Hope all goes well… “So explain why bond yields decline when the Fed tapers?” asked Yoda, high in the Rockies. “And explain why stocks won’t go down when earnings aren’t going up?” continued the mkt’s biggest S&P local. “Explain why the S&P is at all-time highs when the Russell is below its 200day average?” he asked. “And explain why energy stocks trade like internet stocks when December 2017 oil trades at $8

The city’s inhabitants flooded into the streets. To celebrate Sarajevo’s City Hall reopening. It had been 22 lost years since the iconic building was hit by mortars, engulfed by the inferno. And the EU had finally rebuilt it. Like so many icons, its history had neither ended nor begun on that 1992 morning. After all, Archduke Franz Ferdinand stepped through its front door in 1914, and was promptly plugged. Pop! Usher

Pulled in. Hopped out. Dragged my bags from the back seat. “Daddy’s home!” shrieked the lookout. And their campaign began. Shock-and-awe. My four year old hit first, at full speed, hurling himself with the kind of un-hedged commitment that comes from having always been caught. I threw the little terrorist high in the air. Because I still can. And as Osama bin Charlie wrapped himself tightly around my neck, securing t

Hope all goes well… “Can’t believe I’m telling you this,” confessed Dirk, an investment banker, swinging on the pole. I tucked a twenty into his thong. “When I started in the biz, I’d sell companies to private equity firms, they’d make things efficient, hire good sales people, everyone won, even employees.” There were 15 PE firms in his sector, now there are 400. “Promise you won’t reveal my name,” implored Dig

“People are missing the catalyst,” he said. Rain fell in sheets, lashed the windows. The room shook. Rattled by the incessant cracking of jackhammers, far below, chipping away at Manhattan’s bedrock. Making way for skyscrapers. “A trend started in Jan and Feb, in the place where all bad financial things happen; Japan,” continued the CIO. “One of my traders called early this year to say the damndest thing had just hap

He cracked another cold Bud. Shot-gunned it. Burped. And picked up USA Today. Smearing frackin’ shale grime on its colorful pages. Scanned some boring headlines. China’s gonna be richer than America someday soon, but nearly everyone in China’s still gonna be desperately poor. “Damn Chinese,” he muttered, shaking his head. Thirty of thirty-one Chinese provinces missed growth targets, but national GDP is on track. “Bur

Hope all goes well… “If you have a strong thesis and get a deep pullback,” started the CIO, a fella who has the former and stopped out due to the latter, “you mechanistically put the position back on.” Long growth and short emerging markets has suffered the kind of swift trend reversal seen every 5-10 yrs. “But only once market positioning gets cleaned up.” Which is closer to done, than just begun. “Markets periodica

“No Asian nation ever successfully transitioned from a mercantilist to a consumption-based model,” said the CIO. “Part of the problem is cultural, part is age; their societies grow old so fast.” But China’s not just any Asian nation. Earth’s 2nd biggest economy grows quicker, compounds faster, consumes more oil, coal, steel, food and water than any nation. China’s 1.36bln citizens breathe 19% of the air that enters h

“We don’t have a magic wand,” bellowed Vitor Constancio, with a theatrical twirl of his cape. “Otherwise all countries would be rich, because monetary policy would cure everything,” continued the ECB’s Portuguese Vice President, vanishing in a puff of smoke. And denied QE’s intoxicating illusion, the crowd of spoiled, drunken traders erupted. Throwing beer bottles, tipping tables. The nervous emcee grabbed a micropho

“City Hall looks odd, no?” grunted the Russian commando to some other thug. You see, he and his closest comrades, poorly disguised as freedom-fighting locals, stormed the Kharkiv opera house, mistaking it for City Hall. They’re not the only ones confused. “New Russia – Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa – were not part of Ukraine in czarist times, they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows,” exclaimed P