Archive - May 31, 2015 - Story

Having dropped over 10% in the previous 2 days, what better way to get the speculative frenzy of Chinese housewives levered up and buying stocks again than terrible macro data. With China HSBC Manufacturing PMI printing 49.2 (the 3rd monthly contraction in a row) and China's official Services PMI tumbling to its lowest since Dec 2008, the 'bad' news seems to have been greeted wondrously as Chinese stocks are up 2-4% on the news. CHINEXT back to fresh highs, Shenzhen is outperforming, and Shanghai and CSI-300 are all pushing higher. Add to this the news that the CSI-300 its rebalancing some positions and the 'correction' in China is now old news...

"On the Wednesday and Thursday it was reported that Greeks withdrew 800 million Euro from checking accounts. Friday's number will dwarf that. Whe you go to a Greek bank you pull off a ticket and wait for your number to be called. The hall in my bank contains about 60 seats all of which were filled. There were folks standing behind the seats and in fact throughout the hall, all wanting to get their cash out before the bank closed at 2 PM."

Despite proclamations by Kuroda, Abe, and various other elected (and unelected) officials that the 'deflation mindset' is gone from Japan, it appears one segment of the population is keenly aware of the ongoing deflationary market for one staple item. Just as we warned was occurring in America, it appears the cost of blow-jobs has gone from just-plain-cheap to "well, why not?" As one intrepid reporter ventured into the Otsuka red-light district of Toshima Ward discovered, the fee for an oral session at a “pink salon” starts as low as 2,000 yen ($16!).

On Saturday we introduced readers to the “Ferguson Effect”. The idea is that the recent spate of prosecutions and instances of social unrest that followed a series of events involving perceived police misconduct directed at African Americans have made police officers gun shy — literally. A new study by The Washington Post suggests otherwise...

"Until and unless we at least resolve all five of the following, and everyone involved wears an orange jumpsuit and has their corporate and institutional edifices closed down with the ill-gotten gains disbursed back to their victims we are, as a nation, DONE."

Here are Deutsche Bank's 10 themes and "summer issues" to keep an eye on as we leave May behind and enter June...

It took 31 years, but it appears that the origins of 1984 are finally upon us. It’s happening all across the West at an alarming pace, and people are willing to allow it. That’s the funny thing about freedom. True freedom means that you are free to be an idiot. Unfortunately most people in the West are caged birds. It might be a nice cage with plenty of Starbucks and Bed, Bath, and Beyond megastores. But it’s a cage... filled with clueless birds chirping away about how free they are.

"...leaving behind a sovereign, sustainable, and self-reliant Iraq," or not...

When money and investing is no longer rewarded by business acumen and prowess - rather it’s “Here’s a boatload of cheap money. Throw as much as you can, as fast as you can, at as many as you can, and see what, if any sticks” - that is when you should be looking for where the lifeboats are hanging. Rather, than hanging around on the poop-deck waiting to see if it’s all about to hit a fan. We guess we’re just back to the old turn a blind eye to anything historical. Remember “It’s different this time.” Nothing to see here, move along, don’t fret, no need for concern. Just remember and repeat three times every time there’s reason for concern when the market drops 200 or 300 points out of the blue only to recover all if not more the next day... “The Fed’s got your back, the Fed’s got your back, The……”

It took a paltry $1.15 million in bribes to get everyone in the Senate on the same page. And the biggest shocker: with a total of $195,550 in "donations", or more than double the second largest donor UPS, was none other than Goldman Sachs.

Curious how and why the US is "boosting" US GDP by selling over $4 billion worth of weapons to Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to provide these countries with protection against ISIS (the same ISIS, incidentally, which a leaked document last week admitted had been effectively created by the US)?  Simple: by first "losing" a billion dollars worth of Humvees so that, drumroll, ISIS can be the best-armed "terrorist" force in the middle east, a force whose mere presence will demand billions in subsequent military orders from the US military-industrial complex by all those who are threatened by ISIS.

These charts help us understand that a top is not just price, but a reversal in extremes of margin debt, valuation and sentiment. Many observers have an unyielding faith that central banks will never let markets decline ever again. There are four flaws in this blind faith...

The American Dream...

Having detailed the less status-quo-sustaining side of things, thanks to some frankness from Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller, who warned "unlike 1929, this time everything - Stocks, Bonds and Housing - is overvalued," we thought it only fair-and-balanced to illustrate the alternative perspective and who better than Jeremy Siegel to deliver it. In his anti-thesis of Shiller's facts, Siegel unleashes textbook dogma to pronounce, "in no way do current levels quality as a bubble", that stock returns should remain supported by fundamentals, there is no sign of a recession in the next 18 months, The Dow's fair-value currently is 20,000, and "not much" could dissuade him from holding stocks.