“A Major Event Just Happened In Financial Markets”

angelburst29

The Living Force
A report of “a 6-sigma event” (what-ever that is) but it doesn't sound too good for the economy?

“A Major Event Just Happened In Financial Markets”
_http://rinf.com/alt-news/money/snyder-major-event-just-happened-financial-markets/

Tuesday August 19, 2014

Michael T. Snyder
RINF Alternative News

Did you know that a major event just happened in the financial markets that we have not seen since the financial crisis of 2008? If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you probably didn’t even hear about it.

Just prior to the last stock market crash, a massive amount of money was pulled out of junk bonds. Now it is happening again. In fact, as you will read about below, the market for high yield bonds just experienced “a 6-sigma event”. But this is not the only indication that the U.S. economy could be on the verge of very hard times. Retail sales are extremely disappointing, mortgage applications are at a 14 year low and growing geopolitical storms around the world have investors spooked. For a long time now, we have been enjoying a period of relative economic stability even though our underlying economic fundamentals continue to get even worse. Unfortunately, there are now a bunch of signs that this period of relative stability is about to end. The following are 14 reasons why the U.S. economy’s bubble of false prosperity may be about to burst…

#1 The U.S. junk bond market just experienced “a 6-sigma event” earlier this month. In other words, it is an event that is only supposed to have a chance of 1 in 500 million of happening. Billions of dollars are being pulled out of junk bonds right now, and that has some analysts wondering if a financial crash is right around the corner.

#2 The last time that we saw a junk bond rout of this magnitude was back during the financial crash of 2008. In fact, as the Telegraphrecently explained, bonds usually crash before stocks do…


The credit market usually leads the equity market during turning points, as happened when credit markets cracked first in 2008.

Will the same thing happen this time around?

#3 Retail sales have missed expectations for three months in a row and we just had the worst reading since January.

#4 Things have gotten so bad that even Wal-Mart is really struggling. Same-store sales at Wal-Mart have declined for five quarters in a row and the outlook for the future is not particularly promising.

#5 The four week moving average for mortgage applications just hit a 14 year low. It is now even lower than it was during the worst moments of the financial crisis of 2008.

#6 The tech industry is supposed to be booming, but mass layoffs in the tech industry are actually 68 percent ahead of last year’s pace.

#7 According to the Federal Reserve, 40 percent of all households in the United States are currently showing signs of financial stress.

#8 The U.S. homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.

#9 According to one survey, 76 percent of Americans do not have enough money saved to cover six months of expenses.

#10 Rumblings of a stock market correction have become so loud that even the mainstream media is reporting on it. For example, just check out this CNN headline from earlier this month: “Is a correction near? Wall Street on edge“.

#11 The civil war in Iraq is spiraling out of control, and Barack Obamahas just announced that he is going to send 130 troops to the country in a “humanitarian” capacity. Iraq is the 7th largest oil producing nation on the entire planet, and if the flow of oil is disrupted that could have serious consequences.

#12 As a result of the conflict in Ukraine, the United States, Canada and the European Union have slapped sanctions on Russia. In return, Russia has slapped sanctions on them. Will this slowdown in global tradesignificantly harm the U.S. economy?

#13 The three day cease-fire between Hamas and Israel is about to end, and Hamas officials are saying that they are preparing for a “long battle“. If a resolution is not found soon, we could potentially see a full-blown regional war erupt in the Middle East.

#14 The number of Ebola deaths continues to grow at an exponential rate, and if the virus starts spreading inside the United States it has the potential to pretty much shut down our entire economy.

Meanwhile, things look even more dire in much of the rest of the globe.

For example, the economic slowdown has gotten so bad in some nations over in Europe that they are actually experiencing deflation…


Portugal has crashed into deep deflation and Italy’s inflation rate has fallen to zero as the eurozone flirts with recession, automatically pushing these countries further towards a debt compound spiral.

The slide comes amid signs of a deepening slowdown in the eurozone core, with even Germany flirting with possible recession. Germany’s ZEW index of investor confidence plunged from 27.1 to 8.6 in July, the sharpest fall since June 2012, during the European sovereign debt crisis. “The European Central Bank has to act now,” said Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS.

And in Japan, GDP just contracted at a 6.8 percent annual rate during the second quarter…


Japan’s economy suffered its worst contraction since 2011 in the second quarter as consumer spending on big items slumped in the wake of a sales tax rise.

Gross domestic product shrunk by an annualized 6.8% in the three months ended June, Japan’s Cabinet Office said Wednesday. The result was actually better than the 7% contraction expected by economists.

On a quarterly basis, Japan’s GDP dropped by 1.7% as business and housing investment declined. Japan’s economy last suffered a hit of this magnitude after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster.

There is no way that this bubble of false prosperity was going to last forever. It was never real to begin with. It was just based on a pyramid of debt and false promises. In fact, the condition of the global financial system is now far worse than it was just prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

Sadly, most people do not understand these things. Most people just assume that our leaders have fixed whatever caused the problems last time. And when the next crisis arrives, they will be totally blindsided by it.
 
Hi angelburst29 :thup:

This piece was already on Sott: http://www.sott.net/article/283798-The-US-economys-bubble-of-false-prosperity-may-be-about-to-burst-14-reasons

And furthermore it seems that Mr Soros has a wager on Wall Street collapse:

_http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-15/soros-put-rises-record-billionaire-investor-betting-market-crash
 
Thanks Yozilla, missed that piece, somehow?

As for Soros, he has his hands into some many deals, it's hard to determine if he might be playing "against himself" just to turn a profit?
 
angelburst29 said:
#1 The U.S. junk bond market just experienced “a 6-sigma event” earlier this month. In other words, it is an event that is only supposed to have a chance of 1 in 500 million of happening. Billions of dollars are being pulled out of junk bonds right now, and that has some analysts wondering if a financial crash is right around the corner.

Obviously, the chance of the event is not 1 in 500 million if it happened twice in 6 years. That goes to show how BS financial modeling is :rolleyes:
 
angelburst29 said:
As for Soros, he has his hands into some many deals, it's hard to determine if he might be playing "against himself" just to turn a profit?

Soros has been diversifying for a while - even bought some soccer club shares... So if aware of possible collapse of financial market, he is maybe trying to save anything by buying everything... Maybe playing some sort of rail gun investment Russian roulette?

Anyway for what he will be needing all that billions? :whlchair:
 
Bobo08 said:
angelburst29 said:
#1 The U.S. junk bond market just experienced “a 6-sigma event” earlier this month. In other words, it is an event that is only supposed to have a chance of 1 in 500 million of happening. Billions of dollars are being pulled out of junk bonds right now, and that has some analysts wondering if a financial crash is right around the corner.

Obviously, the chance of the event is not 1 in 500 million if it happened twice in 6 years. That goes to show how BS financial modeling is :rolleyes:

Litterally, the term six-sigma event refers to an event in the normal distribution that is more than six standard deviations from the mean. The probability of such an event happening translates to roughly one out of a billion (to be precise, 9.87 out of 10 billion).

However, the term is normally being used to signify something that is extremely rare. It a came out of the operations research and quality management of Japanese manufacturing companies as is describe here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma
 
This is being discussed in the MSM.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/junk-bond-exodus-accelerates-1407455723

Investors pulled a record $7.1 billion from junk-bond funds in the week ended Wednesday, fund tracker Lipper said, the latest sign of investor anxiety following a long rally.

Many investors have been pulling back from the market amid concerns that the bonds are overvalued and that a strengthening U.S. economy could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates sooner than the market currently expects.

The outflow is the fourth consecutive weekly decline as investors yanked money from mutual and exchange-traded funds dedicated to high-yield debt and marks a turnaround from the steady stream of inflows recorded early in the second quarter.

After taking in $2.61 billion in May, junk bond funds suffered about $1.14 billion of withdrawals in June and an additional $5.4 billion of outflows in July. Of the latest week's $7.1 billion outflow, about $1.3 billion came out of ETFs, said Jeff Tjornehoj, head of Lipper Americas research.

Bonds from a unit of Sprint Corp. S +2.04% due in 2022 were down 1.5 cents on Thursday, to trade at 98.875 cents on the dollar for a yield of 6.174%, according to data from MarketAxess Holdings Inc.

The average U.S. junk-bond yield hit 5.78% as of Wednesday, up from below 5% last month, according to a Barclays BARC.LN -0.23% PLC index. When yields rise, prices fall.

At the same time, interest rates around the globe have been in sharp decline in recent weeks, amid geopolitical turmoil centered on Israel and Ukraine and signs that European growth is sputtering. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note on Thursday tumbled to 2.424%, its lowest level since June 2013.

The junk-bond-fund outflows far outpace the previous record weekly withdrawal of $4.6 billion in June 2013.
So much for the last major move being in 2008...

The tremors are being closely scrutinized across Wall Street. Many investors this year have expressed concerns that a pullback in junk-bond prices could signal that market participants are rethinking their willingness to take risk, foreshadowing further declines in stocks and other risky assets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 75.07 points, or 0.5%, Thursday, its ninth decline in 12 trading days.

Investors have flocked to the $1.6 trillion U.S. junk-bond market in recent years, attracted by the income the bonds paid above debt perceived as safer issued by investment-grade companies at a time of low interest rates.

The latest outflow comes amid a sharp slowdown in the issuance of high-yield bonds, where some borrowers have delayed scheduled debt sales and others have canceled planned deals.

Last Friday, S&P Capital IQ Leveraged Commentary & Data said that five high-yield deals had been held over the weekend. Bankers for energy company Warren Resources Inc. sweetened terms on a $300 million high-yield bond sale Wednesday, LCD said.

Sabur Moini, global head of high yield at Payden & Rygel, who oversees $3 billion of junk bonds and loans, said many high-yield borrowers would likely wait to issue debt, anticipating that the market will recover.

"It doesn't benefit anyone to bring deals right now," he said. "Everyone is a bit nervous."

Researchers at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note Thursday that it had already seen some signs the selling would subside. "High-yield redemption activity has slowed dramatically" since last week, they wrote, adding that "fundamentals remain very strong" at below-investment-grade companies.

An alternative explanation is that with the "improvement" in the US economy, money is moving out of high risk areas into low risk areas as the interest rate spread becomes smaller. Which would you rather invest in? Corporate junk bonds or the US government? Historically you would be better off with the latter, especially if the interest rate for US bonds is close to the interest rate of junk bonds (like it is becoming). However, past performance is no guarantee of future returns...
 
Soros has increased his bet against the US stock market by 600% in the second quarter.

A Repeat of Black Wednesday? Soros Bets $2 Billion On Stock Market Collapse: Massive Inflation Ahead
_http://www.thedailysheeple.com/a-repeat-of-black-wednesday-soros-bets-2-billion-on-stock-market-collapse-massive-inflation-ahead-2_082014

Friday August 22, 2014

September 16th 1992 is the day that the British government had to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism because it was unable to keep the pound above it’s agreed lower limit. The reason for the turmoil in 1992 was George Soros, who made over a billion pounds sterling by short-selling sterling on the markets.

Definition of short-selling: The sale of borrowed securities. In a short sale, one borrows securities, usually from a brokerage, and sells them. One then buys the same securities in order to repay the brokerage. Selling short is practiced if one believes that the price of security will soon fall. That is, one expects to sell the borrowed securities at a higher price than the price at which one will buy in order to return the securities. Selling short is one of the most common practices of hedge funds. This is also called establishing a bear position.

Soros became known as the man who broke the Bank of England. The devaluation of the sterling cost the United Kingdom over £3.3 billion.

As early as spring 1992, Mr Soros had decided that the pound would have to be devalued because it had been pushed into the ERM at too high a rate. He knew that the Bundesbank favoured a devaluation of both sterling and the Italian lira and believed it would have to happen because of the disastrous impact that high British interest rates were having on asset prices. Mr Soros spent the next few months building up a position from which he would profit from that devaluation. He borrowed sterling heavily, reportedly to the tune of £6.5 billion, and converted that into a mixture of Deutschmarks and French francs. On Black Wednesday, Mr Soros’s bet paid off. In the following days, he unwound his positions, paying back his original borrowings and ending with a profit of around £1 billion. As a parallel play, Mr Soros bought as much as £350 million of British shares at the same time, gambling that equities often rise after a currency devalues. (source)

Regulatory filings show that Soros has increased his bet against the US stock market by 600% in the second quarter. He has taken out a $2.2 bn bet that the S&P will fall.

From Newsmax: Billionaire investor George Soros has increased his financial bet that U.S. stocks will collapse to more than $2 billion. The legendary hedge fund manager has been raising his negative bet on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since late last year. The latest 13-F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Soros Fund Management increased its position in “puts” on the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund by a staggering amount in the second quarter from the first. The chairman of Soros Fund Management lifted his position to 11.3 million put options on the S&P 500 ETF (SPY), boosting the short position from 2.96 percent to 16.65 percent. The dollar value of the position soared to $2.2 billion from around $299 million. At 16.65 percent, that position is the biggest slice of the Soros firm’s portfolio.Many experts see such a put position as a wager that the price of the stock market (in this case the S&P 500) will tumble. However, some experts warn that such tactics might be part of some long-term trading strategy. Given that the reported positions are as of June 30, Soros may have made changes since that time. Friday, the S&P 500 pared earlier declines in the late afternoon, ending the day little changed at 1,955.06. It earlier fell as much as 0.7 percent. The S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent during the week and ended the week 1.7 percent below its all-time high of 1,987.98, reached July 24.

However, Soros’ fund bought 182 new stocks in the second quarter. Soros also lifted positions in Apple and Facebook in a portfolio loaded up with stocks, “so he can’t possibly be all that gloomy,” MarketWatch reported. Soros nearly doubled his ownership in a U.S. gold-mining companies ETF and initiated new stakes in other gold producers, suggesting the big names in hedge funds continued to have confidence in the yellow metal, Reuters reports. According to the Telegraph Soros has also increased his stake in Argentinian oil by purchasing 8.5 million shares in the state owned oil company YPF, this is in addition to shares he already holds in the company.
 
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