ TRUMP, XI WILL MEET

• KUDLOW: CHINA’S RESPONSES TO U.S. ASKS ARE `UNSATISFACTORY’

Europe had no better luck, with the low tick of the day for Germany’s DAX and the Stoxx 600 indexes coming right at the the close and in the red; the DAX currently sits at its lowest close since February 2017, while the SXXP closed at the weakest since December 2016.

Overnight Bank of America ominous warned that “If it doesn’t bounce now…” referring to the market. It was not clear what would happen if the initial bounce indeed turned red…

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Authored by Nicholas Colas via DataTrekResearch.com,

Yesterday’s market action broke just about every rule that might signal that the worst is past, based on what we outlined previously. Specifically:

• We didn’t get an outsized selloff at the open. Thanks to a tepid CPI print, bonds rallied modestly and the S&P actually ticked higher in the first half hour of trading.

• Instead of rallying after 10am, US stocks began to sell off. This will remind readers who were in the market during the Financial Crisis of the dreaded “margin clerk selloff” that typically occurred mid morning during 2008. Today looked a lot like that.

• Neither Boeing (10% of the Dow) or large cap Tech (25% of the S&P) could muster a positive day. Yes, Tech outperformed the rest of the market but that is cold comfort at best.

Therefore, we don’t think US equities have seen their near term lows. The typical market response to a down 4% day (like Wednesday) is a modest up day in the next session (+1.7% on average). This signals that investors think prices reflect some near term opportunity. That’s what happened in early February of this year, for example, and markets found their footing. The fact that today did not follow the traditional day-after pattern worries us.

And while we are not superstitious by nature, we get a little worried about Friday-Monday trading whenever volatility picks up. 

Case in point: a large sell program hit US stocks around 230pm today. This drove the S&P 500 down 20 points in a matter of 15 minutes. If you have similar action today, and investors have all weekend to stew over their losses, that sets up for a larger selloff on Monday morning.

On the glass half-full side of things, three points:

• Emerging markets outperformed US stocks today, down 1.0% versus the S&P’s 2.1% decline. News reports that Presidents Trump and Xi will meet at the next G20 meeting in late November helped here. Also, the “VIX of” Emerging Markets sits at levels not seen since April, so the chance for a bounce here is good.

• EAFE (developed Europe, Asia, Far East) stocks likewise outperformed the S&P today, down 1.4%, and both this geography and EM have done mildly better than US stocks over the last week. The S&P is down 6.0% over the last 5 trading sessions; EM is off 4.5% and EAFE is 4.8% lower. If non-US markets are starting to bottom, that could bode well for next week.

• Earnings season kicks off on Friday with Citi, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and PNC reporting. Analysts’ expectations for Financial sector results are wonky: 3% revenue growth but 34% earnings growth. Still, positive color on the US economy from bank CEOs may help calm investors’ frayed nerves.

Our bottom line: the next two days are too fraught with uncertainty to consider increasing portfolio risk. During volatile periods, we stick to a rules-based approach to determine investable bottoms. And yesterday broke too many rules.

We’re not out of the woods yet.

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ABC executives regret their “knee-jerk” decision to fire Roseanne Barr, and now believe that the network’s spin-off series The Conners will fail under the weight of its own politically correct hubris, reports the Daily Mail, citing two anonymous execs. 

“We didn’t think it through properly. What Roseanne did was wrong but we shouldn’t have rushed to fire her. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction by Ben [Sherwood] and Channing [Dungey] who should have launched an investigation,” said one insider, who added “This would have given them more time to listen to the public, advertisers and cast members to determine the best decision.” 

The Roseanne reboot – which quickly became ABC’s #1 top-rated series in April, was quickly derailed after the network suddenly fired star Roseanne Barr after she compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to if the “Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a bay,” comments which were condemned by Dungey as “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” 

Barr, 65, was fired before a single advertiser pulled out, just three months into the show’s return. Her co-stars immediately turned on her, publicly shunning Roseanne for her tweet. 

Roseanne immediately apologized: 

Many conservatives at the time pointed out that while Roseanne was fired, MSNBC host Joy Reid was allowed to keep her job despite making anti-gay, anti-Muslim blog posts several years ago over a sustained period – and then lying about it. 

The vastly different treatment of the two TV personalities has once again raised questions over the treatment of conservatives in Hollywood. 

Although many applauded the network for taking swift action against the actress, the cancellation marked a premature and unfortunate end to the revival which had been considered an overall success.

Prior to Barr’s tweet, however, the show had already received criticism for Roseanne’s portrayal of a Trump supporter and its attempts to confront social issues involving race and politics.  

According to one source, ABC was aware of what they ‘were getting’ when they hired the outspoken actress and rebooted her show, but the inappropriate tweet was the last straw for Dungey, despite Barr’s desperate attempts to save face. 

‘They could’ve suspended her from the first few episodes without pay and had her return later on in the season. I mean the season finale saw Roseanne going to the hospital for knee surgery,’ the source added.

‘While they worked out her fate, her character could have faced serious complications and fought for her life, while simultaneously making Roseanne fight for her career with a national apology tour. –Daily Mail

ABC will now attempt to run The Conners on October 16 sans Roseanne – which execs now fear may not go so well. 

“When we greenlit The Conners we thought that the public would tune in to see the family return but what we’ve discovered is that people want Roseanne – they don’t want the family by themselves,” another source told The Mail. 

‘The marketing and publicity teams are horrified as no matter what promotional material is released – and let’s be honest it’s been limited for a show that launches next Tuesday – Roseanne’s fans come out in force stating that they won’t watch the show. 

‘The comments on social media tend to skew in favor of Roseanne and slam The Conners and the cast members who came back. Even dedicated fans of the Conner family feel conflicted about supporting a show that so swiftly eliminated the show’s matriarch and creator.’ –Daily Mail

“In the end the ratings are all that matter – and there are many people at Disney and ABC who are worried that firing Roseanne will see their Tuesday night ratings drop substantially. And should The Conners flop, Channing and her team will have many questions to answer.”

“The whisper across ABC is that they will not even be a quarter of what Roseanne achieved last season.”

An ABC spokesperson told the Mail denied that the network is concerned about the success of the Connors. 

To hear more about her firing, supporting Trump, and much, much more, check out Roseanne’s Thursday appearance on the Joe Rogan show: 

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