Lehman

During a Q&A this evening, Richmond Fed's Jeffrey Lacker unleashed a stream of what can only be described as total idiocy:

*LACKER: INDICATORS POINT TO NEED TO RAISE RATES THIS YEAR (US macro data is the worst since Lehman?)
*LACKER: I'M UNDETERRED BY RECENT WEAKNESS IN DATA, "CAN'T GO ON FOREVER" (Hope is a strategy?)
*LACKER: DON'T EXPECT UNUSUAL MARKET VOLATILITY AROUND RATE RISE (because the Taper Tantrum went well?)

These are the people that the world trusts to centrally plan the world? The people that are there to 'save' investors at the merest downtick in stocks? They seriously have no clue whatsoever!!

While the world gasped last night when China's production-based, and goalseeked GDP number came in at 7.0% - the lowest in 6 years the truly scary numbers were in the details, which revealed unprecedented deterioration. Details which suggest China is now growing at a 1.6% annual pace: the lowest in modern history.

Exactly one month ago we wrote that "Japan Ties China As America's Largest Creditor" when, according to Treasury International Capital in the month of January, China sold just over $5 billion in Treasurys while Japan bought $8 billion in US paper. Fast forward to today when we are pleased to announce that, as expected, the trend has continued and for the first time since the great financial crisis, Japan is once again America's largest foreign credito.

One Is a NeoCon Warmongering Crook ... The Other Is a NeoLib Warmongering Crook. See?? Totally Different!!!

If yesterday stocks surged on the worst 4-month stretch of missing retail sales since Lehman, one which BofA with all seriousness spun by saying "it seems not unreasonable to suspect that the March 2015 reading on retail sales gets revised up next month", then the reason why futures are now solidly in the green across the board even as German Bunds have just 14 bps to go until they hit negative yields and before the ECB is fresh out of luck on future debt monetization, is that overnight China reported its worst GDP since 2009 together with economic data misses across the board confirming China's economy continues its hard landing approach despite a stock market that has doubled in the past year.

A month ago we warned "Beijing, you have a big problem," and showed 10 charts to expose the reality hiding behind a stock market rally up over 100% in the last year. Tonight we get confirmation that all is not well - China GDP fell to 7.0% (its lowest in 6 years) with QoQ GDP missing expectations at +1.3% (vs 1.4%). Then retail sales rose 10.2% YoY - the slowest pace in 9 years (missing expectations of 10.9%). Fixed Asset Investment rose 13.5% - the lowest since Dec 2000 (missing expectations). And finally Industrial Production massively disappointed, rising only 5.6% YoY (weakest since Dec 2008). Finally, as a gentle reminder to the PBOC-front-runners, a month ago Beijing said there was no such thing as China QE (and no, the weather is not to blame.. but the smog?).

Can you arbitrage time?  Can you buy and sell time? We think that you can from the perspective of time horizons. In our view, financial markets are operating on the wrong time horizon – one that is too long (thanks to central banks ZIRP/NIRP and credit creation) - although there are signs that this is beginning to change.

The post-retail-sales, opening ramp has been eviscerated as yet another data series suggests things aren't well in the US economy. US Business inventories rose more than expected in February (+0.3% vs +0.2% exp) but this held the crucial inventories-to-sales ratio at 1.36x - the highest since the Lehman spike.

"Good news" - best month in a year for retail sales... or "bad news" longest streak of misses since Lehman. It is unclear what the market is seeing in this data - Bond yields have plunged and the dollar is getting monkey-hammered (signalling expectations of lower for longer) but stocks are lower (less ZIRP punch in the punchbowl).

After 3 months of missed expectations and the first consecutive drop in retail sales since Lehman, retail sales rose 0.9% in March (missing expectations of +1.1%). While the 0.9% rise is the biggest since March last year, this is now the worst streak of missed expectations in retail sales since 2008/9. Ex-Autos, retail sales also mised expectations (rising just 0.4% vs 0.7% exp).

Judging by the recent action in equity futures, the continuously rangebound US market since the end of QE may be entering its latest downphase, catalyzed to a big extent by the recent strength in the JPY (the EURJPY traded down to 2 year lows overnight), especially following yesterday's not one but two statements by Abe advisor Harada saying a USDJPY at 125 isn't "justified" and a 105 level would be appropriate. A level, incidentally, which would push the Nikkei lower by about 20% and crush Japanese pensions which are now mostly invested in stocks. Not helping matters was the pause in the Chinese and Hang Seng stock bubbles, with the former barely rising 0.3%, while the former actually seeing its first 1.6% decline after many days of torrid, relentless rises.

According to the CMI, the Rejections of Credit Applications index just crashed the most ever, surpassing even the credit crunch at the peak of the Lehman crisis: "There is quite obviously some serious financial stress manifesting in the data and this does not bode well for the growth of the economy going forward. These readings are as low as they have been since the recession started and to see everything start to get back on track would take a substantial reversal at this stage.... The signal this sends is that many companies are not nearly as healthy as it has been assumed and that there is considerably less resilience in the business sector than assumed."

Princeton University and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder unleashes his self-serving smorgasbord of Fed apologism in today's WSJ Op-Ed. The Fed should be patient-er for longer, he explains; and as far as the "loudly and frequently worried 'impatience crowd'," Blinder states, fears of policy "causing financial-market 'distortions' and bubbles might burst, causing untold damage to our economy," can apparently be ignored because, as he explains "none of the hypothesized financial hazards have surfaced." So - because we haven't crashed yet... policy is right - "This is a time to be patient."

The problem with the relentless scramble into London real-estate is that it was almost entirely driven by the high end, which as we have reported tirelessly over the past 4 years, has become - alongside the US ultra luxury real estate market - the new "Swiss bank account": a mostly anonymous place (with anonymous LLCs and Corps buying on behalf of uber-rich foreign oligarchs) where tax evaders can park their cash, with the NAR's, and the government's, blessing. And now, the party is over. As the FT reports, "sales of homes worth more than £2m have dropped by 80 per cent in the past year."... "It is like the 1970s again, when waves of wealthy people left Britain and it was a disaster.”