Archive - Aug 19, 2015 - Story

To keep the credit induced boom going,policy makers have convinced themselves that more credit and more money, provided at ever lower interest rates, are required. Why then, as The FOMC Minutes just showed, do the decision makers at the Fed want to increase rates? If Fed members follow up their words with deeds, they might soon learn that the ghosts they have been calling will indeed appear — and possibly won’t go away. The sooner the artificial boom comes to an end, the sooner the recession-depression sets in, which is the inevitable process of adjusting the economy and allowing an economically sound recovery to begin.

Momentum traders - relying on the 'trend is your friend' theme - may have a rude awakening soon as momentum stocks trade at a stunning 50% premium to the market (vs an average 20%). As BofAML notes, high growth, high multiple names that have been leading the market over the past year are showing some signs suggest we are close to a tipping point. The growth-to-value spread is at its highest since the peak of the dotcom bubble in 2000 and, as Subramanian ominously notes, when momentum ends, it ends badly - with an average loss of 25% over the next 12 months.

Take a step back from the media, and Wall Street commentary, for a moment and make an honest assessment of the financial markets today. If our job is to "bet" when the "odds" of winning are in our favor, then exactly how "strong" is the fundamental hand you are currently betting on? This "time IS different" only from the standpoint that the variables are not exactly the same as they have been previously. Of course, they never are, and the result will be "...the same as it ever was."

Not what you were expecting...

Market pundits robotically suggest that the Fed should not raise rates because inflation is too low.  Well, if zero rates and $4 trillion in asset purchases did not boost inflation, do they really believe that another few months at zero rates will do the trick?  Some Fed researchers are actually asking whether policies have become counter-productive to their dual mandates. The path to rate normalization will not come without pain. On the contrary, there will be a difficult period, potentially even a damaging recession.  Fed doves will likely feel vindicated.  However, while a period of hardship is likely inevitable, purging both bad businesses and market speculation is vital for long-run economic health and will allow more productive businesses to evolve over time.

Having waited for over a year for the Ukraine civil war/conflict to be relegated to back page status, if that, Putin has finally given the green light, and as Xinhua reports, leaders of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" are planning to hold a referendum on seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia, the Donetsk-based Ostrov news agency reported Wednesday.

While the PBOC was literally everything in its power to keep the Shanghai Composite above its 200-day moving average as some sign of 'stability', it forgot about that other proxy of overall Chinese economic health: copper. And just as we warned previously, ever since the CCFD crackdown in 2012, copper has been tumbling and more crucially has just broken a 15-year trendline. The plunge in copper means almost one in five mines globally is losing money.

"In the process of preparing embargoed material we inadvertently sent a headline ahead of the embargo."

With the confused FOMC still stuck on the fence of raising rates (or not), here are ten reasons why they won't.. and a caveat in case we're wrong...

It appears that the Fed's cunning plan to hike rates so it can cut rates was just foiled once again.

"The Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting is four weeks away and officials show no clear sign of having settled on a decision about whether to raise short-term interest rates at that time."

Seconds ago, someone accidentally (we hope) pulled a Janet Yellen as the following just came across the wires

FOMC MINUTES: MEMB 'GENERALLY AGREED' MORE INFO NEEDED TO HIKE
FOMC MINUTES: NO TIP TOWARDS SEPT LIFTOFF, DOESN'T RULE IT OUT

But the bottom line is that the Fed just admitted things are going from bad to worse: "The risks to the forecast for real GDP and inflation were seen as tilted to the downside." The question now is what comes first: QE4 or the first rate hike in nearly a decade.

Another day, another technical breakdown, only this time not for the US but for the entire world. As BofA points out, "the weekly global A-D line shows a 2011-style breakdown", which it notes "is a market risk", although it remains unclear if central banks, and China's National Team in particular, use technicals when deciding to manipulate stocks.

Moments ago, following the earlier DOE report of an unexpected jump in oil inventories which caught all algos by surprise, oil collapsed to a $40 handle - a price not seen since 2009. So what does this mean for S&P 500 earnings in general, and energy earnings in particular? Nothing short of a total wipeout as the following chart, showing energy EPS with a 4 month lag vs oil prices, from Citigroup reveals.