Archive - Oct 9, 2015

As more and more Fed speakers, talking heads, and status-quo-protectors talk of, beg for, and demand negative interest rates (NIRP), the mainstream is starting to wake up to the possibility of this farce coming to America. As Lacy Hunt tells Rick Santelli in the brief clip below, "the evidence is overwhelming that QE was more of a negative than positive," and warns the consequences of NIRP are dire (and The Fed has the tools to enginner it) as "to make it effective they would effectively have to call in the currency."

For the fourth time today, gold has been aggressively bid higher. The latest move broke recent stops and took the precious metal to 3 week highs on heavy volume...

It appears there is a minimum wage threshold below President Obama's mandated thresholds that are "fair" and "livable." As NYPost reports, Urban Outfitters has asked workers at the company’s home office to "volunteer" for extra weekend shifts at a new fulfillment center in the town of Gap, Pennsylvania. In other words, the true minimum wage is $0 per hour. Bear in mind that if the labor market were growing as it should, in sharp contrast to how it has been presented over the past year, minimum wage laws would be the furthest from the mainstream.

If you make it so burdensome to operate a legit business, then you're basically giving people without big lines of credit and capital few choices but to work in the cash-only underground economy.

The persistent claim emanating from Washington that America spreads freedom and democracy around the world has been exposed as ludicrous numerous times and in many parts of the world, but not in the US itself, and that’s what counts most. The notion that we we can grow our way out of the mess that our previous growth spurt has gotten us into, rests at best on very flimsy foundations. To shake off this all-encompassing growth ideal, however, we would need to radically change our ‘model’ of the world.

One weekend. The process was not gradual. It was sudden and it was total: once it began in earnest, the banks were closed and you couldn’t get your money out (more on this in a moment).

Wholesale Inventories rose 0.1% MoM (more than expected and the most in 7 months) and Sales dropped 1.0% MoM (notably less than expected and weakest in 7 months) sending the inventory-to-sales ratio to 1.31x - new cycle highs - and flashing the brightest recession warning yet. With inventories up 4.2% YoY and Sales down 4.5% YoY, the stunning reality is the absolute dollar spread between inventories and sales has never been bigger.

Overnight we got confirmation that Glencore has indeed become a systemic risk from a regulatory standpoint after the FT reported that the Bank of England has asked British financial institutions to reveal their full exposure to commodity traders and falling prices of raw materials amid concerns over the impact of the oil and metals slump. Or, in other words, their exposure to Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Gunvor and Mecuria.

Having reiterated all the key talking points of "data-dependence", "downside risks", "labor slack", and the economy is "improving", The Fed's Dennis Lockhart then admitted...

• LOCKHART: UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE MAY GET LITTLE SKEPTICAL OF FED

We wonder just what makes him "understand" the world's growing skepticism?

WTI Crude is back above $50 to its highest in almost 3 months following a 10%-plus gain on the week (the 2nd best since Jan 2009). This surge has sparked the biggest surge in European and US Oil & Gas stocks since 2008 as Bloomberg notes, output from the world’s biggest consumer drops and Shell and PIMCO claim the worst may be over (while Goldman sees "lower for longer" suggesting this rally is a squeeze). However, while Energy stocks and raw materials are soaring, credit markets remain notably less impressed.

How do we know if the current signal is a “threshold crossing” into a better climate for stocks, or the lower bound of a new climate of elevated volatility? We cannot know for sure at this point if a volatility shift has occurred. We do have our reasons to be suspect of stocks in the longer-term, but not based on this data. Perhaps the best takeaway from this study is that a drop in the VIX below the 20 level is not an automatic all-clear sign for stocks. Similar moves have, on several occasions, marked the lower bound of a new high-volatility environment. In other words, stocks are not an automatic home run here. A year from now, it is entirely possible that stocks will have struck out.

Investors should hope for the best while making preparations for less benign scenarios. This can be achieved by reducing leverage and speculation and having a healthy allocation to physical precious metals in the safest vaults in the world.

Several days ago, when pointing out the record NYSE short-interest, we noted this move may simply mean the following: "a central bank intervenes, or a massive forced buy-in event occurs, and unleashes the mother of all short squeezes, sending the S&P500 to new all time highs." Today, we have confirmation that the rally has been precisely that: a massive short-covering squeeze, when Bank of America's Mike Hartnett looked at the latest weekly fund flow data and noted a "monster $53bn MMF inflows vs redemptions from equity ($4.3bn) & fixed income funds ($2.4bn)...rising cash levels indicate big risk rally (from intraday lows last week SPX +7.7%, EEM +13.5%, HYG +4.2%) driven primarily by short-covering rather than fresh risk-on."

When things are going especially poorly, sometimes all it takes is the slightest glimmer of hope to ignite a rally, and between a poor NFP report in the US (and yes, EM FX is clearly one place where bad news in the US economy is most definitely good news, as it forestalls an FOMC liftoff), “better” than expected trade data in Malaysia, a deceptively low read on capital outflows from China, and dovish FOMC minutes, this week has brought several such glimmers and so, everyone has apparently begun backing up the truck on Asia EM optimism.