Wholesale Inventories

Wholesales Inventories and Sales beat expectations (+0.3% and +0.2% respectively) but, thanks to significant downward revisions in August, hope for a Q3 GDP boost are dashed. Sales growth remains near 2014 lows and inventory growth hovers near 14 month lows. Inventories-to-Sales ratios were flat in September at 1.19 months. Petroleum inventories plunged 5.3% MoM and down 13.2% YoY - the largest since Jul 2009.

With the USDJPY repeatedly hitting 116.00 as a result of the same pair of headlines hitting either Reuters, the Nikkei or Sankei every 6 or so hours for the past 3 days, namely that Japan will delay its sales tax hike by almost two years, and that Abe is preparing early elections, perhaps the algos realized they were pricing in the same event about 4 times in one day, and unable to break the 7-year-high resistance level, slid dropping nearly 100 pips to just over 115 at least check, which may well be today's "tractor" level, which in turn has also dragged down both European stocks and US futures. But the thing that made the vacuum tubes really spark is that at a press conference yesterday in Beijing, Abe was quoted as saying that he "has never made any reference to the dissolution of parliament", this came after the chief cabinet secretary Suga saying that the decision on whether or not to go to the polls would be Abe’s only.

Following Friday's sticksave, where the usual 3:30 pm ramp brigade pushed futures just barely green into the close despite a miss in the payrolls report which the spin brigade did everything in its power to make it seem that the hiring a few hundred thousand young female waitresses was bullish for the economy, overnight we have seen a listless session, dominated by more USD-profit taking as increasingly more wonder if the relentless surge higher in the Greenback is massively overdone, especially considering that stocks are screaming "worldwide recession" excluding the US, if only for now, because as Goldman explained soaring USD means plunging Oil, means tumbling E&P capex, means lower GDP, means less growth, means lower corporate profits, and so on. That said, we expect the now trivial Virtu JPY momentum-ignition algos to activate shortly, pushing the USDJPY and its derivative, the S&P500, higher in the coming minutes, and certainly before the US market opens in under 3 hours.

• IRELAND SELLS 10-YEAR BONDS AT RECORD-LOW YIELD OF 1.63%
• GERMAN 10-YEAR BUNDS RISE; YIELD FALLS 2 BASIS POINTS TO 0.88%
• DUTCH 10-YEAR GOVERNMENT BOND YIELD DROPS TO RECORD-LOW 1.021%
• PORTUGUESE 10-YEAR BOND YIELD DROPS TO RECORD-LOW 2.942%
• FRENCH 10-YEAR GOVERNMENT BOND YIELDS DROP TO RECORD-LOW 1.214%
• U.S. 10-YEAR NOTE YIELD DROPS TO 2.296%, LOWEST SINCE JUNE 2013
• SPANISH 10-YEAR BOND YIELD DROPS TO RECORD-LOW 2.038%
• FINNISH 10-YEAR YIELD DROPS TO 1% FOR FIRST TIME ON RECORD

While the biggest micro news of the weekend is certainly the report that Hewlett-Packard has finally thrown in the towel on organic growth (all those thousands laid off over the past ten years can finally breathe easily - they were not fired in vain), and has proceeded to do what so many said was its only real option: splitting into two separate companies, a personal-computer and printer business, and corporate hardware and services operations (which will certainly lead to even more stock buybacks only not at one but two companies) which in turn has sent its stock and futures higher, perhaps the most notable development in the macro world is Japan's realization finally that the weaker Yen is crushing domestic businesses, which has resulted in the USDJPY sliding to lows last seen at Friday's jobs report print, and also generally leading to across the board wekness for the dollar, whose relentless surge in the past 3 months is strongly reminiscent of the euphoria following the Plaza Accord, only in the other direction (and making some wonder if the Plaza Hotel caterer are about to see a rerun of September 22, 1985 in the coming weeks).

With GDP now basically an exercise in inventory expansion and contraction (Q2 inventory estimate amounted to 40% of GDP), this 'miss' in July Wholesale Inventories provides a worrying glimpse into Q3 GDP.  Against expectations on a 0.5% rise MoM, inventories rose only 0.1% (and June was revised lower) to the weakest inventory build since May 2013. This is the 3rd miss in a row.

Overnight the most notable move has been the ongoing weakness in rates, with USTs reversing earlier Tokyo gains after BoJ Deputy Governor Iwata, in addition to commenting on a lot of things that didn't make much sense,  said he didn’t see any difficulties in money market operations even if BoJ bought bought government debt with negative yields, as InTouch Capital Markets notes. As a reminder, yesterday we noted that in a historic first the "Bank Of Japan Monetizes Debt At Negative Rates." As Bloomberg notes, this may be interpreted that BoJ may target negative yields to penalize savers, which "all boosts the appeal of yen-funded carry trades." In other words, first Europe goes NIRP, now it's Japan's turn! So while this certainly lit the fire under the USDJPY some more, which overnight broke about 106.50 and hit as high as 106.75 on Iwata's comments, it does not explain why the 10Y is currently trading 2.52% - after all the fungible BOJ money will eventually make its way into US bonds and merely add to what JPM has calculated is a total $5 trillion in excess liquidity sloshing in the global market.

One of the more amusing comments overnight came from Bank of America, which now predicts that China's export growth will be boosted by iPhone 6 by 1% per month through year-end. Whether or not this is accurate is irrelevant, but we are happy that unlike before, BofA has finally figured out that iPhone sales are positive for Chinese GDP, not US, which was the case with the release of the iPhone 4 and 5, when clueless strategists all came out boosting their US (!) GDP forecasts on the iPhone release. We note this because the long-awaited release of Apple's new iPhone will certainly grab some attention tomorrow. According to a BofA poll last week and of the 124 respondents surveyed, 66% of those have noted that they are going to buy the new iPhone and of those planning to buy 75% of those will be replacing their iPhone 5/5s.

After being solidly ignored for weeks, suddenly the Scottish independence referendum is all anyone can talk about, manifesting itself in a plunge in the GBPUSD which ha slide over 100 pips in the past 24 hours, adding to the slide over the past week, and is now just above 1.61, the lowest since November 2013. In fact, the collapse of the unionist momentum has managed to push back overnight news from Ukraine, major Russian sanction escalations, Japan GDP as well as global trade data on the back burner. Speaking of global trade, with both China and Germany reporting a record trade surplus overnight, with the US trade deficit declining recently, and with not a single country in the past several month reporting of an increase in imports, one wonders just which planet in the solar system (or beyond) the world, which once again finds itself in a magical global trade surplus position, is exporting to?

Against expectations of a further rise in inventory build of 0.7%, wholesale inventories rose only 0.3% in June (the same pace as in May) missing by the most since February 2013. With GDP now basically an exercise in inventory expansion and contraction (Q2 inventory estimate amounte to 40% of GDP), this 'miss' offers little hope for the initial Q2 rebound to hold its exuberance. In addition, wholesale sales also missed (up only 0.2% against expectations of a 0.7% rise) with growth slowing for the 3rd month in a row.

Late yesterday, after Nobel peace prize-winning president Obama revealed his latest military incursion, years of pent up can-kicking almost caught up with futures, which dared to tumble by a whopping 0.7%, a move which hit Europe far more than the US, and shortly after Europe's open, the Euro Stoxx 50 Index dropped 10% from its 2014 high, marking an official correction in Europe where the Dax continues to be the key risk indicator, and which dropped as low as 8,903 before recovering to a drop of only 0.9% while German Bunds continues to print record highs day after day on fears what the escalating Russian trade war will do to the German economy, and other such "costs." US futures meanwhile have seen most of their losses recovered thanks to the usual relentless low volume USDJPY levitation, which pushed ES down to just -0.2% after a nearly four times greater drop. Still, while futures may be surging, the 10 Year has not gotten the memo and remains stuck just above 2.36% or its lowest print since June 2013, a clear indication that at least the bond market has given up all hope of a so-called US recovery for the conceivable future. What is most important however, is that at this pace, the Friday confidence effect, i.e., a green close, may be recovered: let's all just wait and see what the NY Fed trading desk decides to do, and escalating world wars aside, let's just pretend that HY didn't just sugger the biggest weekly HY outflow in history didn't just take place.

Unlike last week's economic report deluge, this week has virtually no A-grade updates of note, with the key events being Factory Orders (exp. 0.6%), ISM non-mfg (exp. 56.5), Trade balance (Exp. -$44.9 bn), Unit Labor Costs (1.2%) and Wholesale Inventories (0.7%).

Following a ghastly week for stocks, the momentum algos were desperate for something, anything to ignite some upward momentum and stop the collapse which last week pushed the DJIA into the red for the year: they got it overnight with the previously reported bailout of Portugal's Banco Espirito Santo, where the foreplay finally ended and after the Portuguese Central Bank finally realized that the bank is insolvent and that no more private investors will "recapitalize" it further, finally bailed it out, sticking the stock and the subs into a bad bank runoff entity, while preserving the senior bonds. So much for Europe's much vaunted bail in regime and spreading of pain across asset classes. At least the depositors did not get Cyprused, for now. 

This clown parade of clueless opinions (did we mention Goldman had BES at a buy until this morning?), stretched all the way to the very top with Bank of Portugal itself issuing the following pearl:

• BANK OF PORTUGAL SAYS BES DEPOSITORS CAN STAY CALM

Uhhh, what else would the Portugal central bank say? Panic and withdraw your deposits from a bank whose exposures to insolvent entities have been largely unknown until today (and even now).

Another day, another uncomfortable fact about Q2 not being the epic bounce back that so many had promised. Wholesale Inventories rose only 0.5% in May - following April's +1.1%. This is the slowest growth in 2014 and biggest miss of expectations since Dec 2013. Wholesale sales also fel back, missing expectations at +0.7%, to the slowest since Feb as April hopes fade. Cue, Q2 GDP downgrades in 3...2...1...