Richmond Fed

Following last week's macro fireworks, the coming week will be an absolute snoozer with virtually nothing on the calendar until Thursday's Initial claims, which is the key event of the week, as well as much Fed president jawboning again, including both good and bad cops talking QE4EVA either up or down. And with earnings season basically over, at least coffee consumption will be higher than average.

“Labor market conditions are affected by a variety of factors outside a central bank’s control,” admitted the Fed's Jeffrey Lacker after the employment report bounced around the world.

It is one thing for the market to no longer pay attention to economic fundamentals or newsflow (with the exception of newsflow generated by fake tweets of course), but when the mainstream media turns full retard and comes up with headlines such as this: "German Ifo Confidence Declines After Winter Chilled Recovery" to spin the key overnight event, the German IFO Business climate (which dropped from 106.2 to 104.4, missing expectations of 106.2 of course) one just has to laugh. In the artcile we read that "German business confidence fell for a second month in April after winter weather hindered the recovery in Europe’s largest economy... “We still expect there to have been a good rebound in the first quarter, although there is a big question mark about the weather,” said Anatoli Annenkov, senior economist at Societe Generale SA in London." We wonder how long Bloomberg looked for some junior idiot who agreed to be memorialized for posterity with the preceding moronic soundbite because this really is beyond ridiculous (and no, it's not snow in the winter that is causing yet another "swoon" in indicators like the IFO, the ZEW and all other metrics as we patiently explained yesterday so even a 5 year old caveman financial reported would get it).

It is only logical that after last month's New Home Sales miss (exp. 420, printed 411K), which sent the market higher, today's tiniest of beats in New Home Sales, which printed at 417K, on expectations of 416K, would also send the market higher. The total months of supply indicated was 4.4, the same as February, and well above the 4.0 from January. Unnoticed in the release was that the January housing data was revised higher from 431K to 445K, meaning last month's drop would have been even more acute (-7.6% instead of -4.6%), but who cares about such things as data chronology now that the headline effect is long gone.  All that matters is that the trend is the mainstream media's friend, which can report new home sales have grown once more... if only back to levels last seen in April of 2010 when the same number was 422K. Was the data actually meaningful on a long-term basis? We will let readers decide on their own after one look at the chart below. Finally, and this will not be mentioned anywhere, the average New Home price plunged from $310,000 to $279,900 -  the lowest since June of 2012. One can only imagine the step down in quality that was required to make up in volume what was "lost" in price.

Summary of key US events in the week ahead.

Wealth levies and a European banking system collapsing; dismal capital goods new orders; a miss for new home sales and Richmond Fed; almost the lowest volume of the year in stocks, and Treasury bonds trading at their lowest yield since the Cyprus debacle started - a perfect recipe to try a run to all-time closing highs in the S&P 500. The previous high close (not intraday) was 1565.17 on 10/09/07 and we missed it by less than 2 points today. What has taken us to these new post-Cyprus highs, safety - Staples, Healthcare, and Utilities (up 1-3% since 3/15 Cyprus). Banks remain battered with C, GS, and MS all down 5-6%. Treasuries and corporate bonds reflected a considerably different perspective on risk-appetite to stocks today. While the USD largely flatlined, with JPY weakening, EURJPY (and WTI it seems) led stocks higher on dismal volume. Gold, silver, and copper flatlined (following the USD's lead) but the disconnect between VIX/Stocks and Bonds/Credit was extreme by the close. VIX remains 1.5 vols higher than it was when stocks were last here and the protection bid in credit markets (and low volume in stocks) suggests equity algos simply forgot that Europe opens again in 8 hours.

Houston we may have a problem: with the DJIA trumpetedely hitting new all time highs day after day in March, one would expect that its traditional second derivative - US Consumer Confidence, would be at all time highs as well, or close thereby. One would be wrong, because according to the Conference Board, March consumer confidence plunged to 59.7 from 69.6, and well below expectations of a 67.5 print. Both components of the index dipped, with both the present situation and expectations indices sliding from 61.4 and 72.4, to 57.9 and 60.9, respectively. And just to make sure the S&P ramps to all time highs on ongoing miserable economic, corporate profit and, of course, sovereign insolvency news, we got both New Home Sales, dropping from 431K to 411K, missing expectations of 420K, and the Richmond Fed also missing expectations of a 6 print, dropping from last month's 6 to 3. All in all, if this latest round of ugly and rapidly getting worse economic data doesn't send the S&P to new all time highs, nothing will. Well, perhaps another European country going broke may do the trick...

Calmer markets today, but European officials are finding it hard to put the cat back in the bag.

Ben was in congress campaigning er, testifying mostly about the effectiveness of all things ZIRP and QE. He was grilled about #0000ff;">#0000ff;">possible risks with QE especially if interest rates should rise. The Bernank saying that interest rates would rise was unlikely but he then cavalierly stated if rates rise, the Fed would just “hold back on payments” er, stiff the Treasury. That’s no big deal for him since by then he’ll be down the road writing his memoirs, making speeches and joining some big Wall Street firm as a well-paid consultant. The Bernank was also asked if he noted any bubbles or market excess and said he saw none. 

Next week’s calendar is packed with important events and releases, aside of course from the biggest event of the week which are the Italian elections. In fact we already got the first one in the form of China's disappointing HSBC flash PMI which consensus expectations would print stable yet which dropped to a 4 month low. On Friday, the ISM is expected to come out mildly softer vs last month’s strong 53.1 print and consensus at 52.5. Chicago PMI will also be followed by markets on Thursday. On the central bank front markets will be primarily looking for further news on the BOJ leadership succession front. From the perspective of Fed speakers, Chairman Bernanke’s testimony ahead of the Senate Banking Committee will also be followed as markets continue to track the Fed’s assessment of the economic recovery. In the global currency warfare front, the Bank of Israel is expected to cut policy rates by 25bps on Monday, as well as the National Bank of Hungary on Tuesday.

This objective report concisely summarizes important macro events over the past week.  It is not geared to push an agenda.  Impartiality is necessary to avoid costly psychological traps, which all investors are prone to, such as confirmation, conservatism, and endowment biases. Also - from Citi's Steven Englander - what to worry about from this weekend's G-20 extravaganza...

At this point it has gotten painfully tedious, and the one phrase to describe trading is - Same Pattern Different Day. With equity futures closing decidedly weak on earnings reality after US market close, the slowly, steady overnight ramp seen every single day for the past month has returned as always, this time on yet another largely expected German confidence indicator beat (following the just as irrationally exuberant ZEW some time ago, and yesterday's far better than expected PMI), this time the IFO Business Climate, which printed at 104.2, on expectations of 103 and up from 102.4. This was driven by both the current assessment rising from 107.1 to 108 and the Expectations rising from 97.9 to 100.5. Naturally, all confidence indicators will be skewed in a way to prevent the market from doubting for a second that Germany may actually succumb to the same recession that has gripped all other European countries (which Germany is an inch away from after its negative Q4 GDP). In other words: there is hope. As for reality, UK Q4 GDP came in at -0.3% on expectations of a far lower drop to -0.1%, and down from the olympics-boosted 0.9% in Q3. The UK certainly can't wait for Mark Carney to come and show them how cable devaluation is really done, cause this time it will be different, if only it wasn't different for everyone else.

We are now four-for-four (five-for-five if we include the drastic downward revisions in the Chicago PMI) for regional Fed business outlooks taking a serious (and consistent) turn for the worse. Kansas Fed manufacturing just missed expectations turning negative once again. Amid the sub-indices (which were broadly weak) was a plunge in employment as it fell to August 2009 levels. This weakness in Kansas follows Richmond's quadruple dip, Empire State's weakness, and Philly's major miss and in aggregate suggests a very weak ISM to come. Of course, all of this flies in the face of today's US PMI which beat expectations and pushed to recent highs.

While the trend has been your friend in US equities for the last few months; the trend in US Macro data has also been consistent - but negative over the last few weeks. Today, for the first time in almost five months (thanks to misses on existing homes and the Richmond Fed) the US Macro index turned negative. In the past this has marked the start of the market's realization that things are not just dipping but are cycling lower. This is also the weakest 'macro' start to a year since the crisis began - and seasonally is prone to become worse not better from here. It seems, however, that the only reality that is required for any prognosticator or commission-taker is that of nominal stock prices (as self-confirming bias creating data) - just as it was in late-2007.

So much for the latest "recovery." While everyone continued to forget that in the New Normal markets do not reflect the underlying economy in the least, and that the all time highs in the Russell 2000 should indicate that the US economy has never been better, things in reality took a deep dive for the worse, at least according to the Empire State Fed, the Philly Fed, and now the Richmond Fed, all of which missed expectations by a huge margin, and are now deep in contraction territory. Moments ago, the Richmond Fed reported that the Manufacturing Index imploded from a 9 in November, 5 in December and missed expectations of a 5 print at -12: this was the biggest miss to expectations since September 2009.