Archive - Feb 4, 2015 - Story

"Mainly due to the weaker employment component of the ISM nonmanufacturing index, we reduced our forecast for January nonfarm payroll employment growth to 210k, from 250k previously."

While not entirely surprising, the fact that GM Financial has admitted that:

*GM FINANCIAL: SEC PROBING SUB-PRIME LOAN SECURITIZATION

Of course, we should not worry about this... we are sure it is "contained" as GM reports it is "investigating matters internally" - just like it did with the ignition switch year ago?

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," appears to be the 'do-nothing-stupid' strategy that Washington continues to play in The Middle East. How else to explain the continuing 'close-ally' relationship with Saudi Arabia given that, as Reuters reports, Zacarias Moussaoui - a former al Qaeda operative imprisoned for life for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks - has told lawyers for victims of the attacks that members of the Saudi royal family supported the Islamic militant group. Saudi officials were quick to denounce these statements as those of "a deranged criminal whose own lawyers presented evidence that he was mentally incompetent," as he included some "extremely famous" Saudi officials as 'donors' during Osama bin Laden's tenure.

And so the great chess game involving Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, Qatar, Syria, ISIS, Ukraine, natural gas and lots and lots of oil, is finally revealed.

Against Reuters expectations of a 3.25 million barrel build, DOE reports a 6.3 million barrel build... Just 24 hours after Jim Cramer proclaimed, "this smells like a bottom" in crude oil, the crucial commodity (though it is unclear whether lower oil is good or bad today for now) appears to have flushed a few weak hands in a 3-day squeeze and 1430ET ramp-fest as price reasserts to the 'fundamentals' of over-supply and under-demand. WTI has plunged from over $54 at the NYMEX close yesterday to around $50 this morning...

Markit Services PMI rose modestly but hovered at one-year lows at 54.2 in January suggesting, as Markit notes, "the near-halving in the pace of economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2014," as companies struggle with new orders seeing the smallest increase since the financial crisis over six years ago. This comes on the heels of Decembers big miss in ISM Services, which rose - like PMI - very modestly to 56.7 (from a revised 56.5) with prices-paid tumbling to its lowest sinceJuly 2009 and employment lowest since Feb 2014. That said, it wouldn't be a Baffle with BS economy if the two releases, which are supposed to at least agree on the direction of the move, did not report two diametrically opposite trends, with the ISM reporting that while Employment tumbled from 55.7 to 51.6, New Orders actually rose from 56.5 to 56.7. Markit? The other way around, with New Orders dropping from 53.4 to 52.3 as Employment rose from 51.5 to 52.3!

Despite headlines proclaiming better-than-expected earnings Gilead is collapsing this morning (down around 10%) on the heels of concerns that drug discounts were larger than expected (and thus 2015 revenue expectations will be lower). This has dragged the Broad Biotech index down by the most since Dec 23rd and all the way down to the key 50-day moving average.

With the fog of economic war clearing just enough to get a glimpse of the real narrative in the Saudi-US-Syria-Qatar-Russia-Europe chaos, we found it more than a little intriguing that, as Reuters reports, Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holdings - the investment firm owned by billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal - sold most of its stake in media giant News Corp. While stating that they "remain firm believers in News Corp’s competent management," no reason for the sale was given of the US-based media mouthpiece that has been a core holding since 1997.

To say that the PBOC is confused at this moment is a very big understatement: on one hand, yesterday the PBOC moved its reference rate for the yuan outside the daily trading band for the first time in 21 months, forcing the currency to strengthen as authorities seek to limit volatility in capital flows. And then just hours later, as reported first thing this morning, the same PBOC announced its broad RRR cut - the first one since May 2012 -  an attempt to ease ongoing, and thus tightening, capital outflows, and pushing the currency lower in the process. In short: unlike other central banks who hope that institutional and retail investors figure out their FX intentions and help them out by "frontrunning" their moves (which may never come) in what is now a clear and global currency war, China is certainly not making it easy for FX traders to figure out what will happen next.

If you thought the Dijsselbloem-Varoufakis 'exit' was uncomfortable; watching Jean-Claude "when it's serious, you have to lie" Juncker grab Alexis Tsipras' hand in an awkward solidarity gesture as they ambled off stage today was eye-gouging... Perhaps the biggest news overnight was Varoufakis comment that GREECE `WILL NEVER SEEK FINANCIAL AID' FROM RUSSIA but broadly speaking conversations continue with "no change" - Greek FinMin Varoufakis told ECB's Draghi about his "government’s utter and unwavering determination that it can’t possibly be business as usual in Greece," and The IMF has stated that there has been no discussion with the Greek government on a change to the framework. Varoufakis is on his way to meet Germany's Schaeuble next.

Having beaten expectations for the past 4 months, in the face of a surge in jobless claims across Shale states, it appears January's print is finally catching down to a weaker expectations as layoffs dominate headlines as even Mark Zandi is forced to admit "Businesses in the energy and supplying industries are already scaling back payrolls in reaction to the collapse in oil prices, while industries benefiting from the lower prices have been slower to increase their hiring." At 213k, this is the lowest print in 4 months, missing expectations of 223k and dramatially down from December's upwardly revised 253k (from 241k) - the biggest drop since August as small business job growth slides significantly.

Back in September 2010, Petrobras conducted what was then the largest share sale (to date) in history, when US$72.8 billion worth of shares in the company were sold on the BM&F Bovespa stock exchange. Upon its IPO, Petrobras became the fourth-largest company in the world by market capitalisation. Those days are long gone now, and following the triple whammy of a Brazilian economy in tatters coupled with plunging oil prices and an unprecedented corruption scandal, not only is its stock plumbing unseen ultradeep water depths, but Petrobras has rarely been in a worse shape than right now. Which is perhaps why moments ago the CEO of the semi-national company - which was the largest in Latin America by revenue as recently as 2011 - Maria das Graças Foster, "resigned" according to a filing with Brazil's securities regulator.

• Arab World Unites to Condemn ‘Barbaric’ Death of Jordanian Pilot (BBG)
• Jordan hangs two Iraqi militants in response to pilot's death (Reuters)
• As Oil Prices Climb, Some Harbor Doubts (WSJ)
• Taiwan plane cartwheels into river after take-off, killing at least 19 (Reuters)
• Seven dead as commuter train hits car near New York City (Reuters)
• Apollo’s 600% Profit on Oil Company Leaves Rivals Behind (BBG)
• Greece's rock-star finance minister Yanis Varoufakis defies ECB's drachma threats  (Telegraph)

Following the torrid surge in crude in the past 4 days, overnight oil price have taken a step back - if only until the "newer normal" 2:30pm ramp into the Nymex close -  with both Brent and WTI down nearly 3%, with yesterday's latest API inventory data showing another massive crude build when it was released after the close, which in turn is pressuing futures modestly if decidedly, and not even the surprise PBOC RRR-cut (which many had seen as likely if only in advance of the liquidity sapping Chinese New Year) which hit the tape an hour ago managed to push ES into the green, at least for now. Curiously, not even the now standard low volume levitation in the USDJPY in recent trading has had any impact on US futures, which appear to have found a new correlation regime for the time being, one which tracks what oil does more than any other asset class.