(US) Market Volatility

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... Not surprisingly, the biggest potential selloff catalyst is the Fed itself and specifically the Dec. 16 FOMC announcement, which the Fed is desperate to guide as being "priced in" by the market, but considering the Fed's track record with getting any forecast right, concerns are starting to grow. "As for near-term risks—we believe the most imminent market catalyst will be the December Fed meeting in which we are likely to see the first rate hike of the cycle."

* * *

So far so good, but to a market which has traded mostly on technicals and program buying (and selling) in recent months, there is something far more troubling than just what the Fed will announce:

This important event falls at a peculiar time—less than 48 hours before the largest option expiry in many years. There are $1.1 trillion of S&P 500 options expiring on Friday morning. $670Bn of these are puts, of which $215Bn are struck relatively close below the market level, between 1900 and 2050. Clients are net long these puts and will likely hold onto them through the event and until expiry. At the time of the Fed announcement, these put options will essentially look like a massive stop loss order under the market.

What does this mean? Considering that the bulk of the puts have been layered by the program traders themselves, including CTA trend-followers, and since the vol surface of the market will be well-known to everyone in advance, there is a very high probability the implied "stop loss" level will be triggered, and the market could trade to a level equivalent to the strike price, somewhere in the 1,800 area, or nearly 200 points below current levels.

Which would be a tragedy for the Fed: after all, nothing is more important to Yellen, Draghi et al, than affirmative market signaling - pointing to the (surging) market's reaction and saying "look, we did the right thing", just as Draghi did on Friday when he explicitly talked the market higher in the aftermath of the ECB's disastrous announcement...

/... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-14/market-has-just-gone-nuts

Neocons’ Hegemonic Goal Is Bringing The Extinction Of Planet Earth

Livestream: COP21 Paris Plenary about to start now

"(T)he United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way,” he warned."

True enough.

"Russia has vowed to replace what it sees as a coercive U.S.-led global order with one in which the West respects Russia’s interests." We should all respect each others' interests and consider the historical and cultural as well as the economic and political contexts involved, then seek to work together to build not an elitist federal 'one world order' but a workable planetary confedration.

Putin’s message on Syria isn't mixed, it appears to be honest and open. "On the one hand, he has blamed the United States for creating the conditions that allowed ISIS to emerge; on the other, he has offered to join the United States in an anti-ISIS coalition." The first is accurate and the second appears to be genuine. I don't see any hidden agenda here. As for posssible outcomes in Syria, the US and allies seek to impose regime change by ousting the President while Russia speaks of establishing conditions for an orderly transition (through elections, presumably)...

Ukraine, by European standards, is a large country. Perhaps a Ukrainian Confederation of semi-autonomous regions would work better than attempts to impose a unitary State. Majorities in Crimea and in the industrial Don valley areas did vote against Kiev's policy line.

Syria conflict: Who are the groups fighting Assad?

Good, then, I agree.

Food product labeling does not fall within the scope of what the FDA regulates. Agreed.

It is a political issue requiring a political executive decision and not within the set of subjects amenable to scientific analysis (beyond political, economic and associated social sciences, that is). If the FDA has indeed been formally empowered to decide, unscientifically, on the issue of labeling, then that power has been delegated, I would suggest improperly, by the political executive and should be recovered by the same.

"... a minuscule number of narcissistic hedonists, most of whom fit the profile of psychopathy..."

Perfect description, thanks!

Yes, because people want to make the informed choice, a rational motivation

and reasonable in a democracy. This is DU and that is what labeling would enable.

My personal rational reasons, as, amongst other things, an environmental sciences graduate from the 1970s, include the desire to be able to make choices which might help to avoid or mitigate possible ecosystemic risks from predictable and unpredictable effects on the modified and associated species arising from the use of genetic engineering, and a desire to resist the control and contamination of food chains, human beings, their societies and the natural environment by monopolistic and corrupt crony-corporations.

Your rational reasons against labeling?

Your statements do not logically 'add up'.

People want labeling along with other information so that they can make informed choices.

You cannot prove no people have died from eating food including GMO ingredients. It is logically impossible to prove a negative. So there is no rational argument in your favor on that count, sorry.

Genetic engineering can be simply described a a process of 'cutting and splicing' genetic material to and from anywhere in the gene pool of life on this planet, under total human (corporate) control. Breeding can be described as a process whereby natural selection is influenced by human intervention in this natural process, selecting for desired traits as they emerge. There is a great difference. Some extreme forms of mutation breeding (the process of exposing seeds to chemicals or radiation in order to generate mutants with desirable traits to be bred), especially if in breeding animals, could well be considered inappropriate.

If corporate interests are corrupting and contaminating truly organic products in the USA then, you are right, labeling products 'Organic' would be of little use to the discerning mind. Labeling products as 'GMO', by contrast, would be both unambiguous and useful to people who want to know.

Not only.

Natural selection in neighboring species populations is affected by the presence of the GMOs (yes, and any domesticated and non-domesticated species) themselves. In the case of GMOs engineered to be particularly pest-resistant, the pests evolve, so as a consequence new pesticides tend to get developed and/or pesticide use tends to increase in the context of the industrialized, energy-inefficient, corporate-controlled agriculture, horticulture and animal-'husbandry' in which such technology is being employed in a way always designed to benefit corporate controllers, owners and shareholders long before any thought might be given to the consequences, proven or yet to be proven, for the human population at large, its social wellbeing and its natural environment.