Archive - May 14, 2015

The incredible luxury of having a bedroom to yourself is out of reach for all but the very well-paid. Having an apartment to yourself requires serious money.

The fix is in...

Yesterday, the FT reported that Saudi Arabia gloated in declaring victory over US shale. “There is no doubt about it, the price fall of the last several months has deterred investors away from expensive oil including US shale, deep offshore and heavy oils,” a Saudi official told the Financial Times in Riyadh, giving a rare insight into the kingdom’s thinking on oil strategy. Which is great, but there are two problems. First, any time someone say "there is no doubt about it", or "unambiguously this or that", it is a lie. Second, Saudi Arabia is dead wrong.

For the second time in a week, amid ongoing discussions on infrastructure spending, a train has derailed in Pennsylvania. As CBS Pittsburgh reports, emergency crews have been called to a train derailment in Hazelwood. At least 10 cars are off the track but no injuries have been reported yet.

It would appear someone at NBC News got a rather large tap on the shoulder. In what is a stunning reversal of their confirmation that President Obama lied and lying about the killing of bin Laden, NBC News has updated their original story - that "two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a 'walk in' asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding" - to this - "Sources say that while the asset provided information vital to the hunt for bin Laden, he was not the source of his whereabouts." As Slate concludes, while NBC’s story doesn’t use the word correction or retraction, that’s what this appears to be.

Confirming Gallup's demise of the confidence of the consumer, Bloomberg's non-government-sanctioned Consumer Comfort index has now fallen for the 5th straight week - the longest streak of uncomfortableness since Nov 2013. The index is barely above unchanged for 2015 with people in The South and NorthEast feeling the misery the most in the last week (and rather oddly, only the 65+ age cohort saw an improvement - rising rates?).

Bund yields rose once again overnight, testing last week's melt-up 77bps top briefly but have 'stabilized' as US markets come online hovering 1bps lower. As bund prices have collapsed so it appears knife-catchers have been busily leveraging up with Call option open interest soaring dramatically (and put option open interest). This has smashed the put-call ratio from multi-year highs in mid-March (before the collapse began) to 6-month lows now. Whether this is a contrarian's dream is unclear (suggesting that there is further price downside as the weight of positions are skewed to the upside is unclear).

The last 3 days have seen precious metals surging. Silver is up over 7% - its biggest such rise since Aug 2013, and Gold up 3% - its largest in 4 months. Volume is heavy also. A specific catalyst is unclear but USD weakness is being cited, weak macro data suggesting further easing, China demand ahead of SDR-backing, and finally the realization that the Chinese shift to unconventional monetary policy (LTROs) is a slippery slope to full-blown QE from which few (if any) have ever escaped.

A lawyer for the conductor of Amtrak Regional 188 which derailed earlier this week killing 7 and injuring hundreds says his client has no recollection of the event and no explanation for what happened. Meanwhile, politicians rush to blame infrastructure spending.

Breaking: 5 #Iran Revolutionary Guard boats fire across bow of Singapore-flagged cargo ship, ship fled to UAE waters, no U.S. on board

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) May 14, 2015

With a global population of 7.3 billion this works out out at over $27,200 of debt for every man, woman and child alive today. 

Something funny happened on the way to the global reflation (telegraphed so loudly by the recent surge in 10Y yields to the highest level of 2015): PPI just crumbled by a sequential 0.4% in the month of April, despite expectations it would rise by 0.1% and continue the 0.2% monthly increase seen in March.   This was a -1.3% drop in PPI - the fastest fall in 5 years. Worse, the annual decline in final demand goods was -5.2% Y/Y, the biggest drop in the revised series in record!

Only once in the last 42 years have jobless claims been lower than this week's 264k print... Other than April 2000, this is the 'best' jobless claims print since 1973! But not everyone is loving it as Texas continues to turmoil (no matter how diversified the talking heads tell the people their economy is).