Archive - Mar 4, 2015

Just hours after India's 'surprise' rate cut (which saw the SENSEX surge and then dump to close red), Poland has surprised the market with a bigger-than-expected rate cut. Despite two-thirds of econmomists expecting a mere 25bps cut, the Polish Central Bank slashed its benchmarket 7-day rate to just 1.5% - the lowest on record. Today's cut "makes up for inaction in previous months" after Poland held rate flat in January and February (but echoes Poland's Oct 'surprise' greater-than-expected ease of 50bps. Polish stocks dropped on the news (but recovered), banks are weaker, and the Zloty is selling off on this news (pushing back towards record lows)...

“Yes, it’s legal, but it’s just not a very nice or Canadian thing to do.“ Similarly, in Europe, an artist known as Stefanos has been defacing euro notes with images of little human figures in a painfully bleak depiction of life in Greece under austerity.

Another day, another missed data point. ADP Employment data shows 212k jobs added in February, which modestly missed expectations of 219k and is the weakest monthly gain in 6 months. This despite a strong prior revision, pushing the January number up from 213K to 250K to catch up to the BLS runrate. Despite the miss, that showed large businesses adding by far the fewest jobs, Mark Zandi as usual remains optimistic: "jobs growth is strong but slowing," and expects the economy "will return to full employment by mid-2016."

Today's Greek T-Bill rollover auction came, and it was successful, even if it means the yield on the paper rose from 2.75% previously to 2.97% - the highest yield in 11 months, since the 3.01% in April of 2014. The problem is when looking at where the funds came from: as Bloomberg reported, also citing Kathimerini, today it was the turn of Greek Social Security funds to prop up the auction, with part of the reserves of other public entities held at Bank of Greece also used to cover the Treasury-bill auction. Bloomberg adds that the "investment of common capital reserves was necessary as no foreign investors participated in auction, Greek banks couldn’t buy additional securities as they weren’t allowed to increase their exposure to Greek Treasury bills." The biggest problem is that  about €750m of the T-bills maturing Friday were held by foreign investors who didn’t participate in today’s auction.

The stock market is totally mispricing what's coming.

• RBS to cut up to 14,000 jobs in investment banking unit (FT)
• Doctors, patients scramble ahead of high court Obamacare decision (Reuters)
• Rajan Cuts India Rates After Modi Agrees to Inflation Target (BBG)
• Russia’s Putin Makes First Public Comments on Killing of Boris Nemtsov (WSJ)
• House breaks impasse, passes security funding without provisions (Reuters)
• How a 25-Year-Old Investor Spurred Lumber Liquidators’ Plunge (BBG)
• Jeff Immelt’s Overhaul of GE Impeded by Falling Oil Prices (WSJ)
• Sahara India Defaults on Luxury Hotel Loans From Bank of China (BBG)

Just like yesterday, it has - so far - been mostly about Asia in the overnight session, where as reported previously, we got the latest central bank engaging in an "unexpected" rate cut, after Reserve Bank of India Governor Rajan cut rates in an unscheduled move days after the government agreed for the first time to give the central bank a legal mandate to target inflation. This was India's second rate cut in 2 months, and yet despite the Sensex surging to a all time high over 30,000, it subsequently ended up closing red on the day, down -0.7%, despite the Indian currency sliding 0.4% to 62.1463 to a dollar. Is the half-life of thany incremental rate cut in an unprecedented barage of global central bank easing now less than a day?