Archive - Aug 18, 2015

This is precisely what has happened in Spain during the 2012 banking crisis. Since then it’s also happened in Cyprus, Greece…and it is now perfectly legal in the US courtesy of a clause in the Dodd-Frank bill.

"We Were Short… Now We Are Not!: The trend since mid-June is upward and today’s collapse in the Chinese stock market will serve only to make the bid for the US bond market that much stronger!" - Dennis Gartman

Just hours after the PBOC announced a modestly "revalued" fixing in the CNY, which curiously led to weaker trading in the onshore Yuan for most of the day before a forceful last minute intervention by the central bank pushed it back down to 6.39 it was the local stock market spinning plate - which had been relatively stable during the entire FX devaluation process - that China lost control over, and after 7 days of margin debt increases the Shanghai Composite plunged by 6.2% in late trade, tumbling 245 points to 3748, just 240 points above its recent trough on July 8, a closing level some 27% off its June peak.

On Monday we laid out the rather dire road ahead for the world’s emerging economies in the face of China’s entry into the global currency wars. The path ahead is riddled with exported deflation and decreased trade competitiveness for a whole host of emerging economies [and] all of this is set against a backdrop of declining global growth and trade, a trend which many had assumed was merely cyclical, but which in fact may prove to be structural and endemic." Well don’t look now, but trade just collapsed for Indonesia as exports and imports plunged 19.2% and 28.4% (more than double to consensus estimate), respectively in July. Meanwhile, the rupiah is sitting near multi-decade lows.

It may not rely on such tech bubble (ver 1.0 and 2.0) buzzwords as eyeballs, clicks, "story", "sharing", "hyperxxxx, "non-GAAP" and so on, in fact with 2.2 million worldwide employees Wal-Mart is as old-school as it gets, which is why the fact that what was once the world's most valuable retailer (until Amazon dethroned it a month ago) just reported not only a miss, on tumbling operating earnings, but slashed its guidance by 7%, should be very troubling to anyone who still looks as such trivial things as "fundamentals" and how these reflect the even more trivial "economy."

Everyone seems to focus on gold's price while forgetting its value as a diversification.

A German company, airport operator FRAPORT won the bid to operate and maintain 14 regional airports, considered to be top of the top in Greece. With an offer of 1.23 billion euro, the consortium of Fraport-Slentel (a unit of Greek energy group Copelouzos) won the bid to lease the regional airports for 40+10 years. Among the 14 regional airports are those on most popular tourist Greek islands like Mykonos, Rhodes, Kos, Santorini and Corfu. It is the first privatization deal under SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government and the biggest privatization deal in Greece since beginning of the crisis and the bailout programs in 2010.

• China stocks slump 6 percent on fears of further yuan depreciation (Reuters)
• U.S. Lacks Ammo for Next Economic Crisis (Hilsenrath)
• Emerging Markets Extend Slide as Commodities Fall; Pound Jumps (BBG)
• China yuan to move both ways, more 'adjustments' unlikely: central bank economist (Reuters)
• Playing Chinese markets is as simple as 'follow the leader' (Reuters)
• PBOC Injection Shows China Worries About Outflows (WSJ)
• Russia Fails to Soothe Oil Concerns as Citi Joins Ruble Bears (BBG)

Having covered the issue of “competitive devaluation” and currency-debauchment in considerable depth in recent commentaries, China’s “surprise devaluation” of the renminbi provides a practical, current example to illustrate the economic dynamics at work here.

PBoC Injection Shows China Worries About Outflows- WSJ