Market Conditions

"Our Investor Desk would comply with a weekly request from (a client) for details of Central Bank activity that Citi had transacted."

Despite some strangely optimistic expectation of a -0.5 print, September Empire Manufacturing printed -14.67, showing absolutely no hockeynesian dead-cat bounce mean-reversion. Hovering at the worst levels since April 2009, the underlying data is a total disaster. New Orders remain firmly negative and inventories collapse (who could have seen that coming?), and even more concerningly, employment and average workweek plunged into negative territory for the first time in over a year. Simply put, this report suggests total carnage in the manufacturing sector and, just as we have pointed out (most recently here and here), the exuberant inventory over-accumulation of the past few years - from Fed-deluded malinvestment - is about to come crashing down.

One of these days, the people of main street will rediscover their torches and pitchforks. But until they do, Goldman has apparently invented still another ruse to keep the Fed doing Wall Street’s bidding, and to thereby keep its wretched jihad against savers fully in force.

The title does give it away: the only event that everyone will be focusing on this week will be the Fed's announcement and Yellen's press conference on Thursday. Here is what else is on deck.

A review of the technical condition of the dollar in the days leading up to the FOMC meeting announcement.

"The shale sector is now being financially stress-tested, exposing shale’s dirty secret: many shale producers depend on capital market injections to fund ongoing activity because they have thus far greatly outspent cash flow."

"NEW RECOMMENDATION: we wish to sell the S&P futures short this morning, fearing that a major top hss developed and that the recent consolidation in the stock market is precisely that: a consolidation before the next leg downward... If the consolidation is indeed reconciled to the downside, the target becomes 1725-1750, or just a bit more than 200 S&P points to the downside."

So much changes in three days. For proof look no further than just the last three days of Dennis Gartman virtual portfolio recommendations.

"... we came into yesterday’s session decently net short; not aggressively so, but not marginally so either. However, it made no difference; we were short in a rampaging bullish move and we had no choice but to rush to cover much of the net short position immediately upon the opening of trade on the NYSE... We’ve no choice. The market has spoken and it has  spoken loudly."

- Dennis Gartman

And to think all it took was Gartman going short of stocks in 25% correction terms yesterday...

"Strength is to be sold into... How far down do we expect this bear market to run? Our answer is that we can imagine that the S&P might make its way all the way down toward 1600 which would simply take the market back to the trend line going back all the way to the “generational” lows in ’09. That would be nearly a 25% correction from the highs made earlier this year... We remain here at TGL modestly net short of the market generally and we’ve no intention of changing that focus other than to become a bit shorter still as time and market conditions demand."

The last time we looked at Chinese stocks, just a few hours ago, they were on pace to close back under 3000, following the latest collapse in trade, where in August exports dropped 5.5% (last -8.3%) while imports tumbled -13.8% in dollar terms (worse than the -8.1% prior). As the Reuters chart below shows, this was the 10th month in a row of declines and the worst stretch since the 2008 crisis, confirming China will need far more currency devaluation to stabilize the trade pain. And then Chinese authorities intervened with gusto, waiting until the start of the afternoon session, at which point a massive buying orgy ensued, and pushed the SHCOMP from down more than 2% to close at the day highs, up some 2.9%!

What is the reason for the drop? Well, one can believe the ECB's stated explanation which is that due to European summer vacations, activity in Europe has ground to a halt. Of course, this would suggest that monetization in the Eurozone is continent on managers' summer vacation plans, which is probably an even more troubling explanation of ECB activity bottlenecks than what may be really going on in Europe. The alternative? As we noted over the weekend when we reported that now even the IMF is discussing the upcoming limits to BOJ QE as a result of sellers running out of BOJs to hand over to the BOJ, the same may be taking place in Europe

The centrally-planned house of cards is finally starting to shake uncontrollably.

Keys in the week ahead:  equity markets--still look lower; China--volatility likely to continue; Fed--market says no Sept hike