Archive - Nov 18, 2015 - Story

With new and pending sales tumbling and lumber prices down, yesterday's drop in homebuilders sentiment - from 10 year highs! - appears justified entirely now as Housing Starts collapsed 11% in October to the weakest level since March. This is the biggest miss (and MoM drop) since Feb. Multi-family  unit starts plunged 25.5% MoM as single-family dropped just 2.5%. Starts in The West and South plunged as The Midwest saw a 30.8% collapse in housing completions. Building Permits rose 4.1% after tumbling 4.8% in September but SAAR remains notably below the Q2 cycle peak levels (1.337mm) at around 1.15mm homes (with multi-family permits rising 6.8% MoM).

In the first major protest by farmers in several years, bus-loads of men and women arrived from across Greece to protest the looming over-taxation and social security changes exclaiming that these government-enforced, Quadriga-mandated changes will affect the country’s primary production and crash those who sole income comes from farming, breeding and fishing. The infamous Syntagma Square saw oranges and water bottles met with police tear gas and sound cannons as European social tension continues to roil...

The blue chip Major Market Index failed to recapture a key breakdown level. Recently, amid the sharp post-September rally, the XMI returned to “kiss” the underside of the broken trendline. This was no happy reunion, however, as the result was a clear and precise rejection of price by the trendline.

• Security jitters drive European investors back to safe havens (Reuters)
• Global Anti-ISIS Alliance Begins to Emerge (WSJ)
• Merkel says cancelling soccer match was 'responsible' decision (Reuters)
• Paris attacker may have had accomplice on journey through Balkans (Reuters)
• Drop Assad demands if you want to unite against Islamic State: Russia to West (Reuters)
• Putin sets up commission to combat terrorism financing (Reuters)

As @the_real_fly says, "it will SUNE be over" and perhaps catalyzing the ending is a brand new note by Axiom Capital Research titled "The Nightmare Before Christmas” – Credit Event Appears More Likely than Presaged, in which the analyst Gordon Johnson sees at least another 33% of downside before the stock finally stabilizes at something resembling a fair value of $2.00

If this weekend's gruesome terrorist attack on Paris ended up being hugely bullish for stocks, then two subsequent events, a stadium-evacuation scare in Hannover (where Angela Merkel was supposed to be present) and a raid in north Paris which left several dead in the ongoing manhunt against the alleged ISIS mastermind, appear to have but some question into if not stocks then algos whether a rising wave of terrorist hatred across Europe is truly what central bankers need to unleash more QE. That said, we expect the current weakness to last only until the traditional USDJPY carry ramp pushes stocks traditionally higher.