Bank of Japan

It has been a story of two markets so far, with China's Shanghai Composite up another 3% in today's continuation of the most ridiculous, banana-stand driven move of the New Normal (and there have been many ridiculous moves in the past 6 years) on the previously reported hints that the PBOC is gearing up to start its own QE, while Europe and the Eurostoxx are lagging, if only for the time being until Citadel and Virtu engage in today's preapproved risk-on momentum ignition, on Greek jitters, the same jitters that last week were "fixed"and sent Greek stocks and bonds soaring. Needless to say, neither Greek bonds nor stocks aren't soaring following what has been the worst week for Greece in months.

A look at the next week's events that could impact the global capital markets.

"The global economy is awash as never before in commodities like oil, cotton and iron ore, but also with capital and labor—a glut that presents several challenges as policy makers struggle to stoke demand," WSJ notes, suggesting yet again that QE can cause deflation when those who have access to easy money overproduce but do not witness a comparable increase in demand from those to whom the direct benefits of ultra accommodative policies do not immediately accrue.

In the simplest of terms, Abenomics was a form of economic warfare. It marked a transition in global Central Banking policy from an era of coordination to an era in which it is each country/ Central Bank for itself.

Wall Street turns junk-rated US corporate loans into highly rated yen-denominated bonds. Desperate Japanese pension funds gobble them up. Blame the Bank of Japan.

As we have noted previously, The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is one of a handful of central banks that trade on global stock markets. The finance ministry holds a 55% stake of the Jasdaq-traded security, which as one analyst noted "seems like an odd investment." However, it appears BoJ shares serve a different purpose - to signal an imminent easing to the market. As Bloomberg reports, BoJ stock has surged almost 30% in the last few days on very heavy volume... the previous 4 times we saw spikes in price and volume, Japanese authorities eased significantly in the following days.

True, the world faces issues today… so it’s not odd for bond yields to be lower… but are those issues on par with a disease that wiped out 25%+ of Europe’s population… or the single largest military conflict in history?

There are in fact problems that are too big for Central Banks to manage.

 The US stock market is trading at 1929-bubblesque valuations, with a CAPE of 27.34 (the 1929 CAPE was only slightly higher at 30. And when that bubble burst, stocks lost over 90% of their value in the span of 24 months.

A look ahead into next week's macro forces.

There is much more going on than just a problem in the Japanese bond market...

There is a $100 trillion bond market out there that has been priced by a handful of central bankers, not a planet teeming with exhuberant savers. The mad descent of the former into the whacky world of QE and ZIRP has caused a double whammy distortion in the bond markets of the world. So, no, there isn’t a savings glut in the world; there is an outbreak of destructive central bank bond buying and money market price pegging that is virtually destroying the world’s bond market. What we have is a fraud wrapped in a bogus theory. Only none dare call it that. At least, not on bubblevision.

Now we can see the real tragedy of negative interest rates: they not only have the perverse effect of reversing the flow of time, but they demonstrate that borrowers are not acting with the good faith incentives normally associated with someone who needs money. Rather than paying forward, borrowers are paying backwards because they are effectively trying to return something they don’t want. Such an arrangement renders it impossible for an economy to grow. By destroying the temporal and moral structure of money, negative interest rates destroy the economy. When tomorrow cannot be paid, the current regime must fail. The only question to be determined is the form that failure will assume. This may sound like philosophy but it is cold, hard reality.

"The time may have come to seek a solution to the drop in liquidity that is a side effect of the BOJ's large-scale JGB purchases," BofAML says.

While we doubt that the ECB will, of its own volition, elect to scale back PSPP out of a highly uncharacteristic respect for sanity and prudence, there are a variety of factors which could lead to a forced taper. Some market participants are already betting that the ECB scales back purchases by the end of the calendar year.