BOE

If there is one firm that would know what the arrival of a Goldmanite at the head of the BOE means for the GBP, and specifically EURGBP, it would be Goldman. Moments ago Goldman's Tom Stolper just poured more gas into the EURGBP "parity" fire, sending the EUR spiking. That said, the logical Stolper-contrarians in us say this is precisely the time to fade the relentless move higher in the EURGBP: history is on our side about 93% of the time. After all, Goldman's prop flow desk is now selling the pair to its clients. This is even as we said to short the GBP with both hands and feet in late November when Carney's appointment was announced: a move that has resulted in nearly a +1400 pip gain in the GBPUSD short. Oh well, time to take profits.

Because having legal authority to buy corporate bonds, ETFs and REITs, in addition to everything else the Fed now buys, is apparently not enough to crush, mangle and suicide its currency, the BOJ is now considering adding yet another "asset" to its cocktail of eligible securities for purchase: those which Buffett once declared weapons of mass financial destruction - derivatives.

A few observations about growth and policy backdrop that is shaping the investment climate. It is a large overview that may be helpful to start the week.

The US dollar rose to new multi-month highs against several of the major currencies, including the euro, Swiss franc, British pound and the Japanese yen.  The BOJ, BOE and ECB meet last week and none changed policy.  The Swiss National Bank meets on March 14 and is also unlikely to change policy.  The Federal Reserve meets the following week and is widely expected to stay its course.  It is not monetary policy then providing the new trading incentives. 

Nor can the dollar's gains be attributed to political uncertainty in Europe stemming from the inconclusive Italian elections, as was the case previously.   The immediate shock has worn off and Italian stocks and bonds have recovered the lion's share of those initial losses. 

SYFMUDD

The same pattern we have seen every day for the past week is back - slow overnight levitation as bad news piles on more bad news. What bad news? First as noted earlier, a collapse in Chinese imports and a surge in exports, which as SocGen explained is a harbinger of economic weakness in the months to follow, leading to yet another negative close for the Shanghai Composite. Then we got the UK January construction data which plunged by 7.9% according to ONS data. Then the Bank of Italy disclosed that small business lending was down 2.8% in January. We also got a negative Austrian Q4 GDP print.  We also got Spanish industrial output plunging 5% in January (but "much better" than the downward revised -7.1% collapse in December). Capping the morning session was German Industrial Production which not unexpectedly missed expectations of a 0.4% increase, printing at 0.0%, although somewhat better than the horrifying Factory Orders print would have implied. Finally, the ECB announced that a total of EUR4.2 billion in LTRO 1+2 will be repaid in the coming week by 8 and 27 counterparties, about half of the expected, and throwing a monkey wrench in Draghi's narrative that banks are repaying LTRO because they feel much stronger.  Yet none of this matters for two reasons: i) the Japanese Yen is back in its role as a carry funding currency, and was last trading at 95.77, the highest in four years, and with Jen shorts now used to fund USD purchases, the levitation in the stock futures was directly in line with the overnight rout in the Yen; and ii) the buying spree in Spanish bonds, with the 10 Year sliding overnight to just 4.82%, the lowest since 2010.

The World Gold Council noted that central banks increased gold buying 17% to 534.6 tons last year.

Central banks are among the shrewd investors who buy gold bullion on dips. It was reported that South Korea bought 20 tonnes of gold last month rumoured to be below the $1,600/oz mark. This is the first purchase this year for South Korea, after they purchased 30 tonnes in 2012.  Previously they purchased in July 2012 at the same price levels.

As was largely expected by the sell-side, the ECB kas kept all three key rates unchanged. From the ECB:

At today’s meeting the Governing Council of the ECB decided that the interest rate on the main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.75%, 1.50% and 0.00% respectively.

The President of the ECB will comment on the considerations underlying these decisions at a press conference starting at 2.30 p.m. CET today.

It is expected that Draghi will tone down his expectations at the press conference in 45 minutes, although what actual steps he will take as opposed to just talking even more, is unclear. As for JPM, which was alone among those calling for a rate cut, it will promptly pull reality's margin and bankrupt the real world, leading to a new, better world, one in which JPM is the only entity.

• French unemployment rises again to highest since 1999 (Reuters)
• BoJ rejects call for monetary easing (FT)
• North Korea threatens pre-emptive nuclear strike against US (Guardian)
• Firms Race to Raise Cash (WSJ)
• Time Warner Will Split From Magazine Unit in Third Spinoff (BBG) - slideshows, kittens, "all you need to knows" coming to Time
• U.S. economy, world's engine, remains in "neutral": Fed's Fisher (Reuters)
• BOE Keeps QE on Hold as Officials Weigh More Radical Measures (BBG)
• Jobs start to go as US sequestration cuts in (FT)
• BofA Times an Options Trade Well  (WSJ)
• Congress Budget Cuts Damage U.S. Economy Without Aiding Outlook (BBG)
• Dell’s Crafted LBO Pitch Gets Messy as Investors Circle (BBG)
• Dell says Icahn opposes go-private deal (Reuters)
• Portugal Rating Outlook Raised to Stable by S&P on Budget Plan (BBG)
• China’s Richer-Than-Romney Lawmakers Reveal Reform Challenge (BBG)

In today's overnight trading, it was all about Europe (and will be with today's BOE and ECB announcements), where things continue as they have for the past six months: when it is a problem that can be "solved" by throwing bucketloads of money, and/or guaranteeing all risk, things appear to be better, such as today's EUR5.03 billion Spanish bond auction (the 0.03 billion part being quite critical as otherwise how will the authorities indicate the pent up demand by the Spanish retirement fund and various other insolvent ECB-backstopped Spanish banks for Spanish debt). And while events that can be "fixed" with massive liquidity injections are doing better, those other events which rely on reality, and the transfer of liquidity into the real economy, are just getting worse and worse. Sure enough, today we also learned that French unemployment rate just hit a 13 year high. But it wasn't only the French economy that continued to slide into recession: Germany wasn't immune either following "surprising" news that German January Factory Orders tumbled -1.9% M/M on expectations of a 0.6% rise, down from a revised 1.1% in December. The great equalization in Europe continues, as the PIIGS, kept still on artificial life support do everything in their power to drag down the core.

GBPUSD (Cable) just cracked back below 1.50 and is trading at its lowest since July 2010 as The FT reports that it appears George Osborne (British Chancellor) is paving the way for Mark Carney (Bank of England governor) to follow the so-called 'Merkel-Draghi wager' that Europe is dangerously betting on. Instead of following business secretary Vince Cable's proposal of a new program of spending on schools, roads and housing – funded by extra borrowing - Osborne will use his Budget on March 20 to reinforce his message of “fiscal conservatism and monetary activism” by clarifying how the government intends to use monetary policy to get the economy growing again. Treasury officials are discussing proposals to change the remit of the bank - which could include giving the monetary policy committee greater time to bring inflation back to the 2 per cent target, giving the BoE a Federal Reserve-style dual mandate to target both employment and inflation, and even targeting cash spending in the economy rather than inflation. It would appear our short Cable trade continues to do well as Carney's arrival heralds more aggression in the global currency wars.

Earlier we reviewed the overnight plunge in China stocks, especially those related to the real-estate market in the aftermath of the latest move by the State Council to be far more hawkish than expected, in its effort to curb property inflation. The economic and market weakness that resulted has followed through to overnight US and European futures, even as peripheral bonds are trading roughly unchanged, surprising many who thought this weekend's Beppe Grillo statement on the future of Italian debt and presence in the Eurozone would be market moving: it wasn't as Grillo said nothing that he had not already made quite clear. In other, more recent economic news, UK construction PMI imploded to recession levels, plunging to 46.8 from 49.0, far below expectations and the lowest print since October 2009, setting the stage for much more Goldman-led reflation by the BOE. Also negative was the drop in the Eurozone Sentix Investor Confidence index which tumbled to -10.6 from -3.9 on expectations of -4.3, sending the EURUSD deep into 1.29 territory. It appears the Sentix excludes the soaring German confidence, which two weeks ago was the sole driver of all upside, not once but twice in one week. Today we get the first day of the sequester being digested by the market - this togetger with an empty macro calendar in the US means rumors and headlines will determine how far GETCO's algo push the stop hunts during the first and last 30 minutes of trading.

The week ahead promises to be eventful. Three main items stand out: service sector purchasing managers surveys, five major central bank meetings, and the US employment data.

In the upcoming week the key focus on the data side will be on US payrolls, which are expected to be broadly unchanged and the services PMIs globally, including the non-manufacturing ISM in the US. Broadly speaking, global services PMIs are expected to remain relatively close to last month's readings. And the same is true for US payrolls and the unemployment rate. On the policy side there is long lost with policy meetings but we and consensus expect no change in any of these: RBA, BoJ, Malaysia, Indonesia, ECB, Poland, BoE, BoC, Brazil, Mexico.  Notable macro issues will be the ongoing bailout of Cyprus, the reiteration of the OMT's conditionality in the aftermath of Grillo's and Berlusconi's surge from behind in Italy. China's sudden hawkishness, the BOE announcement and transition to a Goldman vassal state, and finally the now traditional daily jawboning out of the BOJ.

Last year was a record one for major new discoveries, and 2013 has so far demonstrated that the road to discovery still has plenty of mileage. The past two months alone have netted new finds in Egypt, a flurry of promising exploration results in East and West Africa, some important moves toward commercial viability in Kenya, more gas in the North Sea, an unexpected junior discovery in Brazil - and of course, more gains in Texas. Riding high on a year of brilliant discoveries, companies are drilling deeper and expanding exploration like never before. These are the top finds for January and February that should be on your radar and sure enough as we have been vociferously discussing, Africa is increasingly the focus of developed nations' resource hunting.

With little on the event calendar in the overnight session, the main news many were looking forward to was Italy's auction of €2.5 billion in 5 and €4 billion in 10 year paper, to see just how big the fallout from the Hung Parliament election was in the primary market. As SocGen explained ahead of the auction: "The target of Italy's 2017 and 2023 BTP auction today is a maximum EUR6.5bn, but in order to get to that tidy amount the Tesoro may be forced to offer a hefty mark-up in yield to compensate investors for the extra risk. Note that Italian 6-month bills were marked up at yesterday's sale from 0.731% to 1.237%. Who knows what premium investors will be asking for today for paper with the kind of duration that is not covered by the ECB OMT (should that be activated)? Will Italian institutions, already long BTPs relative to overall asset size, be forced to hoover up most of the supply?" The outcome was a successful auction which, however, as expected saw yields spike with the 4 year paper pricing at 3.59% compared to 2.95% before, while the 10 Year paper priced some 60 bps wider to the 4.17% in January, yielding 4.83%. The result was a brief dip in Italian OTR BTP yield, which have since retraced all gains and are once again trading in the 4.90% range on their way to 5%+ as JPM forecast yesterday. And as expected, talk promptly emerged that the auction was carried by "two large domestic buyers" in other words, the two big local banks merely levered up on Italian paper hoping furiously that they are not the next MF Global.