Overnight

In one word, down, best describes Asian markets overnight.

Asia markets fell in Wednesday's choppy session, as polling closed in some U.S. states in the world's most closely watched election of recent times.

Japan's Nikkei 225 shed 4.12 percent, after rising more than 1 percent, as the yen, regarded as a safe haven currency, climbed amid nervousness over the vote. Dollar/yen was trading at 101.56 as of 11:32 am HK/SIN, after climbing up to 105.46 earlier.

Australia's ASX 200 was down 3.46 percent, slipping from gains of 0.8 percent at the open. The benchmark index's saw broad losses across all sub-indexes, except for gold which was up 10.4 percent. The Mexican peso dropped 10% when Trump carried Ohio.

According to NBC News, Donald Trump was the projected winner in several states: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, Louisiana and Kentucky.

 
The yen rallied as the did gold and other safe haven investments.

This from Reuters. Risk is back on. Dow futures are down 600 points. Gold and the yen are up. Gold is up $40 an ounce at $1322.20 or 3%. Dow Futures are down 625 points. At one point the Dow futures were down 750 points. U.S. Treasuries, yen, gold jump by most since Brexit and the Mexican peso plunges most since 1994, per Bloomberg.

Overnight

Caution is the word before Tuesday's election results overnight in Asia as markets are mixed. the Nikkei 225 opened up as investors hugged the sidelines as the index was off 0.2% at 17,148.27 after being higher.

Investors themselves seemed mixed as some see a Clinton victory as calming the market versus the unknown factor of a Trump win. But the reality is after a short term burst either higher or lower depending on who wins the future is quite uncertain given all the trouble around the globe. The ASX 200 was up slightly, 0.1%;  the Kospi up also 0.1%. In Hong Kong the Hang Send Index was up 0.3% and the Shanghai Composite Index tacked on 0.6%.

Reuters reported: Gold steadied early Tuesday along with the dollar, after dropping nearly 2 percent in the previous session, as uncertainty just hours ahead of the U.S. presidential election kept wary investors locked into the safe-haven commodity. The dollar steadied in Asia on Tuesday, keeping gains made in the previous session on the growing prospect of a victory for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after the FBI cleared her of any possibility of criminal charges in its latest probe.

With hours to go before Americans vote, Democrat Hillary Clinton has about a 90 percent chance of defeating Republican Donald Trump in the race for the White House, according to the final Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project. Investor sentiment in the euro zone improved further in November, reaching its highest level for the year and easing pressure for further stimulus measures by the European Central Bank, a survey showed on Monday.

A majority of Bank of Japan policymakers believe it could take time for inflation expectations to firm, underscoring lingering doubts on how effective the BOJ's new policy framework would be in achieving its ambitious 2 percent inflation target.  China's gold reserves rose to 59.24 million fine troy ounces (oz) at the end of October, up from 59.11 million a month earlier, the central bank said on Monday. Prices for Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose on reports that Russia signaled it would take part in a deal with members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut production. Brent was last up 0.2% at $46.22 a barrel in morning Asian trade, though Nymex futures were flat.

At Your Own Peril

 
We have always warned about gurus and the need to realize you are on your own. Read them, digest if you want what they say, but do your on thinking. Governments want you to need them more than they need you. That's one of the globalist crowd's major themes.

Confidence is like trust, fragile at best. People have been through Magic Mario's "Whatever it takes" nonsense; they've seen, many first hand, the BOJ's decades' long monetary swamp and other central bank triflings; and we haven't even mentioned the Federal Reserves Bank's pathetic shortcomings.

It's not old men, white or otherwise, it's perception that rules in the end. And liquidity. Forget that term at your peril.

peakprosperity.com/podcast/103187/jim-rickards-theyre-going-lock-down-system

Here’s the point. In 1998, Wall Street bailed out a hedge fund (LTCM). In 2008, the central banks bailed out Wall Street. In 2018, if not sooner, who’s going to bail out the central banks? The central banks are at the point where they don’t have any dry powder left.
By way of example, the Fed took their balance from $800 billion to $4.2 trillion and cut interest rates to 0%. Now, if they had normalized things in the meantime, so let’s say they got their balance sheet back down to $800 billion or maybe one trillion dollars and raised interest rates up to 2 or 3%, I’d be the first one to congratulate them. I’d say, “Hey, nice going. You saved the world and you normalized your balance sheet and normalized interest rates.” But, that didn’t happen. The balance sheet is still at $4 trillion, interest rates are still close to 0%. What are they going to do in the next crisis? Take the balance to $8 trillion, $12 trillion? They can’t do it. There’s an invisible confidence boundary. No one knows exactly where it is -- you find out the hard way. And when you cross it, you destroy confidence in the dollar.
The only clean balance sheet left in the world is at the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. And, that’s where the liquidity will come from in the next crisis. They have a printing press. They can print this world money called a geeky name: the special drawing right, or the SDR. But just think of it as 'world money', because that’s what it is. So, the Fed has a printing press; they can print dollars. The European Central Bank has a printing press; they can print euros. The IMF has a printing press; they can print SDRs. An SDR is not backed by anything, it’s just this kind of world money. That’s where the liquidity will come from, with an important difference. The IMF is not that nimble. It will take six to eight months. Last time it took 11 months, maybe they can do it faster. But, it’ll take a few months to print this new world money.
In the meantime, if the central banks are tapped out and the IMF is taking six months or so to issue the SDRs to reliquify the system, what are the elites going to do in the meantime when they can’t print the money? They’re going to lock down the system. Money market funds are going to spend redemptions. Banks are going to be closed. ATMs will be reprogrammed so you can get max $300 a day for gas and groceries. Stock exchanges will close. By the way, all this has happened before. None of what I’m talking about is new. It has all happened before.
So, in 1998, the Fed printed the money and gave it to you. In 2008, they printed the money and gave it to you. In 2018, if not sooner, they’re not going to able to print the money, they’re not going to let you have your money. Instead, they’re going to lock down the system.

Elitist Leadership

There is an old saying: What's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's one you can bet elites hate. A host of lesser known--and in the eyes of elitists, less important--people have been prosecuted and jailed for the crime, we emphasize the word crime here, sharing classified information.

Now one of the elites is being charged. If anything comes of it, it will strike a blow for real equality of justice these people give only patronizing lip service to.
----

French president François Hollande whose approval rating is a scant 4% now faces impeachment for disclosing classified information to journalists.

Given national elections take place in 2017 and given socialists would be unlikely to convict him, one has to wonder “why bother?”, yet here we go: French Right Calls for François Hollande’s Impeachment.Republican MP Pierre Lellouche on Monday started a process to activate Article 68 of the French constitution, allowing parliament to impeach the president. The move comes three days after Eric Ciotti, another Republican MP who is managing former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign for the rightwing presidential nomination, formally requested that prosecutors investigate a potential breach of security.

While the impeachment request would have to get over several obstacles and remains a long shot, the initiatives add to Mr Hollande’s woes following the publication of a 622-page book in which the president, among other things, criticised Socialist colleagues and hoped for his party’s “hara-kiri”.

The book, A President Should Not Say That, caused outcry within Mr Hollande’s camp, pushing his approval ratings down to a record low of 4 per cent and prompting calls on the left and right for him to rule out a second presidential bid. In the book, Mr Hollande also admits that he ordered assassinations for security reasons and disclosed details of plans to destroy targets held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad after allegations that the Syrian leader bombed civilians with chemical weapons.

mishtalk.com/2016/11/07/impeachment-process-starts-on-hollande-for-disclosing-classified-information-to-journalists

You're Next

A lot of people live by the idea it won't happen to them. It's reasonable, a way to cope with many of life's vagaries, kind of a personal comfort zone available to any and all. It's another way of convicting oneself it's the other guy not me. I am one of them, I voted for them, they won't single me out.

Well, if you're currently thinking this won't and isn't happening right now here in America, you're not thinking. This is PC in it's purist sinister form. Right in your face. Diversity is supposed to be about tolerance. This is zero tolerance at its ugliest.

It's also a testimony about just how rigged the system is and how those who want want they want will stop at nothing to get it. They're called elites for a reason.
----
Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors. In Britain, the gymnast Louis Smith has just been suspended for two months by British Gymnastics. This 27-year old sportsman's career has been put on hold, and potentially ruined, not because of anything to do with athletics but because of something to do with Islam.
Last month a video emerged online of the four-time Olympic medal-winner and a friend getting up to drunken antics after a wedding. The video -- taken on Smith's phone in the early hours of the morning -- showed a friend taking a rug off a wall and doing an imitation of Islamic prayer rituals. When the video from Smith's phone ended up in the hands of a newspaper, there was an immediate investigation, press castigation and public humiliation for the young athlete. Smith -- who is himself of mixed race -- was forced to parade on daytime television in Britain and deny that he is a racist, bigot or xenophobe. Notoriously liberal figures from the UK media queued up to berate him for getting drunk or for even thinking of taking part in any mockery of religion. This in a country in which Monty Python's Life of Brian is regularly voted the nation's favourite comic movie.
After an "investigation," the British sports authority has now deemed Smith's behaviour to warrant a removal of funding and a two-month ban from sport. This is the re-entry of blasphemy laws through the back door, where newspapers, daytime chat-shows and sports authorities decide between them that one religion is worthy of particular protection. They do so because they take the religion of Islam uniquely on its own estimation and believe, as well as fear, the warnings of the Islamic blasphemy-police worldwide.

The front-door reintroduction of blasphemy laws, meantime, is being initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders has been put on trial before. In 2010 he was tried in the courts for the contents of his film "Fitna" as well as a number of articles. The trial collapsed after one of the expert witnesses -- the late, great Dutch scholar of Islam, Hans Jansen -- revealed that a judge in the case had tried in private to influence him to change his testimony. The trial was transparently rigged and made Dutch justice look like that of a tin-pot dictatorship rather than one of the world's most developed democracies. The trial was rescheduled and, after considerable legal wrangling, Wilders was eventually found "not guilty" of a non-crime in 2011.

But it seems that the Dutch legal system, like the Mounties, is intent on always getting its man. On Monday of this week the latest trial of Geert Wilders got underway in Holland. This time Wilders is being tried because of a statement at a rally in front of his supporters in March 2014. Ahead of municipal elections, and following reports of a disproportionate amount of crimes being committed in Holland by Muslims of Moroccan origin, Wilders asked a crowd, "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?" The audience responded, "Fewer, fewer." To which Wilders responded, "Well, we'll arrange that, then."

• Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors, initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics.
• By prosecuting Wilders, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer "more," or he will be committing a crime.
• At no point would it occur to me that anyone saying he did not want an endless flow of, say, British people coming into the Netherlands should be prosecuted. Nor would he be.
• The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalising a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.
• The Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. In so doing they obviously aspire to keep the peace in the short term, but they cannot possibly realise what trouble they are storing up for our future.

gatestoneinstitute.org/9253/europe-blasphemy-courts

Overnight

Markets got a boast overnight from the FBI news that noting in Hillary Clinton's private email server search changes their previous findings as Asian shares rose and the U.S. dollar bumped higher. Dow Jones futures leaped 220 points on the news, the Nikkei 225 rebounded 1.59%, the Kospi gained 0.89% and the ASX 200 rallied 0.96%. The Hang Send rose 0.62% and the Shanghai Comosite inched  0.13% higher.

So it's most likely risk on again with investors as they digest the news ahead of Tuesday"s election.
Reuters reported: After the FBI announcement, the Mexican peso rose against the greenback, at 18.6837 compared to levels above 19 pesos last week. The peso is seen as a proxy for Trump's hopes of winning the election, due to his vocal anti-Mexico stance.

"The Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso, the two benchmarks for the election due to their close geographic and economic ties with the US, gained strength as a Clinton White House becomes a symbol for continental trade and prosperity,"one observer noted.

Also on Monday, China will reveal its foreign currency reserves for October.
U.S. crude futures were up 1.11 percent at $44.56 a barrel in Asia, after settling at $44.07 in the Friday U.S. session, while Brent futures rose 0.97 percent to $46.02, after they settled at $45.58.
Oil futures had fallen for the sixth straight session in the U.S. on Friday, on signs of renewed tensions between Saudi Arabi and Iran, which could scupper an output-cut deal being hammered out by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members.

The WSJ noted that nickel prices soared on Monday pushing up broad based gains in base metals owing to the risk on again meme. Three-month nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange jumped 4.1% with tin prices up 3.2% and copper up 0.7%. Nickel rices since the first of the year are now up 45% on the LME. Gold retreated a bit with Spot gold XAU= was down 0.7 percent at $1,295.01 an ounce at 0127 GMT. The metal hit a low of $1,287.86 earlier in the session.

Misunderstandings

 
Well, can you say: Hang your chad?

It appears theirs what the left claimed was corruption down in Florida again dating back the the Internet inventor, Al Gore's, bid for the White House. This time it's those terrible people on the left.

Broward County, Florida, home of the now infamous "hanging chad" fiasco during the 2000 showdown between George Bush and Al Gore, may be on the verge of yet another controversial election cycle.  Historically a democrat stronghold, Broward County always comes under extra scrutiny during presidential elections.

Per a new report from NewsMax, the 2016 election cycle may be among the most controversial yet as a temporary worker for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office has been fired after reporting what she thought to be "election fraud."  In a sworn affidavit presented to the Florida State Attorney General, this temporary worker claims that she witnessed "four Supervisor of Elections employees sitting at the same table actively filling out election ballots."  Further, according to the affidavit, each of the four workers "had a stack of blank ballots to the right of them … and a stack of completed ballots to their left."

Of course, as usual, we're supposed to believe that there is absolutely nothing unusual about a group of poll workers, in a heavily democratic county, sitting in a back room filling out blank ballots.  No, apparently this is just another attempt to "criminalize behavior that is normal," as Donna Brazile would say.

According to Brenda Snipes, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, what this terminated employee witnessed was workers simply transcribing faxed paper ballots from the men and women of our armed forces from overseas.  According to Snipes, those faxed ballots are a different size than regular ballots and thus have to be converted to the official forms in order to be counted.
----
 According to officials, it was all just a misunderstanding. And so we now fire workers for legitimate misunderstandings. Sure we do.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-05/florida-elections-worker-i-was-fired-witnessing-possible-absentee-ballot-fraud

Be Flexible

Some call it PhD copper.

There are lots of reasons people give for copper being a bellwether for economic growth because of its wide use. And there are lots of reasons now being cited for it fall from grace as an economic prognosticator. Things have changed goes one.

Be that as it might, copper of late has been on a tear. Prices are now up for the 10th straight day, a streak that spans 28 years, and many are suggesting signals a turn in the slow-growth miasma witnessed these past several years. But copper is not alone in this rally. Aluminum, zinc and nickel have been on their own upswing.

                                

Copper closed the week up 3.3% punctuating an 8.5% rise in prices over the 10-day stretch. Signs that inflation might be on the upswing in the world's two biggest economies, the U.S. And China, has buoyed investor hopes, as factory activity in both countries has been reported on the rise. But there's still much room for another declaration: Not so fast. Reported is a suspect of interest. Can any one believe U.S. numbers let alone those from the government-controlled China?

Rising car sales in China is one reason cited for the expected good tidings. But sales in the U.S. tell a different story. Ten days, however impressive,  don't make a trend. The stock market many seem to overlook has benefited from stilts in it climb higher, $2 trillion in share buybacks. Then there's capital expenditures, anemic by most standards given the excessive amount of artificially cheap money afloat. Further the cheap money has spurred M&A activity not something known to stimulate economic growth,but more an exercise in money grubbing and poor allocation of funds.

Trump is considered an unknown risk. Well, what many Americans, agree with them or not, now know Obama proved to be an unknown risk. In the corporate world, as one might expect, these Johnny come late elites, have a new excuse, short termism. Now short termism has been a Wall Street-caused problem for as long as we can recall, but don't try to awaken that sleeping pooch.

Way back in 2002 you had one of the biggest Wall Street darlings of the time exceed it's expected earning by one penny for 14 straight quarters, probably right up there with one's odds of winning the Super Lottery, and each time the stock price roared upwards. Now JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon and his fellow Wall Street elites are suddenly going to change all that by focusing on the longer term. Anything to get heat off them and the pressure they put on quarterly earnings.

The bottom line here is these elitists are human beings. And history shows without doubt the pit of human greed and arrogance is bottomless. One recent example is the glee from these people over the UK court decision calling for a vote by Parliament. The people spoke. Democracy is only democracy if these people get to define it. Learn that now or step in line to get measured for you ankle shackles.

As for your investments expect the unexpected. Fade the scaremongers and be flexible.

The Clinton Family Dirt

The Clinton Family saga is long, dirty and deep. Apparently, they don't care who they ripoff, including insiders. You should also note the Bush connection here.
-----
A couple of days ago we shared a Podesta email from Doug Band about Chelsea talking openly in public about her "internal investigation" into the Clinton Foundation. 
As with many of the Doug Band email chains, the rabbit hole just got a little deeper today with Band accusing of Chelsea of "using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade" among other accusations.  He also concludes with another veiled threat on the consequences "once we go down this road...."

The investigation into her getting paid for campaigning, using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade, taxes on money from her parents....

I hope that you will speak to her and end this

Once we go down this road....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-06/doug-band-accuses-chelsea-using-clinton-foundation-money-pay-her-wedding

For The PC Purists

There's so much concern about crude language today particularly when it's directed at the female species. So much so that the Harvard men's soccer scheduled was canceled for the rest of the season over some language the men's team used to discuss players on the school's female soccer team.

Harvard's president, a female, promptly expressed her PC shock and canceled the rest of the men's season. Now we're sure the president, good academician she is, appreciated studies.So this one is for you, sweetheart, and your purist academic-trained mind.

A unique survey of the swearing habits of men and women over the past 20 years has revealed that not only is the English language constantly discovering new ways to be rude, but women are using the f-word more often than men.

With the help of 376 volunteers who submitted recordings of up to three hours of their daily conversations, British researchers have amassed a language database of 10m words. Half of them have been transcribed so far.

The full results will not be published until 2018, but the most striking conclusions so far confirm that men are no longer the champs when it comes to.....
thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/the-swearer-sex-women-use-f-word-more-than-men-kd87fmspc