Equity Markets

While any moves in the US stock market ahead of Thursday are largely irrelevant, as only Yellen's statement in 4 days will unleash epic algo buying or short covering (yes, according to JPM the Fed statement is bullish no matter what), it is what happened in China that is concerning, because while we had expected Chinese stocks to go nowhere in particular now that index future trading volumes have plunged by 99% or perhaps rise on hopes of even more easing after the latest terrible economic data, the Shanghai Composite dropped 2.7%, but it was the retail darling Shenzhen Composite which tumbled 6.7% - its worst selloff since August 25, while China's Nasdaq, the ChiNext crashed -7.5%.

global bank credit looks like it is already contracting in key markets, such as China, in which case global fundamentals are definitely deteriorating. This being the case, it will take increasing amounts of newly-issued money from the central banks to perpetuate the illusion that markets are rising, and that the economy is still growing, with or without state-directed buying of equities.

"A 'policy error' rate hike might well result in positive correlations among equities, commodities and bonds, due to a combination of risk off and higher rates. In this case it is not entirely clear how risk-parity funds would rebalance: A potential candidate for inflows would be currencies, and in particular the dollar. This would only put additional upward pressure on the dollar, reinforcing the “policy error” nature of the hike."

When a digital dickweed exposes the reality "the equity markets are broken," it can be shrugged off as the rantings of a kid in his mom's basement.

"The shale sector is now being financially stress-tested, exposing shale’s dirty secret: many shale producers depend on capital market injections to fund ongoing activity because they have thus far greatly outspent cash flow."

Perhaps after intervening every single day in the past week (remember that FT piece saying the PBOC would no longer directly buy stocks... good times) in either the stock or the FX (both on and offshore) market, China needed a day off; perhaps even the algos got tired of constantly spoofing the E-mini and inciting momentum ignition, but for whatever reason the overnight session has been oddly uneventful, with no ES halts so far, few USDJPY surges (then again those come just before the US open), and even less violent CNY or CNH moves, leading to virtually unchanged markets in Japan (small red) and China (small green). And while the initial tone in Europe has been modestly "risk off", it is nothing in comparison to the massive gyrations that have become a stape in the past few weeks.

What the pundits attempt to do is have you focus on the forest from an inch away. While the endless optimism of the talking-heads, most recently that the selloff in developed equity markets has gone too far, each offering up various 'narrative' reasons to support their claim; simply put, they are full of tragic flaws. Allow us to color-code this for all those market "pros" and PhD "economists" who haven't been able to follow the premise over the past several months...

Since the “impossible” global panic in 2008, there have been 10 QE’s in Japan but using the numerical standard which has been applied to the Federal Reserve there may have been as many as 22 or more. What none of those have amounted to is an actual and sustainable economic advance; NONE, no matter how you count them. In very simple fact, the idea that central banks “need” to keep doing them in continuous fashion is quite convincing that at the very least they don’t mean what central bankers think they mean, and perhaps worse that the more they are done and to greater extents the more harm that eventually befalls.

This is getting way too stupid. The Keynesian Chorus has launched a full blast trilling campaign, emitting an increasingly shrill cackle of warnings against a Fed rate hike. Yes, 80 months of pumping free money into the canyons of Wall Street is not enough. Why? Well, this is hard to type with a straight face, but according to the cackling gaggle of Keynesian Chicken Littles, the Fed has already tightened too much!

It has become virtually impossible to differentiate between actual central bank intervention, hopes of central bank intervention, and how the two interplay on what was once the "market" but is now merely the place where money printers duke it out every day in some pretense of price discovery set by those who literally print money.

This key barometer of global equities dropped to a level that it could ill-afford to lose. And while a bounce should transpire from here, the fact that the index has been traversing this level for the past 8 days reminds us that significant potential risk awaits should it fall off the precipice.

The good news: the collapse in global market cap since May of 2015 is not the worst ever.

The bad news: the $9 trillion drop in combined market cap between the MSCI All World index and Chinese stocks, is the second highest ever, surpassed only by the $13 plunge in global market capitalization in late 2008.

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%!

Monetary history, staggering mountains of debt, demographic problems, metrics relevant to the gold market, central bank debauchery and currency debasement in all their terrible glory, and even the beer price of gold – the latest Incrementum "In Gold We Trust"chartbook has it all...

Logically, the massive liquidation of USD assets by China and other emerging market central banks should put upward pressure on UST yields and will, all else equal, work at cross purposes with DM central bank QE. But all else is never really equal...