The reading from our staff on the grounds in Athens seems to be 50/50 right now, but the NO vote appears to be more organized with booths and stalls setup everywhere. A NO vote is the ONLY way forward for Greece. What they must be mindful of is that Brussels will have its talons firmly embedded in the count. It is […]

As you would expect ahead of July 4th weekend, volumes were a fraction of their norm – as if they were not poor enough! Asian equities were the early talk today and the possible investigation into the recent wild volatility of the Shanghai (SHCOMP) equity market – today closing down almost 6%. An interesting point of fact […]

QUESTION: Mr Armstrong; A friend works for a ….. Hedge Fund. He said you could put together a team to save Europe. Would you take up such a challenge? Thank you for telling it the way it is. OD ANSWER: In theory, yes, we could put together a team of people from the real world to […]

The IMF on Thursday issued its own analysis on the Greek economy. The new debt forecast numbers have been raised in recent months and while the IMF analysis is never on point (way too optimistic), this tends to make the new number even more shocking. The entire idea of lending more and more money and […]

Greece was not the main headline today, to no surprise. Obviously, it’s still all over the media, but the markets had the Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) to contend with instead. Not such a shocker at 223k (rate 5.3%) but the revisions (down 60k, putting April 187 and May 254) were mildly interesting.  Also, a point to note […]

The most fundamental truth about trading is that your opponent is YOURSELF. The majority must be wrong because they are the fuel that propels the market. The market enters a flash-type crash when the vast majority is LONG and they try to sell but there is no bid. Far too many people demonize trading such as “paper gold”, arguing that it is […]

Interesting day in bunds where we saw initial weakness as the safe haven bid was unwound, only to see it all reverse at the end of the day! GGB 2yr got messy at one stage on headlines (needless to say, no IMF repayment was made) and was last seen 50bp higher at 35.75% at the time of this writing. YTD […]

A slew of emails have been coming in asking if we would help Greece if they leave the euro. ABSOLUTELY YES! This week we have people in Athens meeting as I write, offering at this stage an informal proposal should the people vote to leave the euro. This would be the GREATEST of all events that would not merely […]

  The Greek drama of Greek Tragedy continues with a rumored agreement to continue the stimulus in return for promised reforms, only to have Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announce a surprise referendum on July 5 after June 30, which puts the IMF payment into default. Late last week EurAsia group’s Ian Bremmer remained confident […]

On Monday, Puerto Rico is set to release a key report on its financial stability. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla told The New York Times that the island would probably seek significant concessions from many of its creditors because “the debt is not payable.” Puerto Rico is the next Greece where the “vulture” investors bought their bonds back in […]