Trade Balance

D-day - the real D-Day: the day after which the US government will have to start shutting down - is now 52 days away, but with the Pyrrhic victory on the Fiscal Cliff, which once more, did nothing to resolve the Fiscal Cliff issue but merely hiked payroll taxes for some, general income taxes for others, even as drunken sailor spending has persisted, it is virtually a guarantee that nothing will happen in D.C. for at least 3-4 more weeks until the posturing and jawboning soars in earnest. Only this time the can kicking won't be nearly as easy. In other news, for the first time in maybe 2 months, the algos are neither gripped by headlines about Washington, or macro events, but micro, as the fourth quarter earnings season kicks off, with Alcoa reporting on Tuesday, Wells on Friday and a true launch of Q4 earnings season next week. And since revenues are set to continue deteriorating despite estimates of a Y/Y increase in top lines following a disastrous Q3, and let's not even mention cash flow, operating earnings and capital reinvestment, once again it will all be about EPS rejiggering and accounting games.

Well that did not take long. T+2 days from his re-election, Shinzo Abe has summarily unbudgeted himself. As Kyodo News reports, the sphincterially-challenged wild-man has decided to scrap the country's spending cap for the annual budget. Previously capped at a measly JPY71 trillion (excluding debt-servicing costs) in an effort to create some pretense of fiscal discipline, the new Keynesian has unilaterally decided that moar is better. Not exactly helping, though perhaps exactly what the currency-war-inflaming Abe might like, the trade balance plunged yet again (to -JPY953bn from -JPY540bn) from  - setting a new all-time record negative average as the implicit capital flight continues. JPY weakness has resumed but it is the collapse in JGBs that will be worrying people - the biggest 5-day run-up in 10Y JGB yields in over 13 months.

At a time in the year when the market should be at a standstill, and when all trading should be over, the tension in the S&P is unprecedented, driven by two main factors: the ongoing Fiscall Cliff confrontation, which now appears set to not be resolved by Christmas, and very likely to persist into the new year, and what happens with hotel AAPLfornia, as suddenly it has become a liability to show LPs any holdings of the fruit in the year end statement. The two events combined will likely see furious market volatility persist well through the year end, and since volumes will further die down, we may well see massive stock moves on odd lots. And while AAPL is trading under $500 for the first time since February following last night's Citi downgrade, the confusion over the Fiscal Cliff persists, with The Hill first reporting that Boehner is willing to cave on the debt ceiling extension,  even as Boehner himself subsequently tweeted that "Any increase in the debt limit will require a greater amount in spending cuts and reforms." So back to square one, with a red herring proposal that Boehner can say we offered to the president and the president turned down. Japan continues to attract a lot of attention with the ADHD market desperate to hope that the coming of Abe 2.0 will be much better than that of 1.0, when in one year he achieved nothing and then resigned due to diarrhea. Judging by the action in the USDJPY, we may be a few short hours away from closing the gap that sent the pair to 84.30 first thing, and proceeding to unwind the near record JPY commitment of traders short position as the JPY realizes this time will not be different. Quiet calendar in the US, with the Empire State Manufacturing Index expected to print at -0.5 at 8:30 am Eastern, TIC data to show China's ongoing TSY boycott at 9 am, and a hawkish Jeff "Mutiny on the Eccles" Lacker speech at 1 pm.

Turkey’s trade balance may turn on whether President Barack Obama vetoes more stringent sanctions against Iran after the U.S. Senate passed a measure targeting loopholes in gold exports to the Islamic Republic. Turkey’s gold trade with neighbouring Iran has helped shrink its trade deficit over the past year according to Bloomberg. Incredibly, precious metals accounted for about half of the almost $21 billion decline. That’s calmed investor concern over its current-account gap, and helped persuade Fitch Ratings to give Turkey its first investment-grade rating since 1994.  The U.S. Senate voted 94-0 on Nov. 30 to approve new sanctions against Iran, closing gaps from previous measures, including trade in precious metals. Obama, who opposes the move on the grounds it may undercut existing efforts to rein in the nation’s nuclear ambitions, signed an executive order in July restricting gold payments to Iranian state institutions. Turkey exported $11.9 billion of gold in the first 10 months of the year, according to the Ankara-based statistics agency’s website. A very large 85% of the shipments went to Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Iran is buying the gold with payments Turkey makes for natural gas it purchases in liras, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan told a parliamentary committee in Ankara on Nov. 23.

In a sharp turn around from the open, Italian and Spanish 10yr government bond yield spreads over German bunds trade approx. 10bps tighter on the day, this follows several market events this morning that have lifted sentiment. Firstly from a fixed income perspective, both Spain and Greece managed to sell more in their respective t-bill auctions than analysts were expecting and thus has eased concerns ahead of longer dated issuance from Spain this Thursday. In terms of other trigger points for today's risk on tone the December headline reading in the German ZEW survey was positive for the first time since May 2012 coming in at an impressive 6.9 M/M from previous -15.7 with the ZEW economists adding that Germany will not face a recession. Finally, reports overnight have suggested that Italian PM Monti could be wooed by Centrist groups which means that if he wanted too the technocrat PM could stand for elections next year albeit under a different ticket. As such yesterday's concerns over the Italian political scene have abated and the FTSE MIB and the IBEX 35 are out performing the core EU bourses. Looking ahead highlights from the US include trade balance, wholesale inventories and a USD 32bln 3yr note auction, however, volumes and price action may remain light ahead of the key FOMC decision on Wednesday.

In a perfect trifecta of disappointment, overnight we had reality reassert itself with a thud as first Japan reported weaker than expected GDP which contracted for a second consecutive quarter and which technically sent the country into yet another recession, merely the latest one in its 30+ year deflationary collapse. Which isn't about to get better: "Analysts expect another quarter of contraction in the final three months of this year due to sluggish exports to China, keeping the Bank of Japan under pressure to loosen monetary policy as early as this month." Of course, there is hope that the new, old PM, Abe will restore money trees and unicorns and get Japan to a 3% inflation target, without somehow destroying bank and insurance co balance sheets in the process, all of which are loaded to the gills with JGBs set to collapse should inflation truly return. Then after Japan, China reported miserable trade data, which flatly refuted all hopes of an economic pick up both in the mainland and across the world. Perhaps the reason China can not openly fudge its trade data, unlike its GDP, inflation, retail sales, industrial production and all those other indicators that none other than the incoming head of government Li Keqiang said are for "reference only" (a fact conveiently ignored when they are all going up, and duly noted when China is self-reportedly sliding) because other countries report the counterparty data and it is very easy to catch China lying in this particular case. And finally there was Europe...

The upcoming week is comparatively less loaded with policy events, though the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations in the US remain one of the key developments to follow. Important is also the FOMC meeting on Wednesday, where Goldman and everyone else now expect the Fed to increase their monthly asset purchase target under the QE3 program to $85bn per month, up from $45bn per month; this will keep the pace of asset purchases constant after the Operation Twist expires at the end of December, as Zero Hedge predicted the day QE3 was announced. There are is a handful of other central bank meetings in emerging economies (Russia, Indonesia, South-Korea, Philippines, Chile) although consensus expects no change to the base-rate in most cases. On the data front industrial production numbers for October will be released around the world including in the Euro-area, US and China. We also get the US retail sales number and December flash PMIs for the Euro-area and China.

Today the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut the its rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.0 percent, as panic set in that the resources boom is fading quicker than anticipated. Note that rates have not been this low since the aftermath of the global financial crisis.  This strategic move was done in effort to rekindle the demand in some of the country’s weaker sectors in hopes that they would offset the rapid decline in the mining sector.

The JPY dropped 1.3% against the USD this week for a greater-than-6% drop since its late-September highs as it appears the market is content pricing Abe's dream of a higher inflation-expectation through the currency devaluation route (and not - for now - through nominal bond yields - implicitly signaling 'real' deflationary expectations). In a 'normal' environment, Barclays quantified the impact of a 1ppt shift in inflation expectations from 1% to 2% will create a 'permanent inflation tax' of around 18% (which will be shared between JPY and JGB channels). However, as we discussed in detail in March (and Kyle Bass confirmed and extended recently), the current 'Rubicon-crossing' nature of Japan's trade balance and debt-load (interest-expense-constraint) mean things could become highly unstable and contagious in a hurry. When the upside of your policy plans is an 18% loss of global purchasing power, we hope Abe knows what he is doing (but suspect not).

Confused at why the stock market has risen phoenix-like this week amid no-news on the fiscal cliff, a lack of closure on Greece and EU budgets, and a further collapse in Japan's trade balance? Wonder no longer; for the explanation is simple - a massive and dramatic short-squeeze has created a 200bps outperformance this week among the most-shorted Russell 3000 names. Impressive indeed; sustainable? One wonders if an "expert network" was used by various known and unknown CT-based hedge funds for "advice" to ramp stops in the highest beta, most shorted stocks in a market in which volume would be so abysmal any entity which already controls 10% of NYSE volume could do with the market as it saw fit?

Things are going from worst to worsterer in Japan. Somewhat ironically (given our recent post), this update to the state of play awaiting Mr. Abe is not good. With the Senkaku debacle flaring still in the background, we wonder just how much 'face' the Japanese are willing to lose as their exports fall 6.5% (for the fifth month in a row) dominated by an 11.6% drop 'to' China (which accounted for around 20% of Japanese exports until recently) making it extremely likely the nation is headed for yet another recession. The trade balance missed large to the downside yet again, extending a multi-year trend (and drastically reducing the 'net' exports capital buffer), and so (as USDJPY remains 'strong' despite REER being well below its 1995 peak) we are to believe yet another JPY1tn Koo-nesian fiscal stimulus will do the trick.