Carry Trade

Who would have thought terrorism is so good for stocks.

The market drop in August triggered by China devaluing the Yuan (another victim of the US Dollar bull market) was just the start. Once the US Dollar rally really begins picking up steam, we could very well see a crash.

Once again, the two major macroeconomic announcements over the weekend came from China, where we first saw an unexpected, if still to be confirmed, increase in FX reserves, and then Chinese trade data once again disappointed tumbling by 6.9% while imports plunged 18.8%. So how did the market react? The Shanghai Composite Index rose for a fourth day and reached its highest since August 20because more bad data means more easing from the PBOC, and just to give what few investors are left the green light to come back into the pool, overnight Chinese brokers soared after Chinese IPOs returned after a 5 month hiatus. Elsewhere, Stocks and currencies in emerging markets slump on prospect of higher U.S. borrowing costs before year-end and after data underscored slowdown in Asia’s biggest economy. Euro strengthens.

If it smells like a rat it probably is a rat, and so it is with respect to these deals by collusion between China and Western governments, and their chosen corporate protégés, whether on currency or trade or investment matters. This is all an exercise in some combination of crony capitalism (with cronies on both sides!) and diplomacy by stealth. The gains and gainers are deliberately kept opaque. The losers are much less evident than the gainers, on whichever side of the fence, but principle and practice tells us that the total losses are much larger than the gains.

"It is ironic that we are perhaps best known for advising “that you panic”. However, if you are anxious at the wrong time it can prove very painful. Today, we would advise that you don’t panic!
... by withdrawing the “Greenspan put” and using their asset purchase schemes to eviscerate any notion of value, the authorities have paradoxically created a safer yet more paranoid market."

- Hugh Hendry

Ironically, it would only exacerbate the pressure and you can handsomely profit from it

China as the global Bubble’s focal point – the weak link yet, at the same time, the key marginal source of Bubble finance. China’s policy course appears to focus on two facets: to stabilize the yuan versus the dollar and to resuscitate Credit expansion. For better than two decades, similar policy courses were followed by myriad EM policymakers in hopes of sustaining financial and economic booms. Many cases ended in abject failure – often spectacularly. Why? Because when officials resort to such measures to sustain faltering Bubbles it generally works to only exacerbate systemic fragilities. For one, late-stage reflationary measures compound Credit system vulnerability while compounding structural impairment to the real economy. Secondly, central bank and banking system Credit-bolstering measures create liquidity that invariably feeds destabilizing “capital” and “hot money” outflows.

No, Ben S. Bernanke will be someday remembered as the world’s most destructive battleship admiral. Not only was he fighting the last war, but his whole multi-trillion money printing campaign after September 15, 2008 was aimed at avoiding an historical Fed mistake that had never even happened!

How governments all around the world resort to absurd marketing to finance largesse

There is no alternative except to take cover because the latest stock market rip is based on pure central bank hopium. Indeed, Mario Draghi has confirmed once again that the world’s central bankers have a monetary death wish. Unlike the gamblers who bought Cramer’s top 49 stock picks, the best course of action is to sell, sell, sell—–and do it now.

Yesterday morning, when previewing the day's tumultuous events, we said that "Futures Are Firm On Hope Draghi Will Give Green Light To BTFD." And boy did Draghi give a green light, that and then some, when his press conference unleashed one of the biggest one-day US equity rallies in 2015. This morning it has been more of the same, with global market momentum on the heels of Draghi's confirmation that Europe's economy is again backsliding (it's a good thing, if only for stocks), leading to momentum for US equity futures, which together with soaring tech/cloud, earnings if no other, are on their way to take out recent all time highs.

Chinese stocks are not as exuberant as European, Japanese (which are rolling over), and US markets at the open as they cling to unchanged for the day and week (despite margin debt rising to a six-week high). The main event in AsiaPac trading appears to be a huge re-entry into the EUR-ANY-EM-FX carry trade as The USDollar gets pummeled against Asian FX (despite EUR weakness). PBOC weakened the Yuan fix by the most in 8 days to its lowest in 2 weeks.

The world sits at a very precarious point once again in time. There is a very real possibility, as well as an ever-increasing chance one wrong unintended or misunderstood event could trigger an all out war of global proportions. For the matter at hand, the players involved, the possibilities of doing just the slightest of wrong moves whether intentional or not, at precisely the wrong time; has the inherent risk of triggering world events in ways and at magnitudes not seen since WW2. And if you think that’s hyperbole – you’ve just not been paying attention.

In the absence of any key economic developments in the Asian trading session, Asian stocks traded mostly under the influence of the late, pre-opex US ramp momentum courtesy of another day of ugly economic data in the US (bad econ news is good news for liquidity addicts), closing solidly in the green across the board, led by China (+1.6%) and Japan (+1.1%) thanks in no small part to the latest tumble in the Yen carry trade, which mirrored a bout of USD overnight weakness. And since a major part of the risk on move yesterday was due to Ewald Nowotny's comments welcoming more QE, news from Eurostat that Eurozone CPI in September dropped -0.1% confirming Europe's deflation continues, should only be greeted with even more buying as it suggests further easing by the ECB is inevitable.

If we, and Bloomberg, are correct, and if the CFD unwind has only just started impacting the true supply/demand dynamics, and thus price, of copper, then we are only 30% of the way through the unwind of China's copper "carry trade" and thus the 'over-capacity' concerns are massively under-appreciated.