Kyle Bass Shares The “Stunning” Thing A Central Banker Once Told Him

If you ever wanted to get a look inside the mind of Kyle Bass, founder and CIO of Hayman Capital Management, here is your chance. In a wide-ranging discussion with Grant Williams, author of Things that Make You Go Hmm and co-founder of Real Vision TV, he shared his thoughts on position-sizing, China, the appeal of holding gold, central banking, interest rates – and much, much more.

Predictably, the one topic that got the most attention was China, where as widely known Bass has made his next “career” wager, expecting a substantial devaluation of the currency, a process which had stalled out in recent months but has once again picked up speed.

Looking at recent data, and specifically something we pointed out two weeks ago, Bass said the country’s $3 trillion corporate bond market is “freezing up” amid rising defaults and canceled debt sales. “We’re starting to see the beginning of the Chinese machine literally break down.” 

Bass reiterated that China’s lending binge in recent years is unsustainable and it is only a matter of time before this bubble, bigger than the US bubble of 2005/2006 which brought Bass fame and fortune, bursts. He expects bank losses of $3 trillion to trigger a bailout, with the central bank slashing reserve requirements, cutting the deposit rate to zero and expanding its balance sheet – all of which will weigh on the yuan, and lead to a dramatic devaluation.

“They’re going to do everything the U.S. did in our crisis,” said Bass, who has gone public with his China views since at least October. “Every single thing the Chinese central bank and central planners have to do is currency negative for them.”  He added that the Chinese government wants a devaluation, but “they just want to do it on their terms.” By this he is of course referring to the vast exodus of domestic capital as the local population sees the endgame and is scrambling to park its funds offshore (mostly in UK, US and Canadian real estate as well as US M&A, and more recently, in bitcoin), something Beijing is terrified of and is doing all in its power to prevent.

An interesting theme here was Kyle Bass’s devaluation thesis as a contrast to Hugh Hendry‘s recent Chinese optimistic euphoria. This is what Bass told Williams:

Williams: China is something else that you’ve been very vocal about recently. You and this gang of nefarious Texas hedge fund managers who are trying to take down the People’s Bank of China. And again, it’s another, in my reckoning, very well argued case for the devaluation of the yuan. And Hugh Hendry was on talking to Raoul, said, “It’ll never happen. The world’s over if it happens.” And I can see where he’s coming from, but it seems to me that the people that debate on the “they won’t devalue” side are assuming it’s going to be a voluntary devaluation, something that they choose to do, rather than they have to do.

 

Kyle: That’s a perfect point, perfect point.

 

Grant: Because that seems to me, they’re going to have to do it to recap the banks. There’s going to be a reason for them to do it, not a choice.

 

Kyle: Well, it’s going to happen to them. And again, even in your soliloquy there, you say, “They’re going to have to do it.” They’re going to have to allow it to happen. It’s going to happen. I love Hugh, we’ve had a number of debates throughout history, and he’s a fantastic individual and a brilliant mind. But if the reason that it’s not going to happen is because “it can’t happen, because the rest of the world’s going to have so much trouble with it,” that doesn’t give me any solace whatsoever. In fact, you look back to the U.S. financial crisis when I would go meet with various heads of investment banks or investors, and I would say, “This is what’s going to happen, and this is why, and this is how the structures are structured.” And some would look at me and say, “Well, that means Fannie and Freddie will be out of business. And so therefore, the government will never let that happen.” I said, “Well, the government doesn’t have a choice here. It’s too late.” The credit excesses had already been built. And in China, the credit excesses are already built. They’ve got, we can go into numbers, but they have asset-liability mismatches in their system, in the wealth management products, that are more than 10% of their system. And our asset-liability mismatches were two and a half percent of our system, and you know what they did. So their excesses are already, they’re already so far ahead of the world’s excesses in prior crises that we’re facing the largest macro imbalance in world history. And to this day, I can’t figure out why people don’t see it for what it is.

At this point Bass proceeds to discuss some interesting behavioral bises inherent in investing:

Bass: I think the behavioral psychology plays a huge part. And you’ve hit it right on the head. I give you an interesting anecdote. Again, back to the U.S. subprime crisis, I went all over the country raising money for a subprime, two subprime funds and some advisor relationships. And what was absolutely hilarious to me, looking back at the meetings that we had, is we would go to Chicago, and we would say…we’d lay out the thesis, and they would say, “You’re exactly right, this is absolutely going to happen.” It’s not going to happen here in Chicago because of one, two, three and four these points. But that’s because they live there, the NIMBY, the not in my back yard scenario or psychological profile of events, was not going to happen. But it was going to happen to everyone else but them. And then I’d go to Seattle and I’d lay that thesis out and they’d say, “Oh, you’re absolutely right. Never going to happen here because Microsoft’s here and Amazon’s here, and but our houses are fine, but everybody else’s homes, they’re going to drop 35%, and we’re going to invest with you.” And then I’d go to Southern California and I’d go to Texas, and everywhere I went, not one organization or group of investors would agree that it would happen to them, but it was going to happen to everyone else. And that’s again, I think the beginning of what you and I were just discussing with regard to the psychological profile, or more importantly, the behavioral psychology that plays into one’s thought process. Because the first thing…I think the first inalienable right of human nature is self-preservation, and when you get into a thought of, okay, Hugh’s position, is if it…if this were to happen, it would be so globally terrible that therefore, they’re going to not let this happen. I understand that logic and I think you do too, but I believe it’s flawed. And the reason it’s flawed is again, it’s just this…It’s almost like the Kahneman’s availability heuristic, where you only have this certain data set, and you only look at history back…I think the brevity of financial memory is only about three years.

 

* * *

What’s fascinating to me, Grant, is outside of Hugh Hendry, behind the scenes, when you talk with some of the largest asset managers in the world and the largest investors in the world, and you lay out a hundred page PowerPoint of exactly how their banking system and credit system works, and how they are putting off the final day of just realizing a loss cycle. You mentioned Armageddon. It’s not Armageddon. They’re going to have a loss cycle. They’ll recap their banks, their currency will depreciate, pretty materially. It will export deflation to the world one last time. And if you have any money left, it will be the best time in the world to invest, and we both know this.

Bass also sees the humor in shorting China:

Bass: I know there are permabears on China. But from my perspective, it’s just a scenario that I see has come to a head. And one other point that you made…one of my good friends, Dan Loeb, says all the time to me that “there are no short sellers on the Forbes 400 list, so be careful.” And a friend I think told you, don’t invest in Armageddon, it only happens once in a blue moon. All of those things are absolutely true. But to check caution to the wind and hope the central banks get it right from here, I think is an outsized risky proposition.

Bass doesn’t just limit himself to China: he also touches on arguably the most controversial asset of all time – gold.

Williams: What’s your current thinking on gold? Because I know it’s something you’ve had thoughts in the past, but it’s not something I’ve heard you talk about for a while.

 

Bass: Yeah. I look at Global M2, being just under a hundred trillion. And the total amount of mined gold in world history is somewhere around seven trillion. And there’s about…and then gold that’s kind of in circulation in use. We studied…we did a deep dive on gold a few years ago. They call it the yellow metal that has no yield, but with the entire world going to negative rates, then on a relative basis, it’s probably one of the better currencies to own. I buy that wholeheartedly. And seeing which way the central banks are going, you’re going to have to own something.

He also touches on the future of interest rates:

Bass: The spreads between U.S. 30 year treasuries and 10 year treasuries, and Japanese 30 years and 10 years, and European 30 years and 10 years, is as wide as it’s ever been. And so what does that mean? That means that I think U.S. rates are coming down, regardless of what kind of inflationary pressures we have, which is something that we’ve never seen before. Again, a new paradigm given the global central banking conundrum. So when you ask me whether stocks have peaked or not in the U.S., look, if China has the comeuppance we think they’re going to have, soon, then that’s not going to be an equity positive environment.

Bass also discusses the recent collapse in central bank confidence:

Williams: When you talk about this handicapping the central banks, which we’ve all had to do, and it’s essentially impossible. How do a group of free market capitalists handicap a group of academics? We speak different languages. So as we watch this thing move forwards, the guys in the markets assume to a cliff somewhere out yonder in the fog. What do you think tips this thing on? Because to me, it’s purely confidence now. There’s nothing left but confidence in these guys that they can do this. And you bring up the reaction to Kuroda-San going negative in January. And I think the instant reaction of the markets, people are going to look back on that, when the Nikkei fell a thousand points and the yen strengthened by a full bip. That, to me, was the start of people going, “You know, maybe these guys are just throwing things at the wall.”

 

Kyle: You’re right. That was the first time I’ve seen investors show a disbelief in the markets, in central banks. And I agree with you. That was a watershed moment in our business, in attempting to see when there’s a tectonic shift in the belief systems, because we all know that that one of the central banks’ objectives is price stability, whatever that means. I think that means each relevant industry that they oversee trading higher and not lower, it equals price stability. And they didn’t get it, Kuroda-San didn’t get it then, and since then Japan struggled. And this concept of Ricardian equivalence, where you’re issuing debt to quantitatively ease on the monetary policy side, and maybe even allowing, right, the fiscal authorities to continue to spend, it comes into play where people just start saving more. And this idea of negative interest rates realize…it’s interesting, academically negative interest rates look like they work on paper. And in reality, what these central bank heads are realizing, whether you’re in Denmark or Japan or any of these economies, is savers think, “Well, I just need to save more if I’m not going to earn anything on my savings.”

 

* * *

 

We’re already crossing the Rubicon of the helicopter money. And Japan’s talking about a negative lending facility from the BOJ to the banks. So we’re starting to see…the academics will never turn and say, “We were wrong.” The academics will go “more,” and they’ll just go unsterilized. And in the end, we know where that gets all of us.

But the punchline is beyond gold, beyond China, beyond even investing, and has to do with something a central banker once told Bass in what the hedge fund manager describes as an “out of body” epiphany:

Grant: this idea of helicopter money, and the idea of banning cash, and all these things that, when you sit here in the cold like that, you can see exactly why they need to do these things. You watch the narrative unfold in the media, and then the trial balloons get floated. But you’re right, they have to go to helicopter money, they’re really not going to have a choice. And it seems to me that they are going to have to try to ban cash. Because, as you say, the U.S. savings rate has tripled since 2007, and that’s literally the last thing they want or need. So is there any way out for these guys? Because that’s the thesis that I keep checking. I can’t see a way out, absent cold fusion.

 

Kyle: Look, I had a fascinating out of body experience meeting with one of the world’s top central bankers in a private meeting about three years ago. And he said, “You know Kyle, quantitative easing only works when you’re the only country doing it.” He would never say that publicly. And I’ll protect his name, because it was a private meeting. But it was one of those moments where I…it was one of those epiphanies almost, where it’s something you and I knew, but hearing him say it, call it one of the four top central bankers in the world, it was a jarring experience for me, because when I look around the world  today, everyone’s in the same boat. So we’re all trying…we’re attempting through our treasury and our Fed to get the rest of the world to not devalue against us, while we quietly attempt to devalue ourselves against them, and it’s all this…it is the race to the bottom, it is the beggar thy neighbor policies that we all talk about. And I believe that there is no way out.

* * *

A 5 minutes excerpt of the full interview can be watched below:

 

The full hour-long interview is available to Zero Hedge readers with a free 7-day trial subscription to Real Vision TV at the following page.

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Brexit & The Crisis Of Capitalism

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

If you collapse these extractive, debt-dependent crony-capitalist cartels, you collapse the entire status quo.

Thousands of commentaries have been issued about Brexit in the past week. I've written four myself. Most discuss Brexit as the result of immigration issues, class war, political theater, a reaction against the European Union's bureaucratic power, sovereignty, etc. Other essays focus on the potential upsides or downsides of Brexit.

What few if any commentators present is the idea that Brexit is a symptom of the Crisis of Capitalism.

The current global version of Capitalism is characterized by these overlapping dynamics:

1. Replacing stagnant real growth and income (and thus taxes) with debt.

 

2. Replacing investment in real-world productivity with speculation (i.e. financialization)

 

3. Replacing “everyone must have skin in the game” free-market capitalism with protected, privileged Elites crony capitalism in which the few benefit at the expense of the many.

 

4. Replacing local, decentralized democracy and ownership with central planning.

 

5. Using “extend and pretend” financial trickery to mask insolvency, impaired assets/ collateral and non-performing loans rather than address the debt overhang directly via write-downs and liquidations of impaired assets.

If real (adjusted for inflation) growth and wages were increasing organically (i.e. as the result of free-market dynamics rather than central-planning manipulation) there would be no need for financialization, “extend and pretend” or central planning.

These ills are the status quo's "fixes" to the Crisis of Capitalism, which arises from these causes:

1. It is no longer profitable to hire people to do an expanding range of work, from minding the jumble store on high street to writing software code that has been automated.

 

There is no fix for this. As I explain in my book A Radically Beneficial World, the idea that we can "tax the robots" to generate the $2.4 trillion we'd need to make a Universal Guaranteed Income a reality in the U.S. is pure fantasy, as profits collapse as the cost of those commoditized tools decline.

 

Paying people to do nothing looks like a grand benefit but it is actually terribly destructive because people need purposeful work and a sense of contributing to something meaningful. Paying the majority of people to do nothing is a destructive and financially impossible fantasy.

 

2. Consumer demand is not infinite, and modern production can over-supply the demand of an aging populace. The supply-demand curve has shifted for demographic and structural reasons. The idea that consumer demand can be endlessly goosed higher is false. As demand stagnates and the tools of production are commoditized, production increases (because the money needed to expand production is essentially free) and profits and wages both decline.

 

 

3. What cannot be over-produced burdens the system with a higher cost structure. The core fantasy of neoliberalism is that everything can be made abundant once it is commoditized on a global scale. But this is simply not true of resources such as potash, lithium or ocean fisheries.

 

As scarcities arise from the fact that the planet we inhabit is not infinite, these scarcities tend to drive innovation and a search for substitutes. But substitutes have limits, too. As costs rise, there is less disposable income to pay interest on rising debt or consume more. Spending and consumption stagnate, along with profits and wages.

 

4. The status quo is dominated by cartels and crony-state-capital arrangements that raise systemwide costs to benefit the few at the expense of the many. Healthcare (specifically, Obamacare) is a prime example: costs are soaring because the pool of taxpayer money that can be devoted to healthcare is assumed to be limitless.

 

College costs $150,000 for four years not because education "must cost" $150,000; it costs $150,000 because students can borrow $150,000 from the federal-higher-education cartel. the actual cost is unknown because the cartel has been able to impose staggering price increases for decades.

 

(I make the case that a four-year college degree should cost no more than a few thousand dollars in my book The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy.)

 

5. If you collapse these extractive, debt-dependent crony-capitalist cartels, you collapse the entire status quo. All the finance, debt-dependent production and consumption, pensions, insurance and tax revenues that the majority depend on for their income implode once you take away the cartel's monopoly pricing.

Reforming the system implodes the system. This is why Brexit has limited scope to fix the structural causes of Crisis of Capitalism.

*  *  *
A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All is now available as an Audible audio book.

My new book is #14 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition) For more, please visit the book's website.

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Obamacare Enrollment Drops To 11.1 Million, Government Calls It “Sign Of Success”

By nearly all accounts, Obamacare has been a spectacular failure. Whether it's the fact that half of the cooperatives created by Obamacare had to shut down costing taxpayers roughly $1.2 billion, or that insurance premiums are exploding higher, or perhaps just having to find a new healthcare plan since the largest US health insurer decided to divorce itself from the Obamacare exchanges, it all points to disaster.

When it comes to the latest Obamacare enrollment figures, the story remains the same. As The Hill reports, Obamacare enrollment dropped to about 11.1 million people at the end of March, down from the 12.7 million who signed up for coverage before the January 31 deadline.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that a dropoff was expected, and has occurred in previous years as well, given that some people who sign up do not pay their premiums – we wonder why that is. The administration says it projects that about 10 million people will remain signed up by the end of the year. Said otherwise, they government is planning on another 1.1 million dropping out of Obamacare before the end of the year.

Kevin Counihan, the CEO of the Obamacare marketplaces, said the fact that about a million more people are signed up than at a similar point last year (11.1 million compared to 10.2 million) is a sign of success. We suspect Kevin is conveniently forgetting the fact that the CBO had projected that 2016 enrollment would be as high as 21 million people – but perhaps missing projections by nearly half is a sign of success in the government's eyes.

Here is how Counihan is spinning the results:

"This increased level of enrollment demonstrates the strength of the Marketplace over time, as millions of Americans continue to have access to quality and affordable coverage when they need it. As of early this year, 20 million Americans had coverage thanks to provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and the Health Insurance Marketplace is an important contributor to that progress."

* * *

Then again, despite the incredible miss in enrollment compared to projections, and ignoring the fact that the enrollment level dropped once again, perhaps Obamacare did actually achieve its ultimate goal. As we reported earlier this week, Obamacare accounted for 58% of US growth in Q1.

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What Risk? Post-Brexit VIX Crash Is Greatest Ever

After a wild few weeks…

 

VIX dropped almost 42% this week – its biggest decline in history – as nerves settled over Brits' decision to "leave" the EU.

 

A bigger "relief" than the end of the Gulf War, than the post-Bear Stearns fund liquidations bounce as Central Banks saved the world, and than the last minute decision to not shut down the US government on Dec 31st 2012, "Bre-lief" is indeed the great dumping of protection in history…

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Governor Jerry Brown Signs Six, Vetoes Five Gun-Right Restricting Bills

A raft of bills intended to restrict Californians’ rights to possess or exchange their weapons went to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk this week, and today he signed six and vetoed five of them.

Via a press release from the pro-Second Amendment Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), with descriptions that reflect their perspective, a list of the six signed and four of the five vetoed. (The last one on the vetoed list was not discussed by the FPC). The names in parenthesis are those of the legislator who introduced the bills. The [bracketed] interpolations are by me:

  • AB 1135 (Levine): Bans common and constitutionally-protected firearms that have magazine locking devices.
  • AB 1511 (Santiago): Criminalizes loaning of firearms between personally known, law-abiding adults, including family members, sportspersons, and competitors.
  • AB 1695 (Bonta): Makes a non-violent misdemeanor [falsely reporting a firearm as having been stolen] a prohibiting offense.
  • SB 880 (Hall): Bans common and constitutionally-protected firearms that have magazine locking devices.
  • SB 1235 (de Leon): New restrictions on ammunition purchases; creates a DOJ database of ammunition owners.
  • SB 1446 (Hancock): Statewide confiscatory ban on all lawfully-possessed standard-capacity ammunition feeding devices that hold more than 10 round; exemption for retired police

 The five vetoed by Brown:

  • AB 1673 (Gipson): Would have redefined “firearms” to include objects that are not firearms [the bill would make legally a weapon “a frame or receiver blank, casting, or machined body that requires further machining or molding to be used as part of a functional weapon so long as it has been designed and is clearly identifiable as being used exclusively as part of a functional weapon.”]
  • AB 1674 (Santiago): Would have banned buying more than one firearm of any type within a 30-day period
  • AB 2607 (Ting): Would have dramatically expanded the reach of secret “Gun Violence Restraining Orders” [From the bill’s own language, it would “authorize an employer, a coworker, a mental health worker who has seen the person as a patient in the last 6 months, or an employee of a secondary or postsecondary school that the person has attended in the last 6 months to file a petition for an ex parte, one-year, or renewed gun violence restraining order,” greatly expanding the ability of the state to restrict gun possession rights absent any crime. The bill would have allowed for confiscation of existing owned weapons at the suggestion of a co-worker or boss, among others. The Los Angeles Times focused on that now-vetoed bill in a story this morning.]
  • SB 894 (Jackson): Would have re-victimized victims of theft by criminalizing the failure to report lost and stolen firearms
  • AB 1176 which would make “the theft of a firearm grand theft in all cases and punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months, or 2 or 3 years.”

In an emailed press release from FPC, they noted regarding the signed SB 1446 that its:

statewide, confiscatory ban on lawfully-possessed “large-capacity” magazines [can be evaded by] law enforcement interests [who] once again cut shady deals to exempt their retired members from the long reach of the new gun control laws.

Earlier this year, Firearms Policy Coalition, two other civil rights groups, and a number of individuals filed a federal civil rights lawsuit–captionedGarcia v. Attorney General Kamala Harris–that challenges California’s gun law exemptions for retired law enforcement officers on Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection grounds.

California should have already learned that bills like 1446 that require confiscations of widely and innocently owned items can be expensive (and pointless) to enforce from its past attempts to take away previously legally owned weapons from people whose later actions placed them in prohibited categories.

No one who cares about civil liberties should cheer the newly minted creation of overwhelmingly harmless contraband. No compensation will be provided for the now banned over-10-capacity magazines, which must be destroyed, sold, or turned in by July 1, 2017. A brand-new excuse for police searches of the innocent is thus created, one with a built-in excuse for police to feel “endangered.”

I reported on versions of many of these bills passing the state Senate in May. 

I wrote in the Orange County Register in December about why California doesn’t need new gun laws.

Steven Greenhut wrote here about how most of these bills qualify far more as harassment of the innocent than any kind of insurance of public safety. Greenhut observed: “The number of guns owned by Californians has soared over the past two decades, and the population has grown dramatically—yet firearms-related deaths have fallen over the years. Is gun violence a problem of gun supply by legal owners or the behavior of criminals?”

Correction: The headline originally mistakenly said only four gun-related bills were vetoed today.

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Weekend Reading: Bre-lief?

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Quite a week.

Last week, the markets rallied in anticipation Britain would “Remain” in the European Union which reversed the sell-off from the previous week. Despite a variety of polls and betting sites showing rising odds of Britain remaining in the EU, the “inconceivable” occurred last Thursday proving everyone wrong.

But this week, the markets proved everyone “wrong” again. I suggested on Tuesday that Central Banks would come to the rescue once again, that happened yesterday as both the BOE and ECB made announcements hinting at more QE this summer. To wit:

  • BOE: SOME MONETARY POLICY EASING LIKELY OVER SUMMER
  • BOE: MPC WILL DISCUSS FURTHER POLICY INSTRUMENTS IN AUG
  • ECB: TO WEIGH LOOSER QE RULES AS BREXIT DEPLETES ASSET POOL
  • ECB: OPTIONS TO INCLUDE MOVING AWAY FROM QE CAPITAL KEY
  • ECB: CONCERNED ABOUT SHRINKING POOL OF ELIGIBLE DEBT

For those predicting financial market chaos and mayhem, Central Banks has successfully juiced asset prices erasing the majority of the previous losses.

It is for that reason I stated previously:

“There are times in portfolio management where ‘doing nothing’ is better than ‘doing something.’ This is one of those times.”

Any action taken over the last two weeks has likely turned out to be wrong. The problem for investors remains that markets have made “no progress” over the last 13-months. While volatility has increased, returns on assets remain muted which continues to frustrates individuals.

Fundamentally and economically there is little cheer about and on a longer-term basis, as shown below, the markets remain in what appears to be a broadening market topping process.

SP500-MarketUpdate-063016-2

The question remains whether Central Banks can continue to keep asset prices aloft while the economy and markets go through a recessionary cycle? Historically, that has never been the case. But then again, we have never had the level of Central Bank interventions currently being witnessed today.

Here is your reading list for the weekend.

It’s the height of your responsibility to not allow the EU to disintegrate without utilizing all its resources. Throughout history governments have issued bonds in response to national emergencies, When should the AAA credit of the EU be put to use if not at the moment when the European Union is in mortal danger” – George Soros


BREXIT – BRELIEF


OTHER THINGS I’M READING


“There is nothing riskier than the widespread perception that there is no risk.”   Howard Marks

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Oil Market Structure (Video)

By EconMatters


Always avoid the last 45 minutes of the “Pit Close” in the Oil Market, unless you have reached the Master`s skill level as a Oil Trader, and even then you better be on your A-Game as a Trader. Institutional Traders often close out or initiate new positions on the last 5-minute bar of the “Pit Trading Session” which often results in large relative volume to overall market liquidity dynamics and leads to explosive spikes in Oil at the close (1:30 CST).

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The Problem with Rationalia, Income Inequality Studies Is a Lucrative Field, Hating on Trump: P.M. Links

  • TysonWho should be Donald Trump’s vice president? Bernie Sanders, says Fareed Zakaria.
  • “As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. And, sometimes, demonic possession.”
  • Aspen Ideas Festival tackles campus free speech: views from Greg Lukianoff, Stephen Carter, and Michael Roth.
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson’s idea for a country called “Rationalia” is pretty flawed.
  • Why Republicans who endorsed Trump should publicly admit their mistake.
  • Income inequality experts at the University of Berkeley make more than $300,000 a year.

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Family Sues TSA for 2015 Assault on Disabled Female Cancer Patient

For 17 years, Hannah Cohen and her family have traveled between their home in Chattanooga and Memphis so she could receive treatment for a brain tumor at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. After completing the end of her treatment on June 30 of last year, then-18-year-old Hannah and her mother, Shirley, made their way through Memphis International Airport to get on a flight home, as they had so many times before.

However, the Cohens did not make it back to Chattanooga that night. Instead, Hannah was locked up in a Shelby County jail, her face bloodied and bruised after a confrontation with Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents.

Her years of treatment left the teenager partially deaf, blind in one eye, and limited in her abilities to walk and talk. She also, according to her mother, can become easily confused.

When Hannah went through the metal detector at the airport, an alarm went off. Disoriented by the noise, she did not immediately cooperate with TSA agents who asked to conduct further screening.

Shirley Cohen tried to inform the agents about her daughter’s disabilities, she told television station WREG, but airport police kept her away. That’s when the situation between Hannah and the TSA officials became violent:

“She’s trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere,” said [Shirley].

Security personnel arrested Hannah (though all charges against her were later dropped), and what should have been a night of celebration with family and friends because a night of terror and confusion in a jail cell.

A year later, the family is suing the airport, its police, and the TSA for damages, including medical expenses and emotional injuries. According to the lawsuit, they are asking for a “reasonable sum not exceeding $100,000 and costs.”

The defendants declined to comment, while TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz noted in a statement that “passengers can call ahead of time to learn more about the screening process for their particular needs or medical situation.”

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Breuphoria – Stocks Explode Higher On Biggest Short Squeeze In 7 Years

We hope this helps…

 

Quite a week!!!

  • S&P +3.3% – best week since Oct 2014 Bullard Bounce
  • "Most Shorted" stocks =10.1% in last 4 days – biggest squeeze since May 2009
  • Financials +3% – best week in 3 months
  • 30Y Treasury yield to record low – best week in 3 months
  • Silver +11.25% – best week since Aug 2013
  • Gold up 5 weeks in a row
  • Oil +3.2% – best week in six weeks
  • Copper +5.5% – best week in 3 months

Since Brexit, bonds and bullion remain best and stocks tried their best to scramble back to unch…

 

The Dow has been the best post-Brexit performer… gettuing with 9 Dow points of the pre-Brexit close…

 

S&P at 2,100 and Dow at 18,000 were as crucial as getting green to Brexit…

TS S&P/DOW

 

On a yuuge short squeeze…(biggest weekly rise in "Most Shorted" in 4 months)

 

BUT the last 4 days' 10.1% surge is the biggest since May 2009!

 

On no volume…

 

It's been quite a few weeks for VIX… its biggest drop in history this week

 

While financials had a great week, they are still down over 2% from Brexit…

 

And the curve just keeps running away from them…

 

Treasury yields have tumbled since Brexit, reaccelerating lower today…

 

To record lows for 10Y and 30Y…

 

As 2s30s curve crahses to its lowest since Jan 2008 – when the last recession was underway…

 

FX markets were choppy but volatility dropped as The USD Index slid 4 days in row…

 

Commodities all rose on the week but Crude remain slower post-Brexit as Silver explodes…

 

Crude rallied thgrough the NYMEX close for the 10th day of the last 11 and extended on…

 

Silver is up 14% in the last 6 days post-Brexit… pushing for $20… the biggest surge since August 2013…

 

Charts: Bloomberg

via http://ift.tt/29bVidx Tyler Durden