Archive - Sep 2014 - Story

So much for the latest recovery: with not a single analyst expecting a NFP print below 190K, the BLS just reported that August payrolls tumbled from a revised 212K to only 142K, which was not only below the lowest Wall Street estimate of 190K, but it was also the the lowest monthly jobs print in all of 2014 and the biggest miss to expectations since the "polar vortex"! The Unemployment rate dripped modestly from 6.2% to 6.1% confirming yet again it has become a completely meaningless metric.

• Barclays 200K
• Citigroup 200K
• Deutsche Bank 200K
• HSBC 215K
• JP Morgan 225K
• UBS 230K
• Goldman Sachs 240K
• Morgan Stanley 250K

"Our artillery has come and is being deployed against the rebels," said the mayor of Mariupol, Yuri Khotlubey. The commander of the Azov volunteer militia, Andriy Biletsky, said his men had regained territory from the rebels in a counter-offensive after they came within just five km (three miles) of Mariupol on Thursday. And while leaders meet in Minsk to discuss peace, "A ceasefire would be a disaster, we would lose everything. By fighting we can resist the invasion and send them back. With a ceasefire they will consolidate and carry on after a while," said Ukrainian soldier Taras.  And an interesting undercurrent has emerged: now the Ukraine army is stronly against a ceasefire, with one possibly leading all the way to yet another presidental coup. To wit: Another Ukrainian soldier who gave his name as Mykola said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - who was attending the second day of a NATO summit in Wales on Friday - would "betray the country" if he backed a peace plan at this time.

• Euro left reeling after ECB's liquidity splurge (Reuters)
• Coalition Emerges to Battle Islamic State Militants (WSJ)
• Ukraine Gas Chief Takes on Gazprom in Race With Winter (BBG)
• Nato leaders fail to agree spending targets (FT)
• JPMorgan Had Exodus of Tech Talent Before Hacker Breach (BBG)
• Mercedes-Benz Sales Rise Despite Weak German Demand (WSJ)
• Secret Network Connects Harvard Money to Payday Loans (BBG)
• ICE looks to crack financial data market (FT)

It has been an odd session: after yesterday's unexpected late day swoon despite the ECB launch of "Private QE", late night trading saw a major reversal in USDJPY trading which soared relentlessly until it rose to fresh 6 year highs, briefly printing at 105.70, a level not seen since October 2008, before giving back all gains in overnight trading. It is unclear if it was this drop, or some capital reallocation from the US into Europe, but for whatever reason while Europe has seen a stable - if fading in recent hours - risk bid, and European bonds once again rising and Irish and Italian yields both dropping to record low yield, US equity futures have slumped and are now trading at the lows of the session ahead of a US nonfarm payroll print which is expected to rise and print for the 7th consecutive time above 200K, at 230K to be precise, up from 209K in July (down from 288K in June). It is unclear if the market is in a good news is bad news mood today, but for now the algos are not taking any chances and have exited risky positions, with the ES at the low end of the range the market has been trading in for the past week centered aroun S&P 2000.

While NATO is contemplating its existential purpose in a world where the Cold War has suddenly come back with a vengeance, and the military alliance has found itself woefully unprepared to deal with a Russia which no longer accepts the supremacy of the west (appropriately enough NATO is doing this on a golf course) Russia is also strategizing, only instead of issuing "sharply-worded catchphrases" and hashtags, a Russian general has called for Russia to revamp its military doctrine, last updated in 2010, to clearly identify the U.S. and its NATO allies as Moscow's enemy number one. That in itself is not disturbing: we reported as much yesterday and is merely more rhetorical posturing. Where things, however, get very problematic is that the general demands that Russia spell out the conditions under which the country would launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the 28-member military alliance.

We believe independence terrifies some people because it requires a human being to challenge the unknown and take responsibility for the consequences if he fails. Followers trade in their mental and spiritual freedom to governments, oligarchs and gatekeepers so that they never have to face these difficulties. Sometimes, they are simply lazy. Sometimes, they lack confidence in their own abilities. Sometimes, they are just cowards. In any case, the result is the same: a life of relative ease riding the tides in a vast school of self-serving minnows but always prey to the ever circling sharks. We say don’t be a minnow; man-up, and build something of your own.

Just two charts...

"The West is afraid of a major war and Putin is exploiting that," says one former Kremlin adviser, adding that "his end goal is a Ukraine that is a buffer state between Russia and the West." After the recent rebel offensive, it's now militarily possible to gain full control of Donetsk and Luhansk and to create a 'land bridge' to Crimea, and "without help, Russian troops can roll ever-deeper into Ukraine." As Bloomberg reports, Vladimir Putin will continue his shadow war until he's created quasi statelets in Ukraine’s easternmost regions with veto power over the country’s future, five current and former Russian officials and advisers said. As they ominously conclude, "Ukraine's only way out is to admit defeat... the longer Ukraine waits, the more territory it will lose and the harsher demands it will face." However, as Gavekal explains, Putin may have staved off an immediate defeat but the stakes have undoubtedly been hugely raised - here are 3 scenarios.

It is "Mission Accomplished" for BofAML's Macneil Curry's EURUSD short. Thanks to Draghi's moar-negative-rate-cut, EURUSUD pushed through Cury's objective and we note has now stabilized at 14-month lows around 1.30 the figure. Curry's fear now, given the extremes in sentiment and positioning, is that EURUSD squeezes notably higher.

In today’s financialized economies, zero cost money has but one use: It gifts speculators with free COGS (cost of goods sold) on their carry trades. Indeed, today’s 10 basis point cut by the ECB is in itself screaming proof that central bankers are lost in a Keynesian dead-end.  You see, Mario, no Frenchman worried about his job is going to buy a new car on credit just because his loan cost drops by a trivial $2 per month, nor will a rounding error improvement in business loan rates cause Italian companies parched for customers to stock up on more inventory or machines. In fact, at the zero bound the only place that today’s microscopic rate cut is meaningful is on the London hedge fund’s spread on German bunds yielding 97 bps—-which are now presumably fundable on repo at 10 bps less.

Context is king. Week-in, week-out, we are reassured by whoever the next talking-head is that the recovery-meme is alive-and-well (despite consensus GDP expectations continued to slide for 2014), and that housing is back. The fact that mortage applications inched 0.2% higher on the week (as mortgage rates briefly dropped below 4% for a day - back at 4.20% now) is extrapolated into full recovery when the following chart perhaps provides a little clearer picture of just what has happened in this 'recovery'.

"Get up! Get down! Fast-food workers run this town!" were the chants from fast-food workers in over 100 cities across America today, as empowered by President Obama's explanation of 'fairness', they demanded a $15-per-hour minimum wage amid strikes, rallies, and acts of civil disobedience. Many fast-food chains and independent restaurants have said that a $15 hourly wage would lead to big price increases on their menus or make it impossible to eke out a profit, adding that they "believe that any minimum wage increase should be implemented over time so that the impact on owners of small and medium-sized businesses." Police arrested 19 workers in NYC and several dozen were placed in handcuffs in Detroit and organizers strongly denied unconfirmed fast-food industry accusations that some workers were being paid $250 to $500 by the union to strike. While the economic reasoning for a minimum-wage hike has been dead-and-buried, we try one more time to explain the hidden costs of the minimum wage.

Back in 2009 we first warned that the market is now just a "market" where between the direct manipulation of all asset-prices by the firehose Fed and its peers, and the explicit rigging of stock prices by the HFTs, there is no such thing as a market left. Back then, we were called tinfoil something or another. Now that everyone admits the Fed's only purpose is to push asset prices higher, and the topic of HFT's rigging of markets is now a blockbuster book, those accusations have grown silent. In fact, the only thing that remains are the very loud screams as increasingly more often, some unknown or well-known trader and/or investor, with a several year delay, stumbles on our conclusion and realizes that the game (i.e., market) is so rigged, manipulated and broken, that the only winning move was not to play in the first place. Today's case in point Andrew Cunagin, the founder of Rinehart Capital Partners LLC, a hedge fund backed by hedge-fund veteran Lee Ainslie and specialized in emerging-markets stock-picking, and who as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier, is closing. The closure is not news: what Cunagin blames the closure on, however, is.