Yen

There was no good news overnight: CSCO (a rather prominent DJIA member) imploded on global demand weakness, China posted a larger than expected trade surplus which however was due to a greater than expected drop in imports, European industrial production was slightly better in Italy but offset by worse than expected news out of France (as for Greece - forget it), while all the attention continues to be focus on how the Greek endgame plays out, and now Spain too. Still, futures are on the cusp of greenness simply because following 6 days of declines stocks are oversold, and will desperately try to rally into any good news: such as initial claims later today, which will once again be spun as "declining" following a bigger upward revision to last week's number, making this week's appear to drop... at least until next week. As usual be on the watch for any erroneous headlines based on spurious rumors out of Greek developments: these tend to more the EURUSD, and thus ES, quite violently.

Sign of Japan's "declining economic power"

All you need to read and some more.

Preaching from the pulpit of the fiscally most undisciplined country in the world

One can call the BOJ inefficient, slow and for the most part utterly worthless, but one can certainly not accuse them of lying, and beating around the bush. Because unlike all other central banks, with the BOJ at least it has been fully public knowledge that this particular central bank unlike all others (wink wink), is actively engaged in buying equity products, among them REITs and broad equity ETFs (which provide much explicit tail-wags-dog leverage and explains why the FRBNY's red phone hotline goes directly to Citadel's ETF trading desk). And buy stocks on full tilt and in record quantities is precisely what the BOJ just did, only as one can expect, with absolutely no impact on the broader stock market. Because once even the central bank is exposed as participating in the market, the element of surprise is gone, and the central bank becomes just one mark (if one with a largish balance sheet). As MarketWatch reports, "The Bank of Japan stepped back into the stock market Monday, making its largest single-day purchase of exchange-traded funds to date... The Japanese central bank said it spent 39.7 billion yen (about $500 million) buying up stock ETFs as part of its ongoing asset-purchase program, breaking a previous record of ¥28.5 billion, set on April 16. In addition to the ETF buys, the Bank of Japan also acquired ¥2.3 billion in real-estate investment trusts Monday." Too bad that this latest outright bull in a Japan store (sic) intervention had zero impact: "the move failed to prevent a sharp fall for the Tokyo equity market." But at least they are honest. Imagine the shock and horror (and complete lack of apologies to all those who have predicted just that) when the world finally gets a trade confirm-based proof that Brian Sack was indeed buying (never selling) SPYs and ES. Why everyone would be truly shocked, SHOCKED, that the Fed is nothing but another two-bit gambler in a rigged and broken casino.

Anybody watching the EUR/CHF exchange rate this year was wondering why the volatility the pair saw last year had completely left. The pair slowly fell from 1.2156 over 1.2040 at the end of Q1 to 1.2014 today. FX traders hoped on a hike of the floor from 1.20 to 1.25, as many Swiss politicians and companies requested. Banks sold masses of Long EUR/CHF certificates and options. The retail market measured in SSI (Speculative Sentiment Index) was 96% long EUR/CHF.  We saw the typical Forex web sites telling regularly their masses of followers that the protagonists of these web sites were going long EUR/CHF in the hope that the SNB is going to act. This happened at multiple critical levels, at 1.2070, 1.2050, at 1.2030 and finally at 1.2010. The small FX trader was begging for months that the SNB would finally intervene. When all these people were long EUR/CHF, who was actually short, when the exchange rate continued to fall ? We speculated that some big accounts wanted their clients to be knocked out with their EUR/CHF longs, we thought that Swiss pension funds and big investors continued to repatriate their foreign funds.  What did the SNB ? Did they support the hopes of the masses, of all these SNB rooters ? But on the back-door of all this rhetoric they did the complete opposite: The central bank was happy to get rid of their Euros at a higher price than the floor they had set in September 2011 !

In the shady underground world of banking, doing wrong means doing right, up is down, and left is right.

When we talk about Europe today in an economic context, we really mean the Eurozone, whose seventeen members are the core of Europe and share a common currency, the euro. The euro first came into existence thirteen years ago, on January 1, 1999, replacing national currencies for eleven states; Greece joined two years later. In theory, the idea of a common currency for European nations with common borders is logical, and it was Canadian economist Robert Mundell's work on optimum currency areas that provided much of the theoretical cover. However, the concept was flawed from the start.

Looking at your screens and seeing nothing but black? Don't worry, your internet feed did not get cut - it is just that virtually everyone else in the world is taking today off (although judging by recent volumes one could be forgiven to assume that it is "just another day"). Which is not to say that nothing is happening, with a surprising bigger than expected rate cut (50 bps to 3.75%) by the RBA crushing AUD longs overnight, and a Manufacturing ISM on deck which is far shakier now than it was before yesterday's major PMI miss. Compounding the concerns was a UK PMI print just barely above contraction territory at 50.5, below expectations of 51.5, down from 52.1. Finally, expect another record bout of GM channel stuffing which continues to be the only "shining" aspect of the now inflecting US recovery. To summarize with DB's Jim Reid: "Ahead of an important day, it has been a fairly quiet session for markets overnight. Most Asian markets (include Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and South Korea) are closed for Labour Day. Indeed much of Europe will be closed today. In terms of what's open overnight, the Nikkei is -1.2% but the ASX 200 is up +0.9%. China’s official PMI manufacturing inched a little higher in April to 53.3 from 53.1 in March but slightly below market consensus (53.6). For such a huge economy the Chinese official PMI series does seem to have been remarkably smooth of late as the reading has been gradually on the rise since hitting a recent low of 49.0 in November (50.3 in Dec, 50.5 in Jan, 51.0 in Feb, 53.1 in Mar, 53.3 in April). As we go to print the Reserve Bank of Australia has unexpectedly cut its key benchmark rate by 50bps to 3.75%. Indeed only 2 out of 29 economists polled by Bloomberg saw this coming. The market reacted aggressively post the announcement taking the front end bills 15-18bp lower in yields."

Goldman summarizes what to look forward to in the next few days, when once again fundamental will be ignored and all attention will be on the ECB. "The Week ahead will be dominated by global PMI and US labour market data as the two key releases. A few central banks meetings are on schedule, but market consensus suggests clearly that that ECB will not change its policy, while the RBA will likely cut interest rates by 25bp. There are also central bank meetings in Columbia, Thailand and the Czech Republic.  The impact of these events on the FX markets, in particular the key activity data, will mainly be driven by the usual risk-on/risk-off mechanics. Moreover, with cyclical data generally weakening, chances are that risk-off currencies could perform relatively better this week. Some additional Yen strength is therefore possible, as well some under-performance of pro-cyclical currencies. The AUD may be worth some particular attention with the RBA meeting this week and the Chinese PMI - both key drivers of the currency."

Hugh Hendry is back with a bang after a two year hiatus with what so many have been clamoring for, for so long - another must read letter from one of the true (if completely unsung) visionary investors of our time: "I have not written to you at any great length since the winter of 2010. This is largely because not much has happened to change our views. We still see the global economy as grotesquely distorted by the presence of fixed exchange rates, the unraveling of which is creating financial anarchy, just as it did in the 1920s and 1930s. Back then the relevant fixes were around the gold standard. Today it is the dual fixed pricing regimes of the euro countries and of the dollar/renminbi peg."

Way back in 2009, we remember fielding all manner of questions from people wanting to invest in gold, having seen it spike from its turn-of-the-millennium slump, and worried about the state of the wider financial economy. A whole swathe of those were from people wanting to invest in exchange traded funds (ETFs). John Aziz always and without exception slammed the notion of a gold ETF as being outstandingly awful, and solely for investors who didn’t really understand the modern case for gold — those who believed that gold was a 'commodity' with the potential to 'do well' in the coming years. People who wanted to push dollars in, and get more dollars out some years later. 2009 was the year when gold ETFs really broke into the mass consciousness. Yet by 2011 the market had collapsed: people were buying much, much larger quantities of physical bullion and coins, but the popularity of ETFs had greatly slumped. This is even clearer when the ETF market is expressed as a percentage of the physical market. So what does this say about gold now? Especially as Zhang Jianhua of the PBoC noted "No asset is safe now. The only choice to hedge risks is to hold hard currency — gold."

In short? Nothing good.

Better late than never. All you need to read. 

The Fed’s promise to use more QE should the economy falter is supporting gold.

The global economic picture remains grim, with euro zone economic sentiment falling more than

expected in April and the US job market recovery showing signs of a slowdown.

Apple earnings and the tech boom and indeed possible tech bubble remains one of the primary

drivers of continuing irrational exuberance and risk appetite.

The poor and deteriorating economic backdrop is gold supportive.