Until the latest Podesta leaks created turbulence for the Clinton campaign, Wikileaks; most recent accomplishment was getting former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz to resign following revelations the DNC had rigged the primary campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton and against her primary challenger, Bernie Sanders.
However, in a leaked document from the latest round of Podesta emails, we learn that the Clinton campaign may have been strategizing how to “rig” the primaries as early as 2014.
In a March 2014 email from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook to Cheryl Mills, David Plouffe and John Podesta, the democrat recounts a conversation he had with Jeffery Berman, Barack Obama’s 2008 delegate guru, who would later be hired by the Clinton campaign to run the math for her primary campaign.
In the email, Mook discusses how to coordinate the schedule for Democratic primaries to maximize benefit for Hillary Clinton “if she gets a significant primary challenger.” In such a case, Mook writes, “we need to consider changing course and getting N.Y., N.J. and maybe others to move their dates earlier to give her hefty early wins,” Mook wrote.
And the punchline of the proposed strategy:
“We may need allies to help in this process but we’re going to look at each state one step at a time, limiting as much as possible the perception of direct intervention by the principals.”
As a reminder, accusations of “principal intervention” by his challenger, was one of Bernie Sanders’ recurring laments during this primary campaign. As such, this email provides additional evidence that the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign colluded to rig the primaries for Hillary Clinton.
As the Observer further notes, other emails released by WikiLeaks confirmed the debate schedule was coordinated to the Clinton campaign’s preference. A recent thread revealed then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was directed to hold phony meetings with other Democratic candidates to provide the Clinton campaign and DNC with plausible deniability that they were coordinating with one another.
Ultimately, Bernie Sanders, who was written off as a fringe candidate due to his tenure as an Independent, managed to energize progressive Democrats and Independent voters by the millions. Yet despite his surging popularity, he had no chance from the beginning, as the last few months of email revelations has shown.
The market may be (even) more illiquid than you think.
In a stark warning to its clients, popular online brokerage Interactive Brokers has advised traders to avoid using market orders at all if possible, and alternatively, to split them up into smaller orders trading over time, something legacy sellside platforms have effectively done over the years by splitting “parent” orders into smaller, “child” orders.
In a notice, IB warns that it has “noticed that you have recently submitted Market Orders in your account(s). Please see important information below regarding this order type.” It then provides the following guidance:
Please note that a Market Order is an instruction to trade your order at any price available in the market, subject to any additional instructions for handling/simulating the particular order type you specified and other order conditions you specify when submitting your order. A Market Order is not guaranteed a specific trade price and may trade at an undesirable price. If you would like greater control over the trade prices you receive, please submit your order using a Limit Order, which is an instruction to place your order at or better than the specified limit price, or submit an algorithmic Market Order (IBALGO).
In accordance with our obligations as a broker, large Market Orders may be split into smaller orders, which will be traded over time. This is designed to reduce the impact of these large orders on the market, including the impact your order has on the market price.
There are two potential implications from this: one is that the HFTs are growing restless, and are aggressively frontrunning any and all market orders, thereby inciting microvolatility once large market orders hit the tape. The second, and more troubling implication, is the implicit suggestion that even a handful of large market orders can expose just how illiquid the market truly is, once “liquidity providing” HFTs all align on the same sign of the trade to be frontrun, potentially leading to even more micro, or macro, flash crashes.
And with liquidity only set to decline over the next two trading days heading into the election, we would like to underscore IB’s warning: anyone wishing to trade in or out of positions, is advised to use limit orders, even if it means leaving a few pennies on the table, as the alternative could be far less pleasant.
While most Americans were captivated by last night’s World Series Game 7, some very, very big news broke. Normally, I’d summarize the news and provide my perspective before highlighting source text, but in this case I want to provide the information first.
The real blockbuster came from Fox News’ Bret Baier, who released some serious information courtesy of two sources at the FBI. Real Clear Politics summarized Bret’s primary conclusions based on his conversations:
“What’s beautiful about language is that people will modify it to suit their needs,” Drake Baer writes in New York magazine. He’s right: English is not a fixed set of commandments but a constantly evolving spontaneous order powered by innovation and adaptation. Baer highlights a recent example:
Around the turn of this century, a new usage popped into the vernacular: Your guys’. Like a caller ringing the spectacular “Car Talk” radio show: “I wanted to get your guys’ opinion.” Or in the millennial tour de force, Napoleon Dynamite: “Hey, can I use your guys’s phone for a sec?” Or what [Ben] Yagoda has as the earliest entry in Google Books, from a 2002 novel called Impeachment: “Well, it is, but that is your guys’s problem.”
In this case, your guys’ came about to deal with the weakness of the standard possessive form, you guys’, which sucks because it sounds just like the nonpossessive you guys when you say it. “Of course, one could differentiate it by treating guys as if it were a nonplural ending in s, adding an extra syllable, and saying ‘you guises,’ the way one would say ‘Jesusez’ (for ‘Jesus’s’) or ‘the Jonezez’ (for ‘the Jones’s’),” Yagoda writes. “But (in my admittedly small sample) I’ve never heard it pronounced this way, probably because it sounds childlike, if not childish.”
I always went with “you guises” myself, but I think it’s pretty well established that I’m not a bellwether for anything. In any event, you can read the rest of Baer’s post here and you can check out the Yagoda piece he’s riffing on here. If you’ve got any interest in emergent orders, you’re likely to find them interesting.
Give me a job, give me security Give me a chance to survive I’m just a poor soul in the unemployment line My God, I’m hardly alive My mother and father, my wife and my friends I see them laugh in my face But I’ve got the power, and I’ve got the will I’m not a charity case I’ll take those long nights, impossible odds Keeping my eye to the keyhole If it takes all that to be just what I am Well, I’m gonna be a blue collar man Make me an offer that I can’t refuse Make me respectable, man This is my last time in the unemployment line So like it or not I’ll take those Long nights, impossible odds Keeping my back to the wall If it takes all that to be just what I am Well, I’m gonna be a blue collar man Keeping my mind on a better life Where happiness is only a heartbeat away Paradise, can it be all I heard it was I close my eyes and maybe I’m already there. I’ll take those long nights, impossible odds Keeping my back to the wall All that be just what I am Well, I’m gonna be a blue collar man You don’t understand. I’ll take those long nights, impossible odds Keeping my eye to the keyhole If it takes all that be just who I am Well I vow to be a blue collar, gotta be a blue collar, Gonna be a Blue collar man. Believe it.
It’s no coincidence that the popularity of Brexit and Donald Trump is appearing contemporaneously in this current time of mankind. Beppe Grillo in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France are also examples. They are all symptoms of the effects of the 70+ years push by the elitists to force globalism and open borders on all of us. The good news is the elitists got too greedy and they are now very concerned their “Utopian” dream (for them) is in big trouble. The bad news is they will go down fighting. And the rest of us are their targets.
The globalists’ plan was to have control of/by a relatively small number of multinationals which would dominate the rest of the 99.9% of our fellow humans. From what I’ve cobbled together there were several parts to the plan, such as: getting us addicted and very comfortable taking on debt (debt/leverage scares me – the only time I use leverage is for short term trading); having one world characterized by open borders; having one global governing body (U.N.); having a few global banks working with the IMF, et al; having control of the media and the “educational” system. And more, but the point is to have total domination of this Planet. And it was looking good for them up until a few decades ago, but just like what most people do in markets – they got blinded and off focus due to greed.
So now for a few decades the masses have gotten restless, as we have seen our wages stagnate, our taxes soar, and our cost of living rise relentlessly (even with “deflation” allegedly omnipresent). But we have reached the critical limit where the restlessness has gone from apathy to fear and then to anger, and it’s accelerating. And the Trump, Sanders, Grillo, Le Pen, Brexit, etc. phenomena are “confirmations” of the new trend. That trend is the peaking and the eventual loss/downtrend in the confidence levels in hedge funds (oops, I mean Central Banks), Governments and globalism. And the peaking/distribution in those confidence levels can best be seen in the massive distribution in the US Long Term Treasury price, which can be seen (inverted) in the Long Term Treasury yield, The true acceleration in the loss of confidence will be reflected in and accompanied by the beginning of the acceleration of the major downtrend in global Government Bond markets. This situation is close at hand. The short term rates in the US bottomed in Fall 2011. With approximately a six year lag, we should start seeing the final bottoming in the longest term yields within the next twelve months. There will be a few more attempts to push below the July lows of 2.1% in the US Long Bond yield. But from here forward the pushes down in yield will not likely have any staying power and will fairly quickly bounce back up. The big capital is using the price rallies (drops in yield) to sell into. The geniuses at the central banks are some of the biggest buyers into those low yields (price highs). Disaster awaits the insanely leveraged balance sheets of the world’s Central Banks when yields begin their relentless move higher over the next many, many years. And this will be occurring at the same time as the loss of control over the rest of us by the global elitists and their agenda. Thus begins the Revenge of the Blue Collar Man.
Equity market implied correlation is flashing a ‘panic’ warning according to BMO quant Mark Steele as the little-known derivative indicator suggests traders fear a major ‘high correlation’ event and are aggressively hedging systemic risk.
As Bloomberg notes, Steele warns that many asset classes are in a “funk” as weaker oil prices hurt high yield and Donald Trump’s staying power in the polls “pressures the status quo.”
And the massive spike in implied correlation – soaring 7 straight days from 35 to 70 – indicates fear may have turned into panic.
Chart: Bloomberg
As a reminder, implied correlation measures the relative demand for macro overlays (index hedges) vs micro risk (individual stock hedges/concerns). The higher it is, the more systemically worried investors are and the more traders believe a high correlation ‘event’ is due (typically the high correlation event is a big downturn in stocks).
But as BMO’s Steele concludes, just as we saw with Brexit, a rebound in sentiment “can be just as ferocious, and that carries the day for broad equity markets,” seemingly suggesting to buy the dip as he notes there’s “no sign of a banking system threat” that pressures equities systemically.
There is a nice setup in the oil market ahead of the OPEC Meeting this month that meets all the criteria for a nice trading setup. OPEC is going to cut production at this meeting on the 30th. There is massive short positioning that will have to unwind over the next 20 days in the oil markets.
The catalysts are the following:
1) Considerable bearish Sentiment & Positioning in the Oil Markets 2) Cold Weather Coming for both Natural Gas & Oil Markets which have been trading together 3) Risk-On mode in financial markets after the Election next Tuesday 4) OPEC Meetings on the 25th & 30th of November 5) Good Risk Reward setup Given Recent Price Decline in Oil Markets 6) Low Oil Prices put more pressure on OPEC to Over deliver on expectations for Production Cuts 7) Saudi Arabia has changed Market Strategy, needs higher prices for economic reasons 8) Traders will not want to be short here ahead of OPEC Meeting
Now that thanks to first the WSJ, and then Fox News, the public is aware that a probe into the Clinton Foundation is not only a hot topic for both the FBI and the DOJ (and has managed to split the law enforcement organizations, but is also actively ongoing despite the DOJ’s attempts to squash it.
In the latest update from Fox’s Bret Baier, we learn that the Clinton Foundation investigation has now taken a “very high priority,” perhaps courtesy of new documents revealed by Wikileaks which expressed not only a collusive element between Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the “charitable foundation’s” donors, which included the use of funds for personal gain, but also revealed deep reservations by people within the foundation about ongoing conflicts of interest.
As Baier also notes, the Clinton Foundation probe has been proceeding for more than a year, led by the White-Collar Crime division.
Fox adds that even before the WikiLeaks dumps of alleged emails linked to the Clinton campaign, FBI agents had collected a great deal of evidence, and FBI agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people regarding the case.
“There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day,” one source told Fox News, adding some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails.
FBI agents are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case,” and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, Baier’s sources said. Agents also are going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews as well as the FBI 302 documents, which agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources.
As expected, the Clinton Foundation denied everything, and Foundation spokesman, Craig Minassian, told Fox news a statement: “We’re not aware of any investigation into the Foundation by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any United States Attorney’s Office and we have not received a subpoena from any of those agencies.”
Now that deatils of the infighting between the DOJ and FBI regarding the Foundation probe have been made public, Loretta Lynch may have no choice but to launch an official probe, including subpoeans.
The information follows a report over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal that four FBI field offices have been collecting information about the foundation. The probes – in addition to the revived email investigation – have fueled renewed warnings from Republicans that if Clinton is elected next week, she could take office under a cloud of investigations.
“This is not just going to go away … if she ends up winning the election,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” earlier this week.
Donald Trump has referenced this scenario, repeatedly saying on the stump this past week that her election could trigger a “crisis.”
Separately, Fox News reports that authorities also are virtually certain, i.e., “there is about a 99 percent chance”, that up to five foreign intelligence agencies may have accessed and taken emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server, two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations told Fox News. If so, it would suggest that the original FBI probe – which found no evidence of breach – was either incomplete or tampered with.
The revelation led House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul to describe Clinton’s handling of her email system during her tenure as secretary of state as “treason.”
“She exposed [information] to our enemies,” McCaul said on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning. “Our adversaries have this very sensitive information. … In my opinion, quite frankly, it’s treason.”
McCaul, R-Texas, said that FBI Director James Comey told him previously that foreign adversaries likely had gotten into her server. When Comey publicly discussed the Clinton email case back in July, he also said that while there was no evidence hostile actors breached the server, it was “possible” they had gained access.
Clinton herself later pushed back, saying the director was merely “speculating.”
But sources told Fox News that Comey should have said at the time there is an “almost certainty” that several foreign intelligence agencies hacked into the server.
The claims come as Comey’s FBI not only revisits the email investigation following the discovery of additional emails on the laptop of ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner – the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin – but is proceeding in its investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
In other words, Anthony Weiner may be ultimately responsible not only for the downfall of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, but also the collapse of the entire Clinton Foundation… which incidentally is just what Donald Trump warned could happen over a year ago.
A summary of Baier’s latest reporting is in the clip below.
No matter what anyone tells you, we are still in a gold bull market. Gold stocks will oscillate higher and pull-backs along the way are healthy. In fact, it appears the most recent correction is already over, even though another 2 months of negative returns would not have been out of the ordinary:
The idea for this chart was given to us by our good friend, Jordan Roy-Byrne, of The Daily Gold. Please visit and subscribe to his site for professional guidance in riding the uptrend in gold.
Looking at past corrections, the average duration was 80 days, losing ~30% during that period. In our recent correction, we did indeed bottom out at -30% after only 44 days. In our opinion, these oscillations are buying opportunities and given where we are currently, the window will close fairly quickly.
In our article, How Low Can Gold Go? The Gold Shakeout Continues, Stay The Course!, we urged our readers to stay the course and maintain long positions in gold. And again, we reiterate the same thing. The current pullback is minor compared to the scale and duration of bull market we are in. Do not get shaken out.
