Archive - Mar 28, 2011

Today's economic docket includes Personal Income and Spending (which is expected to show a jump in inflation) and the Savings Rate, core PCE, Pending Sales, the Dallas Fed, and a whole lot of dovish Fed speeches. These will be analyzed under a fine toothed comb to see if any of the more dovish members are starting to become as hawkish as their brethren from last week. In the meantime, Frost-Sack will monetize another $5.5-7.5 billion in 5 year debt.

It only took TEPCO about two weeks to realize what had been so glaringly obviously to many - namely that the company is largely unprepared to deal successfully with the Fukushima catastrophe on its own. Reuters reports that TEPCO, which has conceded it faces a protracted and uncertain operation to contain the crisis, sought outside help, asking help from French firms including Electricite de France SA and Areva SA. The question now arises whether it is too late for any help to come, and how fast before the sudden inlfux of new cooks spoils the radioactive broth. The news comes after TEPCO announced highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor at Japan's crippled nuclear complex, as environmental group Greenpeace said it had detected high levels of radiation outside an exclusion zone.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 28/03/11

AUDUSD is firing on all cylinders in the long zone whilst 65.81% traders are short and actually made it to the strong short zone in Fridays session before pulling back a little into the long zone. Both EURUSD and GBPUSD are now well within the neutral zone. Pending Home Sales coming out of the US at 10:00am EST is the big new event of the day and if we do have a strong deviation from consensus we expect it to have a strong influence on retail positioning.