Archive - Sep 25, 2015

"The big upside for both corporate bonds & corporate stocks has subsided as the liquidity story has peaked. Of greater note, the recent big reversal in the performance of assets directly linked to the bull market on Wall Street. Private equity managers and large asset managers saw their stocks appreciate 36% & 32% respectively between QE1 and the end of QE3. Since the end of QE3, the annualized returns are -10% & -18% respectively."

"By relaxing constraints on other economic actors, central-bank support may create opportunities for them to shirk their responsibilities. In turn, this may render it more difficult for the central bank to withdraw its exceptional measures. The road to central bankers’ hell may be paved with good intentions."

• Global Markets Rebound on Yellen Speech (WSJ)
• Obama and Putin to meet; Syria and Ukraine vie for attention (Reuters)
• Obama to host China's President Xi amid simmering tensions (Reuters)
• Don't Fall for It, Xi! Chinese Take to Web to Scorn U.S.—and China, Too (BBG)
• Yellen Confirms Fed Still on Track to Raise Rates This Year (BBG)... but is still China dependent?
• Abe's New Economic Plan Confounds Analysts (BBG)
• It's All `Perverted' Now as U.S. Swap Spreads Tumble Below Zero (BBG)

The market, which clearly ignored the glaring contradictions in Yellen's speech which said that overseas events should not affect the Fed's policy path just a week after the Fed statement admitted it is "monitoring developments abroad", and also ignored Yellen explicit hint that NIRP is coming (only the size is unclear), and focused on the one thing it wanted to hear: a call to buy the all-critical USDJPY carry pair - because more dollar strength apparently is what the revenue and earnings recessioning S&P500 needs - which after trading around 120 in the past few days, had a 100 pip breakout overnight, hitting 121 just around 5am, in the process pushing US equity futures some 25 points higher at last check.