Archive - Aug 5, 2015

Following API's drawdown last night, DOE reported a significant 4.41mm barrel draw (dwarfing the 1.63mm barrel draw expectation). Thisis the 11th of last 14 drawdown in inventory. Crude spiked on the news, seemingly ignoring the 0.6% surge in production - its biggest jump since late May... but has given all the spike back now, hitting a $45 handle.

"Ilias Zagoraios, the chief prosecutor of the Athens First Instance Court, has asked Greece’s cyber crime unit to investigate whether the public revenues service was hacked as part of an effort to create a parallel payment system under ex-Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis," Kathimerini reports.

ISM Services soared to its highest sicne 2005 - printing 60.2, beating expectations by the most on record - with the biggest MoM jump in employment in history. Does that sound in any way realistic? Markit Services PMI printed above its preliminary level at 55.7 for a small bounce after 3 straight months lower. However, more problematic is the plunge in 'hope' as busines outlook tumbles to its lowest since June 2012. As Markeit notes, while the headline may be encouraging, "dig a little deeper and there are causes for concern which could worry policymakers into deferring any tightening of policy."

Yesterday we showed a chart demonstrating that while the top 10 "Unicorn" startups have a private valuation of $156 billion on just $4 billion in revenue, what caught readers' attention is that the average employee among these 10 companies is worth a whopping $8 million.  But what about the "value" of employees at public companies, and especially at the blue chips, names such as MSFT, XOM, JPM, MCD and, the more recent trailblazers, AAPL and FB? The answer is shown below.

Seriously...VIX is trading with an 11 handle once again, at the lowest levels of 2015...

Simply put, Gold stymies "welfare statists," but back in 1966 no lesser credit-nation-creator than Alan Greenspan still belived in free markets and sound money. You can obstruct price discovery and you can disguise and distort the real value of things. But Mr. Market will get even someday. He always does.

Boeing, whose Chairman Jim McNerney says the demise of the Export Import bank amounts to "craziness", lost a contract worth several hundred million dollars last month, after the buyer backed out citing credit concers related to the expiration of the Depression-era institution's charter. Now, Boeing and GE alike are threatening to move American jobs overseas if Congress fails to renew the authorization for what some commentators call "a vast, well-funded network of consultants, lobbyists and big-government interest groups."  

Dear Fed: behold another example of why your ludicrous rate hike ideas will crush the economy. Moments ago the BEA reported that the June international trade deficit spiked by 7.1% from $40.9 billion in May (revised) to $43.8 billion in June, as exports decreased and imports increased.  The previously published May deficit was $41.9 billion. The goods deficit increased $2.9 billion from May to $63.5 billion in June. The services surplus decreased less than $0.1 billion from May to $19.7 billion in June.

Disney is down over 8% from post-earnings highs for its biggest drop sicne at least Oct 2014 and back at 2-month lows... The Happiest Place On Earth... isn't...

Jay Powell reminded investors that September is not guaranteed and a dismal ADP print confirmed that there's maybe enough bad news that we get one or two more months of ZIRP... so stocks surge on algo eagerness. Bonds are also rallying and the dollar fading...

Following June's small-business-driven better-than-expected rise in ADP employment, July printed a stunningly weak 185k against expectations of 215k - the biggest miss since March. This is around the lowest level of the year and lowest since Q1 2014. It is also 20% lower than the 232K ADP print a year ago, and the weakest July print since 2013: all signs screaming QE4 a rate hike is imminent.

Standard Chartered’s new CEO Bill Winters thinks the bank is positioned well in "markets which will offer outstanding opportunities for decades to come", and while that may be true, the opportunities in those markets didn’t prove to be all that outstanding in the first half of the year, as the bank’s EM and commodities exposure contributed to a 44% decline in H1 profits and prompted a 50% dividend cut. 

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• Turkey says coalition to launch 'comprehensive battle' against Islamic State (Reuters)
• Buffett’s Celebration Tempered by 50th Anniversary Stock Slump (BBG)
• SEC Set to Approve CEO Pay-Gap Disclosure Rule (WSJ)
• Greece wants full bailout, not bridge loan, ruling party says  (Reuters)
• Stocks Rise Fueled by Strong European Corporate Earnings and Chinese Data (WSJ)
• JPMorgan Reclaims Place Among U.S.'s Top 10 Biggest Stocks (BBG)
• Eurozone retail sales fall sharply in June (MW)