Archive - Jun 5, 2013

The UK Prime Minister, David Cameron has convened a meeting with ministers from overseas territories (Bermuda, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands) in London it has been announced.

Amid the cozy world of X-Factor, American Idol, and Dance Moms, we can often be lulled into the belief that all is well in the world. But once the cocoon of mind-numbing media is shrugged off, the realities of the world are all too 'Matrix-like' exposed. Simon Black's travels have exposed these three things...

How Another Housing Bubble Was Blown … And Why

As every down-tick in the paper price of Gold is viewed as another death knell for the 'global safety' trade; a drop in stock prices is somehow seen as an 'opportunity' to the world's media and status quo maintainers. However, as Reuters reports, Richard Peterson - acting director of the US Mint - explains, demand for US gold and silver bullion remains at "unprecedented" high levels almost two months after the historical sell-off. So that is what the pent-up-demand, 'money on the sidelines' has been waiting for? Notably, Peterson also added that, due to demand, the Mint may resume making platinum bullion coins (after stopping in 2008).

A month ago we posted two sets of charts - WTFs and Divergences. It appears equity markets are beginning to catch down to this underlying reality as the Fed (afraid of its own shadow impact now) tries to gently talk the bulls off the leveraged ledge.

Moar 'm' words from the modest boring of backward-looking release - The Beige Book. Unable to say the word slow, it seems 'modest', 'mild', and 'moderate' are the adjective of choice. But there is a bright spot... FED: BEIGE BOOK BASED ON INFORMATION GOTTEN ON OR BEFORE MAY 24; FED SAYS GROWTH WAS `MODEST TO MODERATE' ACROSS MOST OF U.S.; FED: HOUSING INCREASED AT `MODERATE TO STRONG PACE' ACROSS U.S. and we know what is happening there now. So we assume this is the 'growth' that brings 'teper' chatter - hhmm.

Debt and deficits don't matter - until they do. That which is unsustainable will go away. That includes debt, malinvestments, currencies, deficits and yes, entire empires.

In a considerably worse 'crash' than the Japanese stock market, a building has collapsed in Philadelphia with 12 injured and 2 still trapped in the rubble. Just as suddenly as the market went from euphoric stability to volatile entropic failure, perhaps a massive infrastructure spending project (Quantitative constructing?) is required in a country in which major urban building can be perfectly stable one moment and a pile of rubble the next...

Back on Monday, following the huge miss in the Manufacturing ISM, in collaboration with Nanex, we exposed yet another instance of blatant headline data frontrunning in "15 Milliseconds Of HFT Fame: Watch Today's Early Leak Of The ISM Print" where we showed aggressive trading amounting to tens of millions in notional contracts ahead of the 10am release of the key economic indicator. We assumed that just like every other lament about a market that is front-run by those "who have the means", manipulated (by the Fed of course - remember when that was just a conspiracy theory: good times) and simply broken, it would disappear in the ether forever. After all: why bring attention to facts when hopium is sufficient for the E-Trade baby to retire rich and famous before it has hit 2.  We were delighted to learn that CNBC's Eamon Javers picked up the torch and actually did some further investigating, which in turn led to an actual admission out of Reuters that it "inadvertently" sent out the data to "a select group of high frequency traders, many of whom immediately traded on the information before it was available to the wider market, CNBC has learned." Inadvertently? The humor just never stops.

Tepper: "the numbers are overwhelmingly bullish, ... the US manufacturing renaissance... not worried about the Taper"

Fact: manufacturing has lost jobs two months in a row, and which as the BLS reported today saw hourly compensation collapse by 6.9% in Q1 - the most ever. As for the Taper... look at the chart below.

That concept of the Chinese Dream "came just in time" and will "benefit the world"

Dow 15,000 hats off.

Looks like France is waking up with a hangover this morning and will be in need of some hair of the dog to get through China’s statement today that there will be an anti-dumping probe carried out by the latter on wine exports from the EU. France’s Trade Ministry is worried and has made a public call on the rest of the EU27 to take a collective decision.

The topic of the IMF's idiocy - unquestioned here following years and years and years of absolutely horrific forecasts, not to mention charts like this one courtesy of the Troika, of whom the IMF is a proud member  has been widely covered in the past. However, while in the past we have attributed to stupidity all the faults of the Angela Mozilla Christine Lagarde-headed organization, we never had the factual backing to also invoke malice, lies and manipulation. Now, we can.