Archive - Dec 11, 2015 - Story

What the PBOC's unexpected announcement means, is that for anyone who thought the Yuan devaluation is over, now that the currency is at the lowest level relative to the dollar since 2011, the reality is that the devaluation relatively to everyone else is only just starting.

Here’s one for the "actions speak louder than words" file: Investment research firm TrimTabs reported on Wednesday that insider selling reached $7.6 billion for the month of November, the fourth-highest monthly level on record.

With the biggest single-day drop in over 4 years, US High-Yield bond prices have collapsed to their lowest levels since July 2009. Crucially, it's not just energy companies as the painful illqiuidty has careened across the entire space, not helped by fund liquidations and the biggest outflows since August 2014.

Putting the 'mad' in Maduro. Venezuela's heavy crude oil price just crashed almost 9% to $31.24... its lowest since December 2004. Time for another 'swap' with China?

Time to go to Tijuana for Christmas vacations? The Mexican Peso just collapsed to all-time record lows against the US Dollar...

"Templeton Global Bond ($100bn in total; $59bn in mutual funds) – BEN’s largest fixed income fund – has seen meaningful outflows YTD (-$7.6bn from retail; -13% annualized rate) and could persist given the deterioration in excess performance (-460bps vs. benchmark YTD)."

As soon as the Fed moves money market rates upwards, unproductive parts of the economy will come under severe strain which in turn sets in motion recessionary forces prompting the Fed to reverse course. The only way out is to realize that the world is awash in mal-invested capital that need to be written off. Since that is inconceivable for today’s vested interests, the way forward will be further “Japanification” of the global economy. And this time we are all out of arrows.

Clearly the time for a rate hike that "boosts confidence in the economy" has come....

The writing has been on the wall for a few days/weeks, but it appears a combination of global FX and equity turmoil and domestic corporate debt market collapse is finally starting to roil US equity markets. The Dow is down over 600 points in the last week or so, bond yields are collapsing, the USDollar is tumbling, crude is crashing, and junk bonds are in free-fall.

Following the wholesale inventories-to-sales jump, business inventories-to-sales just shifted once again to cycle highs, deep in recessionary territory. With inventories unchanged in October, slightkly lower than thge expected 0.1% increase, Q4 GDP will start to be affected (and Q3 as prior data was revised lower). Nevertheless, with sales dropping 0.2%, with manufacturers tumbling 0.5% MoM, the looming production cuts set up The Fed for an epic policy error.

Even as large swaths of the population call for media outlets to do their part in stemming the “dangerous tide of hatred, violence, and suspicion” taking hold in the United States, corporate media - which stands to benefit nicely from the $5 billion 2016 presidential election - is egging on that same divisive rhetoric.

Three words... "not unequivocally good."

Syria was a secondary topic on Putin's mind today when during a meeting with his defense chiefs, Putin gave the order "to strengthen Russia’s strategic nuclear forces amid rising tensions with the U.S. over the global balance of power."

We have been almost alone in our exclamations at the collapsing offshore Yuan in the last few days but since The IMF blessed China's currency with inclusion in The SDR, CNH is down 13 handles. However, now we appear to have an answer. Overnight saw commentary from CFETS (China's FX market 'manager') that indicated implicitly that Trade-Weighted Yuan was still trading too high.

Following a miss in retail sales (if slight beat in core spending), the final key economic update the Fed will look at before its "first rate hike in nine years" meeting next week is today's Producer Price Inflation report which rose 0.3%, above the expected unchanged print and even higher compared to October's -0.4% decline. The report showed that while the decline in energy prices continued as expected, sliding 0.6% in the Final Demand Goods category, there was a surprising pickup in final demand services, which rebounded by 0.5% driven by Trade which rose 1.2% from the prior month, driven by an unexpected pickup in margins for apparel, jewelry, footwear, and accessories retailing.