Nikkei

Risk averse sentiment dominate the session, as market participants looked forward to the latest European finance ministers meeting who are due to discuss Spain’s finances, as well as Greece, which is yet to formalise spending cuts in order to receive the next aid tranche. Reports that China's economic growth is expected to have slowed to 7.5% in Q3 from 7.6% in Q2 weighed on basic materials and industrials stocks. The World Bank cut its 2012 GDP forecast for China to 7.7% from 8.2%; 2013 to 8.1% from 8.6%. Uncertainty surrounding the never-ending sovereign debt crisis in Europe weighed on financials, and in turn translated into lower 3m EURUSD cross currency basis. Peripheral bond yields rose, with Italy underperforming, ahead of the supply later on in the week. Going forward, given the Columbus Day holiday across the pond, trade volumes are expected to be below the average.

The market is so focused on this morning's BLS number it has completely ignored the latest round of Reuters "news" (after their last two market-testing, unsourced "exclusives" about European developments were roundly refuted nobody can blame it) on how the OMT will proceed once operational (assuming of course Spain ever requests an activation of the mechanism that has allowed it to consider not requesting it). So, on to the thing of importance via BBG: expectations is for a NFP print of 115,000 and an unemployment rate of 8.2%. Any major surprises to either side will likely be risk negative. The unemployment rate has held above 8% level for 43 consecutive months; U.S. labor force participation rate last month declined to 63.5%, lowest since Sept. 1981. Back to Europe, a possible bailout for Spain is not imminent, a European Union official said, as concerns grow over the country’s ability to reach its deficit-reduction targets. The German recession accelerates as factory orders fell 1.3% in August, more than forecast. Switzerland’s foreign-currency reserves rose to a record 429.3 billion francs at the end of September from 420.8 billion francs at the end of August.Around the world: the Bank of Japan held off from more easing after adding to stimulus last month; shoppers from China’s mainland curbed spending at Hong Kong luxury stores during the Golden Week holiday.

Now what?

Markets were in sleep mode for most of the session, ahead of the BoE monetary policy decision, as well as the ECB’s press conference where the President is unlikely to outline any new measures and instead reiterate that the ECB stands ready to do whatever is necessary. The BoE held both their rates and asset purchase target unchanged, however it is widely expected that the central bank will boost the facility by another GBP 50bln in November. Today’s supply from both Spain and France was easily absorbed by the market, both were supported by the recent decline in bond yields. Going forward, apart from digesting comments from Draghi, market participants will get to see the release of the latest weekly jobs report, durables revisions and the minutes from the FOMC.

For the third day in a row, there is little to write home about from the overnight action. The EURUSD has been choppy following an MNI report about comments from EU officials that suggested Germany wants to delay the Troika decision on a €31.5 billion payment to Greece until after the November 12 Eurozone finmin meeting, no doubt predicated by the already discussed willingness by Europe to not rock the boat before Obama is reelected, still leaving the question hanging: just why is an entire insolvent continent so hung up on a US presidential decision. The main FX market focus is on the European Central Bank rate decision, due at 1145GMT. The ECB is widely expected to leave rates on hold just as the BOE did moments ago (it needs to hurry up if it wants to win the race to debase) although in the New Normal one can't be sure of anything. In other news Spain auctioned off a much needed €3.99 billion in various short-term bonds, the bulk of which fell under the LTRO maturity umbrella, but which was successful nonetheless if with modestly weaker short-end results, and an overall bitter aftertaste as seen by the resumption in Spanish 10 year widening, as the entire market, not to mention Draghi, is starting to get very impatient with Rajoy, who is now even getting urged by Catalonia's Arturo Mas to finally bite the bullet and demand a bailout (and resign shortly thereafter): "A bailout is inevitable; therefore the best thing to do is to make the decision without delay,” Mas said. “Spain has the potential to overcome the situation, but it will need assistance for some time." Recall that Spain's cash needs in October surge so every single successful euro raised is more than critical.

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Less than impressive PMIs from Europe, as well as China failed to depress the bullish sentiment as market participants remained hopeful that a full scale bailout of Spain will take place in the very near future. As a result, in spite of opening lower, equity markets in Europe have edged into positive territory, supported by utilities and telecommunication sectors. Banks also posted decent gains, after Spanish economy minister outlined the bad bank plan which is to be financed with senior debt and private investors to have majority stake in bad bank. The bank recap plan is expected to be running by start of December. Italian markets outperformed, largely due to the fact that today’s Italian Services PMI posted a minor improvement on the previous reading. Bond yield spreads continued to tighten, however flows remained light ahead of the ECB policy meeting tomorrow, as well as the latest round of issuance from Spain and France. Heading into the North American open, EUR/USD is trading little changed as demand from Middle Eastern, as well as EU semi-official accounts was offset by risk event (ECB, auctions) pre-positioning. Going forward, the second half of the session sees the release of the latest ADP Employment Report, ISM Non-Manufacturing and the weekly DoE inventory survey.

Tonight's session has been even more boring than yesterday's, when nothing happened. Several data points came out of Europe, some better than expected, some worse, but all massively beaten down to where any uptick is merely a dead cat bounce. Retail sales in the euro zone rose 0.1 percent in August from July, when they also gained 0.1 percent. From a year earlier, sales dropped 1.3 percent. A composite PMI of manufacturing and services industries in the euro area fell to 46.1 in September from 46.3 in August, Markit Economics said. That’s above an initial estimate of 45.9. The problem is that the PMIs of the most notable countries: Germany (at 49.7 on expectations of 50.6, lowest since March 2006), France (45.0, down from 46.1, and below consensus of an unchanged print -keep a close eye on this suddenly fast-motion trainwrecking economy), Spain, UK and Sweden all missed badly. In the U.K., where the services PMI dropped to 52.2 in September from 53.7 in August. But don't call it a stagflation: it's been here for years - U.K. retail prices rose 1 percent in September from a year earlier after a 1.1 percent gain in August, the British Retail Consortium said. Some additional data via BBG - Britons injected a net 9.8 billion pounds into their housing equity in the second quarter, the Bank of England said. Elsewhere, one central bank that refuses to join the global easefest is, not surprisingly, Iceland’s central bank kept the sevenday collateral lending rate unchanged at 5.75 percent for a second meeting. None of this has been able to move the futures which are net flat with Treasuries steady, before the US ISM Services number (est. 53.4 from 53.7), the total joke of an indicator which is the ADP Employment (est. 140k from 201k) but which wrong as it always is, is the only advance hint into Friday as traders prepare for Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report (est. 115k, unemployment rate rising to 8.2%).

Equity markets continued to edge higher today as market participants grew hopeful that a full scale bailout of Spain will take place in the very near future. So much so that even though reports that Spain is to seek bailout this weekend was denied, the risk on sentiment held strong. As a result, SP/GE and IT/GE bond yield spreads tightened further, with IT 10s now yielding close to 5%. The renewed sense of security saw EUR/USD squeeze higher towards the psychologically important 1.3000 level, while GBP/USD also benefited from a weaker USD and is trading in minor positive territory in spite of another round of disappointing macro data from the UK. Going forward, the second half of the session sees the release of the latest ISM New York index, as well as the regular weekly API report. Both the BoE and the Fed are due to conduct another round of asset purchases at 1445BST and 1600BST respectively.

The "mañana" approach to fiscal management, that Spain is known for, presented what is generally perceived as overly optimistic growth forecasts for 2013 and lacked details on structural reform resulted in another risk off session. As a result, Spanish stocks continued to underperform (IBEX seen lower by over 5% on the week), with 10y bond yield spread wider by around 12bps as market participants adjusted to higher risk premia. The state is due to sell 2s and 5s next week, which may also have contributed to higher yields. As a reminder, Moody’s review on Spain is set to end today, however there is a chance that the ratings agency may extend the review for another couple of months or wait until the stress test results are published to make an announcement. In other news, according to sources, Greece could return to its European partners for a Spanish-style rescue of its banking sector, as the country is looking to ease the burden via another writedown of its debts or a strong recapitalisation of its banks (no official response as yet). Going forward, the second half of the session sees the release of the latest PCE data, as well as the Chicago PMI report for the month of September.

Those confused by yesterday's rapid move higher in stocks, which fizzled by day's end, which was catalyzed by the non-event of the Spanish budget declaration which will prove to be a major disappointment as all such announcement are fated to be, can take solace in the following summary by DB's Jim Reid: "Yesterday's risk rally on the back of the 2013 budget announcement coincided with a trend seen over the last couple of years of rallies into month and quarter ends. We'll probably get a clearer picture of underlying sentiment by early next week with the new quarter starting, especially as it commences with a bang with the Global PMI numbers on Monday." In this vein, tonight's overnight sentiment showing weakness confirms yesterday's move was one which merely used Spain as a buying catalyst without reading anything into it. Because an even cursory read through shows major cracks. Sure enough the sellside readthroughs appeared this morning: "In our view the Spanish 2013 budget is based on a too optimistic GDP growth assumption" from Citi. Once again, the market shot first, and asks questions later, as the weakness in the futures confirms, EURUSD retracing all overnight gains, and Spain now 1.6% lower on this, as well as uncertainty of today's latest non-event - the local bank stress test vers 304.2b - whose results will be announce at noon NY time, and which just may find Bankia (and its Spiderman towel collection) is quite solvent once again.

After seeing its stock market tumbling to fresh 2009 lows, the PBOC decided it couldn't take it any more, and joined the Fed's QE3 and the BOJ's QE8 (RIP) in easing. Sort of. Because while the PBOC is prevented from outright easing as we have been saying for months now (even as "experts" screamed an RRR or outright rate cut is imminent every day while we warned that Chinese inflation has proven quite sticky especially in home prices and food and China's central bank will not attempt to push its stocks up as long as the situation persists, so for quite a while) it can inject liquidity on a ultra-short term basis using reverse repos (or what are called repos here in the US). And shortly after it was found that Chinese companies industrial profits fell 6.2% in August after tumbling 5.4% in July, we learned that the PBOC added a record 365 billion Yuan to the financial system in order to prevent a creeping lockup in the banking system. While this managed to push the Shanghai Composite by nearly 3% overnight, this injection will prove meaningless in even the medium-term as the liquidity is now internalized and the PBOC has no choice but to add ever more liquidity or face fresh post-2009 lows every single day. Which it won't as very soon it will seep over into the broader market. And as long as the threat of surging pork prices next year is there, and with a global bacon shortage already appearing, and food prices set to surge in a few short months on the delayed effects of the US drought, one thing is certain: China will need a rumor that someone- even Spain- is coming to its rescue.

Remember when we said two months ago that one way or another the market will need to tumble to enforce the chain of events that lead to Spain demanding the bailout which has long been priced in, and (especially after yesterday's violent protest) Rajoy handing in his resignation? Well, it's "another." After nearly 3 months of suspending reality, in hopes to not "rock the boat" until the US presidential election, reality has made a quick and dramatic appearance in Europe, where after a day in which the EURUSD tumbled, events overnight have finally caught up. What happened? First, ECB's Asmussen said that the central bank would not participate in any debt restructuring, confirming any and all hopes that the ECB would ever be pari passu with regular bondholders were a pipe dream. Second, Plosser in the US said additional QE probably won't boost growth which has reverberated across a globe in which the only recourse left is, well, additional QE. Finally, pictures of tens of thousands rioting unemployed young men and women in Madrid did not help. The result: Spain's 10 Year is over 20 bps wider, and back over 6%, Germany just had a €5 billion 10 Year auction for which it only got €3.95 billion in bids, which means it was technically a failure, and the second uncovered auction in one month, and finally CDS across the continent, not to mention the option value that is the Spanish IBEX which may fall 3% today, have finally realized they are priced far too much to perfection and have, as a result, blown out.

Risk-averse sentiment was prevalent throughout the session, after both Spain and Italy sold bonds/T-bills, which attracted weak bidding and hence saw lower than exp. b/c. In addition to that, yields on 3m and 6m Spanish T-bills were higher, with some pointing to the fact that the Treasury has been forced to step up its T-bill issuance to meet its zero net funding target (higher supply). As a result, peripheral bond yield spreads are wider by around 9bps, with Italian bonds underperforming given the supply later on in the week. This underperformance was also evident in the equity space, where the domestic stock exchange is seen lower by over 1%, compared to DAX which is only lower by 0.4%. In the FX space, firmer USD weighed on both EUR/USD and GBP/USD, both trading in close proximity to intraday option expiry levels.

The last time we saw a bevy of regurgitated European rumors shortly refuted was last Friday. Today we get a redux, following a hard push by none other than Spiegel (precisely as we predicted a month ago: "And now, time for Spiegel to cite "unnamed sources" that the EFSF is going to use 3-4x leverage") to imagine a world in which the ESM can be leveraged 4x to €2 trillion. This is merely a replay of last fall when Europe's deus ex for 2 months was clutching at a cobbled up superficial plan of 3-4x EFSF leverage, which ultimately proved futile. Why? Because, just like in 2011, one would need China in on this strategy as there is simply not enough endogenous leverage in either the US or Europe which would make this plan feasible. And China, we are sad to say, has a whole lot of its own problems to worry about right about now, than bailing out the shattered dream of a failed monetary unions still held by a few lifelong European bureaucrats, which this thing is all about. As expected, moments ago Germany refuted everything. Via Reuters: "Germany's finance ministry said on Monday that talk of the euro zone's permanent bailout fund being leveraged to 2 trillion euros via private sector involvement was not realistic, adding that any discussion of precise figures was "purely abstract." This also explains why we devoted precisely zero space to this latest leverage incarnation rumor yesterday: we were merely waiting for the refutation.