“But, like Cinderella at the ball, you must heed one warning or everything will turn into pumpkins and mice: Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to guide you. It is his pocketbook, not his wisdom, that you will find useful. If he shows up some day in a particularly foolish mood, you are free to either ignore him or to take advantage of him, but it will be disastrous if you fall under his influence. Indeed, if you aren’t certain that you understand and can value your business far better than Mr. Market, you don’t belong in the game. As they say in poker, “If you’ve been in the game 30 minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.'” — Warren Buffett

1. The SEC and CFTC Plan to Ask Congress for Federal Oversight of Digital-Currency & Credit Card Ban on Buying Crypto-currencies — worries over a global regulatory clampdown led bitcoin – which is still trading below $8,000 – last week to record its biggest weekly loss since December 2013. Lloyds (NYSE:LYG) is barring its credit card customers from buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It follows similar moves by U.S. rivals JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), BofA (NYSE:BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE:C), which all announced similar bans on crypto purchases via credit cards. In addition, the SEC and CFTC plan to ask Congress to consider federal oversight for digital-currency trading platforms, many of which have been operating in a regulatory gray zone.
2. Steve Wynn Steps Down as Wynn Resorts Chairman, CEO — Steve Wynn has resigned as CEO and Chairman of Wynn Resorts (NASDAQ:WYNN) in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced in recent weeks. “I have reached the conclusion I cannot continue to be effective in my current roles,” he declared. The company has named current President Matt Maddox as its new CEO and Boone Wayson as Non-Executive Chairman.
3. CBOE Announced No major Impact from VIX products’ Demise — CBOE Global Markets does not expect any significant impact on trading volumes at the exchange following the collapse of two popular exchange-traded products (ETPs) that let traders bet that volatility will fall. The Chicago exchange addressed analysts’ questions after markets closed late last week, following an almost 15% decline in CBOE’s share price in the last three days.
4. Gun Maker Remington Seeks Financing for Bankruptcy Filing — one of the biggest U.S. gun manufacturers is taking steps toward filing for bankruptcy, according to Reuters. Remington has “reached out to banks and credit investment funds” in search of “debtor-in-possession financing” that would let the company continue operations once it went bankrupt.
5. Congress Ends Brief Government Shutdown — Just hours after the government stumbled into another shutdown, Congress passed a budget agreement early Friday that would extend the current level of federal funding until March 23. The bill would also bump limits on defense and non-defense spending by about $300B over the next two years.
6. Stock-market Correction Looks a lot like 1996-1997 — according to Jeff deGraaf of Reinaissance Macro Research, the current market trend for the past 12-month shows similar pattern from the 1996-1997. Noted ““Today’s price action is weaker over a shorter period of time than that of ‘96, and then, as we suspect happens today, the market needed a few weeks to convalesce before resuming its uptrend. When we aggregate the price paths of the top 25 correlations with today, the picture suggests a pause of a few weeks and resumption of trend,”. See the chart below.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: