Archive - Jul 2015 - Story

The Chinese economy is in an obvious deepening swoon and the median company on the Shanghai exchange had a PE ratio of 60X before the recent break. But no matter. Not only does everything financial race the skyscrapers to the sky in the land of red capitalism, but valuation upside is apparently whatever the comrades in Beijing want it to be. Says Goldman’s chief stock tout for China,“It’s not in a bubble yet.”. Why? Because “China’s government has a lot of tools to support the market.”

If The Fed's dream of wealth creation by equity-levitated mandate is to be fulfilled then it is simply inevitable that QE Moar is on its way...

It's true that “the authorities” want the price of financial assets (stocks, bonds) to go up, and the price of hard assets (commodities) to go down… which is exactly what has happened. So do governments and central banks ever lose? In the old days, they lost all the time. In one extreme example, an individual hedge fund took out the entire Bank of England. But central banks are currently on a massive winning streak. So to answer the question, “Will we ever have a crisis,” you need to answer the question, “Will we ever be allowed to have one?”

"There is an estimated need of about 10 to 14 billion euros in new capital. Given the magnitude of the shock we have been through, regulators will take stock of the situation and the impact on non-performing loans."

For the 2nd week in a row - after declines every week this year - the US oil rig count increased (up 5 to 645). The total rig count rose 1 to 863 (for the 3rd week in a row). The initial reaction was a smal snap below $52.50 but WTI is stabilizing now...

"It will be appropriate at some point this year...to raise the Fed funds rate and normalize monetary policy," Yellen recently explained but given recent comments from Fed heads and the FOMC Minutes, it appears the real meme is "everything is awesome, we promise and as long as it stays that way we will hike rates just a little bit, stand back and watch the implosion, then stand ready to step back in to save the world... oh, and if Greece, China, US Shale, or LatAm blow up contagiously, we won't normalize policy ever again." Yellen speaks on the US economic outlook at The City Club of Cleveland.

Facing pressure from all sides, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras sells out voters and looks to push concessions through parliament ahead of Sunday deadline.

A week ago we warned of the odd build up in inventories in GM's parking lots in China. It appears those warning were spot on as WSJ reports, China’s new car sales recorded the first year-over-year decline in more than two years in June, as slowing economic growth and falling stock markets hit the world’s largest auto market. “2015 will be an off-year for the Chinese car market,” said Dong Yang, a vice president for the auto manufacturers’ association, and we note auto dealers are seeing orders cancelled at a frenetic pace as it appears stock margin calls are draining the liquidity car-buyers once had.

Dear SEC, SIFMA, FINRA, CFTC, and anyone else who refuses to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. Following the initial dump in Treasuries after Greek proposal news overnight, bonds started to rally back... it appears that was unacceptable as 'massive' spoofing was then put in place to signal the price of Treasuries lower (yields higher)...

Greece has already collapsed, and the only real question is whether the ECB will give Greek depositors time to withdraw some of the €120 billion in deposits it holds hostage with the frozen ELA, or if the ECB will admit the truth about the Greek insolvent banking system risking Eurozone contagion. A better question is just what is the purpose of the IMF whose intervention in Greece can be described in one word: disaster. It can also be described in eleven, as the creator of the Taylor Rule, John Taylor, has done in a blog post which can be summarized as follows: IMF Loans To Greece Bailed Out Banks And Worsened The Situation.

“The energy sector of the high-yield market continues to be a silo of misery... If we stay near these levels, marginal high-cost producers won’t be able to survive.”