Archive - Jun 25, 2015

After 6 straight months of decline in annual spending growth, May saw YoY spending pop 3.6% (the most since Dec 2014). After an unchanged April, May expectations for spending were a 0.7% jump but the data blew that away, printing a 0.9% MoM jump - the biggest since August 2009 and biggest beat since Jan 2013. Personal Income only grew at 0.5% (still the highest MoM jump since March 2014) driving the savings rate down to 5.1% - the lowest since December. Before Steve Liesman and his buddies get too excited - spending was driven mainly by a 4.72% surge in spending on Energy goods & services - not exactly what the discretionary buying consumer-oriented society that is required to keep the dream alive was looking for. Spending Ex-Energy is the lowest since March 2011. Finally we note non-durable spending topped durables and this exuberant GDP-boosting spendfest (un-save-fest) provides more ammo for an earlier Fed rate hike.

The Bundesbank's Jens Weidmann unleashed a litany of cticisim on the Eurosystem (read the ECB) when he said that Greek banks should not continue to buy the short-term debt of their government, which is then repoed back to the ECB in exchange for precious cash. "The Eurosystem must not provide bridge financing to Greece even in anticipation of later disbursements," said Weidmann, who also sits on the European Central Bank's Governing Council, which approves such funding to Greece. "When banks without access to the markets buy debt of a sovereign which is likewise locked out of the market, taking recourse to ELA raises serious monetary financing concerns," he said in a speech to be delivered at a conference in Frankfurt.

With 10% declines following the past 5 occurrences, the after-effects of this development have not been kind to the Nasdaq.

• This headline needs updating: Creditors set bailout ultimatum for defiant Greeks (Reuters)
• Greece’s Fragile Banks Leave Alexis Tsipras Few Options in Bailout Talks (WSJ)
• Dueling Greece Plans Presented as Ministers Race for Aid Deal (BBG)
• Icahn Cashes In His Netflix Chips (WSJ)
• Meet the Health-Law Holdouts: Americans Who Prefer to Go Uninsured (WSJ)
• ECB holds Athens lifeline unchanged as Bundesbank protests (Reuters)
• Supreme Court Guide: Six Big Decisions Remain (WSJ)
• The Rise of the Compliance Guru—and Banker Ire (BBG)

Ron Paul, former congressman for Texas, laid plain the absurdity of central policy towards the markets in a recent interview with Amanda Diaz on CNBC. He believes a day of reckoning is in the cards because the central banks “can’t print money forever.”

Chaos reigns, with contradictory headlines pushing and pulling futures in any one direction, only for the next headline to undo the previous one. And only headline scanning frontrunning algos have any chance of trading any of this...