Archive - Mar 1, 2013 - Story

• US braced as cuts deadline passes (FT)
• U.S. stares down start of steep "automatic" budget cuts (Reuters)
• Yeltsin-Era Tycoons Sell Resources for Distance From Kremlin (BBG)
• Italy's center-left leader rules out coalition with Berlusconi (Reuters)
• Apple Required Executives to Hold Triple Their Salary in Stock (WSJ)
• BOJ Seen Spiking Punchbowl in April Under New Chief Kuroda (BBG)
• Diplomatic fallout from EU bonus cap (FT)
• Italy’s Stalemate Jeopardizes Resolution of Crisis, Finland Says (BBG)
• Chinese trader accused of busting Iran missile embargo (Reuters)
• JPMorgan No. 1 Investment Bank Amid a Flurry of New Deals (BBG)
• Eurotunnel’s Ferry Strategy at Risk as Rivals Cry Foul (BBG)
• Telepathic rats team up across continents (FT)

The "great rotation" illusion may have ended just as rapidly as it arrived. Bank of America reports that in the past week, "commodity funds reported their largest historical weekly outflow, in dollar terms, of -$3.2bn this week and US equity funds reported an outflow of -$4.1bn this week, which is their largest weekly outflow this year." So much for anyone rotating anywhere. And while we await for the delayed ICI to confirm this data, we can only remind readers that this is precisely the same inflow followed by outflow that was seen in early 2011, which was then followed by nearly two straight years of relentless and persistent outflows.  Oh well - better luck in 2014.

If the new year started off with a bang, March is setting up to be quite a whimper. In the first news overnight, we got the "other" official Chinese PMI, which as we had predicted (recall from our first China PMI analysis that "it is quite likely that the official February print will be just as weak if not more") dropped: while the HSBC PMI dropped to 50.4, the official number declined even more to just barely expansionary or 50.1, below expectations of a 50.5 print, and the lowest print in five months. This was to be expected: Chinese real-estate inflation is still as persistent as ever, and the government is telegraphing to the world's central banks to back off on the hot money. One country, however, that did not have much hot money issues was Japan, where CPI declined -0.3% in January compared to -0.1% in December, while headline Tokyo February data showed an even bigger -0.9% drop down from a revised -0.5% in January. Considering the ongoing surge in energy prices and the imminent surge on wheat-related food prices, this data is highly suspect. Then out of Europe, we got another bunch of PMIs and while French and Germany posted tiny beats (43.9 vs Exp. 43.6, and 50.3 vs 50.1), with Germany retail sales also beating solidly to cement the impression that Germany is doing ok once more, it was Italy's turn to disappoint, with its PMI missing expectations of a 47.5 print, instead sliding from 47.8 to 45.8. But even worse was the Italian January unemployment rate which rose from 11.3% to 11.7%, the highest on record, while youth unemployment soared from 37.1% to 38.7%: also the highest on record, and proof that in Europe nothing at all is fixed, which will be further confirmed once today's LTRO repayment shows that banks have no desire to part with the ECB's cash contrary to optimistic expectations.