Tag: news

Much like Hillary’s former IT consultant Paul Combetta who admitted to deleting Hillary’s emails despite the existence of a Congressional subpoena, it seems as though James Comey has just had his very own “oh shit” moment.

After months of inexplicable delays, the chairman of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees,  Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), announced moments ago a joint investigation into how the Justice Department handled last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. 

Among other things, Goodlatte and Gowdy said that the FBI must answer for why it chose to provide public updates in the Clinton investigation but not in the Trump investigation and why the FBI decided to “appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton,” a power typically left to the DOJ.

“Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.

 

“Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered. These include, but are not limited to:

 

• FBI’s decision to publicly announce the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s handling of classified information but not to publicly announce the investigation into campaign associates of then-candidate Donald Trump;
• FBI’s decision to notify Congress by formal letter of the status of the investigation both in October and November of 2016;
• FBI’s decision to appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton to the FBI rather than the DOJ;
• FBI’s timeline in respect to charging decisions.

 

‘The Committees will review these decisions and others to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn. Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken.”

????#BREAKING: @RepGoodlatte & @TGowdySC to investigate #DOJ decisions made in 2016 to ensure transparency and accountability at the agency. http://pic.twitter.com/EOm4pnHbTG

— House Judiciary ? (@HouseJudiciary) October 24, 2017

Of course, this comes just one day after Comey revealed his secret Twitter account which led the internet to wildly speculate that he may be running for a political office…which, these days, being under investigation by multiple Congressional committees might just mean he has a good shot.

Finally, we leave you with one artist’s depiction of how the Comey ‘investigation’ of Hillary’s email scandal played out…

Here is the full letter from Goodlatte and Gowdy:

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Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“The Kurds have no friends but the mountains,” is an old lament. Last week, it must have been very much on Kurdish minds.

As their U.S. allies watched, the Kurdish peshmerga fighters were run out of Kirkuk and all the territory they had captured fighting ISIS alongside the Americans. The Iraqi army that ran them out was trained and armed by the United States.

The U.S. had warned the Kurds against holding the referendum on independence on Sept. 25, which carried with 92 percent. Iran and Turkey had warned against an independent Kurdistan that could be a magnet for Kurdish minorities in their own countries.

But the Iraqi Kurds went ahead. Now they have lost Kirkuk and its oil, and their dream of independence is all but dead.

More troubling for America is the new reality revealed by the rout of the peshmerga. Iraq, which George W. Bush and the neocons were going to fashion into a pro-Western democracy and American ally, appears to be as close to Iran as it is to the United States.

After 4,500 U.S. dead, scores of thousands wounded and a trillion dollars sunk, our 15-year war in Iraq could end with a Shiite-dominated Baghdad aligned with Tehran.

With that grim prospect in mind, Secretary Rex Tillerson said Sunday, “Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against … ISIS is coming to a close … need to go home. Any foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home.”

Tillerson meant Iran’s Quds Force in Iraq should go home, and the Shiite militia in Iraq should be conscripted into the army.

But what if the Baghdad regime of Haider al-Abadi does not agree? What if the Quds Force does not go home to Iran and the Shiite militias that helped retake Kirkuk refuse to enlist in the Iraqi army?

Who then enforces Tillerson’s demands?

Consider what is happening in Syria.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, largely Kurdish, just annihilated ISIS in Raqqa and drove 60 miles to seize Syria’s largest oil field, al-Omar, from ISIS. The race is now on between the SDF and Bashar Assad’s army to secure the border with Iraq.

Bottom line: The U.S. goal of crushing the ISIS caliphate is almost attained. But if our victory in the war against ISIS leaves Iran in the catbird seat in Baghdad and Damascus, and its corridor from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut secure, is that really a victory?

Do we accept that outcome, pack up and go home? Or do we leave our forces in Syria and Iraq and defy any demand from Assad to vacate his country?

Sunday’s editorial in The Washington Post, “The Next Mideast Wars,” raises the crucial questions now before us.

[As The New York Times notes, the United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories. While the number of men and women deployed overseas has shrunk considerably over the past 60 years, the military’s reach has not. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of deadly attacks, as well as Jordan, Thailand and elsewhere. An additional 37,813 troops serve on presumably secret assignment in places listed simply as “unknown.” The Pentagon provided no further explanation.]

Would President Trump be willing to fight a new war to keep Iran from consolidating its position in Iraq and Syria? Would the American people support such a war with U.S. troops?

Would Congress, apparently clueless to the presence of 800 U.S. troops in Niger, authorize a new U.S. war in Syria or Iraq?

If Trump and his generals felt our vital interests could not allow Syria and Iraq to drift into the orbit of Iran, where would we find allies for such a fight?

If we rely on the Kurds in Syria, we lose NATO ally Turkey, which regards Syria’s Kurds as collaborators of the PKK in Turkey, which even the U.S. designates a terrorist organization.

The decision as to whether this country should engage in new post-ISIS wars in the Mideast, however, may be taken out of our hands.

Saturday, Israel launched new air strikes against gun positions in Syria in retaliation for shells fired into the Golan Heights.

Damascus claims that Israel’s “terrorist” allies inside Syria fired the shells, to give the IDF an excuse to attack.

Why would Israel wish to provoke a war with Syria?

Because the Israelis see the outcome of the six-year Syrian civil war as a strategic disaster.

Hezbollah, stronger than ever, was part of Assad’s victorious coalition. Iran may have secured its land corridor from Tehran to Beirut. Its presence in Syria could now be permanent.

And only one force in the region has the power to reverse the present outcome of Syria’s civil war — the United States.

Bibi Netanyahu knows that if war with Syria breaks out, a clamor will arise in Congress to have the U.S. rush to Israel’s aid.

Closing its Sunday editorial the Post instructed the president:

“A failure by the United States to defend its allies or promote new political arrangements for (Syria and Iraq) will lead only to more war, the rise of new terrorist threats, and, ultimately, the necessity of more U.S. intervention.”

The interventionist Post is saying: The situation is intolerable. Confront Assad and Iran now, or fight them later.

Trump is being led to the Rubicon. If he crosses, he joins Bush II in the history books.

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Some question if “Pigs Can Fly.” I don’t know if they can or can’t, of late though, Piggy Banks are flying high and breaking out.

We have highlighted positive bank patterns of late and three weeks ago we shared that the banking sector was sending bullish signals and Regional Bank ETF (KRE) looked like they were ready to break out of a bullish flag pattern, See Post HERE.

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

The Bank Index is breaking above highs hit earlier this year at (2) and back above channel resistance at (3). Banks continue to send a bullish message to this important sector and potentially the broad market.

Full Disclosure- Premium and Sector Members have been overweight banks for several months and continue to like what we see, from a Power of the Pattern perspective. Multiple banks positions are owned and we continue to bring up stops to protect gains.

Why you see charts with brief commentary:   There is a ton of news and opinions around markets and assets that make the decision-making process more difficult than it needs to be.   I believe the Power of the chart Pattern provides all you need to see what is taking place in an asset and determine the action to take.  This approach has worked well for me and our clients and I encourage you to test it for yourself.

Receive my free research posted on the blog daily here 

Or,  send an email if you would like to see sample research and take me up on a trial of my premium or weekly research where I provide actionable alerts on breakouts and reversals in broad market indices, sectors, commodities, the miners and select individual stocks 

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In a time when traditional long/short, macro and other fundamental-analysis based hedge funds are losing the war to ETFs and passive investing…

… one group of funds is thriving, and none more so than quant powerhouse Two Sigma which according to the FT, has quietly grown assets under management mark over $50 billion “putting it on a par with Renaissance Technologies as the biggest global quantitative hedge fund, as investors continue to pile into computer-powered investment strategies.”

Putting Two Sigma’s staggering growth rate in context, the New York-based hedge fund, which was launched in 2001 by computer scientist David Siegel and mathematician John Overdeck, had $6bn in 2011 but soared past the $50bn mark earlier this month, according to FT sources:

“That puts it roughly level with Renaissance Technologies, which manages just over $50bn, and more than DE Shaw’s $45bn. Both are older than Two Sigma.”

The reason for the unprecedented growth rate is that while the rest of the hedge fund industry has struggled with poor performance and outflows, investor demand for lower-cost, quant and algorithmic investing has exploded in recent years.  Morgan Stanley recently estimated that various quant strategies, ranging from cheap next-generation exchange traded funds to pricey sophisticated hedge fund vehicles, have grown at 15 per cent annually over the past six years, and now control about $1.5tn.

As MS reported in early October:

“$1.5 trillion of AuM currently managed under quantitative guidelines could continue its double-digit growth over the next five years. Part of this growth is a  ‘pull’ from investors broadening their search for risk premium and uncorrelated returns at lower fees than traditional alternatives. Part of this is a ‘push’, as asset managers see systematic strategies that lend themselves well to automation and scale, offering value over pure ‘beta’ in a traditional active management framework. Relatively small further reallocation by asset owners towards these strategies could still drive significant growth.”

To be sure, this invasion of Math Ph.D will harldy come as a surprise to regular readers: back in 2009 we predicted that with central banks obviating fundamentals, it was only a matter of time before the mathematicians and physicists took over. Well, they have:

Quants tend to have a different background to typical hedge funds. More than half of Two Sigma’s 1,200 staff come from outside the finance industry, with most educated in mathematics and computer science. They include the winner of a Japanese backgammon tournament and the “world’s first open-source software artist”, according to a graphic novel handed to new recruits.

As programmers and data scientists have taken advantage of ever-cheaper computing power and ravenous investor appetite, a flurry of new start-ups have emerged in the quant investing field in recent years, But the biggest growth is happening at the largest, most-respected players, according to Emma Bewley, head of fund investment at Connection Capital.

“The big firms are getting bigger,” she said. “There’s a real sense that while a lot of hedge funds are building out their quantitative side, they don’t have the know-how of the established quant firms.”

There are pros and cons to this substantial reallocation to quant funds away from conventional, fundamental “active” managers: on one hand, “the rapid growth of quantitative investing has sparked a ferocious war for talent, with banks, traditional asset managers and hedge funds desperate to attract more coders.” But, as the FT’s Robin Wigglesworth observes, such clustering creates a risk of all “traders” being on the same side at the same time:

The greater worry for investors and the industry is that the inflows of money into the space is ramping up risks to markets.  While strategies can vary greatly, there is concern that with more money gushing in some trades can become “crowded”, and unravel quickly if the market environment shifts.

To avert such concerns, many quant funds are careful to monitor for signs of crowding, and limit how much money a strategy or fund manages at any time.

For example, Two Sigma’s equity and macro hedge funds, which manage about $35bn, have long been closed to outside investors.

And while quants claim their strats are now less aggressive, and use less leverage and deploy more varied strategies, there is no way to know until the next downturn, a downturn which refuses to occur precisely because of quants, whose primary directive it appears is to Buy The Dip, Any Dip before the other Math PhD does, and not only ask questions later, but ideally never ask anything as more greater fools emerge to bid up risk even higher, which luckily these days also includes central banks.

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Now that the Trump administration’s temporary ban on accepting new refugees – first implemented in June after the Supreme Court ruled that a narrower version of Trump’s second travel ban would be allowed to take effect – has expired, the administration has said it will begin accepting refugees from all countries, but with new rules meant to better vet applicants, and with a tighter cap on the number of refugees that was previously unveiled last month, both the WSJ and Fox reported, citing sources close to the administration.

President Trump is expected to announce a tighter cap on the number of refugees admitted to the US and call for tougher vetting rules during a speech on Tuesday – the day the 120-day refugee ban expires. Coinciding with the deadline, Trump is expected to sign a document starting the process of allowing refugees back into the US under new guidelines.

Under the rules, the administration would cap refugee admissions at 45,000. That’s down from 110,000 under the last year of the Obama administration.

After Trump signs the order, the administration will begin collecting more biographical data, such as names of family members and places of employment, officials said. The administration will also do more to mine social media posts to see, for instance, if refugees’ public pronouncements are consistent with the stories they offer in their applications, the officials said.

Meanwhile, the officials responsible for the screening at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, will be given new guidance and better training to help detect fraud in refugees’ applications.

Under the new order being issued, refugee admissions will resume for all countries. However, one person familiar with the planning said that people from 11 targeted countries will be subject to additional vetting that will slow down the process for them.

As WSJ points out, the vetting process can be particularly challenging because applicants have been forced to flee their home countries and often don’t have documents to confirm their identities and personal details.

The Obama administration also sought to increase vetting of social media posts, but officials involved say their efforts were limited in part because the process is labor intensive.

Of course, Trump’s immigration policies have been repeatedly challenged by federal judges. But while the courts have delivered a series of setbacks to the administration’s efforts to block travelers from certain – most of them Muslim-majority – countries. But the Supreme Court gave the administration a temporary victory on the refugee policy last month, allowing the ban to stay in place until the October expiration. 

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Authored by Ian Miles Cheong via DailyCaller.com,

A University of Illinois math professor believes that algebra and geometry perpetuate “white privilege” because Greek terms give Caucasians unearned credit for the subject.

But that isn’t the professor’s only complaint. She also believes that evaluations for math proficiency perpetuates discrimination against minority students, if they do worse than their white counterparts.

Rochelle Gutierrez argues in a newly published math education book for teachers that they must be aware of the identity politics surrounding the subject of mathematics.

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform.

 

“Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”

Gutierrez argues that subjects like algebra and geometry, which relate to arithmetic, also perpetuate racism and white privilege. She worries that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”

Gutierrez claims that the importance of math skills in the real world also places what she calls an “unearned privilege” for those who are good at it. Because most math teachers in the United States are white, white people stand to benefit from their grasp of the subject disproportionate to members of other races.

“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, raising the question as to why math professors get more grants than “social studies or English” professors.

 

“If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, claiming that minorities “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”

To resolve the intelligence gap, Gutierrez calls on math professors to develop a sense of “political conocimiento,” a Spanish term for “political knowledge for teaching.”

She concludes her argument with the claim that all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”

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The so-called FANG group of stocks (FB, AMZN, NFLX, GOOGL) fell for the fifth day yesterday – the longest losing streak since right after the election.

Worst 5-day drop in almost 4 months, sliding back to 3-week lows…

NFLX is the biggest loser in the last 5 days (down 5%) and while TSLA is not in the FANGs, it has been panned in recent days too…

As analysts cut expectations for the big tech firms ahead of earnings…

The problem is, analysts are cutting their estimates, calling into question their stock valuations. At an average 74 times earnings, the multiple is three times that of the S&P 500.

“There has to be a bit of reality that they just can’t keep running further and further,” Bill Schultz, who oversees $1.2 billion as chief investment officer of McQueen, Ball & Associates Inc., said by phone.

 

“We’ve built in a very good scenario for them, so if it’s just plain good, they’re being punished.”

"no brainer"

And it's not just high-beta big tech, Biotechs are stumbling hard too – down 6% from recent highs and down 6 days in a row…

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