Two weeks ago, ahead of the recent face-ripping, "most-hated rally" in tech stocks which has pushed the Nasdaq from the depths of a bear market in May to the verge of a 20%+ bull market last week, we said that with hedge funds positioned bearishly and getting steamrolled by the CTA, buyback and retail driven-rally, they will be forced to chase market upside.

First, we pointed out that amid all the recent preparations for a market crash, hedge funds forgot to "hedge" for a melt up, and as the Goldman Prime Brokerage chart below shows, positioning in the Info Tech sector weighting vs. SPX on the Goldman Prime hit a fresh 10-year low at the end of July....

The former chancellor said, if he becomes party leader and prime minister, he will make sure UK police forces record the ethnicity of members of the paedophile rings, who are predominantly of Pakistani and South Asian heritage.

In an interview with GB News, Sunak said: “I have two young girls who are 9 and 11, and I think for too long we just haven’t focused on this issue.”

The procedural vote to advance the Democratic bill - which authorizes over $400 billion in new spending - was 51–50 after Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the Capitol to cast a vote, breaking the deadlock in the Senate over the measure that Democrats say would reform the tax code, lower the cost of prescription drugs, invest in energy and climate change programs, all while lowering the federal deficit.

As part of the deal, which would increase cooperation in the transportation, agriculture, finance, and construction industries and present a seemingly united front against “terrorist organizations” in Syria,  Turkey agreed to change how it pays Russia for natural gas. Under the new agreement, Turkey has agreed to pay Russia partially in rubles, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said after the meeting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced months ago that unfriendly nations would be required to pay for Russian energy through a rubles account to insulate Russia from the effects of Western sanctions.

While Russia would not consider Turkey an unfriendly nation, Turkey’s payment in rubles for Russia’s natural gas would protect those payments from sanctions, and could smooth things over with Moscow, who might otherwise frown on Turkey’s activities in Syria.

Last month, Turkey also helped broker a deal to ship grain between Russia and Ukraine, further...

"75,000 people have pledged to strike on October 1st! If the government & energy companies refuse to act then ordinary people will! Together we can enforce a fair price and affordable energy for all," tweeted "Don't Pay UK," an anonymous group spearheading the effort to have more than one million Brits boycott paying their power bill by Oct. 1. 

Food prices look to at least double from here, after they’ve doubled once already, while energy prices are set to triple or worse. And there’s no logical reason for it.

This is not due to some inevitable market mechanism, it’s because the west decided to halt all Russian imports after the latter’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. All western leaders found that reason enough to cut all, or nearly all, imports from Russia. Gas, oil, fertilizer, food. Essentials. They could have been sitting around a negotiating table, but chose not to. Which only works as long as things remain sort of affordable. And then, it does not.

Problem is, they had and have no alternative to the Russian supplies of these goods (and there’s many more).

See, this is how we know they don’t make their own decisions. Those are made in Brussels and Davos, and then the “leaders” have to carry out the preconceived programs, and they will.

No elected official on his/her own would risk...

China's urging "flexibility" on North Korea appears to coincide with the Chinese Communist Party's ambitions in the region.

"According to unclassified intelligence reports to Congress, there are five key Chinese banks and a specially created holding company that funds the North Korean missile and nuclear technology programs." — Peter Huessy, Real Clear Defense, August 10, 2017.

China's main strategic concern when it comes to the Korean peninsula is apparently to end the US presence there and keep it out of US hands so that China can finally establish itself as the hegemon in the region.

North Korean escalation in the form of increased missile tests and resumption of ICBM and nuclear tests to pressure the US to make concessions -- in the shape of troop withdrawals from South Korea -- would play directly into the hands of China, enabling it to replace the US and establish itself as the primary power in the region.

"They are looking to take actions, which...

Before diving in, it’s worth briefly explaining the basics of bitcoin mining, and why it requires so much energy.

When someone mines for bitcoin, what they’re really doing is adding and verifying a new transaction record to the blockchain—the decentralized bank ledger where bitcoin is traded and distributed.

To create this new record, crypto miners need to crack a complex equation that’s been generated by the blockchain system.

Potentially tens of thousands of miners are racing to crack the same code at any given time. Only the first person to solve the equation gets rewarded (unless you’re part of a mining pool, which is essentially a group of miners who agree to combine efforts to increase their chances of solving the equation).

The faster your computing power is, the better your chances are of winning, so solving the equation first requires powerful equipment that takes up a lot of energy.

According to the study, a total of 61 active shooter incidents occurred across 30 states last year with 103 people killed and 140 wounded. This is up from 40 incidents and 38 killed in 2020.

California had 6 incidents that claimed the lives of 19 people with 9 wounded. Texas and Georgia each had 5.

California, which has some of the strictest gun laws, saw 0.015 shootings per 100,000 people. Texas, which has very unrestrictive state gun laws, had nearly the same at 0.0167 per 100,000 people. Georgia had 0.045 per 100,000 people.

Criminal attorney Arash Hashemi told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times, that in his opinion there’s no easy answer to how gun laws should be handled.

If there is one moment that symbolized our degeneration, it was when an enraged mob gathered in front of the Supreme Court and a leader of the United States Senate shouted threats against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying "You won't know what hit you!"

There have always been irresponsible demagogues. But there was once a time when anyone who shouted threats to a Supreme Court Justice would see the end of his own political career, and could not show his face in decent society again.

You either believe in laws or you believe in mob rule. It doesn't matter whether you agree with the law or agree with the mob on some particular issue. If threats of violence against judges — and publishing where a judge's children go to school — is the way to settle issues, then there is not much point in having elections or laws.

There is also not much point in expecting to have freedom. Threats and violence were the way the Nazis came to power in Germany. Freedom is...

The corporate dynamic when it comes to politics has been rather bizarre the past five years.  The general rule for decades in the US was that companies would avoid public sparring over political agendas whenever possible and if they did contribute to election campaigns they would spend money discreetly on candidates in both parties to hedge their bets.  Something changed around 2015-2016, however.  

Was it the surprise election of Donald Trump?  Trump was probably incidental.  It was more likely the dramatic shift among conservatives away from the controlled Neo-con paradigm and into a more liberty oriented standing.  Ron Paul's 2008 and 2012 campaigns had a lot to do with this change among Republican voters.  Conservatives and liberty minded independents were returning to their foundations of small government, constitutionalism, independent thought, meritocracy and decentralization.  This is when the corporate world decided (or was...

The three contracts, including one with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), gave the Chinese labs powers to destroy “secret files” from any stage of their collaboration.

“The party is entitled to ask the other to destroy and/or return the secret files, materials, and equipment without any backups,” stated the 2017 memorandum of understanding (MOU) that the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) signed with the Wuhan lab, which first came to light in April.

The broad confidentiality obligation, renewable every five years, applied to “[a]ll cooperation and exchange documents, data, details and materials,” the document said.

Located in the first city where COVID-19 began to spread, the WIV, which for years conducted coronavirus research with U.S. funding, has attracted global attention as a possible source of the virus. The confidentiality agreements, coupled with Beijing’s pattern of suppression of discussion on pandemic origin, raised questions over...

Following an official visit of U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, relations between the island state known as the Republic of China and its direct neighbor, the People's Republic of China, have cooled considerably.

Apart from an increasing number of military exercises off the coast of Taiwan stoking fears of an escalation of the long-running conflict, the People's Republic also has, to a certain extent, halted trade with Taiwan.

According to the 2021-22 annual summary from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), levels of coral cover in the northern and central areas of the reef were at their highest levels over the past 36 years of monitoring.

The growth is of course excellent news for environmentalists, but curiously, at the time of writing, the news is being downplayed in the mainstream media. The demise of the world’s coral reefs has long been a go-to poster scare story for Net Zero promoters. As late as October 2020, the BBC  was telling stories about the Reef losing half of its coral. The Guardian was one of the first to set the coral doomsday ball rolling when George Monbiot told its readers in 1999 that the “imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story”. Noting the recent record growth, the newspaper added that “global heating could jeopardise recovery”.

This notion that global...

In response to the disastrous failures and egregious poor decision-making of law enforcement to confront the Uvalde elementary school shooter that killed 21 people, including 19 children, a school system in North Carolina unveiled a new program to beef up security measures for the upcoming school year, including the placement of standard semi-automatic AR-15 rifles in every school, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Madison County Schools and Madison County Sheriff's Office agreed to put AR-15s in all schools in the district so that school resource officers can neutralize a threat immediately, unlike the disastrous response time in Uvalde, where video footage shows it took officers 77 minutes to breach the classroom where the shooter was hiding. 

Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute,

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, as tensions have risen to dangerous levels with China, President Joe Biden’s administration is lobbying Senate Democrats to "put the brakes" on the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022. The bill was recently introduced by the hawkish Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Analysts have said the bill which, inter alia, would designate Taipei a "major non-NATO ally," could see the One-China policy "in effect gutted." In a New York Times op-ed this week, Menendez said "we are laying out a new vision that ensures our country is positioned to defend Taiwan for decades to come."

The housing and renting market continues to teeter on the brink, and the newest incoming data doesn't offer up any clear signs of stabilization. In fact, new data continues to suggest the opposite: that volatility in housing could only be beginning...and that we're going to have plenty of fodder on deflation, which we have talked about frequently, invoking the effects of a "reverse bullwhip" on the economy. 

A new report from Apartments.com examining multifamily rent growth trends for July 2022 shows that the Sunbelt markets are set up for what is being called a "a significant collapse of demand" heading into the back half of 2022. 

Sunbelt cities, which had previously "dominated the top 10 rent growth markets in July with eight out of 10 located within the region" are now setting up for the fastest pullback.

I’m calling this the Ethereum Neoclassic (ETN) chain, because “ETH PoW” puts readers to sleep and there already exists a PoW-based Ethereum Classic from 2016.

So why is the Ethereum Neoclassic hard fork potentially a thing? For the simple reason that the Merge is about to render an estimated $5B worth of mining rigs obsolete. That presents Ethereum miners with two choices:

Following on the heels of a ban in Georgia, Indiana is the latest state to end abortion after the Supreme Court ruled that the practice is not a constitutional right and that laws regarding abortion must be decided by the states.

Media pundits were quick to attack the decision while applauding Kansas for its blocking of similar restrictions. 

There are numerous claims that abortion laws are a losing proposition for conservatives going into the November election and that Republican candidates face sure defeat.  However, pro-abortion protests have been far smaller than many expected after the Supreme Court confirmed what illegal leaks had hinted at – That Roe v. Wade was about to be undone.  Activist groups have left little impression that conservatives face some kind of “reckoning” in the fall.  

“We can have no finer role model. First and foremost, he was a value investor — a member of that eccentric tribe that believes it’s better to underpay than to overpay.”

The effects of elevated food prices have rippled worldwide and forced governments to impose price controls and trade restrictions. Price increases are due to supply constraints driven by several variables, including high energy prices, geopolitics, and weather. Ukraine restarted maritime transport of crops to the rest of the world, forcing grain prices to slip, though the food crisis is far from over. 

We pointed out in April that the next challenge for the global food supply could be a plunge in rice production (read: here). Fast forward months later, and our suspicions appear to be right as India, the world's largest rice exporter, has seen planting areas of the crop decline by 13% due to heatwaves and drought. 

In the midst of an already ongoing investigation into Tesla's Autopilot and Full-Self Driving claims, the NHTSA is now investigating two new accidents involving Teslas that took place over the last month.

The Tesla's were "apparently running on Autopilot", according to APs coverage of the story. The accidents wound up killing 2 motorcyclists, the report says. The NHTSA is now looking at whether or not Tesla vehicle automation stops the vehicles for motorcycles. 

Both accidents were similar in nature: the NHTSA said it "sent investigation teams to two crashes last month in which Teslas collided with motorcycles on freeways in the darkness". In both instances, the motorcyclists were killed. 

By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

The number of container ships at anchor or drifting in San Pedro Bay off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has now blown through all previous records and is rising by the day.