Crude

S&P threatening to downgrade India... UK double dipping... Germany having a failed auction. It is all irrelevant, for the great fruit has spoken and people are buying iGadgets at record levels, which can only mean that once the great credit spree ends, Apple will likely be forced to use its $110 billion cash hoard to start an in house "Acceptance Corporation" vendor financing purchases of its products directly. And while the AAPL earnings beat has become a contrarian bet, now that even Gartman has said he is turning bullish on stocks, here is a summary of what happened and what will happen. In a nutshell, just like Apple was the only thing that mattered yesterday, today it is only the Fed and the subsequent press conference that matter, with the market likely to only take away whatever it wants to take away.

All you need to read.

It' quiet out there... Too quiet, as everyone is awaiting the most important earning number of the quarter - that of Apple. Everything else is secondary. Here is how the secondary data is driving the market so far in the trading session.

All you need to read and some more.

European stocks are trading lower as North America enters the market with participants coming to terms with the political events of the weekend. The collapse of the Dutch government has clouded the future for fiscal harmonisation in the Eurozone and the outperformance of the far-right in the French Presidential elections has highlighted the discontent of the populous with mainstream politics. As such, all European bourses are trading significantly lower, with the Bund seen trading higher by around 70 ticks. European government bond yield spreads against the German 10-yr reflect the caution, with the Dutch/German spread widening by over 10BPS and the Spanish yield holding above 6% for most of the session.

Our equity Bloomberg screens are bright red, as equity markets sell off across the globe. Several reasons are contributing to the market selloff: 1) several firms in Asia posted weaker-than-expected earnings, 2) worries that Europe's debt crisis still threatens global growth, 3) the French elections, and 4) a breakdown of budget talks in the Netherlands.

Wholesale gasoline futures are down around 8% from their late March peak. This follows the late February peak in WTI crude prices. Joseph Brusuelas of Bloomberg's Economics Brief today asks whether this signals a peak in retail gas prices - which are up around 20% this year. In a very similar seasonal and monetary cycle manner to last year, energy prices are rolling over but will retail follow again this time as it did before. For sure this would provide direct releif to households, as Brusuelas notes, that have seen average hourly earnings decline for 13 consecutive months. The typical lag is 2-4 weeks before wholesale improvements start showing up in retail prices and while we wait with baited breath for that spending relief, we note that at the same time, the average price of gasoline in Europe just broke back above $10 per gallon (equivalent) to its highest in almost a year showing no signs of retracing at all.

Japanese Finance Minister said an IMF funding increase to USD 400bln is "coming into sight", and that he expects the BRIC nations to offer funds to the IMF at the appropriate time. The finance minister sees funding figures to be released as early as tomorrow. (Sources) The IMF looks set to reach or pass that target, with USD 320bln secured yesterday and many of the largest emerging economies still to contribute. ECB’s Knot and EU’s Rehn have said IMF commitments may have to be up to USD 500bln, and expects China to boost resources.  Brazil’s finance minister has said his country is still not ready to give numbers on their IMF contribution. The Indian finance minister has said he will take time to provide an answer to the funding question for the IMF. China also remains undecided on an increased IMF contribution.

All you need to know.

Contrary to BP's Happy Talk, the Gulf Ecosystem Is Being Decimated ...

According to the latest OPEC data, Saudi Arabia, which in its own view, is some endless pool of easily retrievable crude, yet which Phibro's Andy Hall, as well as leaked confidential docs, claim is nothing but one big lie, pumped a record 9.834 million barrels per day, an increase of just 24K barrels from February's total (based on secondary market data, not direct communication). While we salute Saudi's peak production, which has never crossed over the 10 MMBPD level, we wonder, just how and where will Saudi get the 25% extra spare crude capacity needed to fully replace Iran's embargoed oil, which however continues to flow. Or it does at least according to Iran - oil production rose in February and March, if just redirected: India and certainly China (which is currently adding to its strategic reserves as pointed out here some time ago) are delighted to buy excess Iran production. Based on secondary market sources, Iran production has declined from 3.46MM BPD to 3.35MM BPD: hardly much of an "embargo" impact.

As Europe approaches the halfway point of the week, equities are suffering losses on the day as North America comes to market, with underperformance observed in the CAC and peripheral bourses. Markets have been weighed down upon from the open with commentary from the Portuguese PM garnering attention in the press, saying that there are ‘no guarantees’ that Portugal will return to the financial markets as planned. A Bank of Spain release has shown the bad loan ratio for the country’s banks has increased to 8.16%, further weighing on sentiment. There was also market talk of stop-loss buying of German Bunds at the cash open, the security had sold off since then but safe haven flows have kept the Bund in positive territory.

Following a blistering two days of upside activity in Europe and a manic depressive turn in the US in the past 48 hours, the rally is now be running on fumes, and may be in danger of flopping once again, especially in Spain where the IBEX is tumbling by over 3% to a fresh 3 year low. Still, the Spanish 10 year has managed to stay under 6% and is in fact tighter on the day in the aftermath of the repeatedly irrelevant Bill auctions from yesterday, when the only thing that matters is tomorrow's 10 Year auction. Probably even more important is that the BOE now appears to have also checked to Bernanke and no more QE out of the BOE is imminent. As BofA summarizes, "The BoE voted 8-1 to leave QE on hold at their April meeting: a more hawkish outturn than market expectations of an unchanged 7-2 vote from March. Adam Posen - the most dovish member of the BoE over the last few quarters - took off his vote for £25bn QE, while David Miles judged that his vote for £25bn more QE was finely balanced (less dovish than his views in March)." Even the BOE no longer know what Schrodinger "reality" is real: "The BoE judged that developments over the month had been relatively mixed, with a lower near-term growth outlook, but a higher near-term inflation outlook. However, they thought that the official data suggesting very weak construction output and soft manufacturing output of late were “perplexing”, and they were not “minded to place much weight on them”." Naturally, this explains why Goldman's Carney may be next in line to head the BOE - after all to Goldman there is no such thing as a blunt "firehose" to deal with any "perplexing" issue. Finally, the housing market schizophrenia in the US continues to rule: MBA mortgage applications rose by 6.9% entirely on the back of one of the only positive refinancing prints in the past 3 months, which rose by 13.5% after a 3.1% drop last week. As for purchases - they slammed lower by 11.2%, the second week in a row. Hardly the basis for a solid "recovery."

Billionaires, Corruption, and Crony Capitalism

The Brent-WTI spread has compressed under $14 for the first time in 10 weeks but it is being led by the margin-hiker-in-chief's most visible indication of dastardly speculation - the WTI contract as Brent remains close to unchanged. Perhaps, just perhaps, there really is little to no speculation (remember there is a speculative seller for every speculative buyer no matter how many speculator-surveilled market participants there are). As WTI breaks $105 for the first time in almost three weeks, we suppose this is not what Obama was hoping for and just as we pointed out earlier - just as every failed attempt at central planning, all Obama will achieve is another spike in crude prices - an hour later - we are proved right.