Archive - 2015

In Canada, there seems to be a cult belief that housing simply will not correct. They are full on drinking the good old tasting real estate Kool-Aid. Canada has enjoyed many years of the global commodities boom and now finds itself contending with a market full of debt and inflated housing values. Short of oil rising back up to $80 a barrel or higher, Canada is likely going to face some short-term pain. The housing market is due for a correction.

"Fixed..."

"Don't fall for the trap of myopically following yesterday's winners. Protect yourself, keep your powder dry, and wait for a better day. Think more about getting rich in 2020 or beyond... The Fed has turned the entire investing population into zombies (with a gambling addiction, I might add) wandering aimlessly in search of any tiny extra return to ravenously consume... This has left stock markets as elevated and overvalued as they’ve been since the dot-com mania (and more than they were in 1929 and 2007), which history has shown will likely lead to significant declines ahead."

Supporters and opponents of Abenomics may debate the metaphorical death of Japanese society as a result of the terminal hyper-Keynesian, hyper-monetarist policies implemented by Abe and Kuroda for the past 2 years until they are blue in the face, but when it comes to the literal death of Japan, there is no debate: as the FT succinctly puts it "deaths outnumbered births in Japan last year by the widest margin on record, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing the government as it tries to ensure a dwindling pool of workers can support growing ranks of pensioners."

The reason why the BLS has not yet revealed the reality of the shifting US labor force, and why there is virtually no real wage growth across the US, is that the BLS simply backs into statistically goal-seeked results, using seasonal and statistical (birth/death) adjustments to smooth a trendline to beat a monthly bogey used by algos to bid stocks higher. Meanwhile, the reality at the micro level, is that increasingly more Americans are seeing their work status transformed from full-time to part-time status, earning less in the process, having no healthcare and retirement benefits and virtually no job security. As a result, starting this year, some 19 states just increased their minimum wage threshold, with 3 more states due to follow later in 2015. This takes place at the state level because for numerous reasons, there simply wan't enough of a consensus to pass this at the Federal level.

The rash of “unexpected” declines in PMI’s this morning in the US, of all places, seems to have abraded at least somewhat the pervasive belief in the American “decoupling.” But... The FOMC sees 5% GDP and a serious workdown in the unemployment rate; credit markets are worried about how continued mistreatment of economic fundamentals may mean another disastrous trip like the one from the housing bust to the Great Recession. Worse than that, the treasury curve, in particular, may be going a step further by envisioning that we may already have replicated that period and are now very deep within it.

Having outperformed in the beheading leagues for 2014, US ally Saudi Arabia has begun 2015 with a new policy sure to please its Western 'partners'. As Entertainment.ie reports, after a number of complaints from passengers about "random males" being seated next to their wives, Saudi Arabia's national airline is looking in to segregating their flights.

"most investors take a relatively short-term view and assume that what has happened most recently will continue. They fail to recognize that economic and market forces are always working to press companies (and whole industries) back toward their respective grooves... companies rarely perform way above the industry average or way below it indefinitely. There is a constant tendency to regress toward the mean..."

US foreign policy just jumped the shark: a few days after both the FBI and the US State department were humiliated when it was revealed that it wasn't North Korea but a disgruntled, laid off Sony employee that was responsible for the "hack", and when the best possible course of action would have been to simply let this latest embarrassing incident fade from memory, moments ago Obama - currently not working out next to a rainbow or flashing his support of "Shaka" -  just signed his first executive order of 2015, imposing even more sanctions against North Korea.

As bonds rally and EUR slumps near 1.20 (the figure) following moar Draghi jawboning and suggestions of sovereign QE from the ECB, Germany has come out swinging to remind the world that it won't stand idly by as the nation's taxpayers are thrown under the bailout-the-EU-or-else bus. Michael Fuchs, deputy parliamentary floor leader of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, told Deutschlandfunk radio on Friday: "We shouldn't pump extra money into these states, but rather make sure they continue along the reform path." As Reuters reports, Fuchs further added, "I'd be grateful if (ECB President Mario) Mr Draghi would make statements along these lines."

Martin Armstrong, Max Keiser and High-Level Economists Weigh In

Captured moments before his freak accident...

While Jim Cramer went "all-in on oil stocks" in May 2014 (right before the collapse), it was the fracking sand-providers that were the most-loved stocks on many individual investors buying lists last year... until their worlds caved in. As WSJ reports, for many sand producers, this is their first time on the bucking bronco that is the cyclical energy business—and not all of them are ready for the wild ride. As one CEO exclaimed, "there are a lot of wide-eyed people out there right now in the industry."

Today we update where China stands on its path to a very hard landing. As the charts below show, what has been so far a controlled descent is rapidly sliding out of control.