Archive - Aug 28, 2015

You know what they say: when it rains it pours, especially when you’re the poster child for an epic emerging market unwind and you’re suffering through the worst inflation-growth outcome in over a decade while trying to combat dual deficits and ward off political and social upheaval.

"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." - Morpheus, The Matrix

News That Matters

Presented with no comment...

Many were stunned at the pace of the v-shaped recovery in US equity markets this week after Monday and Tuesday's carnage. However, as the following chart makes very clear, there was good reason for it... Having overshot to the downside of "Fed-Balance-Sheet-Implied" levels but around 100 S&P points, the broad index ripped back higher to almost perfectly settle at "Fed Fair Value" - between 1980 and 2000. But, there is a rather ominous event occuring in 2016 that is out of The Fed's control that implies S&P 1,800 unless QE4 is unleashed.

In the midst of turmoil among asset classes, investors tend to make irrational decisions, such as panicking and liquidating at inopportune times. Nobel Prize-winning Psychologist Daniel Kahneman helps explain ill-conceived reactions to the market with his concept of loss aversion. That’s the fear and feelings of loss surpass the joy one may receive from a similarly sized potential gain.  In order to frame this discussion of volatility, we dug up old surveys of institutional and individual investors that recorded their responses to the 1987 market crash

One of the greatest con jobs in history was convincing ordinary people that Central Bankers care about the “economy” or Main Street.

Hint: think Treasurys, oil, and renminbi...

Two years ago, when we first profiled Japan's mysterious "Mister Watanabe" daytrader - aka CIS - we thought it may just all be a hoax. But, as his claims this week that he made $34 million trading the panic on Monday - "I do my best work when other people are panicking," Bloomberg reports, CIS - who claims JPY20bn AUM, has become a cult figure among Japan’s tight-knit community of day traders. Notorious for lines like "Not even Goldman Sachs can beat me in a trade," CIS drops some knowledge this week on how he has become so successful... "Buy stocks that are being bought, and sell stocks that are being sold." Just don't tell Cramer.

It goes until the “big one” shows up “out of nowhere” because everyone studiously ignores these events as if they can’t possibly be what they so obviously are: continued warnings. It is impossible to say what the final turn will be, as you can’t predict the level of “necessary” liquidations going too far because liquidity supply is totally hidden and derivative. The fact that one central bank after another continues to fall victim to the same connecting degeneration is cause for still deeper pause and reassessment, but that isn’t any fun for the bull bubble and the “easy money” mindset. In any case, when the yen functions as the last resort bid of safety, you can pretty well assess just how messed up everything got – and start to make some determination about just how close to the precipice.

While all eyes are on the front-end of the VIX term structure, today's volatility term structure in the out-dates is now higher than they were at the close on Monday at "peak crisis." VXX - the VIX ETF - is still surging, as the massive short position continues to get squeezed amid the ongoing backwardation in VIX...

Earlier today, following the disappointing July personal spending data and yesterday's record surge in inventories as part of the spike in Q2 GDP, we predicted that the Atlanta Fed would cut its already painfully low Q3 GDP forecast of 1.4%. Moments ago, it did just that, when the Atlanta Fed GDPNow "nowcast" was revised lower to just a 1.2% annualized growth rate, more than two-thirds below the BEA's first revision of Q2 GDP.

The private economy and its millions of savers exist for the convenience of the apparatchiks who run the central bank. In their palpable fear and unrelieved arrogance, would they now throw millions of already ruined retirees and savers completely under the bus? Yes they would.