Archive - May 30, 2014

It is very apparent the Fed literally are making policy up as they go along and Wall Street doesn`t realize that the Fed has no exit strategy.  The learning curve is going to be painful as always for Bond Holders.

Just as we can't eat iPods, we can't subsist on official reassurances that the Fed and inflation are both benign.

May's preliminary UMich confidence print of 81.8 was the biggest miss to expectations in 8 years. In the two weeks since then, the 'economists' have ratcheted back their exuberance to an expectation of 82.5... and still it missed at 81.9. So two weeks of exuberant equity markets have done nothing to soothe the consumer. The Current conditions sub-index tumbled to its lowest since Nov 2013 (and the outlook dropped also). Stock pushers are going to need higher highs if the dream of multiple expansion is to live on....So just as reminder, against the initial expectations, May's consumer confidence missed by the most in 8 years.

March's miss in Chicago PMI is now a dim and distant aberation as April and now May's Purchasing Managers Index surged to 65.5 - just shy of its Oct 2013 highs. As champgen corks fly and the world celebrates "we're back baby" - we hesitate to burst that exuberant bubble and note that production fell, the employment sub-index fell below its 12-month average (but that doesn't matter, right) and prices paid surged by their most in 5 years (that awkward margin-consuming inflation stoking thing).

Earlier today, as part of its latest macro markets research roundup, Goldman let a phrase slip, which probably better than anything we have seen in the past few years, captures just how truly broken the "market" is. To wit: "it is important to remember that weak global growth is generally negative for risky assets." That Goldman even had to remind its clients of this dramatic observation, puts to rest any doubts about just how much central banks' central-planning has perverted the cost/benefit analysis of the world.

Long-dated bond yields are lower this morning but that is not stopping 'them' from smashing JPY lower to try to spark yet another pre-US-open ramp in stocks to run stops and get the momentum going once again (as they have for the last 6 days)... except today - so far - it's not working...

Last month, when we noted the massive surge in Personal Spending which was funded entirely by the depletion of personal savings, we said that "since spending was so much higher than income for one more month, at least according to the bean counters, the savings rate tumbled and at 3.8% (down from 4.2% in February), was the second lowest since before the Lehman failure with the only exception of January 2013 after the withholding tax rule changeover. So for all those sellside economists who are praying that the March spending spree, funded mostly from savings, will continue into Q2 (because remember March is in Q1, which as we already know had an abysmal 0.1% GDP growth rate), we have one question: where will the money come from to pay for this ongoing spending spree?" Turns out the answer was... nowhere.

The Keynesians have failed. Japan has proved it. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world… and the markets catch on.

With yields at record lows and stocks soaring, is it any wonder that the politicians of Europe's periphery are proclaiming victory over the crisis (and yet oddly imploring Draghi to do moar?). Perhaps, just perhaps, they are keeping one eye on the 'real' economic progress that is being made (or un-made) in their nations... such as Spain, where there are now 1.26 million people who have been jobless since 2010 and the long-term unemployment rate has risen by more than 500% since 2007.

In the footsteps of the smashing success that was the #AskJPM and #MyNYPD social outreach by the two beloved institutions, yet another renowned entity has decided to take its comedic genius to the people: none other than the place where it all started - the Bank of England. So if you have a question for Mark Carney's money printing and housing bubble-forming institution, do no hesitate to tweet it: just remember to add the #AskBoE hash tag.

• Ukraine Rebels Outfox Army to Dent Poroshenko Troop Goal (BBG)
• Russia Withdraws Most of Forces From Ukraine Border: U.S. (BBG)
• Super-Size Me! China’s ’Mini’ Stimulus Starts Expanding (BBG)
• Option B: The blueprint for Thailand's coup (Reuters)
• Big investors replace banks in $4.2tn repo market (FT)
• Draghi Shields Catalan Independence Bid From Market (BBG)
• U.S. companies seek cyber experts for top jobs, board seats (Reuters)
• Parsley CEO Emerges as One of Youngest U.S. Billionaires (BBG)

Last night's docket of atrocious Japanese economic data inexplicably managed to push the Nikkei lower, not because the data was ugly but because the scorching inflation - the highest since 1991 - mostly driven by import costs, food and energy as a result of a weak yen, and certainly not in wages, has pushed back most banks' estimates of additional QE to late 2014 if not 2015 which is as we predicted would happen over a year ago. As a result the market, addicted to central bank liquidity, has had to make a modest reassessment of just how much disconnected from reality it is willing to push equities relative to expectations of central bank balance sheet growth. However, now that the night crew trading the USDJPY is replaced with the US session algo shift which does a great job of re-levitating the pair, and with it bringing the S&P 500 higher, we expect this brief flicker of red futures currently observable on trading terminals to be promptly replaced with the friendly, well-known and "confidence-boosting" green. The same goes for Treasurys which lately have been tracking every directional move in stocks not in yield but in price.

With the advent of unions in the USA in the 19th century, they were once synonymous with downing tools and walking out to hold the management and the company they were working for to ransom. Collective bargaining and across-the-board pay rises were high on the agenda back then.