Archive - Sep 2015 - Story

With The UN's Ban earlier commenting that "Syria is out of control" and demanding that Russia, US, Saudi, iran and Turkey cooperate, it will be interesting to see what tack President Obama takes in his address this morning...

While the rest of the US economy was slowly but surely reentering a recession, with the only two pieces of silver lining being the relatively strong, if unbelievable, jobs data (driven by low-wage paying jobs) and the US housing market, moments ago we just got the latest confirmation that one of these two final anchors is slowly falling apart when the perpetually optimistic housing industry organization, NAR, reported that August pending home sales dropped -1.4%, on expectations of a 0.4% increase, and down from a 0.5% jump the month before. Confirming that the Chinese "hot money parking" bid is finally ending, this was the fourth consecutive miss in a row.

· Friday sees the latest nonfarm payroll report from the US, with surveyed expectations for the reading at 200k

· This week sees the advance reading of Eurozone and German CPI for September, which may see added attention given recent suggestions the ECB may expand QE

With Biotechs in a bear market, and Nasdaq having dropped back into negative territory for 2015, the year's leading equity index has now joined the rest of the majors and completed its "death cross."

We have been warning for months that high-yield bonds have decoupled from equity markets, just as they did in 2007/8, and the credit cycle's turning will inevitably flow through to crush the only thing left supporting stock valuations - the irrational non-economic corporate buyback-er. However, as we detail below, time's running out and it’s getting tougher out there for our QE and ZIRP-coddled corporate junk-bond heroes.

When is a 'date' not a 'date'? When a Fed member says so. The Fed speaker confusion-carpet-bombing contonues this morning with Bill Dudley who offered the following "insight":

*DUDLEY: HE EXPECTS FED PROBABLY WILL RAISE RATES LATER THIS YR (so a date?)
*DUDLEY: THAT'S NOT CALENDAR GUIDANCE, THAT'S DATA-DEPENDENT (not a date?)

His double-speak has sent stocks and bonds lower and USD higher for now...

Personal income rose at 0.3% MoM in August, the weakest growth and biggest miss since March's tumble. At the same time spending rose 0.4% MoM, slightly more than expected. Of course this relative shift means the savings rate declined from 4.7% to 4.6%, which is to be cheered by economic models the emphasize spending over saving.

Despite a relatively unchanged US Dollar, commodities across the board are under significant (and seemingly coordinated) pressure this morning. It appears that the key selling began as Europe opened and the carnage in massive commodity group Glencore began to materialize. Glencore CDS is now above 700bps (up 154bps today) and stocks down almost 30% today...

"It was our Black Monday. The big question is when will they come back, because managers have been really quite reliant on Sama for business in recent years."

• Headline winner: "Read Beyond Massive Job-Cuts Headlines: Labor Market Is Fine" (BBG)
• And speaking of lies: The More Yellen Talks Up Inflation, the Less Traders Believe Her (BBG)
• How Some Investors Get Special Access to Companies (WSJ)
• Victorious Catalan separatists claim mandate to break with Spain (Reuters)
• Russia seizes initiative in Syria (Reuters)
• Former VW boss Winterkorn investigated for fraud (Reuters)
• Investors Pull Back From Junk Bonds (WSJ)

It was all about China once again, where following a report of a historic layoff in which China's second biggest coal producer Longmay Group fired an unprecedented 100,000 or 40% of its workforce, overnight we got the latest industrial profits figure which plunging -8.8% Y/Y was the biggest drop since at least 2011, and which the National Bureau of Statistics attributed to "exchange rate losses, weak stock markets, falling industrial goods prices as well as a bigger rise in costs than increases in revenue." In not so many words: a "hard-landing."

In a move that would make even Hewlett-Packard's Meg Whitman blush, Harbin-based Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group, or Longmay Group, the biggest met coal miner in northeast China which has been struggling to reduce massive losses in recent months as a result of the commodity collapse, just confirmed China's "hard-landing" has arrived when it announced on its website it would cut 100,000 jobs or 40% of its entire 240,000-strong labor force.

Whether it’s the economy, climate, the planet, warfare, your future obligations, your pensions, the future of your children, nobody in power tells you the truth. Human life is fast losing the value we would like to tell ourselves we assign to it. We don’t, do we? Our technological advances haven’t come with moral advances, quite the contrary, our morals turn out to be a thin layer of mere cheap veneer. What advances we’re making are the last death rattle of a society in decline, and a dying civilization.