Archive - Dec 3, 2014

First it was Shoppertrak, then it was the National Retail Federation, then it was IBM, and now, with its own set of internal data, here is Bank of America slamming the door shut on US retail spending as a source of Q4 growth, and proving once and for all that the extended Thanksgiving-weekend, and the start to US holiday spending season, was the biggest dud since Lehman.

Yes, the CEO of JP Morgan sits on the board of his own regulator as part of a deal that was struch way back in 1905 at the origin of the Federal Researve.

Several days ago we heard rumors, unsubstantiated, of an accident at Ukraine's Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Europe's largest and the 5th biggest in the world. Considering Ukraine's history with nuclear accidents, and resultant panics, we decided it would be prudent to wait for an official confirmation before proceeding with a report. We got the confirmation about an hour ago, when Ukraine's new/old Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, or "Yats" as his puppetmaster Victoria Nuland likes to call him, said "on Wednesday an accident had occurred at the Zaporizhye nuclear power plant (NPP) in south-east Ukraine and called on the energy minister to hold a news conference."

• Fall of the Bond King: How Gross Lost Empire as Pimco Cracked (BBG)
• Hong Kong 'Occupy' leaders surrender as pro-democracy protests appear to wither (Reuters)
• Ashton Carter, Ex-Pentagon No. 2, Emerges as Obama Favorite for Defense Secretary (WSJ)
• Oil, the Ruble and Putin Are All Headed for 63. A Russian Joke -- for the Moment (BBG)
• New U.S. oil and gas well November permits tumble nearly 40 percent (Reuters)
• Swedish government on brink of collapse (AJ)
• China says Britain has no moral responsibility for Hong Kong (Reuters)
• Indian Labs Deleted Test Results for U.S. Drugs, Documents Show (BBG)

Is this weakened system able to absorb a spike in one-directional volume? Will it step up and keep order? Or will it back off and allow volatility to roar?

Those wondering why European stocks are higher but off earlier highs, the answer is simple: the latest Service ISM was bad but it wasn't a complete disaster. And while RanSquawk notes that "the particularly disappointing slew of Eurozone Service PMI’s from France and Spain capped any potential upside seen across the European indices" stocks are clearly green on hopes Europe's ongoing economic devastation accelerates enough for the ECB to finally start buying Stoxx 600 and various other penny stocks. This is what happened, in Goldman's words: the November Euro area final composite PMI came in at 51.1, 0.3pt below the flash (and Consensus) estimate. Relative to October, the composite PMI fell by 0.9pt. The weaker final composite PMI was driven by flash/final downward revisions to the German manufacturing PMI and the French services PMI. Today’s data also showed some improvement in the Italian services PMI, and a deterioration in its Spanish counterpart.