Meet 39-Year-Old “PepeCashMillionaire” Who Dicks Around On A Yacht All Day

For the past several months, 39-year-old crypto entrepreneur Marty M – known online as “PepeCashMillionaire,”  and MartyMcFly has been living on a yacht at the Bowden Island Marina off Vancouver be bought by selling “Rare Pepes” – digital assets integrated into the blockchain like Bitcoin.

#FortKekx #ETF sells top #XCP pump #HedgeFund manager buys #Yacht?⛵️ https://t.co/OOooWFAGf0 https://t.co/vGnePKT6yw https://t.co/o1QEMjMyZS pic.twitter.com/oUueZfjKrz

— ??000,000? (@dionysus64) October 20, 2017

Rare Pepes can be exchanged or sold for Pepe Cash, a cryptocurrency used by fans of Pepe the frog – a character made popular by 4chan and labeled a “hate symbol” by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) during the 2016 election. At present there are around 1500 Rare Pepe cards, with a little over 600 listed in the Rare Pepe Directory.

Motherboard caught up with PepeCashMillionaire for an exclusive interview, republished below:

Motherboard: Hi PepeCashMillionnaire. You can introduce yourself ?

Marty M.: I think I’m 39, I do not count too much. I was born in Poland, I lived under communism for about ten years. I came to Canada with my parents when I was 10 years old. I was a geek when I was young, I went to a school for gifted. But I also liked to smoke weed. So, I did not finish my computer studies. After four years, I sent everything shit and took off for the sunniest place possible, California. I stayed there illegally for seven years and I came back to Canada in 2009, when the economy was planted. I finished my studies, I found a job in which I managed a small team of developers for seven years. And the second year, one of the guys in the group told me about Bitcoin.

That’s how it all started?

Yes. He was mining on his work computer. At the time, Bitcoin was worth six dollars. I thought it was cool and I put $ 10,000. I bought at the wrong time, sold at the wrong time, did absolutely anything and did not win anything for three years but stayed in the community. I had a good job, I could afford to be a player. When the price began to rise, I knew that the crypto delirium was not going to stop. I started doing sleepless nights to ride Ethereum miners , I ran 18 graphics cards in my apartment, I got to work exhausted. I fell asleep on my desk and my boss woke me up.

How long have you been doing this?

In August 2016, I resigned the hard way. My life was great but I felt it was the end of the world. All I had to do was go to work. I dropped everything for cryptos. I think I did not win a penny with Bitcoin for six months. Once I lost seven of them. A nightmare. And then, in 2017, the value of the Pepe I bought for nothing in 2016 was multiplied by 20. When I saw that, I threw myself into it. What I had lost in Bitcoin was offset by the rise of Pepe Cash in recent months. Market movements were crazy, a good manager could make 20% margins. That’s how I earned my money.

I am intrigued by your nickname. You are a millionaire in Pepe Cash or dollars?

Good. How much do you earn, day to day?

I must say that returns are sporadic. All in all, Bitcoin trading has not been very lucrative because of the vagaries of the market. Bitcoin trading, big deals, all of that make the big majority of people lose a lot of money. I made the majority of my money in August and December last with Rare Pepe. I think the next push will be for March. It’s an income, but not a stable income. You can earn thousands of dollars in three days and struggle to make a few hundred dollars in the following weeks. If you have a child, a wife and a credit, it can be difficult.

What does PepeCashMillionaire’s life look like?

How long do you hope to live like this? What is your objective ?

In five years, I would like to have a yacht on every continent. I want friends I met through the couch surfing who take care of these boats, so that I can fly to any place in the world and navigate with them as I see fit. In ten years time, I would like to be rich humanly. I want to grow our community. Of course, if I have enough to pay for boats all around the world, I am very happy. But above all I would like to have a community of hundreds of thousands of members who express their political dissensions without risk of being transferred or banned.

How does Pepe Cash relate to political dissension? You know that Pepe has a rather heavy liability in the sector.

Most Pepe cards are completely innocent but some are a little taboo. There is one called Killary Pepe (in reference to a conspiracy theory that says the Clinton couple had political opponents assassinated, ed) . You could send mail to have it removed from a magazine. But you can not remove it from the blockchain. That’s what interests me.

Thanks to the blockchain, we now have a permanent graffiti wall. People will be able to consult it to enter the ethos at the popular level, without intermediary to limit this expression. It’s exactly like hieroglyphs. In hundreds of years, people will analyze the Pepe, they will look for their political meaning, their meaning … There will be so much detailed research about them that it will become a new field of study, a kind of meme archeology. You will be able to trace the origin of social modes and constructions through memes.

I understand that the system Rare Pepe also had an interest for artists and art dealers?

Representatives of Sotheby’s came to the Rare Pepe auction held in Manhattan last month … Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi was sold for $ 450 million. Now, imagine that an artist reproduces it perfectly. If you find yourself in the same room as the original and copy, good luck to differentiate them without tools.

 

With blockchain and verified transactions you can be the world’s greatest mathematician, artist or cryptography genius, you will never be able to duplicate a blockchain-based work. If you do digital art, of course, you can do a jpeg or a gif, but it will be stolen art. You will not be able to prove that you have the private key. The guy who bought the Homer Pepe for $ 38,500 at the Manhattan auction is his only real owner.

Why did you open the Museum of Modern Pepe ?

Last summer, one of our community members tried to book a site at Comic Con to present the Rare Pepe. I do not know if it’s because she’s transgender, but those fucking liberals at shit comics refused. We wondered what we could do to be present in spite of everything.

I thought that Andy Warhol’s canned soup was widely perceived as nil when it came out. They ended up in museums or sold for millions. That’s when I clicked. When I was in San Francisco, I went to the Museum of Modern Art and watched digital artworks. And I told myself that the Pepe were entitled to their own museum online, a Museum of Modern Pepe.

Two months after I launched the site, a virtual reality box, PrimeVR, contacted me accusing me of cybersquatting . It had been about two years since they were working on their own Museum of Modern Pepe in virtual reality. You can walk it, there are thousands of Rare Pepe on the walls, you can see the prices by clicking on it … The works are virtual, the museum is virtual. Only the price is real.

 

It’s cool, but what interest?

Everyone is connected to the Internet. Therefore, why would one need to go to a museum? Why go to an art auction? Why go anywhere, apart from the back of your boat with your laptop, and participate in virtual auctions to buy virtual artwork, which you will come back for more money later?

All this stuff going somewhere to make money in the Internet age seems to me insane. I want to move to have a social life, not to work. (Laughs.) I want the money to come to me to finance my life. It’s selfish, but why not?

President Obama’s official portrait is, ah, quite something…

The Smithsonian's portrait of President Obama pic.twitter.com/buvVAEomrj

— Axios (@axios) February 12, 2018

Upon closer inspection, the portrait which was “Painted” by bigoted homosexual black power advocate, Kehinde Wiley – who has a history of featuring sperm in his various works, it appears that President Obama’s forehead was the latest recipient of Wiley’s handiwork – as the former President bears what appears to be a giant sperm on his head.

For those who can’t quite make it out:

Indeed, proof of Wiley’s penchant for inserting sperm can be seen by nearly a decade of tweets referencing the lil’ swimmers:

In addition to all the sperm, Wiley apparently loves depicting violence against whites – and is on record saying the below “art” is “sort of a play on the “kill whitey” thing”:

Can you imagine if President Trump did the inverse?

To top it off, as the Gateway Pundit‘s Lucian Wintrich notes – in addition to being bigoted, Wiley uses Chinese labor to Photoshop his paintings:

As Wintrich of TGP reports:

The fawning New York Magazine piece makes this clear after the writer attempts to snap a few pictures of the studio space. Wiley immediately grows uncomfortable and begins skirting around the truth:

There’s nothing new about artists using assistants—everyone from Michelangelo to Jeff Koons has employed teams of helpers, with varying degrees of irony and pride—but Wiley gets uncomfortable discussing the subject. “I’m sensitive to it,” he says. When I first arrived at his Beijing studio, the assistants had left, and he made me delete the iPhone snapshots I’d taken of the empty space. […] “I don’t want you to know every aspect of where my hand starts and ends” […]

Producing work in China cuts costs, but not as much as it used to, Wiley says. These days in Beijing he employs anywhere from four to ten workers, depending on the urgency, plus a studio manager, the American artist Ain Cocke. 

Perhaps Obama would like to simply fade away after this latest debacle…

Shares of Chipotle ($CMG) jumped more than 12% after hours on heavy volume Tuesday after the company announced the addition of Taco Bell Chief Executive Brian Niccol as its new CEO.

Niccol will replace founder Steve Ellis, who announced last November that he would be stepping out of the CEO role to become executive chairman.

“At Chipotle’s core is delicious food, which I will look to pair up with consistently great customer experiences,” Niccol said in Tuesday’s announcement. “I will also focus on dialing up Chipotle’s cultural relevance through innovation in menu and digital communications.”

Niccol had been with Taco Bell parent company Yum Brands ($YUM) for seven years, and was an executive with Pizza Hut, Inc. prior to that.

Chipotle’s changing of the guard comes as the company struggles to rebound from several e.coli scares, along with a hack of their Point-of-Sale (POS) system after the company refused to upgrade to new chip reading payment technology. The belagured burrito vendor’s stock has gone down over 39% in the last year, while the S&P 500 gained 14.1%.

Last July, a selloff which began after the May announcement of a system-wide hack accelerated after the company had to close a Sterling, VA location following multiple reports of customers falling ill.

Customers reported symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, dehydration, and nausea to the website iwaspoisoned.com, which first alerted Business Insider to the issues at the Sterling restaurant. One person reported two hospitalizations as a result of the illnesses.

In total, eight reports were made to the website, indicating that at least 13 customers fell sick after eating there from July 14-15. –Business Insider

The fast food chain which notably refuses to use ingredients containing Monsanto GMOs was also hit with a massive hacking attack last March after refusing to upgrade to chipped card readers, which Chipotle reported in May.

No chip readers? No security.

Last May, Chipotle announced that Hackers used malware to infiltrate Chipotle Mexigan Grill Inc’s ($CMG) payment system over a three week period beginning in late March – stealing sensitive customer banking information, including account numbers and internal verification codes that could be used to drain debit-card linked bank accounts.

The announcement was made following an investigation into an incident first reported on April 25th of “unauthorized activity” detected in some of their Canadian restaurants.

The malware searched for track data (which sometimes has cardholder name in addition to card number, expiration date, and internal verification code) read from the magnetic stripe of a payment card as it was being routed through the POS device.

Chipotle refused to upgrade to chip readers in 2015

The malware used in the attack steals data found within the magnetic stripe of payment cards. Although it is not clear if EMV (chipped) payment cards would have been susceptible to the hack, Chipotle notably declined to use them in 2015 – citing inefficiencies caused by delays in the authentication process in a fast paced food service environment.

The breach could mean big trouble for shares of Chipotle, which have only partially recovered from an E.coli outbreak in late 2015. According to Reuters, security analysts say Chipotle will likely face a fine based on the size of the breach and number of records compromised.

“If your data was stolen through a data breach that means you were somewhere out of compliance” with payment industry data security standards, Julie Conroy, research director at Aite Group, a research and advisory firm.

“In this case, the card companies will fine Chipotle and also hold them liable for any fraud that results directly from their breach,” said Avivah Litan, a vice president at Gartner Inc (IT.N) specializing in security and privacy.

Let’s see if Niccol can turn this sinking ship around and bring it into the 21st century – perhaps without having to resort to the use of GMOs. Then again, rumor has it Monsanto doesn’t like companies who don’t embrace the science.

Two weeks after Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio mocked bears, telling the crowd at Davos that people holding cash will “feel pretty stupid,” the salty 68-year-old Billionaire has changed his tune.

Dalio then:

“We are in this Goldilocks period right now. Inflation isn’t a problem. Growth is good, everything is pretty good with a big jolt of stimulation coming from changes in tax laws. If you’re holding cash, you’re going to feel pretty stupid.”

Dalio now: 

“About 10 days ago, that’s where I thought we were. However, recent spurts in stimulations, growth, and wage numbers signaled that the cycle is a bit ahead of where I thought it was.”

Amazing what a technical correction can do to one’s long-term outlook in the near-term, no?

In a Monday LinkedIn post – since that’s where Ray Dalio spits game apparently, the Bridgewater founder explained “what’s happening within the context of the classic short-term debt/business cycle.”

Via ZeroHedge:

Dalio begins, as he usually does, by providing the following idealized snapshot of the business cycle:

In the “late-cycle” phase of the short-term debt/business cycle, when a) an economy’s demand is increasing at a rate that is faster than the capacity for it to produce is increasing and b) the capacity to produce is near its limits, prices of those items that are constrained (like workers and constrained capital goods) go up. At that time, profits also rise for those who own the capacities to produce those items that are in short supply. Then the acceleration of demand into capacity constraints and rise in prices and profits causes interest rates to rise and central banks to tighten monetary policy, which causes stock and other asset prices to fall because all assets are priced as the present value of their future cash flows and interest rates are the discount rate used to calculate present values. That is why it is not unusual to see strong economies accompanied by falling stock and other asset prices, which is curious to people who wonder why stocks go down when the economy is strong and don’t understand how this dynamic works. If the prices for stocks and other assets that do well when growth is strong continue to decline (which is typical), that and the credit market tightening leads demand to fall until demand is significantly less than the capacity to produce, which leads interest rates to fall and central banks to ease as their concerns about economic weakness supersede their concerns about inflation; that causes stock and other asset prices to rise. Such is the nature of the “short-term market and business cycle.” That is why it is classically best to buy stocks when the economy is very weak, there is a lot of excess capacity in the economy, and interest rates are falling (and to sell stocks when the reverse is the case).

Where are we now? While Dalio admits it is unclear “precisely where we are”, it is “clear that we are past the top in the bond market.”

We know that we are in the “late-cycle” part of the short-term debt/business cycle with the conditions I described at the beginning now existing, but we don’t know precisely where we are—i.e., we don’t know exactly how far we are from the top in the stock market and then the economy, though it is clear that we are past the top in the bond market. While squinting and doing calculations to try to figure that out, we know that we won’t get it precisely right, but we hope to get it as by-and-large right as we have in past times.

What are the key corporate considerations in a late cycle economy? For one, whether profits are rising faster than rates:

As for the calculations we are doing, classically, if the spurt in growth in profits (which is good for equities) is faster than the rise in interest rates (which is bad for asset prices) that will be marginally bullish, and if there is a lot of cash still on the sidelines (which there is) that causes one last spurt in equities prices, which is also bad for bonds (raising interest rates) and leads to Fed tightening, which makes the classic top. For the most part, that will be the most important determinant of the exact timing of the top in stocks.    

And here, a surprising mea culpa from the billionaire founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund:

“About 10 days ago, that’s where I thought we were. However, recent spurts in stimulations, growth, and wage numbers signaled that the cycle is a bit ahead of where I thought it was.”

Dalio is of course referring to the February 2 payrolls report, and specifically the jump in hourly earnings, which rose the most since 2009. That was just the beginning as he explains next:

These reports understandably led to the reactions in bonds, which affected stocks as they did. Then on Friday, we heard the announced budget deal that will produce both more fiscal stimulation and more T-bond selling by the Treasury, which is more bearish for bonds. And soon ahead, we will hear about a big (and needed) infrastructure plan and the larger deficits and more Treasury bond selling that will be needed to fund them. In other words, there is a whole lot of hitting the gas into capacity constraints that will lead to nominal rate rises driven by the markets. The Fed’s reactions to them and the amount of real (inflation-adjusted) rate rises that will result will be very important, so we will be monitoring this closely.

The Fed’s reaction will also be to the market, which took one look at these rapidly changing events and suffered a historic move, entering a correction from all time highs in the short period on record.

But wait, there’s more: in this case a recession scheduled to hit some time in 2019/2020:

What we do know is that we are in the part of the cycle in which the central banks’ getting monetary policy right is difficult and that this time around the balancing act will be especially difficult (given all the stimulation into capacity constraints and given the long durations of assets and a number of other factors) so that the risks of a recession in the next 18-24 months are rising. While most market players are focusing on the strong 2018, we are focusing more on 2019 and 2020 (which is the next presidential election year). Frankly, it seems to be inappropriate oversight to not be talking about the chances of a recession and what that recession might look like prior to the next election.

Finally, here is what according to Dalio is different in this business cycle, and why he is especially nervous this time round. As the billionaire writes,”there are two important differences that concern him:

1. there is such a big gap between the haves and the have-nots (which creates social and political sensitivities) and
2. the powers of central banks to reverse contractions are more limited than they have ever been (because interest rates are so low and QE is less effective).

And due to the above, Dalio concludes, “I worry about what the next economic downturn will be like, though it is unlikely to come soon.”

That said – Bridgewater just got done building out it’s largest short position ever – piling on $13 billion in European corporate short positions. And just this morning, Bloomberg noted that Bridgewater will be adding to the basket of shorts with a bet against Europe’s largest manufacturer – Siemens.

And there you have it, the world’s biggest hedge fund just turned a little more bearish – despite when Ray Dalio thinks the downturn is coming.

President Trump’s Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, appeared on Fox News Sunday – one day before the White House is expected to release 2019 spending proposals – where he warned that the U.S. will post a larger budget deficit this year, which could cause interest rates to “spike” (his words) as a result.

That said – the spike seems to have support, as the 10Y went from 2.60% to 2.90% since Friday’s payrolls (along with the inflationary assumptions from the jump in hourly wages).

“This is not a fiscal stimulus; it’s not a sugar high,” Mulvaney said on of the president’s economic program, including the $1.5 trillion tax cut passed in late 2017. “If we can keep the economy humming and generate more money for you and me and for everybody else, then government takes in more money and that’s how we hope to be able to keep the debt under control,” Mulvaney said. –ZeroHedge

Watch:

In a second interview on Face the Nation, Trump’s tough talking bureaucrat said that rising budget deficits are “a very dangerous idea, but that’s the world we live in.”

Echoing this sentiment, President Trump shot off a Feb 9 tweet suggesting that were there only more GOP in congress, spending would be under control:

Without more Republicans in Congress, we were forced to increase spending on things we do not like or want in order to finally, after many years of depletion, take care of our Military. Sadly, we needed some Dem votes for passage. Must elect more Republicans in 2018 Election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2018

What may spook rates even higher will be Monday’s budget release from Mulvaney’s OMB – which will include concessions hammered out in the two-year budget deal that Trump signed into law on Friday morning, avoiding a government shutdown (Technically there was a shutdown for a little over 90 minutes). The deal will boost government spending by roughly $400 billion – funded directly with more debt.

Mulvaney said that as a fiscially-conservative congressman from South Caroline, he would “probably not” have voted for the bill.

“The additional spending could increase the deficit to about $1.2 trillion in 2019, and there’s a risk that interest rates “will spike” as a result, Mulvaney said.” –ZH

The Washington Post has perhaps the most dire outlook on the Trump budget – suggesting that tomorrow’s release won’t project a balance for ten years, abandoning the GOP’s long-held goal of eliminating a budget deficit, even over the next decade.

Let’s see if tomorrow brings higher yields and lower equity prices. As ZeroHedge notes, it’s already begun…

Invesco’s Chief Global Market strategist, Kristina Hooper, says the recent market turmoil may have weeks to go – after which “another jolt could be right behind it,” reports CNBC.

“I would expect whiplash to continue,” said Hooper. “The negative animal spirits that are in the market today don’t look like they’re abating … We could see this kind of tumultuous environment continue for days and perhaps weeks.”

After promising big returns, Scottsdale, AZ-based cryptocurrency lender DavorCoin left investors with virtually zeroed out accounts – following a similar wipeout of BitConnect.

The scheme was simple; investors would lend the cryptocurrency operators real money, for which they would receive interest on their loans in the form of proprietary “DavorCoins” (DAV), which promised an interest rate as high as 48%. The site’s “Lending and profit calculator” suggested at the end of January that an investor lending $30,000 in davorcoin who agrees to lock funds up for 120 days may earn $513 per day, $3,591 per week, $15,390 per month, and $104,217 upon “capital release day” on August 23, 2018.

The company was also offering a “WELCOME TO THE ‘BE A MILLIONAIRE’ LENDING LOTTERY!!!” in a Medium.com post, adding “We will offer an amazing $1,000,000 to someone from the Davor community and many more prizes!”

Sounds legit, right?

Things were going swimmingly until cryptocurrency prices began to crash in January. After BitConnect was shut down for “illegally and fraudulently offering investments in a cryptocurrency lending program” subject to the Securities act, DavorCoin responded, saying “This does not change anything for us,” adding that DavorCoin is now “the number one lending platform in the world !!”

Shortly thereafter the price of DAV went from $177 to under a penny in less than three weeks – amid receiving a Cease and Desist from the state of Texas, alleging a variety of fraud offences in connection to DavorCoin’s offerings – as well as “misleading and deceptive statements.”

And then people had issues selling their DAV coins:

FACT: You can not withdraw DAV because there is a huge price gap between our internal exchange and Coinexchange (external), so its very understandable currently. Please stick with us while we rectify this. #dav #davorcoin @DavorCoin

— DavorCoin Support (@davor_support) February 7, 2018

Investors on Facebook and Twitter bemoaned their losses. One investor who had loaned the company $4,000 said they were left with just $9. Another said that their $20,000 loan dissolved into $23.50 upon cashout.

DAVOR ARE YOU SERIOUS? FOR MY 1K LOAN YOU GIVE BACK 69 DAV COINS WHILE THEY ARE WORTH 0.19 CENT?!? I SHOULD GET 5200 DAV COINS FOR THAT WITH THE CURRENT PRICE, NOT 62

— JDR77 (@JDR775) February 7, 2018

I lost 20k in bitconnect and 10k In Davor…..hope that makes you feel better.

— asif (@asif114) February 10, 2018

@ChrisPageHome let me know if you find out anything. I had 8k in davor lost it all?

— Justin Price (@jprice73) February 10, 2018

I lost 20k on Davor man I am also low on money my 128 dav coins are worthless now

— Andreas2005 (@vstworld2019) February 9, 2018

On February 7, DavorCoin issued a statement ending their lending program, stating “There will be certainly winners and losers in this project, as in many high-risk investments. This is also true for the whole cryptocurrency market.”

According to a December survey, over 18% of respondents said they bought bitcoin on credit. Of those, 22% said that they had not paid off the debt despite virtual currencies reaching all time highs. And of those who hadn’t paid back the money borrowed to purchase crypto, 70% said they believed that owning Bitcoin is worth the interest expense.

Following its worst week in two years, CNBC reports that the Dow has moved a cumulative 22,000 points over the last five trading days, when you add up each day’s trading range.

Stocks have plunged in the last week as traders worried about rising interest rates and inflation, bringing an end to more than a year of historically low volatility. On Monday, the S&P 500 broke its longest ever streak without a 5 percent drop from a recent high, according to Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial.

The Dow suffered its worst daily point drop on record Monday, and briefly fell nearly 1,600 points intraday. The index recovered about half of Monday’s losses in a volatile Tuesday session, but has closed lower in each of the two days since. –CNBC

On Friday the Dow closed up 330 points higher, after initially jumping 349 points in the morning, falling 500 points in the afternoon, and then recovering. Meanwhile, the Cboe Volatility Index jumped above 50 Tuesday for the first time since August 2015 – trading near 29 late Tuesday afternoon.

Insane!

Insurance giant American International Group (AIG) posted a $6.7 billion fourth-quarter loss on Thursday after booking a giant charge connected to U.S. tax reform, as well as losses from global catastrophes such as the California wildfires.

Via Reuters:

“Excluding one-time items, adjusted fourth-quarter earnings were $526 million, or 57 cents per share, compared with an adjusted loss of $2.8 billion, or $2.72 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 75 cents per share, on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

AIG booked $762 million of catastrophe losses during the quarter, largely from wildfires that raged through California and caused significant damage to homes and businesses.

The quarter also reflected a “modest” reserve boost to cover future claims, driven by losses in its international commercial businesses.”

Despite tax-linked charges and catastrophes, AIG’s general insurance business posted $13 million in pre-tax income, vs. a $4.9 billion loss during the same quarter last year.

The insurer’s life and retirement business was affected by a major recalculation in the way AIG determines losses – booking a $90 million charge due for what the company called “modernization” of actuarial systems and models. Due to this, the retirement and life insurance segments declined 10% to $782 million vs. $866 million one year ago.

“U.S. tax reform has caused many financial services companies to book big one-time losses for earnings held overseas and also for an accounting oddity related to losses booked during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, even though lower corporate tax rates will help them in the long run.

Under Chief Executive Officer Brian Duperreault, who has been in the role for less than a year, AIG has been looking to acquire businesses and restructure itself to boost results, with a particular focus on technology.” –Reuters

AIG was mostly flat after hours.

The Dow sharted in its pantaloons to the tune of -1,032 points today (-4.15%), wiping out 2018’s gains and entering 10% “correction” territory along with the S&P 500. To be precise:

10% Correction Levels:

• Dow 23954 – Dow closed at 23860 is in correction
• S&P 2585 – S&P closed at 2581 in correction
• Nasdaq 6755 – Nasdaq closed at 6777, not in correction

YTD:

2018’s gonna be YUUUUUUGE!–uh oh…

Meanwhile, Treasury yield spiked after a weak auction and the implications of a budget deal implying more supply is on the way. As stocks were force-choked lower by darth maul, bonds ended up catching a tiny bid as credit spreads snapped wider and rate volatility spiked.

Portfolio rapist XIV cratered shortly after the open:

The greed? Where did it go? Is it still good?

Since the collapse of XIV, markets have also seen huge equity outflows from US ETFs:

Sad!