Hong Kong

The People’s Bank of China may have tripled holdings of bullion since it last updated them in April 2009, to 3,510 metric tons. It is worth noting that the U.S. refuses to allow their gold reserves to be publicly audited and the Bundesbank is having difficulty repatriating much of its gold stored with the Federal Reserve. This has led many analysts to speculate that the U.S.’s gold reserves have been leased out or sold or are encumbered as part of an ongoing effort to manipulate gold prices.

• Because it just gets funnier: UK speed trader arrested over role in 2010 'flash crash' (Reuters)
• ... and funnier: Mystery Trader Armed With Algorithms Rewrites Flash Crash Story (BBG)
• Presidential hopeful Rubio reaches out to gay Republicans (Reuters)
• Varoufakis Sees Differences Narrowing in Creditor Talks (BBG)
• China Debt Mess Brings Out the Yin and Yang in Policy Makers (BBG)
• Hedge Fund That Made 18% on Dollar Strength Now Bets on Drop (BBG)
• Whistleblower Jim Marchese Scores Millions in Payout—Again (WSJ)
• Release of Benghazi Report on Hillary Clinton Likely Pushed to Election Season (BBG)

• The Fed Still Wants Easy Money (BBG) - you don't say
• ECB Is Studying Curbs on Greek Bank Support (BBG)
• Banks Paid to Borrow as Three-Month Euribor Drops Below Zero (BBG)
• Baoding Tianwei is first state-owned Chinese enterprise to default (Reuters)
• Major Chinese Developer Says It Can’t Pay Dollar Debts (BBG)
• Wall Street Has No Idea How Much Money Venezuela Has (BBG)
• Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Find Different Paths to Profits (WSJ)
• Does the Collapse of a Chinese Developer Signal the Start of More Defaults? (BBG)
• Retail Traders Wield Social Media for Investing Fame (WSJ)

"The exchange's trading turnover exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($161.28 billion) for the first time on Monday, but the data could not be properly displayed because its software was not designed to report numbers that high," Reuters reports, in what looks like further evidence that China's self-feeding equity mania is reaching epic proportions. On the bright side, it's not often in today's market that man overcomes software, so score one for human traders.

While this week sees the peak of Q1 earnings season, it will be a generally quiet week on the macro economic front for both EM and DM, with the emphasis on the latest seasonally adjusted manufacturing sentiment surveys, US durables and Japan trade.

• Just How Leaky Is the Fed? More Than You May Realize (BBG)
• Republican Presidential Candidates Spar Over Party’s Future (WSJ)
• Euro Area Seeks Greece Roadmap to May Agreement (BBG)
• The $320 Billion Bogey Needed to Placate U.S. Stock Market Bulls (BBG)
• Seeking Obamacare alternative, Republicans eye tax credits (Reuters)
• Gundlach Says Market Hasn’t Seen Full Impact of Fed Moves (BBG)
• EU meets on migrant crisis as shipwreck corpses brought ashore (Reuters)
• Canada’s Own Oil Pipeline Problem (WSJ)

As we observed yesterday when we showed that if comparing the collapse in China's housing market with that of the US following their respective peaks then China is already a recession, we added that "as shown in the chart below [China] has recently engaged in several easing steps, with many more to come according to the sell-side consensus." Sure enough, just a few hours later, the PBOC announced its second Reserve Requirement Ratio (RRR) for all banks since February 4, when China had its first industry-wide RRR cut since May 2012. The move will be effective Monday, April 20.

"The last time China suffered such pace of capital outflows was during 2012 when $165bn of capital left during the last three quarters of that year. And before then it was during the Lehman crisis," JPM notes, in yet another sign that Beijing is stuck between a rock and a hard place as it battles to maintain the dollar peg in the face of slumping economic growth.

Central bankers in the U.S., Europe and Asia have created another massive bubble. This time it is a bubble in stocks, bonds and real estate simultaneously. There is no place to hide. But we’d put my money on war, chaos, and revolution. There will be no impunity for our gambling.

Just as China was closing for trade and Europe was opening, something previously unseen happened: no, not another another GPIF or Virtu inspired marketwide stop squeeze, those are quite recurring these days. It was virtually every Bloomberg terminal around the globe suddenly going dark.

• Fed Shies Away From June Rate Hike (Hilsenrath)
• Europe Stocks Fall Most in Three Weeks Amid Greece as Banks Drop (BBG)
• China Futures Tumble on Trust Curbs, Expansion of Short Selling (BBG)
• Oil slips below $64 as ample supplies weigh (Reuters)
• Fed officials lean all ways on rate hikes, data in focus (Reuters)
• Eurozone deflation eases in March (FT)

As noted earlier, while tens of thousands of Bloomberg terminal users were twiddling their thumbs during an outage that lasted several hours, China crashed.  There was some confusion about the cause of the rapid move, but it appears the catalyst was an announcement by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in which it allowed fund managers to lend shares for short-selling, and will also expand the number of stocks investors can short sell, in a bid to raise the supply of securities in the market.

Because the only thing more exciting than betting on the continuation of a margin-fueled, self-feeding domestic mania is betting on the exchange where the maniacs are trading...

While the world gasped last night when China's production-based, and goalseeked GDP number came in at 7.0% - the lowest in 6 years the truly scary numbers were in the details, which revealed unprecedented deterioration. Details which suggest China is now growing at a 1.6% annual pace: the lowest in modern history.