Archive - May 2015

For those who still cling on to margin debt as indicative of anything, the latest NYSE report should provide some comfort: finally the long-awaited breakout in participation has arrived, and after stagnating for over a year, investors - mostly retail - are once again scrambling to buy stocks on margin, i.e., using debt, and as of April 30, the amount of margin debt just hit a new all time high of $507 billion, $30 billion more than the month before, and nearly 50% higher than the last bubble peak reached in October 2007.

Statistics have become very misleading: in particular we are being badly misled into believing that the US is teetering on the edge of price deflation, because the US official rate of inflation is barely positive, a level that US bonds and therefore all other financial markets have priced in without accepting it is actually significantly higher.

Just hours after being force to admit that they were hacked (by Russians apparently), an inspector general's report shows that The IRS has rather remarkably continued to pay refunds on hundreds of thousands of fraudulent tax returns in recent years, and sent dozens of checks to the same addresses, including in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. While some progress has been made, $2.3 billion of real US taxpayer's money was wrongfully refunded to fake US taxpayers... but with this new cyber-attack, we suspect that number will soar.

A postcard from Neocon hell...

With production soaring by the most in almost 2 years, the rig count declines (or additions) appear to have become noise but following last week's single oil rig decline but this week's re-acceleration of declines is rather notable. Total rigs declined 10 to 875 and oil rigs declined 13 to 646 (the biggest weekly drop in a month). Crude prices had soared into the rig count data (despite the record production in Russia, OPEC's promise to keep production at highs, US production surging, and economic growth slumping) and kept going after.

While it is likely oil prices could get a bit of a bump from a decline in the U.S. dollar, ultimately it will come down to the fundamentals longer term. It is quite clear that the speculative rise in oil prices due to the "fracking miracle" has come to its inglorious, but expected conclusion. What is interesting is that most have not figured out that the same thing will occur with the artificially driven surge in financial markets as well. It is quite apparent the some lessons are simply never learned.

Another day, another stock market dump saved by another Greece headline...

GREECE WILL MAKE JUNE 5 PAYMENT DUE TO IMF, GREEK ECONOMY MINISTER STATHAKIS: REAL

The question is, what money will Greece use this time? They already "borrowed" their IMF reserves to make the May 12 €750MM payment to the IMF...

Russia is moving to undercut a critical financial communications link by creating an alternative system backed by the world's rising EM powerhouses who are set to officially launch their own development bank when they convene in July. At the same time, Moscow will consider cementing its economic ties with regional allies via the establishment of a currency bloc.

How do you support a consumer economy with stagnant incomes for the bottom 90%, rising basic expenses and crashing employment for males ages 25-54? Answer: you don't.

It seems bad news is bad news after all...

We did not actually need confirmation that global trade is slowing to a crawl (and has in fact reversed): after all, we have been showing just that for the past year, most recently earlier this week but it is important to note that in today's negative GDP print, it was net trade (exports less imports) that subtracted -1.9% from the final GDP print, driven by a -1.03% annualized drop in exports. This was the biggest hit to US trade since thegreat financial crisis.

Following the collapse in Gallup's consumer confidence and Bloomberg's Consumer Comfort, UMich Consumer Senitment printed 90.7 (against expectations of a rise to 89.5 from 95.9). With May's preliminary print the biggest miss in 17 months, this final drop leaves Consumer Sentiment at its lowest since November 2014. Hope dropped from 88.8 to 84.2 but it was the collapse in Current conditions - which fell from 107 to 100.8 - that crushed the headline. This is the biggest plunge in current conditions since Summer 2011 (the US debt downgrade). Business expectations plunged to 8-month lows, employment expectations tumbled... but the number who think it's a good time to buy a house rose.

Goldman Sachs proposes that society should bend to the needs of the financial and monetary system rather than reform of that system. At any rate, the proposals put forward by them are unlikely to achieve any kind of long-term solution to the problem of massive unsustainable debt faced by the western world and Japan. 

Following Milwaukee ISM's plunge to 15-month lows this morning with a plunge in new orders (missing for 4 of last 5 months), Chicago PMI printed a disappointing 46.2 (against expectations of a slight rise to 53.0 from 52.3 last month) - lower than the lowest economist estimate. After last month's modest (dead-cat) bounce back from winter's collapse to 6 year lows, this re-collapse is hardly the kind of Q2-recovery-reinforcing data the mainstream wants. With the level now back at the same when Lehman hit, New Orders, Production, and Employment all contracted in May.