And by now, as Zero Hedge first reported, we all know who dumped a boatload of shares of BP just as its sellside team was pushing the stock to a buy...

Just headline for now.

The attached slide deck from Morgan Stanley provides a convenient 5 minute summary of the current state of the global financial and economic picture. Discussing everything from fund flows (nearly $300 billion in domestic equity outflows since the beginning of 2007: strong like bull), to equity hedge fund outflows in Q2 (and fixed income and macro fund inflows), proceeding to the US economy, where the dip in final domestic demand is expected to follow the GDP inflection point shortly (does anyone even remember the disappointing Q2 GDP number posted a long, long time ago last Friday?), a consumer spending number that based on the current saving rate is unsustainable, to the endless rally in corporate profit margins as firms fire any and all non-essential overhead, to China's PMI drop, to Morgan Stanley's reiteration of the bullish Chinese groupthink, to observations of the exquisite correlations between the US ISM, China's PMI, and the MSCI EM Total Perf, the unprecedented decline in US manufacturing as a share of total world manufacturing (charted below), to a hockeystick projection for Emerging Markets where decoupling this time is most certainly different, and other useful, if not particularly original, tidbits of data.

Certainly today started with a very strong risk appetite, and the ISM release will help carry the momentum with PMI/ISM giving the markets an excuse to shrug disappointing GDP data. It also feels like there is a buildingconsensus that going into the fall elections markets will have a strong bid. It makes sense to expect all sorts of stimulus, stimulus promises, and information spin, given that a populist approach where major equity indices are the benchmark of success for politicians has been the mantra for Western democracies over the past 30 years. Basically monetary expansion and propping of financial assets has been the response to the shocks of the 70s after the end of the fight against inflation, and please keep in mind when thinking about this issue that creditexpansion and monetary expansion are very different from rates policy, though both have been used to achieve the same goals over the past few decades. In that sense comments by Mr. Greenspan that a rally in equities would be more beneficial to the economy than anything else is very revealing, if not incriminating in my opinion...

Goldman's Jan Hatzius continues to be one of the most skeptical people when observing recent economic data. His interpretation of today's ISM is no exception. In the meatnime, the market once again doesn't care about anything than a forced headline number (sub 3% 10 Year be damned): "Although the ISM manufacturing index came in higher than our expectation and the median forecast, the composition was weaker than implied by the modest setback in the headline. In particular, the orders index fell 5 points to 53.5 and the production index fell 4.4 points to 57.0. Meanwhile, the inventory index rose 4.4 points to 50.2. Although this algebraically added 0.9 points to the change in the composite index, the combination of a falling orders index and a rising inventory index is clearly not positive for future growth in manufacturing output. At 3.3 points, the difference between the two is the smallest since February 2009, four months before the recovery got underway. On the basis of this composition, we have judgmentally reduced by one point what otherwise would be a US-MAP reading of zero."

The PMI came in at 55.5, a smidge better than expectations of 54.5, yet worse than June's 56.2, and the lowest since December 2009, yet expectations set by a roundtable of Ph.D.'s are all that matters. Among the various indices, New Orders came in at 53.5 versus 58.5, the lowest since Junr 2009, while both Employment and Prices Paid came in better than before at 58.6 and 57.5 respectively. Deterioration was also spotted in Production, Backlog of Orders, and Imports. Yet this seemingly "better than expected" report was overshadowed by the sampling of negative responses:"Business in July was strong, the best month since October 2008." [don't tell this to Arcelor-Mittal] (Fabricated Metal Products), "Slow economy has killed sales for new equipment orders." (Machinery),"Quoting activity and sales are slow, and backlog is dropping." (Computer & Electronic Products),"Business continues to be sluggish and has fallen slightly as the economic ills continue." (Nonmetallic Mineral Products),"Retailers are still unwilling to gamble on inventory." (Printing & Related Support Activities).

The Goldman Markets team has put together this handy analysis on a proposed set of metrics that could be used to spot capitulation days, based on such inputs as VIX, options skew,daily trading volume relative to the 50 DMA, magnitude of sell-off, return from S&P’s intraday low to close, and the Fama-French winner/loser momentum. Based on the correct spotting of true capitulation days, Goldman predicts that those buying stocks following dramatic sell offs leads to abnormal profits. On the other hand Goldman refuses to mention the alternative: shorting the market on dayswhen stocks, which now have an implied correlation of about 1 and no associated volume, melt up alongside the risk-FX squeeze. Furthermore, there is no accounting of those situations where after a several hundre d point drop, the Federal Reserve refuses to get involved, which as Alan Greenspan pointed out, is unlikely, due to the Fed's perception that the market is the one true indicator of economic health (and nothing less than a case of the tail wagging the dog.) Lastly, one should not forget the abysmal track record of Markets' group top 2010 trade recommendations, presented below as of today: with 2 out of 9 top recommendations profitable, clients who have bet against Goldman's sell side advice have made a mint.

Things in the middle east are back to normal (which means the usual deadly massacre), although with a twist. An earlier rocket attack on the Israel port city of Eliat missed its target completely, and instead slammed into Aqaba, in neighboring Jordan, located 6 miles away just over the border. Instead of firing the rockets from Israel and prompting immediate airborne retaliation, the launch point for today's attack was Egypt, which prevent Israel (or should that be Jordan) from retaliating. Sky News reports that the reason for the shelling is connected to a recent agreement that will see the Palestinian authorities talk face-to-face with the Israelis, and radical elements, who do not want that to happen, are escalating the violence as a means to stop it. It is unclear if Jordan will also escalate now that its own territory has been impacted in the ongoing conflict, and it is also to be seen how Egypt will react should it become perceived as a peripheral zone of cross-border attacks.