Archive - Oct 29, 2015

On Wednesday morning a new national poll revealed that 54% of Americans rate the economy as 'poor', but instead of focusing oin that, Becky Quick quizzed Marco Rubio about his 'lack of bookkeeping skills,' Carl Quintanilla posed questions about homosexuality and fantasy football, and the astonishingly incompetent John Harwood expressed doubt about Donald Trump's 'moral authority.' The interaction between the candidates and the CNBC moderators revealed the yawning gap between the bubble world at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street and the hard scrabble reality of economic stagnation and political alienation on main street America.

Just when you (and Bill Ackman) thought the worst was over,  an avalanche of insurers and pharmacies are dumping Valeant's Philidor and raising more questions about its activities. VRX is now down 16% on the day, back below the key $100 level (after touching $127 intraday).

According to the Guardian, the US trade representative, Michael Froman, in the first public comments from a senior US official on the matter, said that "the United States is not keen on pursuing a separate free trade deal with Britain if it leaves the European Union."

Contrary to the popular view, a fall in the growth momentum of prices is always good news for the wealth generating process and hence for the economy.

Moments ago VRX stock flash crashed on news CVS had just terminated Philidor from its Caremark PBM network: CVS CITES 'NONCOMPLIANCE' W/ PROVIDER PACT ON PHILIDOR; CVS MOVE BASED ON RECENT AUDITS OF PHILIDOR, DJ SAYS

Once more in this new normal in which we 'live', the necessary creative destruction of capitalism is eschewed in favor of saving a zombie company that the CEO admitted was "overwhelmed." The good news for American taxpayers is that it is Canadian taxpayers - via a generous $1.3 billion 'investment' by the Quebec government - that are bailing out private-jet-maker Bombardier. Following aircraft projects plagued by overruns, missed deadlines, and scant interest from airlines, Bombardier posted a $4.9billion loss in Q3. Well never mind that, Quebec taxpayers now own 49.5% of the challenged CSeries program.

"... judging from market-based implied measures of longer-term inflation expectations, the effectiveness of the ECB’s announcements has proved limited so far."

- Goldman Sachs

It appears even Goldman Sachs was surprised by the recent rally in US equities - especially in light of the explicit hawkishness of The Fed yesterday. In a trading note this morning, the bank says that market risks are real and rising (but are not overwhelming) as it explains, we assume with no intent at humor or sarcasm, that they "prefer to think of the recent equity rally as 'macro-free' rather than 'low quality'," reiterating their view of the cycle and of markets as "fundamentally upbeat." They do, however, admit over the last month, the likelihood of a drawdown in the US equity market further increased, and remains at mildly elevated levels.

Don't call us, we'll call you: "This is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the U.S. Department of Defense to be involved in direct operations. We have enough soldiers on the ground."

Venezuela has two immediate bond payments due this and next week amounting to $3.5 billion. Where did the near-insolvent country obtain the funds needed to make these debt payments? The answer: it has been dumping its gold, which its former ruler Chavez worked hard in 2011 to repatriate from London, and which its current president Maduro, just four short years later, is busy sending back to its creditors.

"This is not our war. I cannot condemn in strong enough terms this ill-advised US military escalation in the Middle East. Whoever concluded that it is a good idea to send US troops into an area already being bombed by Russian military forces should really be relieved of duty."

Once the algos had their way with stop-running to yesterday's highs (following a smaller than expected build in stocks for the second week in a row), NatGas has collapsed back to new cycle lows into the close...

The “equal-weight” S&P 500 has dropped to near 3-year lows versus the cap-weighted version. Previous such events under similar conditions occurred at inauspicious times.

With very strong demand for the belly of the curve, today's auction puts to rest any concerns about a buyers' strike.