recovery

In a recent survey not a single major central bank could provide an example of an accurate “a priori” recession forecast. The silence from the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, BOE, BOJ and the Bank of Canada is deafening.

Man Group, which runs $76.8 billion in assets, said on its website that its $4.4 billion AHL Diversified fund lost 5.1% on Thursday. Among other funds to have been running bets, to a greater or lesser extent, against the euro were Brevan Howard Asset Management, which oversees about $25 billion in assets; Tudor Investment Corp.; Moore Capital Management; and Caxton Associates, said investors. "Pretty much everyone was short the euro. The view was very clear for everyone."

Over the weekend, in its latest quarterly presentation, the Bank of International Settlements made what may have been a very premature assessment that China is now contained. Judging by events in the past 24 hours, the reality is anything but.

"We’re broke. We’re basically living off of debt. We’ve had a huge transformation of the American economy. Look at all the Americans now on food stamps, on disability, on unemployment... The whole economy has imploded... the bottom hasn’t dropped out yet because we’re able to go deeper into debt. But the collapse is coming."

"There are $1.1 trillion of S&P 500 options expiring on Friday morning. $670Bn of these are puts, of which $215Bn are struck relatively close below the market level, between 1900 and 2050. At the time of the Fed announcement, these put options will essentially look like a massive stop loss order under the market. This important event falls at a peculiar time—less than 48 hours before the largest option expiry in many years. "

Global equity markets, as measured by the MSCI Developed World index, are above the lows hit in early October but remain on a downtrend that began after markets peaked at the end of May this year. As SocGen's Andrew Lapthorne notes, the current level is now only just above where the index stood at the beginning of 2013 and less than 1% above the 2007 peak. In other words, as he warns, "the equity market has run out of momentum," and the 'bill' for the debt overhang is coming due.

With Draghi's Friday comments, which as we noted previously were meant solely to push markets higher, taking place after both Europe and Asia closed for the week, today has been a session of catch up for both Asian and Europe, with Japan and China up 1% and 0.3% respectively, and Europe surging 1.4%, pushing government bond yields lower as the dollar resumes its climb on expectations that Draghi will jawbone the European currency lower once more, which in turn forced Goldman to announce two hours ago that it is "scaling back our expectation for Euro downside."

"... if nominal growth is 3 percent and the debt GDP ratio is 300 percent, the implied equilibrium nominal rates is around 1 percent. This is because at 1% rates, 100% of GDP growth is necessary to service interest costs."

As we approach the Fed meeting expect markets to get more volatile. While the odds favor a move, it isn’t a sure thing until it is actually done. We found out last week what happens when forward guidance turns out to be forward misdirection. All those traders who thought they had a sure thing, who assumed that Draghi wouldn’t dare disappoint the market, got whipped. Whipped good.

With an all time high of 293 ounces of paper per ounce of registered physical gold, it appears hedge funds continue to ignore systemic risk and surging physical demand, merely following the trend lower in paper gold prices by adding to already record short positions in gold last week. With the speculative world near-record long the USDollar and record short gold, how much longer can the status quo boat can remain upright with so many on the same side. After this week's shake-out of USD longs courtesy of Draghi, one wonders if the gold squeeze is about to begin?

Until pro-growth, low taxation and less regulation policy changes are enacted, we don’t foresee any changes to central bank policy nor the unsustainable market divergences and asset price distortions. Expect more media propaganda on how great the economy is while the reality is another story. Early signs are that retail sales this holiday season are poor. Nobody can predict when reality will set in and equity markets revert back to pre QE levels in 2008/09. The longer this charade continues, the lower equity markets will eventually go, and in the short-term so will commodities. Then the super cycle in commodities will begin anew. Much this will hinge on next fall’s election cycle.

"Deteriorating market breadth and herding into an ever-narrower number of stocks is classic market top behavior. Currently, there are many other warning signs that are also being ignored. The merger mania, the stock buyback frenzy, the year-over-year declines in corporate sales and falling earnings for the entire S&P 500 index, the plunges this year in the high-yield and leveraged loan markets, the topping and rolling over of the massive (record) level of stock margin debt... and I could go on."

Optimism in US equity futures appears to have returned, and as of this moment US equity futures are higher by 9 points to 2060 as the attention shifts to what, according to BofA, is truly the most important ever. It is unclear just how the algos would take a second consecutive major disappointment in a row: should today's NFP print be well below the 200,000 consensus, December rate hike odd will tumble and the EUR will surge even more after declining modestly from overnight highs just below 1.10, leading to even more losses in European equities and spilling over to the US.