Saxo Bank

"The irony in this year’s batch of outrageous predictions is that some of them are “outrageous” merely because they run counter to overwhelming market consensus. In fact, many would not look particularly outrageous at all in more “normal” times – if there even is such a thing!"

Mario Draghi is on deck Thursday morning and market expectations could scarcely be higher. In fact, Draghi is widely expected to execute the Keynesian trifecta, i) a rate cut, ii) expansion of QE, and iii) extension of QE duration. The ECB has indeed gained a reputation for over-delivering, but as SocGen puts it, "with high expectations comes a high risk of disappointment." 

Capital Economics "expects gold could hit $1,200 before the end of this year, rising to $1,400 by the end of 2016”

A series of dramatic moves at the helm of Germany's iconic carmaker leaves many wondering what's next. Here are some thoughts.

The growing roar of 'the establishment' crying for help from The Fed should make investors nervous. While your friendly local asset-getherer and TV-talking-head will proclaim how a rate-hike is so positive for the economy and stocks, we wonder why it is that The IMF, The World Bank, Larry Summers (twice), Goldman Sachs, China (twice), and now no lessor nobel-winner than Paul Krugman has demanded that The Fed not hike rates for fear of  - generally speaking - "panic and turmoil," however, as Krugman notes, “I think it would be a terrible mistake to move. But I’m not confident that they won’t make a mistake."

The last time we looked at Chinese stocks, just a few hours ago, they were on pace to close back under 3000, following the latest collapse in trade, where in August exports dropped 5.5% (last -8.3%) while imports tumbled -13.8% in dollar terms (worse than the -8.1% prior). As the Reuters chart below shows, this was the 10th month in a row of declines and the worst stretch since the 2008 crisis, confirming China will need far more currency devaluation to stabilize the trade pain. And then Chinese authorities intervened with gusto, waiting until the start of the afternoon session, at which point a massive buying orgy ensued, and pushed the SHCOMP from down more than 2% to close at the day highs, up some 2.9%!

Since today was the last day of trading for Chinese stocks this week ahead of the 4-day extended September 3 military parade holiday to mark the 70th anniversary of the allied victory over Japan, and since Chinese stocks opened to yet another early trading rout coupled with the PBOC's biggest Yuan strengthening since 2010 as we observed earlier, there was only one thing that was certain: massive intervention by the Chinese "National Team" to get stocks as close to green as possible. Sure enough they tried, and tried so hard the "hulk's" green color almost came through in the last hour of trading and yet, despite the symbolic importance of having a green close at least one day this week ahead of China's victory over a World War II foe, Beijing was unable to defeat the market even once in the latest week which will hardly bode well for Chinese stocks come next week.

"The future is unknown and we are not dealing with markets that are free markets anymore...now we have government interventions everywhere. [But] in the last say twelve months, I have observed an increasing number of academics who are questioning monetary policies. That's why I think they will take the gold away and go back to some gold standard by revaluing the gold say from now $1000/oz to say $10,000 dollars. An individual should definitely own some physical gold. The bigger question is where should he store it? because... the failure of monetary policies will not be admitted by the professors that are at central banks, they will then go and blame someone else for it and then an easy target would be to blame it on people that own physical gold because - they can argue - well these are the ones that do take money out of circulation and then the velocity of money goes down - we have to take it away from them... That has happened in 1933 in the US."

After a lukewarm start by the Chinese "market", which had dropped for the past 6 out of 7 days despite ever escalating measures by Beijing to manipulate stocks higher, finally the Shanghai Composite reacted favorably to Chinese micromanagement of stock prices and closed 3.7% higher as Chinese regulators stepped up their latest measures by adjusting rules on short-selling in order to reduce trading frequency and price volatility, resulting in several large brokerages suspending short sell operations. At this pace only buy orders will soon be legal which just may send the farce of what was once a "market" limit up.

Capital should always be allocated to the “marginal cost of capital”. The stock market in its most simple form is really an input–output black box: In goes the “cost of capital” – out comes “profit”. No one can disagree that, over the long- and medium-term, it’s the profit which both explains and drives stocks best. The most profitable companies get the best stock returns... which brings us to the “dilemma” of today’s market: The marginal cost of capital is significantly higher.

Stock markets in the US and Europe are in for a correction, while the euro is set to rise, according to Saxo Bank’s Chief Economist Steen Jakobsen, nomatter what happens between Greece and its creditors. Steen also looks at the impact a rate hike from the US Federal Reserve would have on USD and what currencies could gain once the Fed decides to move on rates, noting that "the consensus has it wrong on the timing of US rate hike," as the credit cycle topped in June 2014. He believes that commodities and metals in particular offer opportunities for investors.

The financial world today is now an island on its own – separated from the real economy, as can be seen by the paradox of record high valuation in the stock market coinciding with record low inflation, employment , productivity and no hope. There is asset inflation, but deflation in the real economy. When the world has been this long at the zero-bound, the misallocation, the inability to reform, and a toolbox without new tools creates a mandate for change. "I expect stocks to trade sideways for the balance of 2015 and have now sold all my fixed income, increased my gold exposure, and I’m looking to buy mining companies and overall to increase my exposure to commodities beyond the normal allocation."

The markets may have overshot, rising beyond levels warranted by the underlying fundamentals. Oil inventories are still at 80 year highs. The 487 million barrels of oil sitting in storage will take quite a while to drawdown. Crucially, oil production is still exceeding demand, leaving oil markets well-supplied.

When you, like me, are used to a proportional representation system, it feels bizarre that the third largest party hardly gains a seat, but still, Nigel Farage has had a lot of beneficial influence on Britain's EU policy.  Hopefully, Brussels also gets the message but I doubt it. The EU never rolls anything back. It continues to amass more and more control in all areas.  The bureaucracy in Brussels has no self-criticism. No regrets. No matter how much and how often it fails. It just continues the roll out of its powers, and it will continue unabated, until someone says enough is enough. Until someone says stop.   The election outcome in Britain is our one chance to say stop!