Richmond Fed

Last week it was all about central banks, when both the ECB and the PBOC unleashed a massive market rally. This week it will be about even more central banks, this time the Fed, which won't hike, and the BOJ, which may but most likely won't as the Fed and the ECB already did its work for it, sending the Yen tumbling with their actions and/or jawboning.

Aside from Chinese monetary data, it was a relatively quiet session in which traders were focusing on every move in the suddenly tumbling USD, and parsing every phrase by central bankers around the globe, as well as the previously noted piece by Fed mouthpiece Jon Hilsenrath which effectively ended the debate whether there will be rate hikes in 2015. Adding to the overnight froth were ECB speakers first Ewald Nowotny and then Spain's Restoy, who said that euro-area core inflation "clearly" below goal, remarks which were immediately assumed to signal increasing pressure to boost stimulus, and which promptly translated into even more weakness in EUR and equity strength, pushing US futures up about 15 points from yesterday's close.

Goldman forecasts nonfarm payroll growth of 215k in September, above consensus expectations of 200k by about 0.3 standard deviations of a typical surprise. Noting that August payrolls were likely distorted downward by seasonal bias last month and may be revised up, Goldman expects the unemployment rate to remain flat at 5.1% (and earnings growth to slow). Howver, judging by the collapse in September's regional Fed surveys, today's "most important" payrolls data ever could be a massive miss.

In many ways, the overnight market has so far been a reversal of yesterday, when a stable Asia session (with China stocks rising) gave way to a European tumble which in turn dragged the US lower.

Following August's collapse (from 13 to 0), September's Richmond Fed followed on the heels of Philly, Empire, and Dallas Fed surveys and collapsed to -5 - its lowest since January 2013. Under the covers it is a total disaster, the average workweek crashed from 3 to -12 - the lowest level since April 2009 (as did the order backlog). New Orders and Capacity Utilization also plunged to its lowest since Jan 2013 as clearly the inventory accumulation is starting to feedback into prodiction cuts. Combined, the regional surveys suggest a notable plunge in overall ISM in September... flashing bright red recession warnings.

While Asian trading overnight started off on the right foot, chasing US momentum higher, things rapidly shifted once Europe opened as attention moved back to global growth fears, global central banks losing credibility, as well as miners and the ongoing Volkswagen fiasco.

In the week following the Fed's admission it is not only market-driven but now has a 4th mandate, which is to respond to China's hard landing on a day-to-day basis, US macro events mecrifully slow down to give everyone a chance to digest what the Fed just did. Here are the highlights.

After sliding early in Sunday pre-market trade, overnight US equity futures managed to rebound on the now traditional low-volume levitation from a low of 1938 to just over 1950 at last check, ignoring the biggest single-name blowup story this morning which is the 23% collapse in Volkswagen shares, and instead have piggybacked on what we said was the last Hail Mary for the market: the hope of more QE from either the ECB or the BOJ. Tonight, it was the latter and while Japan's market are closed until Thursday for public holidays, its currency which is the world's preferred carry trade and the primary driver alongside VIX manipulation of the S&P500, has jumped from a low of just over 119 on Friday morning to a high of 120.4, pushing the entire US stock market with it.

The Fed remains in a box of its own making. We are beginning to doubt whether central bank will ever be hike rates again voluntarily. What is however eventually highly likely to happen is that the markets will force the Fed to act – or as Bill Fleckenstein puts it, “the bond market may take the printing press away from them”.

With just 20 minutes to go until the latest most important jobs report ever in the history of man, Richmond Fed Chief Lacker just explained why "the case for raising rates is still strong"...

LACKER: BOTH MANDATE CONDITIONS 'APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN MET', EXCEPTIONALLY LOW RATES NO LONGER WARRANTED BY JOB MKT
LACKER: AUG. JOBS REPORT UNLIKELY TO `MATERIALLY ALTER' PICTURE

But perhaps most crucially, Lacker explains "recent financial market volatility is unlikely to affect economic fundamentals in the United States and thus has limited implications for monetary policy," removing the one last leg for permabulls to rely on (that is if you velieve The Fed is not Dow-Data-Dependent).

It seemed like finally China's relentless and increasingly futile attempts to have a green stock close would work: interest rate cuts, liquidity injections, direct stock interventions, even threats on the Prime Minister's head, and just to make certain moments before the close news very deliberately broke that government funds are buying large financial stocks, especially state-owned banks, to support the index, in the latest clear signs of government support, the Shanghai Composite seemed on pace to end an unprecedented series of consecutive tumbles which have dragged the composite down nearly 1000 points, or 25% in one week, and then... red close, with the SHCOMP down 1.3% to 2927, and a stunned China watching in horror as the central bank and government lose control, and everything they throws at the biggest market bubble of 2015 does absolutely nothing.

The 3-month bounce in the Richmond Fed Manufacturing survey... is dead. From 13 in July, August saw it collapse to 0 (massivley missing expectations of a 10 print). This is the biggest absolute drop in the index since May 2006. Across the board, underlying factors crashed with Shipments plunging, New Orders cliff-diving, order backlogs disappearing and Capacity Utilization plunging. This is exactly what we would expect after a massive inventory build up that was not accompanied by a surge in sales... but the pundits stil proclaim "no signs of an imminent US recession."

The PBOC cut itself was not surprising, considering the PBOC now has to juggle and micromanage every aspect of the economy, from its sliding currency, to the bursting stock bubble, to record capital outflow, to soaring real interest rates, to the slowing economy. In fact, bulls around the globe will welcome the latest central bank bailout. Which also happens to be the worst aspect of today's intervention, because one can once again toss all the talk that China would finally stop intervening in asset pricing, with today's decision merely perpetuating the market's reliance on central banks. As a reference, this was the second time China cut both RRR and interest rates in 2 months: the last time it did so was during the depths of the financial crisis.

We warned on Friday, after last week's China rout, that the market is getting ahead of itself with its expectation of a RRR-cut by China as large as 100 bps. "The risk is that there isn't one." We were spot on, because not only was there no RRR cut, but Chinese stocks plunged, with the composite tumbling as much a 9% at one point, the most since 1996 when it dropped 9.4% in a single session. The session, as profile overnight was brutal, with about 2000 stocks trading by the -10% limit down, and other markets not doing any better: CSI 300 -8.8%, ChiNext -8.1%, Shenzhen Composite -7.7%. This was the biggest Chinese rout since 2007.

While many labor market indicators were softer in July, some important service sector indicators, such as ISM nonmanufacturing employment, were significantly stronger; and on balance, they expect job growth roughly consistent with the 223k increase in June. The participation rate showed a surprising drop of 0.3pp in June to 62.6% - due in large part from a calendar effect caused by the timing of the reference week relative to the end of the school year - they therefore expect an at least partial rebound in July.