Archive - Apr 2015

Something doesn't quite add up when the median price of a new home is just shy of all time highs, while the actual number of new homes sold is just shy of all time lows.

No sector will be immune to the changing nature of work and value creation. The only sustainable way to avoid upheaval is to learn to create value in ways that cannot be commoditized.

On the occasion of William Shakespeare's Birthday...To Default or Not To Default 

From below $56 to $58 in a few hours as terrible Asian, European, and US PMIs prompt a spoofed, manic stop-run to Tuesday's highs.

It's the Last Stand for Our Republic

US stocks are open - Panic Buy. PMI missed! - Buy moar on bad data. New Home Sales miss - even better - buy moar as bad news is good news. Yesterday's highs hit... Stop-run complete... unleash the selling...

The era the phony recovery narrative has come unhinged.  We have now entered a cycle of actual price discovery in which financial assets fall to more accurate values. This will eventually result in a stock market crash, very likely within the next 12 months.

After existing home sales sent stocks vertical on great news, so new home sales plunge has sent stocks vertical on bad news. An 11.1% drop MoM - the biggest since July 2013 - dragged new home sales back below 500k to 481k SAAR - the biggest miss in a year. Sales of new homes collapse 33.3% in The Northeast and The South saw new home sales crash 15.8%.

A U.S. drone strike in January targeting a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and Italian being held hostage by the group, senior Obama administration officials said. As WSJ reports, the killing of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto is the first known instance in which the U.S. has accidentally killed a hostage in a drone strike. We await President Obama's 'collateral damage' explanation.

On the heels of weak PMIs from Europe and Asia, Markit's US Manufacturing PMI plunged to 54.2 in April (from 55.7). Against expectations of a rise to 55.6, this is the biggest miss on record. Of course, this is 'post-weather' so talking-heads will need to find another excuse as New Orders declined for the first time since Nov 2014.

Gold developments may not be a golden opportunity.

The new term follows in the footsteps of the classic (but now tired) “Grexit” and its underrated predecessor “Graccident,” and refers to two of the four outcomes Citi imagines are possible in the unfolding Greek drama. The bad news: both scenarios involve capital controls, deposit flight, and defaults.

It's 8am, do you know where your sudden Treasury-bond seller is?

Moments ago the NY Department for Financial Services announced that, in what is the largest Libor settlement in history, Deutsche Bank would pay $2.5 billion "in connection with the manipulation of the benchmark interest rates, including the London Interbank Offered Bank ("LIBOR"), the Euro Interbank Offered Rate ("EURIBOR") and Euroyen Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate ("TIBOR") (collectively, "IBOR")."  Most importantly for DB's 98,138 employees is that while DB will "terminate and ban individual employees who engaged in misconduct" nobody will go to jail. Again. In other words it just cost DB's about $25,474 per employee to keep its Libor-manipulating employees (and thus, senior level management because the stench always goes to the very top) out of prison.

For the second week in a row, initial claims were worse than expected and increased year-to-date, While still below the magic 300k levels, claims printed 295k against expectations of 288k confirming the stagnation of the job market since the end of QE3 and the government's fiscal year. California and New York saw the biggest rise in initial claims with only Illinois seeing a drop; notably Texas saw layoffs across various sectors as it seems it ius not as 'diverse' as Richard Fisher propagandized. After 4 straight weeks of decline, continuing claims rose this week by the most in almost 3 months (but remains close to 15 year lows).