Archive - Sep 16, 2013

While the only market moving event of note had nothing to do with the economy (as usual), and everything to do with the Fed's potential propensity to print even more dollars and inject even more reserves into the stock market (now that Summers the wrongly perceived "hawk" is out) some other notable events did take place in the Monday trading session. Of note: while India's August inflation soared far higher than the expected 5.7%, rising to 6.1% from 5.79% (making life for the RBI even more miserable, as it is fighting inflation on one hand, and a lack of liquidity on the other), in Europe inflation decelerated to 1.3% from 1.6% in July driven by a drop in energy prices, while core inflation was a tiny 1.1%. In a continent with record negative loan growth this is to be expected. Additionally, as also reported, Merkel appears to be positioned stronger ahead of this weekend's Federal election following stronger results for her CDU/CSU, if weaker for her broader coalition. In Libya, oil protesters said they would continue stoppages at oil terminals until their demands are met in yet another startling outcome for US foreign intervention. Finally, some headline on Syria noted a Kerry statement "will not tolerate avoidance of a Syria deal", while Lavrov observed that it may be time to "force Syria opposition to peace talks." And one quote of the day so far: "Don't want market to become excessively exuberant" from the ECB's Mersch- just modestly so?

Now that the market has had a day to digest the Summers news, its conclusion is still the same: the man who deregulated and was on Wall Street's payroll for years (when he was not busy micromismanaging Harvard's endowment) and yet was somehow supposed to be Wall Street negative by bearing "hawkish", would have been bad for stocks. And while there was not a correction per se associated with the Summers' appointment or rumor thereof, the fact that he is now out, is even more bullish for stocks, and the correction that never was, can be uncorrected, sending stocks to new record highs, and all EM trades which had unwound modestly on fears of an end of the Fed carry trade, are getting rewound, even as gold has retraced all gains since the Friday fixing because while Yellen is pro-printish, she too is expected to be able to unwind any resurgent inflation in precisely "15 minutes." Here is what else is being said.