Archive - Jan 27, 2015

Following yesterday's earnings disappointments, most notably from Microsoft which is down 7% this morning following the usual after-the-fact downgrades from JPM, Citi and Nomura, futures were already on a the back foot heading into this morning - no doubt impacted by the deja vu ridiculous move in the EURCHF noted earlier - when the latest batch of earnings just hit, of which Dow component Procter and Gamble stood out and which missed the top and bottom line.  But the punchline, and in direct refutation of what Jack Lew said previously about a strong dollar being good for the US economy, was this:"The outlook for the year will remain challenging. Foreign exchange will reduce fiscal 2015 sales by 5% and net earnings by 12%, or at least $1.4 billion after tax." In other words, P&G will "offset" the surge in the USD with more layoffs. So when Jack Lew said "good" he really meant "bad."

For those who slept through the recently-downgraded to junk "Snow Tempest In A Teapot Of 2005", you may want to check the stops of any open EURCHF trades, because, two weeks after the SNB shocked the world and blew up countless retail and institutional FX trading desks, as well as numerous macro hedge funds, the SNB - allegedly - tried to for round two earlier today, when just hours after SNB's Danthine - the same guy who said the EURCHF floor is the bedrock of SNB policy two days before the SNB eliminated it - said that "the SNB remains ready to intervene on foreign exchange markets" that this happened: a dramatic, 250 pips surge in the EURCHF starting at 3 am Eastern.

While the #Blizarrdof2015 may have been a dud, it is the skies above New York, some 10,000 feet and above, that is where the real action lies. Or rather doesn't. As this real time snapshot of airplane traffic over New York, not a plan is to be found.