Archive - Aug 18, 2015

Given the carnage unfolding across EM currencies and the myriad headwinds the world's emerging economies face going forward, it should come as no surprise that sentiment has turned decisively negative. Is it time to be a contrarian? BofAML thinks so.

Will the West endure, or disappear by the century’s end as another lost civilization? Mass immigration, if it continues, will be more decisive in deciding the fate of the West than Islamist terrorism. For the world is invading the West.

"The Goldman blowback is a particularly challenging subject to understand and analyze. Taken to extremes, criticism of the firm, which was founded and built by Jewish Americans, smacks at times of anti-Semitism. Fed officials don’t want to fall into the trap of ostracizing qualified people merely because of their association with the firm or its Jewish roots."

- John Hilsenrath

Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany has been one of the few countries that have successfully moved away from nuclear energy. In fact, the contribution of nuclear power in Germany’s electricity generation has now fallen to just 16% and renewables are now the preferred source of electricity generation in the country. However, Germany and its neighbors are now facing an unusual problem. With the dramatic increase in green energy usage, Germany is generating so much electricity from renewables that it is finding it hard to handle it.

According to the latest, just released survey concerns about both geopolitics and Greece have been largely forgotten, as have Chinese debt defaults, and instead these have been replaced with far more overarching fears about a China recession (made all the more acute after China's devaluation) and an Emerging Market debt crisis. In fact, according to BofA, "2 out of 3 investors think either China recession or EM debt crisis = biggest "tail risks."

Thanks to the economic miracle of offering cheap money to the least creditworthy of society, The Atlanta Fed just increased its forecast for Q3 GDP from +0.7% to +1.3% - though this is still less than half consensus estimates. The driver of this 'almost doubling' was due to a 15.3% increase in seasonally adjusted motor vehicle assemblies in July stuffing inventories even fuller. Of course, as we previously noted, this is entirely unsustainable and we await the mean-reversion in August and September.

In the event you were becoming concerned that the U.S. government might be backing away from its longstanding policy of endless violence, militarism and bloodshed, fear not. If we know one thing for sure, it’s that defense contractors and the military-intelligence-industrial complex must earn. And continue to earn it will.

The era of reaping stupendous profits from low-quality goods produced by low-cost labor in a lax anything-goes regulatory system are ending, not as a result of policy changes but as a result of far deeper structural changes. Anyone thinking China, Inc. and Corporate America will emerge unscathed is living in Fantasyland.

As the U.S. economic expansion ages and clouds gather overseas, policy makers worry about recession. But, as WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath warns, their concern isn’t that a downturn is imminent but whether they will have firepower to fight back when one does arrive. "The world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats,” economists at HSBC Bank explained, and as looming threats are a reminder that the slow-growing global economy is just a shock away from peril, with rates already at zero, Douglas Elmendorf, the recently departed director of the CBO, warned, "policy makers are thinking about their backup, backup plans."

For the 3rd time in a week, Silver futures prices are plunging. This time though it is on considerably heavier volume as Silver drops 3.75% - the most in over a month - hammered off resistance at its 50DMA. Gold is also falling though not as aggressively.

There is no such thing as objective science when a researcher receives tens of thousands of dollars from the GM producers themselves, then goes on to promote their financiers’ products. Corporate collusion between government bureaucracies and educational institutions has become a serious issue in the U.S. that has corrupted objectivity in nearly every sector of American life.

It will probably not come as a surprise that with oil trading at 6 year lows, and with China barely able to keep the plates spinning,  according to the latest NYSE data, Energy and Industrial were the most shorted sectors as the shorts congregate, having smelled if not blood than ongoing commodity and excess capacity turmoil. What about the remaining 8 sectors?

Political turmoil, rising violence, and general EM malaise have hit Turkey's currency hard and on Tuesday, the central bank left rates unchanged prompting further weakness in the lira which had already fallen earlier in the session after Emine Nur Gunay, PM Davutoglu's chief adviser, hinted that a rate hike was not in the cards.

Copper (and aluminum) tumbled overnight as base metals were battered during an intense Asia session and losses are extending in European trading. As one trader noted "sentiment toward China is weak, the dollar is somewhat strong and there is an unholy combination of many factors keeping prices under pressure," and copper traded $4,999/mt on the LME - its first sub-$5000 print since 2009. Aluminum, nickel and zinc all tumbled also.

After 3 months of exploding building permits - driven almost exclusively by the Northeast region (due to expiration of property tax breaks in NYC) - reality bit in July as permits plunged 16.3% to the lowest since March (biggest drop since June 2008). This was the biggest miss on record for permits. Housing Starts rose less than expected but thanks to a dramatic upward revision are stable at around 1.2 million units SAAR (driven by a rise in single-family units trumping multi-family units).