Nikkei

While we’re not bubbling over with optimism, we believe the New Year will be anything but boring. 

Following its just announced flip flop on oil, Goldman's "sellsiders" go ahead and not only cut Chinese growth prospects, but raise the Nikkei. So let's get this straight: Goldman raises its prices forecast for oil, even as it downgrades the primary driver of demand - China, and somehow the Japanese market, which suddenly is overreliant on natural resources for energy creation in the aftermath of Fukushima, is supposed to surge... Was this script written in Bollywood? Anyway, for those with a sense of humor, here is the gist on China: "Recent data have been worse than we expected. The growth slowdown has been even sharper than we forecast, especially evident in April industrial production (which mainly reflected tighter monetary and fiscal policy, although some specific industries have seen supply-side constraints). In addition, inflation is not coming down as rapidly as we hoped. We now cut our 2011 GDP growth forecast to 9.4% from 10.0%. This partly reflects the lower-than-expected 1Q2011 GDP print (9.2% qoq ann.), but we have also cut 2Q2011,3Q2011, and 4Q2011 growth to 8.0%, 9.0%, and 9.3% qoq ann. from 8.8%, 9.5%, and 9.7% respectively. This is only very slightly above the last official consensus, which came before the disappointing April data, and so we are likely to be above the true consensus now. We expect annual average inflation of 4.7% (up from 4.3%), with a peak in yoy terms of 5.6% in June. We also nudge down our 2012 GDP growth forecast to 9.2% from 9.5%, reflecting in part the impact of higher oil prices. Although we maintain our annual average inflation forecast of 3.0% in 2012, we have a slight acceleration within 2012 as higher oil prices eventually get passed on more fully." Yet while this conclusion in and of itself makes some sense, the following from Goldman's Kathy Matsui in the Nikkei, regarding the firm's outlook on the Japanese stock market, confirms that whoever is coordinating the Goldman sellside push may have crossed the Tropic of Thunder: "Contrary to popular opinion, we believe the disaster will accelerate - rather than delay - Japan's exit from deflation. We see reconstruction demand and exports driving gross domestic product growth to an above-trend pace of 2.5 per cent in 2012...Market participants have argued for some time that it will take a cataclysmic event to drive structural change in Japan; now the world is watching." Bottom line: China down, Japan up, and oil far, far away. Sigh.

And we are off. The JPYUSD is up nearly 200 pips as the Bank of Japan buys billions in dollars, using freshly printed Yen, following an agreement with the G7 which will likely see a new plaza accord to keep the Yen low despite ongoing repatriation. This follows earlier news that the BOJ will underwrite a ¥10 trillion in earthquake recovery bonds as Japan is now lurching from one monetization step to another. Keep an eye out for intervention aftershocks as the BOJ now can not allow the USDJPY to drop below 80 or it will be all over. This is what global reflation gone nuts looks like. On the other hand, if the BOJ fails to keep the USDJPY above 80 following this action, and the inflows of yen are far greater than anyone expected, most certainly the G7, then we have big problems. Next up: Armageddon 2: the Sequel, in which the Chairsatan, Trichet, Shirikawa, King, and Hildebrand dig a deep hole in Haley's commet, in order to save the earth, only something goes horribly wrong and everyone blows up in a nuclear fireball. The end.

It appears the earlier speculation by PTI that the BOJ would inject ¥13.8 Trillion in the market to preserve asset prices was a little premature. The BOJ just released the official number and it is a measly ¥5 trillion. And by measly we mean $63 billion. Add this to the ¥28 trillion already deployed by the BOJ and get an even more modest ¥33 billion, or roughly $420 billion, which is the cost to preserve the Nikkei from plunging for a 4th consecutive day. Yet even with this latest injection, the Nikkei is down almost 4% as of this writing. Should headline newsflow from Fukushima deteriorate, we anticipate that the full PTI number will be not only reach by surpassed very promptly as no amount of taxpayer capital will be deemed too great to preserve the wealth of those invested in Japanese stocks.

Below is a heatmap of the Nikkei "no news is great news, as is 26.5 trillion in fiat injections" relief rally. Note the main equity outlier, TEPCO, which however has seen its CDS tighten substantially overnight from 390-440 to just 285-315. The reason for the credit melt up is that according to an article, the operator of a nuclear facility will not be responsible for any damage caused by their reactor if it was due to "a grave natural disaster of an exceptional character or by an insurrection." Which simply means that the nationalization of TEPCO will be indirect and that Japan will have to issue that much more debt.

It's another day for the BOJ, which more than anything is hell bent on preventing a rerun of last night's tumble in the futures to a 7 handle. The solution: add another several trillion into money markets. Following Monday's ¥15 trillion plunge protection deposit, and yesterday's ¥8 trillion, just announced was the first tranche for tonight, which amounted to ¥3.5 trillion. And so the total involve to prevent the market from plunging a more 1,000 points is now ¥26.5 trillion, or $325 billion.

Copy/paste of what we got from a trading desk:

Mkt rumour nikkei to remain closed for the rest of week..margin issues.....some rumbling all afternoon, but as we head towards the end of European trading more people asking

More if we get it...

Japan's nuclear crisis has deepened and we deeply regret to say that there is now the real possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. Investor panic has set in with the Nikkei down over 16.5% in two days and the Topic index down by 17% - its worst two-day loss since the 1987 Wall Street stock market crash. The cost to insure Japanese debt has surged to a record with credit-default swaps protecting Japanese government debt for five years soaring 27 basis points to a record of 125 basis points. One UBS trader said that the deteriorating nuclear crisis had led to "near panic across local credit-default swap markets." While most equity indices and commodities have fallen, some sharply, gold has remained resilient and is down 1% in US dollar terms and is higher in Australian dollars which like other so called 'commodity' currencies has come under pressure in recent days. Gold remains marginally higher in all currencies since the tragedy began last Friday.

All hell is currently breaking loose following an explosion at reactor #2 and a another hydrogen explosion at reactor #4 per Kyodo, leading to a 16% drop in Nikkei futures as blind panic grips Japan. Kyodo essentially confirms there was a reactor meltdown as radiation levels at Fukushima 3 are now 400 times legal levels. And topping it all Japan's warning that all people within 30 kilometers from Fukushima should stay indoors and that the radioactive winds may reach Tokyo in as little as 8-10 hours. The BOJ has just intervened to prevent the yen from surging, as the following chart shows. Our prayers are with the people of Japan.

The latest example of selling not being actually "selling" comes courtesy of a Deutsche Bank oven mitt. Bloomberg reports that "Deutsche Bank AG sent a spate of erroneous sell orders for Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average futures contracts because of a system malfunction. The erroneous orders sent stocks on the Nikkei 225 into a brief plunge seconds after the market opened at 9 a.m. The average sank as much as 1.1 percent to 9,658.44 before rebounding to about 9,743. The gauge was at 9,691.08 as of 1:54 p.m. in Tokyo." We are trying to remember when the last time that a "fat finger" was responsible for panic buying. But when every single HFT algo is programmed to only buy on no volume, the possibility of that happening is slim to none.

The Nikkei just wiped out all gains for 2010 in less than 3 hours. Elsewhere it is not much better: Shanghai down 1.52% and Hang Seng down 1.63% at last check. Furthermore, in taking a page from the rating agency playbook, the Hang Seng Index broke earlier as a result of excess selling.

As Zero Hedge presented previously, the sharp divergence between the Nikkei and the S&P indexed in gold continues. The two reindexed indexes, which have correlated 0.91 since March, have diverged sharply in the past three weeks, and now stand at an over 11% divergence in performance since the year lows. Whether this is due to the "shocking" recent realization that Japan is caught in an ever increasing deflationary vortex (which the US likely will not avoid, at least not in the near term), or simply due to momo quants deciding that the Nikkei is no longer fun to chase, a convergence trade on the two broad indexes (long Nikkei, short S&P) seems like a rather painless way to pick 10%. Then again, ask Boaz Weinstein about "surething" convergence trades.