Archive - Jan 2014

As was reported to mass jubilation on Wednesday, the ADP private payrolls number soared to the highest monthly change since November 2012, a 238,000 increase driven by what the report said was a 48,000 increase in construction jobs.  ADP's Mark Zandi went on the record to say that “The job market ended 2013 on a high note. Job gains are broad-based across industries, most notably in construction and manufacturing. It appears that businesses are growing more confident and increasing their hiring." It appears not. According to today's BLS report in December, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the construction industry lost 16K jobs. And where it gets really funny is when one looks at construction on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, construction jobs plummeted by a whopping 216,000! However you cut it someone is obviously lying. If we cared we would ask who. However, since both data series are completely fabricated, who even cares?

When this indicator of global trade rises, everything is rosy and reams of asset-gatherers and talking-heads wil quote it as indicative of how great the world is. When it drops - silence. There's always an excuse - over- or under-capacity, too many ships, too few ships, etc. However, the last 2 weeks have seen a 35% collapse in the cost to ship bulk. There is a relative seasonal pattern over the holiday period - with shipping costs rising into the holiday and falling after but... this is the biggest drop from a Christmas Eve since at least 1984, 30 years! Seems like the inventory stacking of Q4 had absolutely no follow-through whatsoever...

The $16 Trillion clone...

Markets, it would seem, are choosing to ignore Mark Zandi's sage advice this morning - when faced with yet another example of his ineptly over-optimistic extrapolation "ignore this number - it's going to go away." Stocks had slowly melted up overnight with S&P futures almost back to unchanged on the year and that gain was instantly vaporized on the NFP print - but shortly after bagen to recover losses. Treasury yields have collapsed with 10Y at 2.88%. Gold and silver - which were twitchy going into the number  - have surged higher with gold at $1240. The USD is being sold with JPY and EUR strength. It seems the recognition that bad news is bad news in the new "Yellen collar" world is growing on investors. Of course this can change any second...

Curious why despite the huge miss in payrolls the unemployment rate tumbled from 7.0% to 6.7%? The reason is because in December the civilian labor force did what it usually does in the New Normal: it dropped from 155.3 million to 154.9 million, which means the labor participation rate just dropped to a fresh 35 year low, hitting levels not seen since 1978, at 62.8% down from 63.0%. And the piece de resistance: Americans not in the labor force exploded higher by 535,000 to a new all time high 91.8 million.

Simplistic, subjective and unbalanced anti-gold opinions tend to get media coverage. However, it is important to always focus on the empirical evidence as seen in the academic research, price performance over the long term and the historical record. 

So much for the recovery. Moments ago December nonfarms were revealed at just 74,000 a huge miss to expectations of 197,000 - the biggest miss Since December 2009. The drop from last month's revised 226K was the largest since December 2010. Other notables: the change in private payrolls was a tiny 87K vs expectations of 200K. Mfg payrolls added just 9K vs 15K expected and down from 31K. Average hourly earnings for all employees rose 0.1% vs. Expected 0.2%. The good news: the unemployment rate plunged to 6.7% from 7.0%... For all the wrong reasons - the number of people not in the labor force rose to a record 91,808,000. As a reason for the plunge the BLS says there was a major weather effect seen on the forced part-time series, and notes the decline in healthcare which is rare and part of the sector slowing. Thank you Obamacare. And now bring on the Untaper.

Overnight China reported disappointing export data, missing expectations of +5%. The gvoernment explained this on the basis that they were losing their competitive edge since the Yuan has strengthened to 20 year highs but perhaps most telling is that fact that, as the FT reports, China became the world's biggest trader in goods for the first time last year - overtaking the US for all of 2013. We suspect the powers that be are starting to get nervous as this comes soon after China's surge to become the world's largest oil importer marking a notable shift in the world's most powerful nations - as trade with the rest of Asia and increasing flows with the Middle East represent a shift in power away from the US.

• Citigroup 165K
• Barclays 175K
• UBS 185K
• HSBC 191K
• Goldman Sachs 200K
• JP Morgan 215K
• Bank of America 220K
• Deutsche Bank 250K

What's not to "Like"?

This morning, probably in order to assuage fears that it has lost control more than usual, TEPCO released the following statement "Regarding Certain Overseas Reports on Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station." TEPCO's soothing words - "We found no abnormalities in the measured values (indicating the temperature and condition of the Reactor Building), or in the value of the monitoring post (monitoring the amount of radiation), even when the steam-like gas was being generated, therefore we are certain that there has been no influence on the outside. In addition, we measured the amount of radiation at the point from which steam-like gas was generated, and found that its amount was almost the same as for the other neighboring points."

• From the guy who said the market is not overvalued: Q&A with Fed’s Williams on Upbeat 2014 Outlook and What Keeps Him up at Night (Hilsenrath)
• Obama Readies Revamp of NSA (WSJ)
• Indian envoy leaves U.S. in deal to calm diplomatic row (Reuters)
• China overtakes US as largest goods trader (FT)
• Wall Street Predicts $50 Billion Bill to Settle U.S. Mortgage Suits (NYT)
• Low-End Retailers Had a Rough Holiday: Family Dollar, Sears Struggle as Lower-Income Customers Remain Under Pressure (WSJ)
• ECB charts familiar course as Japan, US and UK begin to diverge (FT)
• Housing experts warn of hiccups as new U.S. mortgage rules go live (Reuters)
• It's a HFT eat HFT world: Infinium ex-employees sue over $4.1m loss (FT)
• Slowing China crude imports to challenge exporters (FT)

Risks surrounding the looming release of the latest jobs report by the BLS later on in the session failed to weigh on sentiment and heading into the North American open, stocks in Europe are seen higher across the board. The SMI index in Switzerland outperformed its peers since the get-go, with Swatch Group trading up over 3% after the company said that it expects good results for 2013 at operating profit and net income level. At the same time, in spite of stocks trading in the green, Bunds remained better bid, with peripheral bond yield spreads wider as market participants booked profits following the aggressive tightening observed earlier in the week amid solid Spanish bond auctions, as well as syndications by Ireland and Portugal. Fake Chinese trade data failed to boost Chinese stocks, which dropped anoter 0.7% and is just 13 points above 2000 as Shanghai remains one of the world's worst performing markets since the financial crisis. The yoyoing Nikkei was largely unchanged. All eyes today will be fixed on the headline streamer at 8:30 when the latest nonfarm payrolls report is released.