Brazil

• Battered oil wins respite, lifts stocks (Reuters)
• Oil Halts Decline as Emerging Market Stocks Climb on China (BBG)
• Bonds Set to Beat Stocks Globally in 2015 After China Falters (BBG)
• SpaceX Falcon rocket nails safe landing in pivotal space feat (Reuters)
• China Leaders Flag More Stimulus After Top Economic Meeting (BBG)
• SEC to Retrench Case Against SAC’s Steven A. Cohen (WSJ)

We now enter the “discovery” phase of financial collapse, where things labeled “capital” and “credit” turn out to be mere holograms. It’s not just the Federal Reserve; everything around us is backed into a corner as the rude discovery that capital is not what it has appeared to be is now underway, with the power to derail political systems and societies.

This weekend the force was strong with thirty (and forty, and fifty) year-olds, wishing to awaken memories of their youthful days with an admirable redo of the first Star Wars movie, first released nearly 40 years ago. But the force has never been stronger with Disney which is expected to rake in a record-breaking $238 million in opening weekend box office sales in the US and Canada, and a near-record $279 million overseas, a grand total of well over half a billion around the globe.

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey

Brazil has a new finance minister and the market is not happy. As BofAML puts it, "the focus turns now to the direction of the fiscal policy under the new FinMin, which should affect the recovery in confidence and thus growth. With mounting downside risks to growth that heavily weigh on the government’s revenues and the ongoing challenges in passing fiscal measures in Congress, tangible results over statements will now be needed to improve expectations over primary fiscal results ahead."

As FT reports, “Argentines woke up on Thursday richer than Poles, Chileans and Hungarians [but] by bedtime they were not only poorer than all three, but also more pecunious than Mexicans, Costa Ricans and the good people of Equatorial Guinea.”

• Oil heads for third straight weekly loss as supply weighs (Reuters)
• BOJ's $2.5 Billion ETF Boost Seen Having Little Impact on Stocks (BBG)
• Japan core CPI seen flat in November, household spending down (Reuters)
• Dollar gets altitude sickness as BOJ disappoints (Reuters)
• Fed Hikes, but Some Rates Veer Lower (WSJ)
• White House calls for 'common sense steps' to help Puerto Rico (Reuters)

Brazil's Supreme Court green lighted House Speaker Eduardo Cunha's Rousseff impeachment bid on Wednesday, even as the high court is also considering a request for his removal. Meanwhile, the economy continues to deteriorate as we just got the highest unemployment reading for the month of November in seven years."

Heading into the Fed's first "dovish" rate hike in nearly a decade, the consensus was two-fold: as a result of relentless telegraphing of the Fed's intentions, the hike is priced in, and it will be a "dovish" hike, with the Fed lowering its forecast for the number of hikes over the next year. Consensus was once again wrong on both accounts: first the rate hike was far more hawkish than most had expected (see previous post), and - judging by the surge in Asian, European stocks and US equity futures - the "market" simply is enamored with such hawkish hikes which will soon soak up trillions in liquidity from the financial system.

"The irony in this year’s batch of outrageous predictions is that some of them are “outrageous” merely because they run counter to overwhelming market consensus. In fact, many would not look particularly outrageous at all in more “normal” times – if there even is such a thing!"

According to ScGen, the Fed is widely expected to start tightening policy on Wednesday and adds that "after the BoJ and ECB, we see a risk that the market will be wrong-footed for a third time, and that extreme positions built ahead of tightening will be reversed.... In particular, we are short US small cap equities vs large via being short Russell 2000 vs S&P 500.... As the Fed tightens and the market enters into a lower-liquidity environment (and higher-volatility regime), we think the premium on small caps is no longer justified."

The writing has been on the wall since the S&P "junking" in September, and now Fitch has jumped on the bandwagon, cutting Brazil to BB+, outlook negative. 

"Are there other people out there with enough equipment? Probably. But in terms of the operational side of things, Aggreko are pretty good at this."

"It is time once again to seek the safety of the sidelines. This is not the time to be aggressively bullish of equities but rather this is the time for… as we say here in the South… “hunkering down,” for getting smaller, for curtailing exposure."

“They need to show they’re selling quickly to calm markets and stop the free fall of their shares. For that to happen they need to accept the price buyers want to pay.”