Bank of America

Is September 2015 going to be one of the most important months in modern American history?

First the good news: of the 28 global regions that have reported PMIs so far (the US Markit PMI is due later today), 18 posted a print of over 50, or indicating manufacturing expansion.
Now the bad news: more than two-thirds of PMIs in August deteriorated compared to July suggesting that while the global economy is not in a recession yet, absent some dramatic improvement, a global economic contraction is just around the corner.

• Charting the Market: New Month, Same China (BBG)
• China jitters send stocks tumbling (Reuters)
• Oil falls on weak China factory data (Reuters)
• Euro zone factory growth eases in August despite modest price rises (Reuters)
• Euro-Area Joblessness Falls to Lowest Level Since Early 2012 (BBG)
• Clinton friend advised on U.S. politics, foreign policy (Reuters)
• Korea exports slump as Asia's woes deepen (Reuters)

Assuming that after being wrong for 7 years about everything, economists are actually right about the market still having some discounting abilities left, what then is the market telegraphing? The answer, according to the Bank of America: the biggest surge in recessionary odds since 2011, which over the past few days have nearly hit a 50% probability of an economic slowdown.

Small Cap stocks are in the middle of their worst summer doldrums since 2011 - and in fact for many individual stocks, worst summer since the collapse in 2008/9. While talking heads proclaim these smaller (supposedly more domestically-oriented) stocks a must-own, they have underperformed significantly as the credit cycle turns (thanks to their higher sensitivity to funding costs, among other things). Judging by this week's farce, the supposedly high-beta small caps are being BTFD'd aggressively either and perhaps that is because, since 1926, on average, September and October are the only months in which small-capitalization stocks have posted losses.

If anyone was curious why the Fear and Greed index is at 13 (up from 5) despite the biggest 2-day surge in the Dow Jones ever, the answer is very simple: nobody believes the "broken market "any more, as confirmed by the biggest weekly equity outflow on record.

"As soon as people sense the government is withdrawing from direct intervention, there will be lots of investors starting to dump stocks again."

As Bloomberg reports, "China has cut its holdings of U.S. Treasuries this month to raise dollars needed to support the yuan in the wake of a shock devaluation two weeks ago, according to people familiar with the matter. Channels for such transactions include China selling directly, as well as through agents in Belgium and Switzerland, said one of the people, who declined to be identified as the information isn’t public. China has communicated with U.S. authorities about the sales."

"In a securities-based loan, the customer pledges all or part of a portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and/or other securities as collateral. But unlike traditional margin loans, in which the client uses the credit to buy more securities, the borrowing is for other purchases such as real estate, a boat or education..." The result was "dangerously high margin balances,' - the products became “the vehicle of choice for investors looking to get cash for anything.” Mr. Sica and others say the products were aggressively marketed to investors by banks and brokerages.

• Virginia TV journalists killed by suspect with 'powder keg' of anger (Reuters)
• Policeman shot to death and three women stabbed, one fatally, in Louisiana (Reuters)
• China Intervened Today to Shore Up Stocks Ahead of Military Parade (Reuters)
• Margin Calls Bite Investors, Banks (WSJ)
• "Computer glitch" is preventing dozens of mutual funds, ETFs from promptly pricing their securities (WSJ)
• Oil prices rise more than 4 percent as equities rally (Reuters)
• Oil Industry Needs Half a Trillion Dollars to Endure Price Slump (BBG)

This time, it really is different. It's "Structural", not "Cyclical". It's actually a very big difference, and banking will never be the same.

Anyone who listens to a mainstream media pundit, talking head, or spokes bimbo deserves the reaming they are going to receive.

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

On Friday, ahead of the closing stock rout, we forecast that the biggest risk for anyone staying long over the weekend was a disappointment out of China, where the sellside had gotten so excited that a 50-100bps RRR cut was imminent, that the lack of one would surely send futures sliding. Sure enough, as we noted earlier today, much to everyone's surprise and disappointment, the PBOC did nothing (for reasons we speculated upon earlier). Which bring us to this evening's S&P futures, which opened for trading minutes ago, and as expected, gapped by over 0.6% after the Chinese disappointment, down 13 points to 1958 and looking quite heavy.

The $64,000,000,000,000 question: what does the Fed now do? One attempt at an explanation taking into account last week's market plunge comes from Nomura, which provides a "2015 Scenario Analysis" in which it "breaks down various monetary policy (rate hike options) and rates market implications ahead."

The following story is guaranteed to make you sick. Once again, we’re shown that following trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts and backstops, TBTF Wall Street banks immediately went ahead and focused all their attention obtaining loopholes in order to transfer risk and make billions upon billions of dollars in the financial matrix, as opposed to adding any benefit whatsoever to society.