Archive - Sep 18, 2014

Yesterday's market reaction to Yellen's commentary was curious: there was none, because when all was said and done the S&P and DJIA traded precisely where they traded just before the show began.  Which, of course, was unacceptable, because one way or another the hawkish for the USD - the USDJPY just traded at the highest since 2008 - statement and conference had to be promptly interpreted for the algos as dovish for stocks - Futures are again just why of record highs - if not so much for the Fed-hated bonds, and sure enough, European equities traded in the green from the get-go even as RanSquawk notes, "there has been no major fundamental catalyst behind the spike higher seen in the morning, although do note that the move comes in the backdrop of the positive close on Wall Street which saw the S&P 500 (+0.13%) touch record highs before paring a large portion of the gains." In other words, the upside volatility in the intraday move is now a bullish catalyst, closing print notwithstanding. And what did US equity futures do? Why they followed Europe higher, with the ES now +8, on what is "explained" as a European move to intraday US futures previously. That, ladies and gentlemen, means we may have finally achieved perpetual motion, because all that would take to send the market higher is... for the market to go higher, etc, ad inf.

As part of Draghi's attempt to reflate the ECB's balance sheet by €1 trillion, a key variable was the extension of the LTRO (1&2) program, in the form of the Targeted LTRO, or TLTRO aka LTRO 3 & 4, whose initial take up results were announced earlier today. It was, in a world, a flop. Because while the consensus was for European banks to take anywhere between €100 and €300 billion in nearly zero-cost credit from the ECB (at 0.15%) to engage in carry trades in today's first round TLTRO operation (ahead of the second TLTRO in December), moments ago the ECB announced that banks, which head already been actively paying down the first two LTRO carry programs, of which only €385 billion had been left of over a €1 trillion total at inception, were allotted a tiny €82.6 billion across 255 counterparties.

The US national debt continues to spiral out of control, seemingly without any plan to ever rein it in. 

Compared to this time last year, the national debt has grown by over $1 trillion. At the end of September 2013, the cumulative debt stood at $16.74 trillion. Now it is over $17.76 trillion.