Archive - Apr 13, 2015

Attempts to isolate Russia and ignore its position are useless and counterproductive, State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said on Monday, ahead of the decision to lift sanctions on anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. With the Russian stock market among the top performers of the year and The Ruble the strongest currency in the world this year, it appears he may be on to something...

On the heels of the South Carolina “confrontation” which led to the shooting death of Walter Scott, we get a new video out of Tulsa in which one Eric Courtney Harris — who apparently sold an illegal firearm to undercover agents and who CNN compassionately describes as a “possibly PCP-addled felon” — is “accidentally” shot by a 73-old reserve deputy who apparently could not distinguish between his Taser and his glock.

Unemployment is the one statistic that one would have thought is easy to define: just total up the number of people on unemployment benefit and there's your answer.

As Wall Street struggles to explain last night’s trade data out of China which seemed to vividly illustrate the notion that the combination of the yuan’s dollar peg and generally weak demand can and will take a devastating toll on the country’s exports, and as iron ore does its best dead cat bounce impression on the “psychologically” important news that Australia’s fourth largest miner is suspending operations, Citi is out with a rather dismal take on the outlook for iron ore prices.

UPDATE: *RUSSIA WILL SUPPLY S-300 TO IRAN QUICKLY: INTERFAX

We showed yesterday the web of interconnected rifts and relationships among The Middle East's local and proxy war members and it seems this morning tensions are escalating once again. As Bloomberg reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday lifting a ban on the delivery of S-300 anti-missile rocket systems to Iran. The ban was introduced by former President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 under pressure from the West following UN sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

WTI Crude broke back above $53 (twice) this morning (having tested down to $50 on Friday) following what BofA calls "the strongest pace of buying by hedge funds since the selloff began."

A gap open in AAPL has sparked a vertical stop-hunt in US equity indices driving Nasdaq back above 5,000 for the first time in3 weeks. Algo buying-panics are being seen across all US equity indices as the US equity open is clearly a fundamentally bullish thing...

There appears to have been a shocking lapse in security surrounding the Easter weekend heist. The security lapse reflects badly both on the company and on the police. Holding tangible assets outside of the fragile banking system is a risky exercise, if the manner in which those assets are stored is not thoroughly secure and fully insured.

USDJPY tumbles and US equity futures are red... that wil not do for a Monday morning... Time to break an exchange!

While today's macro calendar is empty with no central bank speakers or economic news (just the monthly budget (deficit) statement this afternoon), it’s a fairly busy calendar for us to look forward to this week as earnings season kicks up a gear in the US as mentioned while Greece headlines and the G20 finance ministers meeting on Thursday mark the non-data related highlights.

Did the Japanese just get the tap on the shoulder from The Fed? Cabinet Office member and Special Advisor to Abe Koichi Hamada just jawboned the JPY higher (and USDJPY lower) with the following statement:

HAMADA: YEN AT 105/USD APPROPRIATE; WEAK AT 120 CONSIDERING PURCHASING PARITY

The reaction - an 80 pip plunge in USDJPY.

Everyone was shocked by yesterday's Chinese March trade update which showed that while imports slid largely as expected, it was the 15% drop in exports, the largest in over a year, that prompted many to wonder just how big the global trade slump really is, masked by what has now become pervasive, global QE. This was the worst performance, exports and imports combined, since late 2009.  Below is a selection of responses by Wall Street analysts trying to justify how - with global equities, if only in local currency terms, at all time highs - China can be doing so badly.