Archive - Nov 2014

Bwa-haha-harakiri...

Who says there is no wage growth in real (or nominal terms)? After real wages failed to rise in real terms on 6 of the past 7 months, here courtesy of the BLS is the unprecedented surge to real average hourly earnings that took place in October.

Tt has become quite clear that the Fed neither has the intention, nor the market mechanism to do any of that, and certainly not in a 3-6 month timeframe. Which may explain the Fed's hawkish words on any potential surge in market vol. After all, if the nearly $3 trillion in excess reserves remain on bank balance sheets for another year, then the only reason why vol could surge is if the Fed lose the faith of the markets terminally. At that point the last worry anyone will have is whether and how the Fed will tighten monetary policy.

Day after day, well-dressed talking heads are paraded on business media and proclaim how cheap Japan is, how Abenomics will work (he promise... if it doesn't we'll have to question everything we believe in), how GDP is backward-looking (so ignore it... and every other economic indicator), and how being long Japanese stocks (of course, hedged back to dollars because you don't want to take the currency risk that Abe is creating) is a "no brainer." The problem with that strategy is... in 2014, the JPY-hedged Japanese stock market investor in the US has not had a daily close in the green year-to-date and is down over 5% for the year... but it gets worse.

As Hilary Clinton starts to ponder the curtains she wants to hang in the Oval Office, there is only one person who can realistically stand in her way: Rand Paul.

With half the nation covered in snow, according to ABC, nowhere appears to have had it worse (or more suddenly) than upstate New York. As images pour in from lake-effect snow, to The Buffalo Bills stadium, and from scenes caught in a snow storm to pandas playing, we thought the following stunning drone's-eye-view over Erie County was both incredible in its beauty and cruel in its GDP-destroying reality.

‘Punishment Interest,’ as Germans call it with Teutonic precision, becomes a pandemic.

"The multiple expansion phase of the current bull market ended in 2013. The strong S&P 500 YTD price gain of 10% roughly matches the realized year/year EPS growth of the index. The index has climbed by 17% annually during the past three years as the consensus forward P/E multiple surged by nearly 60% from 10x to 16x. ... We forecast US stocks will deliver a modest total return of 5% in 2015, in line with profit growth. The US economy will expand at a brisk pace. Corporations will boost sales and keep margins elevated allowing managements to both invest for growth and return cash to shareholders via buybacks and dividends. Investors will cheer these positive fundamental developments."

In previous commentaries, readers have seen scoffs of derision with respect to (arguably) the two, most-important propaganda myths of the 21st century: the New Normal, and the New World Order. The gist of that criticism is that we rarely see anything truly “new” in our lives, in conceptual terms.

The declaration (through propaganda and/or disinformation) that we have two all-encompassing, new paradigms which supposedly comprise our current reality is patently ludicrous, on its surface. Context changes. Principles are immutable.

Because nothing says rational human stock-buying like the entire world's PMIs collapsing to multi-month lows. Thank the lord of the markets for AUDJPY which took over the mantle from USDJPY as US equities opened... Of course, it is OPEX tomorrow, so this all makes perfect sense. Now all we need is for a stock exchange to break and the unrigged game is complete...

Despite record low bond yields and all the promises one can bear from politicians and central bankers, the people of Europe are the least confident since February. At -11.6, missing expectations of a slight improvement from -11.1 to -10.7, this is the biggest miss since August 2011. It's perhaps not surprising given the near-record highs in unemployment but oddly, confidence seems highly correlated to EUR strength (or weakness)... the opposite of what the market hopes for.

The Ebola crisis has faded from headlines but remains a risk after the death of another Ebola patient in Nebraska and the death of a suspected victim in New York yesterday. This brings the number of confirmed deaths to two in the U.S. and possibly three if the New York victim is confirmed as having had Ebola.

Because when the rape and pillaging of the US middle-class begins at the very top, it won't end until the sharp metal objects finally start falling.

Recovery, we have a problem... November's Flash US Manufacturing PMI printed a 10-month lows 54.7, missing expectation sof 56.3 by the most on record and tumbling for the third month in a row. The last 2 mnths have seen the biggest drop since June 2013 ands as Markit notes, suggests a further drop in GDP growth expectations of only 2.5% in Q4. Output is down for the 3rd straight month and Surprise!! Export market weakness is being blamed... as it seems the US cannot decouple from the rest of the world's slump after all and is - as we have explained numerous times - merely on a lagged cycle. We're gonna need more Fed-fueled subprime-auto-loan malarkey to keep this dream alive.