As we noted last month, even though hedge fund performance has rebounded this year, with big-name managers like David Einhorn and Bill Ackman – and even macro icons like Brevan Howard – finally putting up strong numbers, and putting several years of disappointing returns behind them, investors are still pulling money out of hedge funds […]

Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne claimed in a bombshell interview with Fox Business that he received “fishy” orders from former FBI official Peter Strzok.  Byrne, who admitted to helping the “men in black” on two previous occasions – a murder case and Wall Street investigations – said that the Obama DOJ was conducting “political espionage” on both Hillary Clinton and […]

Tesla short seller David Einhorn has remained mostly mum over the last several quarters, despite Tesla stock plunging since the beginning of 2019. But given the “explosive” (pun very much intended) new details of Tesla’s most recent solar panel shitshow controversy, Einhorn has finally broken his silence in a big way. On Twitter Friday Einhorn called for […]

According to CNBC, Trump is currently meeting with his trade aides… TRUMP MEETING WITH HIS TRADE AIDES NOW, CNBC REPORTS … to decide what additional measures and tariffs to declare against China, and if there is one currency that Trump’s economic team is currently keeping an eye on it is China’s yuan. What said team […]

by Calculated Risk on 8/23/2019 11:58:00 AM

With sales of iPhones having permanently plateaued and now declining year after year, and the state of Apple’s once consistent blowout iPhone numbers under growing threat (explaining the company’s pivot to a “service” company), Apple is now looking to produce new “Pro” versions of its iPhones, along with upgrades to its iPads and laptops, according […]

Are there systematic trends around the world in levels of creativity, aggressiveness, life satisfaction, individualism, trust, and suicidality? This article suggests a new field, latitudinal psychology, that delineates differences in such culturally shared features along northern and southern rather than eastern and western locations. In addition to geographical, ecological, and other explanations, we offer three […]

Authored by Marie Huillet via CoinTelegraph.com, At least three of Facebook’s early backers for its planned Libra stablecoin launch are considering withdrawing their support in light of the fierce regulatory pushback. image courtesy of CoinTelegraph A report from the Financial Times on Aug. 23 alleges that two founding partners of Facebook’s Libra Association have held discussions about what […]

Anyone who was hoping for a quiet end to the week is currently having a panic attack, as first China announced new tariffs on the US, then Powell’s J-Hole speech came and went, and then, as we expected, Trump responded to China’s trade war escalation when in a barrage of 4 tweets he lashed out […]

The escalating pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong against the territory’s China-backed government could turn into a generation-defining moment, Republican Scott Walker told CNBC on Friday. Walker, who unsuccessfully sought the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, compared the movement in Hong Kong to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall — which happened about two years after […]

While Trump’s latest Powell lashing on twitter was most notable for the dramatic criticism of the Fed chair, after Trump said “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi?”, what was far more interesting in the Trump tweet and what got far less attention, was Trump’s disclosure that the […]

Those of you who have taken interest in the seemingly never-ending saga of CalPERS’ diseased governance and incompetence, and now the determined efforts of its executives and the majority of the board to thwart efforts to clean the institution up may have noticed how the Sacramento Bee, the newspaper CalPERS cares most about, has reliably […]

Moments after J-Powell’s J-Hole speech hit, we summarized our longish take as follows: in the aftermath of Trump daring the Fed to “show their stuff”, Powell did not do that and instead… TL/DR: The Fed did not show their stuff. And now, over to Trump’s twitter account — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 23, 2019 We didn’t […]

The much anticipated Jerome Powell Jackson Hole speech on “Challenges for Monetary Policy” is finally out, and the first thing that stands out is Powell’s assurance that the economy is in a “favorable place,” but immediately refers to “significant risks” in the very first paragraph of a text that, according to Bloomberg “ultimately appears to signal a rate cut […]

by Calculated Risk on 8/23/2019 10:25:00 AM

by Calculated Risk on 8/23/2019 10:15:00 AM

I never went looking for a fight with Overstock. Its not what I cover, and its weird collection of oddball employees, sycophants and various, assorted asshats holds no lure for me. In the mid aughts, I was writing about real estate and derivatives and (de)regulation and silly investor errors. Eventually, I began documenting the fallout […]

Video: Peregrine falcons can fly at more than 200 miles per hour Boing Boing Poland lightning strike kills four, injures 100, in Tatra mountains storm BBC Scientists detect a black hole swallowing a neutron star EarthSky (Chuck L) Are farmers setting the Amazon ablaze in support of Bolsonaro? Grist Evil. Amazon fires an ‘international crisis’, […]

What could be more lovely on a summer’s day? A V-12 engine, 2 valves per cylinder, 3 Weber carburetors, mated to a 4-speed manual transmission, making 240HP in a light (2,646 pound) spider equals a fun, fast ride. The design by Pininfarina is one of the most spectacular ever. Gorgeous from every angle, the covered […]

Fed spokescritters are saying the US economy is in decent health. From Bloomberg: The U.S. economy doesn’t appear to be headed toward a recession, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said. “When I look at the data coming in, I see solid domestic momentum that points to a continued economic expansion,” Daly […]

Yves here. Yet more tired arguments for not just “Why you can’t have nice things,” but “Why you must wear the austerity hairshirt.” Peter Dorman is likely correct in seeing that this scare talk is being revved up for 2020. Can’t have Sanders or Warren, now can we? By Peter Dorman, professor of economics at […]

Starbucks has around $1.6 billion in stored value card liabilities outstanding. This represents the sum of all physical gift cards held in customer’s wallets as well as the digital value of electronic balances held in the Starbucks Mobile App.* It amounts to ~6% of all of the company’s liabilities. This is a pretty incredible number. Stored value […]

From the unusual products flogged on health and wellbeing site Goop to her one-of-a-kind beauty habits, Gwyneth Paltrow never fails to surprise us. Case in point: she once hired a ‘personal book curator’. Back in 2001, the former actress decided to redesign her Los Angeles home and realised that to complete the gram-worthy look, she needed a good five […]

Yves here. In the meantime, the WHO says not to worry about plastic in the form of microplastics, while admitting they don’t know much about the health impact. From European Scientist: So far, there is no proof that microplastics in drinking water pose a risk to human health, according to a new safety review into […]

Authored (satirically) by C.J.Hopkins via The Unz Review, If the neoliberal ruling classes expect to keep the American masses worked up into a white-eyed hysteria over “fascism” until November 2020, they’re going to need to get some better Nazis. The current Nazis are just not going to cut it. They are neither scary nor Nazi […]

The Hong Kong consulate employee who vanished two weeks ago after attending a conference across the border in Shenzen was reportedly detained after visiting a prostitute, according to a report in a Chinese newspaper that was cited by Bloomberg. Simon Cheng, the 28-year-old employee at the UK consulate in Hong Kong, mysteriously vanished after alerting […]

Convicted felons in San Francisco may have broken the law, but they’ll get to keep their dignity after the city’s Board of Supervisors adopted new, sanitized language describing them as ‘justice-involved persons’ or ‘formerly incarcerated.’  Under the city’s new “person first” language guidelines, the words “felon,” “convict,” “addict,” “offender,” and “juvenile delinquent” are no-no’s. Instead, those […]

Cryptos, bad; crypto-users, “drug-using terrorists”; USDollar, good; USDollar-users, patriots. That appears to be the message in a new statement from The White House on the links between America’s opioid epidemic and cryptocurrencies. As CoinTelegraph’s Liam Frost reports, on Aug. 21, the White House issued two advisories regarding illicit drug purchases in the United States that […]

Another Hong Kong protest ‘sit-in’ turned into a violent scrap with police as on Wednesday night thousands of black-clad youth and others set up barriers and occupied the Yuen Long station of the city’s MTR metro.  The protest was to mark the one-month anniversary of what anti-Beijing demonstrators are calling the the ‘Yuen Long attack,’ which […]

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) refers to a learning procedure in which a potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell). What Pavlov discovered is that when the neutral stimulus was introduced, the dogs would begin to salivate in anticipation of the potent stimulus, even though it was […]

When, for the first time in 11 years, Jerome Powell cut the Fed Funds rate by 25bps on July 31, something unexpected happened: the dollar spiked (in fact, the trade weighted dollar soared to a record high). And not only did the dollar spike as a result of a market that screamed to Powell “long […]

On the eve of the Jackson Hole meeting, this week’s big event, investors are watching closely, as prices for the various types of risk assets are expected to rush sharply up or down depending on what comes out of the meeting. Considering these event-driven risks, Nomura’s quant team led by Masanati Takada lays out its […]

Authored by Rusty Weiss via The Mental Recession New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claims the Electoral College is a racist scam meant to benefit middle America according to an Instagram video posted earlier this week. Demonstrating a breathtaking lack of intelligence regarding history and government, the Democrat communist took a video of sprawling fields and, […]

President Obama’s FBI, ran by disgraced former director James Comey, knew about – but purposefully ignored – “highly classified” evidence in the Hillary Clinton email investigation before they downgraded their initial assessment of her crime from a felony to a “grossly negligent” mistake.  As The Hill‘s John Solomon reports, a Senate staff memo updating an ongoing inquiry by Sens. […]

PredictIt, accessed 4pm Pacific today: Why the recent movement? One piece of information, the Manufacturing PMI: Source: TradingEconomics.com. Below 50 indicates contraction. In addition, despite the assurances of the administration, markets do not seem to believe in an incipient turnaround: Figure 1: 10 year-3 month Treasury spread, (blue), 10 year-2 year (red) and 5 year-3 […]

Almost four decades ago then-candidate George H.W. Bush used the phrase “voodoo economic policy” to describe Ronald Reagan’s claim that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for itself. He was more prescient than he could have imagined. For voodoo economics isn’t just a doctrine based on magical thinking. It’s the ultimate policy zombie, a […]

by Calculated Risk on 8/22/2019 06:18:00 PM

In the process of assembling the morning reads (sign up here!), I come across lots of really interesting things. A perfect example is these sets of charts via More in Common (hat tip Brent X Donnelly). These show the “exhausted political majority” of America, driven to annoyed distraction by the extreme partisan wings of the […]

I keep on hearing that economists are lousy at forecasting, citing the An, Jalles, and Loungani (2018) analysis. Recently, we heard Larry Kudlow claim that nobody was predicting a recession in December 2007, when he was dismissing the possibility. Without disputing the consensus is lousy at detecting turning points in real time, we can check […]

by Calculated Risk on 8/22/2019 02:36:00 PM

Right now, probably not.  Here is an excerpt from my latest Bloomberg column: The inclination in American politics is to cut the payroll tax on the worker side, not the employer side. That is the opposite of what should be done. In a recession, the usual problem is that too many people are seeking too […]

By Lambert Strether of Corrente Politics “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51 “They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune I’m abandoning the RCP poll on the Democrat Presidential nomination race, despite the fancy presentation, because I don’t […]

Authored by Max Boddy via CoinTelegraph.com, The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has arrested power plant operators for mining cryptocurrency in the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power plant facility.  image courtesy of CoinTelegraph English-language Ukrainian news site UNIAN reported the details of the arrest on Aug. 21. According to its article, the crypto miners compromised the nuclear facility’s security […]

With his company’s stock in free fall, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne resigned as CEO and from the company’s board on Thursday, effective immediately, Bloomberg reports. Patrick Byrne In a separate statement, Overstock named Jonathan Johnson, a board member and president of blockchain-focused subsidiary Medici Ventures, as interim CEO. Byrne’s resignation comes after conspiratorial comments where […]