Archive - Sep 2014

Turmoil! S&P 500 loses 2,000 and EURUSD breaks to 14-month lows with a 1.28 handle

US equity markets are volatile this morning but appear to have now entirely decoupled from USDJPY as it careens headlong to new 5-year highs  running stops to 106.00. US Treasury yields are tracking the collapse of JPY closely since the US open. EURUSD is also plunging (as did GBP this morning). Abe will be happy as JPY collapses so Nikkei futures surge... is this 'great rotation' from every asset in the world into the Alibaba IPO?

While details of the case and patient are not immediately known, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier that a potential case of Ebola is being treated at a Miami-are hospital. This comes as the WHO reports a surge of "many thousands of new cases" in Liberia in recent days and fears rise that the dreadful disease could be spread by animals.

As I have said for at least a year now, until and unless we see a weekly close (ideally consecutive weekly closes) in the VIX index below 10, then I judge risk-on has more to go. We got close in June/early July, but we did not get there. I would expect that, if I am right about the next quarter or two, then VIX should hit this target during this timeframe. At that point, positioning for the big turn and reversal of large chunks of the nominal wealth/asset price gains since early 2009 would take over as my key investment strategy.

The memory hole is working overtime in the USA zeitgeist these days. Shit happens and a week or so later, it unhappens. So it goes, as the late, great Vonnegut always said. All of these stories have something in common: tons of unanswered questions, which the news media shows no interest whatsoever in following up on. And no consequences. People die, nations rise and fall, money disappears, and everybody forgets. The memory hole is the truest signifier of the times we live in: the Age of Anything Goes and Nothing Matters... but that may be changing.

While not exactly a "bear", Deutsche Bank's David Bianco - until this weekend - had the lowest S&P 500 target for 2014 year-end at 1,850. That's all changed now...

BANZAI7 FOOD AND BEVERAGE WARNING...

As 'rumors' of European sanctions against Russia's major oil energy firms are leaked strawman-like to the market and expected to be enacted as soon as tomorrow, it appears there is a 'glitch' in the union. The FT's Peter Spiegel reports that one country is holding out on EU sanctions and that is the reason for an emergency unscheduled meeting of EU diplomats this evening. While it is unclear which country it is, something tells us its name begins with an 'A' and ends in 'ustria'... or starts with 'S' and ends in 'lovakia'...

The proverbial "all you need to know"

When one thinks "recovery", some of the images envisioned include a healthy labor market (not one saturated by part-time, low wage jobs), rising earnings (not wages that have stagnated for years and in real terms are at Lehman levels) and a vibrant housing market in which new home buyers enter with confidence, and where mortgage loans are abundant and available to qualified creditors. One certainly does not imagine a housing "market" dominated by Chinese, Russian and Arab monely-laundering oligarchs, where half of all transactions are "all cash", and where, as Fannie Mae just reported, the number of Americans who said "now is a good time to buy a home" plunging to 64% - the lowest print in survey history!

CNBC’s long-running “jobs Friday” fetish is getting downright appalling.  Each month the BLS puts out a treasure trove of data on the rich and complex mosaic of the US labor market - a download that embodies a truly frightening trend of economic failure. Yet the clowns who assemble in its screen boxes to opine on Hampton Pearson’s 30-second summary of the BLS release never have a clue. Namely, that outside of health and education there has not been one net new job created in the American economy since July 2000! Yes, not a single new jo - as in none, nein, nichts, nada, zip!  The point here, however, is about economics, not social worth. And in the realm of economics, the notion implicit in “jobs Friday” - that all jobs are created equal - is simply a fatuous shibboleth.

For those just catching up on the main news event of the weekend, namely the sudden surge in Scotland "Yes" vote polling surpassing 50% for the first time, here is a complete round up of the background, updates and expert reactions from RanSquawk, Bloomberg and AFP.

"The ECB's quantitative expansion is hitting the financial system at a time when broad liquidity is also very high. The rise in excess liquidity, i.e. the residual in the model of Figure 3, is supportive of all assets outside cash, i.e. bonds, equities and real estate. The current episode of excess liquidity, which began in May 2012, appears to have been the most extreme ever in terms of its magnitude and the ECB actions have the potential to make it even more extreme, in our view.... These liquidity boosts are not without risks. We note that they risk creating asset bubbles which when they burst can destroy wealth leading to adverse economic outcomes. Asset yields are mean reverting over long periods of time and thus historically low levels of yields in bonds, equities and real estate are unlikely to be sustained forever."- JPMorgan

First it was UN and US military hardware and artillery, second it was hijacked Syrian fighter jets, and now ISIS has 'commandeered' a Navy. As Reuters reports, Islamic State fighters attacked a riverside town north of Baghdad on Monday with gunboats and a car bomb, killing 17 people and wounding 54, a security source said. We anxiously await President Obama's Wednesday unveiling of the strategy to 'defeat' The Islamic State on land, and air, and now water...

One of the more amusing comments overnight came from Bank of America, which now predicts that China's export growth will be boosted by iPhone 6 by 1% per month through year-end. Whether or not this is accurate is irrelevant, but we are happy that unlike before, BofA has finally figured out that iPhone sales are positive for Chinese GDP, not US, which was the case with the release of the iPhone 4 and 5, when clueless strategists all came out boosting their US (!) GDP forecasts on the iPhone release. We note this because the long-awaited release of Apple's new iPhone will certainly grab some attention tomorrow. According to a BofA poll last week and of the 124 respondents surveyed, 66% of those have noted that they are going to buy the new iPhone and of those planning to buy 75% of those will be replacing their iPhone 5/5s.