Riskiest Assets Leading the Decline – Ep. 504

Check out my podcast, "What it Means to be an American", Episode 265 Earthquake Hits Puerto Rico Last night, I was lying in bed, I wasn't asleep yet; I just finished watching television; my wife and I were still awake, and next thing we know, the house starts shaking. And it kept on shaking.  I couldn't believe I was in an earthquake. This was a decent-sized earthquake - it was over 6.0 on the Richter scale. The earthquake occurred in the ocean, but not too far from Puerto Rico.  I think it rattled a lot of the islands here in the Caribbean. I haven't felt an earthquake since I lived in California. To be honest, I never even considered earthquakes here in Puerto Rico.  I knew about hurricanes, but I really didn't think we would be hit by an earthquake - and we did.  Fortunately, it didn't do any actual damage; in fact, I don't think anything in Puerto Rico was damaged.  Of course, the big risk when you get earthquakes in the ocean is tsunamis - but that didn't happen.  In the meantime, I've got a tropical storm overhead as I am recording this podcast.  Tropical Storm Karen has arrived in Puerto Rico later than expected.  It was supposed to come this morning but it didn't get here until this afternoon, although "Karen" doesn't sound particularly menacing, and it's living up to its name. It's really just a little rain, not too much wind; so that's not bad. Disaster in the Cryptocurrency Markets The real disaster is not here in Puerto Rico with earthquakes and tropical storms; it's the disaster that is unfolding in the cryptocurrency markets.  We are seeing some real carnage - a real bloodbath over there. I think this is just getting started, because we've finally really broken down on the Bitcoin chart, although the biggest declines today are in the alt coins. Bitcoin is down about 13% right now. But this about the high that Bitcoin is been in the last half hour. We're trading up around $8500.  We did get as low as $8000; I think we maybe ticked below it briefly.  That means from the nearly $14000 high that's a better than 40% drop in the price of Bitcoin from that peak, which, by any definition constitutes a bear market.