US Forces Kill Senior ISIS Leader In Syria, After Large-Scale Troop Withdrawal

Open Sesame Submitted By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities This week’s market behavior had a mythical, almost magical tone to it. In Arabian Nights, Ali Baba was able to open a cave of riches by uttering the phrase “Open Sesame.” Markets responded to any and every sort of connotation of “The Strait is Open” by rewarding participants with riches. We started this week bright and early, kicking off Bloomberg TV, and then moving on to Bloomberg Radio, and Tom Keene’s Best Ideas. At the time we were all trying to understand what “Blockade” meant....

Core US Factory Orders Better Than Expected In December While sentiment is sagging to multi-year lows, 'hard' data is helping support growth forecasts (GDPNOW) and holding stocks at record highs. This morning we get a fresh glimpse at America's manufacturing segment - hard data - with Orders data (which is expected to drop MoM in December). After surging higher in November (+2.7% MoM), analysts expected US Factory Orders to drop 0.6% MoM in December but the actual print disappointed, dropping 0.7% MoM Source: Bloomberg Interestingly, Core Factory Orders rose 0.4% MoM - better than...

'Digital ID Checks For All': Ofcom's Plan For UK's Under-16 Social Media Ban Puts Adults In The Age-Check Line Too Privacy campaigners have argued for months that this is where an age ban ends up. In March, Big Brother Watch titled a post "A social media ban for under-16s = digital ID checks for all" and argued that because the alternatives are intrusive and unreliable, ID would be required in many millions of cases. "All of the online age verification options are highly invasive and the biometric and behavioural profiling...