Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

The World’s Best Female Poker Player Joins the World’s Biggest Hedge Fund
By Nico Grant
January 9, 2018, 3:03 PM CST

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ridgewater

They're going to need her.

[Higgenbotham]

[Higgenbotham]

The distinction in my mind is one of speed and scale. By speed, I mean the speed of response to any systemic crisis to feed liquidity in and continue to grow the bubble. By scale, I mean the fact that speed of response allows a bubble to grow larger. A fiat money system allows for greater speed and scale, meaning the Central Bank can extend the bubble longer and grow the bubble larger than can be done on a gold standard. There are a number of factors besides whether the money base is gold or fiat that are greater determining factors. The most important in my mind is the leverage employed. The leverage employed by hedge funds, for example, was more than 100 to 1 in some instances. Banks employ leverage of about 10 to 1; therefore, it can be seen that the introduction of hedge funds and the failure to regulate them was a bigger contributor to the bubble than whether the base money was gold or fiat.

A relevant note on this--a headline from yesterday said something to the effect that Geithner is saying speed of response is critical at this juncture. There are limits and the bigger the bubble gets, the faster it leaks when it does start leaking, and the faster the authorities have to move to grow it bigger until finally there comes a time when they cannot move fast enough.

[Higgenbotham]

Another graph in the Mauldin article compares the US P/E ratio with
other countries:



I had thought that many global stock markets were in bubble territory,
but this graph shows that the US bubble is by far the worst.

This is a great illustration of how the periphery collapses first while the wealth gets sucked to the center.

[Higgenbotham]

The reason the double and triple inverse ETFs decay so rapidly is because the backwardation in the futures contracts is bad enough but that gets doubled or tripled in these funds. The parasites knew that when they put these funds together. Besides the fact that they skim. That helped to drive the bubble.

Since the S&P 500 futures contracts are now in contango, the premier S&P 500 double inverse ETF is no longer decaying relative to 2X the index. In the chart below, it can be seen that while the S&P 500 index has risen 3.8% over the past 10 days, SDS has decayed 7.3% versus the expected 7.6%.

[John]

I've received a blizzard of hundreds of spam messages about Swisscoin this weekend, with typical subject lines like "Let me tell you about one crypto currency that could turn 1000 bucks into 1 million," or "Could this digital currency actually make you a millionaire?" or "These chicks are looking for a booty call." Oh wait, that last one was something else.

Anyway, apparently Swisscoin is being used in a new pump and dump scam, where people with a large holding sell their holding and make a ton of money, after using social media to get greater fools to invest a lot of money in the non-asset. The people running the scam make a lot of money, while the greater fools lose their life savings.

Apparently Swisscoin was used in a pump and dump scheme a couple of months ago:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2447577.0;all

That page contains a picture of the Swisscoin pump and dump team:

[John]

How come that guy on the right with the checkered sweater isn't
holding his thumb up. Does he know something that the others don't
know?

How come that black guy with the glasses is also extending his pinky?
Is that a signal of some kind?

How come that chick in the front is holding up her fist rather than
her thumb? Is she threatening someone?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Higgenbotham]

A few odds and ends I've recalled and noted lately:

The Tulip Mania happened during a horrible time. It was about the midpoint of the 30 years war.

Kodak announced a Kodak Coin a few days ago and the stock soared. Imagine a company that was once an ethical stalwart of the Dow 30 and has since gone bankrupt resorting to this.

A chain of liquor stores (or something like that) changed their name to include "blockchain" and the stock soared 10-fold in one day. Trading in the stock was halted.

Using any reasonable comparison to previous similar bubbles, the Bitcoin bubble has burst. Yet, like Kodak, that hasn't stopped the fraudsters from continuing to do what is apparently the only thing they know how to do.

According to hedge fund star Paul Tudor Jones, the Bitcoin bubble is the biggest bubble ever, bigger than Tulip Mania, the Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea Bubble.

[Higgenbotham]

A chain of liquor stores (or something like that) changed their name to include "blockchain" and the stock soared 10-fold in one day. Trading in the stock was halted.

I didn't get the details right, but this is the article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/sec-hal ... ading.html

[Higgenbotham]

How come that guy on the right with the checkered sweater isn't
holding his thumb up. Does he know something that the others don't
know?

How come that black guy with the glasses is also extending his pinky?
Is that a signal of some kind?

How come that chick in the front is holding up her fist rather than
her thumb? Is she threatening someone?

Inquiring minds want to know.

What I want to know is which prison they negotiated with to hire these guys and which Goodwill or Salvation Army Thrift Store they got their clothes at.

Which also reminds me, I read where Stoughton Trailers in Wisconsin is hiring inmates that have been convicted of burglary, then bringing them on full time after they are released.