Archive - Sep 2015

After all that...

*TWITTER SAID TO NAME JACK DORSEY CEO, RE/CODE SAYS

Did no one else want the job? And TWTR stocks jumped to run stops above 1-week highs as we presume this removes some uncertainty...

During the "recovery" from the Great Recession, the land of Lincoln had more people enter the food-stamps program than start jobs. Food-stamps growth in Illinois has outpaced jobs creation by a 5-4 margin... and stunningly, has put 25 people on food stamps for every manufacturing job created during the recession recovery.

The shark jumping continues as Citi says its analysts "have found serious residual seasonality in payroll reports for the period from August through October"...

Germany has long been a pioneer in the field of renewable energy, generating a record 78 percent of its power consumption from renewables in July of this year. In fact, Germany is one of the very few countries in the world that is actually struggling with too much renewable energy. The latest testimony to this fact is the new issue of decommissioning its old wind farms... and that is a growing problem (for The US too).

As if the collapse of her poll numbers and trust factor were not already accelerating, it appears Hillary Clinton may have just seen yet another nail in the coffin of her run for Presidency 2.0. As Fox News reports, The Teamsters union’s general executive board voted unanimously Tuesday, 26-0, to hold off on endorsing Clinton at its meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. Furthermore, to rub further salt in that wound, the union is seeking a "sit-down" with Donald Trump.

In a tragic, if very odd coincidence, a day after we postulated that the real "commodity-trader" risk may not be Glencore after all, but its just as vast, if even more levered competitor, Trafigura, moments ago the privately-held company (with publicly traded bonds), announced that its founder and biggest shareholder, french billionaire Claude Dauphin has died at the age of 64.

"financial markets are NOT yet pricing for a recession, rather they are merely flirting with the idea. I suspect this largely reflects faith/hope in policymakers within market participants. The events of the past few weeks, both going into and after the most recent BOJ and FOMC meetings, should give those heavily invested in policymaker faith/hope a lot of food for thought...  the next Fed “put” is not likely until the S&P 500 is trading in the 1500s at least (so more likely to be a Q1 2016 item rather than Q4 2015); and in terms of what the Fed could do, clearly QE4 has to be in the Fed’s toolkit"

USDJPY is tumbling, cracking back below the 120.00 tractor beam (and catching down to Nikkei 225's decoupling). EURUSD is also plunging, down 100 pips in the last few hours... it appears it is not just EM FX that is seeing volatility increase as The Majors start flip-flopping ahead of Friday's payrolls data..

As of this moment the S&P is soaring and is set for the 8th best gain in 2015. Why? Here is one reason, from the latest Gartman letter: "Essentially repeating what we said here yesterday, there are still many who deny that this is a bear market, we fear that it has a good distance to the downside yet to travel. Merely to get to “The Box” shall take the S&P to 1420? 1550! Rallies are to be sold."

This is a damn shame. You can't be upset if your banker calls you a muppet if you hand him the marrionette strings... The tools to cut the strings are just around the corner. Let's see if regulators do the right thing, or if will they stilfe innovation to protect status quo.

Confirming API's reported data last night, DOE reported an even bigger 3.955 million barrel inventory build last week. This is the 2nd biggest build since April and after rallying confidently all morning (on QE hopes and Middle East tensions), WTI Crude collapsed... We also note that total crude production also fell to its lowest since Nov 2014... and that has spareked rampant buying...

For the first time since 2009, all six major Fed regional activity surveys are in contraction territory... time to hike rates?

"Bad news is good news" again... for the global money-printing reflation trade...

Overnight we got a second confirmation of China's golden appetite, when the PBOC announced that China's official gold holdings had risen again in August, increasing by 520,000 troy ounces, or 16.2 tons (which is more than 3 times the entire registered gold inventory in the Comex vault system), and bringing the new total to 54.5 million ounces, or 1,694 tons of gold. In dollar terms, Chinese gold holdings rose from $59.2 billion at the end of July to $61.8 billion. The punchline: in a month in which China sold a record $107 billion notional in Treasurys, it had no qualms about rotating the sale proceeds into gold.