Market Conditions

"The share of young people living with their parents--which rose sharply during the recession and its aftermath--finally began to decline in 2014. But over the last six months, this decline seems to have stalled. We find that the share of young people living with their parents has increased relative to pre-recession rates for all labor force status groups, not just the unemployed and underemployed." - Goldman Sachs

"Look at the data, and you’ll realize that our present concerns are not hyperbole or exaggeration. We simply have not observed the market conditions we observe today except in a handful of instances in market history, and they have typically ended quite badly..."

The Chinese stock market crash has hit the world’s largest auto-market hard. For now, China is a dream turned sour for the Michigan-based Ford and General Motors and Germany’s Volkswagen. The risks are enormous and will become greater with time.

For those who are speculating on the dollar—i.e. most people—there was good news. The dollar rose to 28.3mg gold. It’s a big gain, and welcome news for those who keep all of their eggs in the one dollar basket.

• In Asia/Pacific, the sales decline was primarily due to lower sales in China and Japan.
• Decreases in Latin America were primarily due to continued weak construction activity
• Sales declined in EAME primarily due to the unfavorable impact of currency, as sales in euros translated into fewer U.S. dollars.
• Sales declined in North America as weakness in oil and gas-related construction was largely offset by stronger activity in residential and nonresidential building construction.

Since yesterday there has been another of wave of negative, misleading and almost triumphalist commentary on gold most of which studiously ignores the clear evidence of manipulation of the price on Sunday night.

If yesterday's JPM results were largely a story of contracting trading revenues offset by a decline in expenses, then in many ways today's Bank of America results mimicked what Jamie Dimon did in the second quarter. Moments ago BofA reported that in a quarter in which it repurchased $775 million in stock, it generated $5.3 billion in net income, or $0.45 per share, above the $0.36 declining consensus estimate as a result of a $1.9 billion drop in non-interest expenses, even as FICC trading revenue tumbled just as it did for JPM and Jefferies, sliding 9% Y/Y, offset by a rise in equity trading courtesy of China.

"It will be appropriate at some point this year...to raise the Fed funds rate and normalize monetary policy," Yellen recently explained but given recent comments from Fed heads and the FOMC Minutes, it appears the real meme is "everything is awesome, we promise and as long as it stays that way we will hike rates just a little bit, stand back and watch the implosion, then stand ready to step back in to save the world... oh, and if Greece, China, US Shale, or LatAm blow up contagiously, we won't normalize policy ever again." Yellen speaks on the US economic outlook at The City Club of Cleveland.

"With the drastic fall in share prices recently, social stability is clearly at stake," Credit Suisse says. With the bubble now finished it is only a matter of time before all the 'nouveau riche' farmers and grandparents see all their paper profits wiped out and hopefully go silently into that good night without starting mass riots or a revolution.

Since The FOMC's supposedly dovish June meeting, bonds have outperformed stocks rather notably and crude has crashed. The crucial aspect for the Minutes is the balance they struck between market turmoil overseas (dovish) and the domestic economic and housing recovery (hawkish) as to how that fits with an expectation for a 'gradual' post-September lift-off...

• *FOMC SAW CONDITIONS STILL APPROACHING THOSE WARRANTING LIFTOFF (dovish)
  
• *ONE MEMBER READY TO RAISE RATES IN JUNE BUT WILLING TO WAIT (dovish)
• *MANY FED OFFICIALS EXPRESSED CONCERN ABOUT GREECE AT JUNE FOMC (hawkish)
  
• *SEVERAL OFFICIALS VOICED UNCERTAINTY ABOUT CHINESE GROWTH PACE (hawkish)

With macro data having beaten expectations since then, the last best hope for stocks is that global turmoil picks up (as it has in Greece) to keep The Fed on hold (as they remain cornered to regain some ammo before the next 'event' happens). As SF Fed's Williams notes today the "safer course" for raising rates would be to start sooner and proceed gradually.

When it comes to Greece, and Europe in general, "hope" continues to remain the driving strategy. As Bloomberg's Richard Breslow summarizes this morning, "if you were looking for a word to describe the general feeling of equity markets today, you might well pick hopeful. U.S. equity futures opened higher and have been up all day. European bourses opened cautiously     higher as they await word, any word, from the European finance ministers or more importantly, Chancellor Merkel. Equity markets will continue to be very reactive to European headlines, but so far, no news has been taken as a reason for hope." Which incidentally, has been the general investment case for the past 6 years: "hope" that central banks know what they are doing.

"My concern is not just that markets are mis-pricing Greece contagion, mis-pricing deflation, mis-pricing street liquidity and mis-pricing the (now negative) trend in corporate (US) revenues and earnings (Q2 earnings season is upon us and may well show year-over-year earnings down 5%/5%+). My concerns are also that markets are way too optimistic about global growth (especially the US), about China, about the ability of policymakers to do anything new and/or effective to alter things meaningfully to the upside,"

More than even the unfolding "chaos theory" pandemonium in Greece, market watchers were even more focused on whether or not China and the PBOC will succeed in rescuing its market from what is now a crash that threatens social stability in the world's most populous nation. And, at the open it did. The problem is that as the trading session progressed, the initial 8% surge in stocks faded as every bout of buying was roundly sold into until every other index but the benchmark Shanghai Composite turned sharply red.

What investors will focus on in the week ahead

We warned previously that when (not if) the market crashes next, The Fed is going to need a scapegoat (other than British traders living at home with their parents) and judging by The Fed's Lael Brainard's comments today, high-frequency-traders (HFT) are in the crosshairs. Crucially, Brainard warns that HFT "may amplify market shocks," and The Fed is "studying possible changes in liquidity resilience."