Archive - Nov 3, 2015 - Story

One of the primary “talking points” used by the Department of Justice to defend its practice of systematically deeming corporate criminals above the law via its used of deferred prosecution agreements, has been an emphasis on how much money it has earned in fines from criminal corporations. These fines were supposed to be distributed to help victimized American citizens. Not any more.

Who says innovation is dying in the US tech sector?

"zero interest rate policy actually reduces demand in the economy, prompting the Federal Reserve to prescribe even further doses of a medicine that, for a long time, has been impeding rather than promoting economic recovery."

- JPM's David Kelly

It's just factory orders...ignore it. For the 11th month in a row, US Factory Orders have fallen year-over-year, re-acclerating the most recent drop to -6.9%, something that has not happened outside of a recession in history. In fact, adjusting for the one-off Boeing surge in July 2014 this is biggest Y/Y drop since October 2008. Month-over-month, orders fell 1.0% (more than expected), down for the 11th month in the last 14. The good news is that inventories dropped 0.4% (for the 3rd month in a row) but that will further hurt GDP, but, unfortunately, inventories-to-shipments remain at 1.35x cycle highs.

File this under 'WTF' - despite job growth and purchase volume dropping for the 2nd consecutive month for the first time in 3 years, ISM New York reported a headline print of 65.8 in October. The jump from 44.5 (6 year lows) in September is the largest MoM jump since Nov 2003... Under the surface it was weak all around except for one thing... "outlook" - or hope - which soared from 62.8 to 74.0 (despite a plunge in expected demand 6 months out). All in all - we reiterate our initial thoughts - WTF!?

"The manhaj [method] of destruction, sowing and stirring dissension and corruptions, confusing efforts, making takfir [branding as an infidel] upon those who disagree with them, then this is a manhaj of a feeble and failure [person] who has no perfection except ruin,"

"But they won’t, you know. Yellen and Draghi believe in the Taylor model and the Phillips curve. Gresham’s law will be found in the history books, but his corollary has little chance of making it into future economic textbooks. The result will likely be a continued imbalance between savings and investment, a yield curve too flat to support historic business models, and an anemic 1-2% rate of real economic growth in even the most robust developed countries."

The Keyser Soze bid is back... panic buying crude futures to run stops above yesterday's high before being gone... just like that...

The mainstream media is cock-a-hoop after CNBC-parent NBC and Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reveal a new national poll that shows notjust Trump being beaten in 2nd place by Ben Carson (who is currently on a book tour) but also shows Marco Rubio surging (from 4% to 11%) if one wanted to spin it that way. Softly-spoken Carson, with 29% of the GOP primary voters polled, is ahead of Trump (23%) for the first time in the campaign, tripling his support since July (and as WSJ reports is the first Republican to top 50% when voters 2nd and 3rd choice are combined). On the other side of the scale, Bush's support is collapsing as Cruz and Rubio accelerate.

Participation among all stocks in the recent stock rally, as measured by an equal-weight index, has been relatively weak – as it has been since last spring. This issue should not simply be viewed in the context of judging the quality of the bounce off of the September lows. It should be viewed as a larger, more significant challenge to the longer-term sustainability of the stock market rally. For, even as the major average are once again approaching their former highs, they are doing so on the backs of a diminishing number of stocks.

In the latest example of Washington playing catch up in the global "war" on terror PR battle, “officials familiar with the matter” have told WSJ about a concerted effort to cut off the flow of dollars to ISIS. Allegedly, the US became concerned about the amount of hard currency being shipped to Iraq over the summer. The problem: the requested amounts didn’t seem to be consistent with the country’s economic fundamentals and so, the US cut off Iraq’s access to dollar funding, nearly plunging the country into crisis.

• S&P 500 Futures Slip as Aussie Gains on Rate Outlook; Oil Rises (BBG)
• Xi Says China Needs at Least 6.5% Growth in Next Five Years (BBG)
• Ben Carson Vaults to Lead in Latest Journal/NBC Poll (WSJ)
• World's Biggest Banks Still Not `Truly Resolvable,' FSB Says (BBG)
• Keystone XL's builder faced darkening prospects (Reuters)
• Merkel Says Germany Must Step Up World Role in Refugee Crisis (BBG)

"U.S. intelligence analysts believe it could have been some kind of explosion on the aircraft itself, either a fuel tank or a bomb."

Call it an example of an abbreviated public lifecycle. After IPOing at $22.50 just last March and then promptly tumbling, Candy Crush maker King Digital was stuck in no man's land: demand for its products was promptly waning and the organic growth its underwriters had promised was nowhere to be found. The fundamentally savvy hedge funds sniffed this out and promptly jumped on board what seemed like a royal flush slam dunk to zero. And then, overnight, out of nowhere Activision decided to crush the Candy Crush shorts, who had built up a short stake amounting to 25% of the float, when it announced it would acquire the company for $5.9 billion or $18/share, a 16% premium to the previous day closing price... and also a 20% discount to the IPO price.

So far today's trading session has been a repeat of what happened overnight on Monday, when following a weak start on even more weak Chinese data, US equities soared on the first trading day of the month continuing their blistering surge since that dreadful September payrolls report, which as we showed was mostly catalyzed by a near record bout of short's being squeezed and covering, which accelerated just as the S&P broke the 2100 level.