Archive - Sep 9, 2015

The short squeeze into 10Y auctions never fails.

It's Over... so let's see what we have left... (Spoilier Alert: Mr. Cook is preparing a new email for Mr. Cramer)

For the last 35 years, The Dow Industrials has found one technical level to be crucially important in knowing "when to bail on stocks." Currently that level is 15,334 - a closing break below spells significant downside... Of course, none of this matter, until it matters!

Bank profitability will remain under pressure for some time to come in light of the new capital regulations currently in the works. This will make it more difficult for banks to generate new capital internally, so they will have to tap the capital markets and dilute their shareholders further. It is no wonder that bank stocks remain way below the valuations they once commanded (we actually wouldn’t touch these stocks with a ten-foot pole). From a wider economic perspective, the new capital regulations are rendering banks moderately safer for depositors (as long as the markets don’t lose faith in government debt that is), but they also contribute to their ongoing “zombification”. Bank lending is going to remain subdued. This wouldn’t represent a big problem, if not for the fact that it is likely to provoke even more government activism.

Over the last five years, we have developed an unhealthy obsession with the Federal Reserve, in particular, and central banks, in general, and there is plenty of blame to go around. Investors have abdicated their responsibilities for assessing growth, cash flows and value, and taken to watching the Fed and wondering what it is going to do next, as if that were the primary driver of stock prices. The Fed has happily accepted the role of market puppet master, with Federal Bank governors seeking celebrity status, and piping up about inflation, the level of stock prices and interest rate policy. We don't know what will happen at the FOMC meeting, but we hope that it announces an end to it's "interest rate magic show."

If only the data - that apparently The Fed is 'dependent' on - would collapse. The surging JOLTS data has lifted September rate-hike odds - after a week of sliding - and dragged The Dow more than 200 points off its morning highs...

As WSJ reports, "the European Union on Wednesday proposed redistributing 160,000 refugees across the bloc and speeding up procedures to send back those who don’t qualify for asylum, in a bid to improve a stuttering response to the largest wave of migration on the continent since the aftermath of World War II."

Earlier today, all eyes were focused on Janet Yellen's favoriote Jobs indicator - the JOLTS report, and especially the total nonfarm Job Openings. And here a big problem appeared because while the Fed is now facing tremendous pressure from the outside not to hike in September, the JOLTS report not only gave a green light, but literally shrieked a rate hike in September is inevitable. The reason: the Job Openings number soared from 5.323MM to a new record high of 5.753MM, smashing expectations of a drop to 5.3MM. In fact, the monthly increase in openings of 430,000 was the highest stretching all the way back to April 2010, and was the fourth highest monthly jump in the history of the series!

Once welfare spending and subsidies of Elites collapses, the social and political stability of oil exporters becomes extremely fragile. The leadership of oil exporters without a stash of USD to tide them over as oil prices crash would be wise to start building their bug-out island fortresses.

Remember when two months ago Schauble, jokingly, offered Jack Lew to "trade" Greece for Puerto Rico? Something tells us in the interim period the German finmin changed his mind because while the Greek can has been kicked again, if only for the time being until bailout #4, the full severity of the Puerto Rican insolvency was laid out for all to see moments ago when top officials and outside advisors to the commonwealth released a highly-anticipated report showing that island's whopping funding gap of $28 billion will at best be reduced to "only" $13 billion over the next several years. Worse: according to the report of the so-called Working Group, the Treasury’s single cash account and Government Development Bank would exhaust available liquidity before the end of the year

Since Icahn announced he was going activist on Cheniere Energy one month ago, he has not exactly hit a home run, with the stock tumbling 20% from Icahn's initial price, and closing at $56.75 yesterday: hardly good news for the outspoken billionaire. Today Icahn got some more bad news when famous short-seller Jim Chanos announced on CNBC that his latest heretofore undisclosed short is precisely Cheniere, which he described as a "looming disaster" alleging that demand for liquid natural gas isn’t growing.

Nothing to see here, move along. Amid dismally low volume, it appears the JPY-driven rampathon continues... But it may just have run out of greater fool stops (at last week's highs) to run - unless USDJPY 122 comes soon...

In a word, the official unemployment rate is now in what has been the macroeconomic end zone for the past 45 years. Might this suggest that the emergency is over and done? Self-evidently, the only “incoming” information that can matter between now and next Wednesday is the stock market averages.  If the Fed takes no action in September, it’s hard to imagine any economic or jobs report that wouldn’t support ZIRP or near-ZIRP in the minds of the money printers and the Wall Street gamblers they pleasure.

Wealth gap: "We made it bigger!"

With Spain's Catalan region on the verge of electing pro-independence parties and seeking autonomy from central rule, the government (clearly worried) has ramped up the rhetoric on what consequences lie ahead. In a rather stunning outburst for a supposed democracy, CNA reports, the Spanish Defence Minister, Pedro Morenés, assured that the army won’t act in Catalonia as long as "everybody fulfills their duty." The Catalan minister for the presidency exclaimed Morenes statement was "out of this world," and could only be made by "someone who is afraid of democracy." The army will "enforce the Constitution," Morenes concludes, unless "members strictly obey the rules." As one pro-independence minister opined, "threatening and trying to intimidate means that you are only left with stupidity."