Archive - Sep 2015 - Story

During the "recovery" from the Great Recession, the land of Lincoln had more people enter the food-stamps program than start jobs. Food-stamps growth in Illinois has outpaced jobs creation by a 5-4 margin... and stunningly, has put 25 people on food stamps for every manufacturing job created during the recession recovery.

The shark jumping continues as Citi says its analysts "have found serious residual seasonality in payroll reports for the period from August through October"...

Germany has long been a pioneer in the field of renewable energy, generating a record 78 percent of its power consumption from renewables in July of this year. In fact, Germany is one of the very few countries in the world that is actually struggling with too much renewable energy. The latest testimony to this fact is the new issue of decommissioning its old wind farms... and that is a growing problem (for The US too).

As if the collapse of her poll numbers and trust factor were not already accelerating, it appears Hillary Clinton may have just seen yet another nail in the coffin of her run for Presidency 2.0. As Fox News reports, The Teamsters union’s general executive board voted unanimously Tuesday, 26-0, to hold off on endorsing Clinton at its meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. Furthermore, to rub further salt in that wound, the union is seeking a "sit-down" with Donald Trump.

In a tragic, if very odd coincidence, a day after we postulated that the real "commodity-trader" risk may not be Glencore after all, but its just as vast, if even more levered competitor, Trafigura, moments ago the privately-held company (with publicly traded bonds), announced that its founder and biggest shareholder, french billionaire Claude Dauphin has died at the age of 64.

"financial markets are NOT yet pricing for a recession, rather they are merely flirting with the idea. I suspect this largely reflects faith/hope in policymakers within market participants. The events of the past few weeks, both going into and after the most recent BOJ and FOMC meetings, should give those heavily invested in policymaker faith/hope a lot of food for thought...  the next Fed “put” is not likely until the S&P 500 is trading in the 1500s at least (so more likely to be a Q1 2016 item rather than Q4 2015); and in terms of what the Fed could do, clearly QE4 has to be in the Fed’s toolkit"

USDJPY is tumbling, cracking back below the 120.00 tractor beam (and catching down to Nikkei 225's decoupling). EURUSD is also plunging, down 100 pips in the last few hours... it appears it is not just EM FX that is seeing volatility increase as The Majors start flip-flopping ahead of Friday's payrolls data..

As of this moment the S&P is soaring and is set for the 8th best gain in 2015. Why? Here is one reason, from the latest Gartman letter: "Essentially repeating what we said here yesterday, there are still many who deny that this is a bear market, we fear that it has a good distance to the downside yet to travel. Merely to get to “The Box” shall take the S&P to 1420? 1550! Rallies are to be sold."

Confirming API's reported data last night, DOE reported an even bigger 3.955 million barrel inventory build last week. This is the 2nd biggest build since April and after rallying confidently all morning (on QE hopes and Middle East tensions), WTI Crude collapsed... We also note that total crude production also fell to its lowest since Nov 2014... and that has spareked rampant buying...

For the first time since 2009, all six major Fed regional activity surveys are in contraction territory... time to hike rates?

"Bad news is good news" again... for the global money-printing reflation trade...

Overnight we got a second confirmation of China's golden appetite, when the PBOC announced that China's official gold holdings had risen again in August, increasing by 520,000 troy ounces, or 16.2 tons (which is more than 3 times the entire registered gold inventory in the Comex vault system), and bringing the new total to 54.5 million ounces, or 1,694 tons of gold. In dollar terms, Chinese gold holdings rose from $59.2 billion at the end of July to $61.8 billion. The punchline: in a month in which China sold a record $107 billion notional in Treasurys, it had no qualms about rotating the sale proceeds into gold.

The brief dead cat inventory-stacking bounce in Chicago PMI is over. With a print of 48.7, back below 50, (against hope-strewn expectations of 52.9) this was below the lowest economist estimate and the lowest since May. Aside from employment (which somehow rose), the components were ugly with New Orders and Prices Paid all tumbling, while Production was the lowest since 2009 at 43.6.

The Fed is creating not just uncertainty but appears to be destroying any credibility it ever had along the way. This morning's spewing Fedspeak from Bill Dudley was full of unbelievable and explicit lies.

Milwaukee joins the party with its lowest ISM print since April 2009. Based on the regional Fed survey collapse - Dallas, Richmond, New York, Philly, Chicago, and even Kansas City - it's unanimous - they are all flashing recessionary warnings.