Archive - Jun 2015 - Story

Stocks may be ignoring the 'dollar' and liquidity more broadly (at least as far as repurchases are concerned) but the continued stress in the eurodollar world has had an accumulating effect in some places. Primarily that has been shown in the once-thriving junk space, including more illiquid “products” like leveraged loans... By and large, there seems to be renewed concerns about liquidity, economy or both.

“There are three things that matter in the bond market these days: liquidity, liquidity and liquidity. When the unwind comes, like we’ve seen in the past few months, it comes abruptly and sharply as the exit door is tiny"...

While French president Hollande is busy "grilling" (in the words of The Local) president Obama over the latest US "spying on its allies" snafu, the French economy continues to deteriorate and according to the latest French labor ministry data, in May the number of French jobseekers rose by another 0.5%, or 16,200, to 3.552 million, 10k more than expected, and a new all time high.

While there was a disturbance earlier around the DOE data, crude and copper are now getting clubbed like a baby seal off the day's highs... It appears between Icahn's bubble comments and The Fed's reported impatience, momo trades are being unwound.

CEOs are not the most trustworthy figures in society. They will lay off thousands of employees to beat analysts' estimates, and yet they have no trouble looting the stock to pay themselves millions while the company loses money. However, one theme that keeps coming up is that unethical behavior has a price tag. With this in mind, consider the implications when the New York Fed tells us that economic activity declined because of the weather. Now that it's summer, it's not clear how cold weather is interfering. Perhaps the Fed has a South Pole subsidiary? When will the market crash and the Fed be replaced for lying about poor performance?

2/2 If more respected investors had warned about the market in ’07, we might have avoided the crisis in ’08.

— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 24, 2015

With the US equity market jerking around on every headline (having jumped on DOE inventories?!), reports from MNI that the FOMC majority is not prepared to wait indefinitely for market participants to be fully on board, appear to have taken the shine off the exuberance. It seems yesterday's warning from Jerome Powell that there will be 2 rate hikes this year did not stall the stock bubble enough and so more "officials" leaked more information today.

Angry and embarrassed, France summoned the U.S. ambassador Wednesday to respond to the revelations by WikiLeaks that the U.S. National Security Agency eavesdropped on three successive French presidents and other top officials. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the U.S. must do everything it can, and quickly, to "repair the damage" to U.S.-French relations from the revelations, which he called "a very serious violation of the spirit of trust" between the allies. "If the fact of the revelations today does not constitute a real surprise for anyone, that in no way lessens the emotion and the anger. They are legitimate. France will not tolerate any action threatening its security and fundamental interests."

You just can't make this up... We're gonna need some greater fools!

Against expectations of a 2.0 mm bbl inventory draw, DOE reports a substantial 4.93mm bbl draw (double last week's draw) extending the streak of inventory drawdowns to 8 weeks. Crude production overall raose 0.16% to near a new cycle record high. The reaction - oil algos ran stops at highs then dumped... stocks just ripped - which allmakes perfect sense.

Presented with little comment aside to ask - why does anyone listen to these idiots anyway?

"We've won a few months' respite but the problem will come back," France's Marine Le Pen said of Greece... "Today we're talking about Grexit, tomorrow it will be Brexit, and the day after tomorrow it will be Frexit." We shouldn’t need Le Pen to voice the obvious. But that no other ‘leader’, save for Nigel Farage, puts it into these crystal clear terms, does tell us a lot about all other European leaders. And unfortunately that includes Alexis Tsipras. Though we hold out some hope for him yet. Here’s hoping he will not sign that deal, whichever it may be in the end, and thereby set in motion the disintegration of the unholy Union.

If one excludes just three items: Obamacare, the "harsh winter", and near record inventory re-stocking in anticipation of a spending deluge that never comes, Q1 GDP would have tumbled nearly 2.0%.

We had wondered at the relative lack of response by Russia to extended sanctions and asset freezes in Europe and now we see the first major move. Having confirmed new counter-sanctions this morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin just threw The IMF (US taxpayers), and Ukraine's 'American' finance minister under the bus... "Moscow can no longer give Ukraine gas discounts due to the current drop in oil prices." The price must be on level of other countries like Poland, he added.

15 minutes after GDP data was released - showing Q1 was indeed as weak as expected and inventories suggesting Q2 will be just as weak - someone decided it was an appropriate time to dump over half a billion dollars of notional gold on the futures market...