Lehman

The US and world economies are drifting inexorably into the next recession owing to the deflationary collapse of commodities, capital spending and world trade. These are the inevitable “morning after” consequence of the 20-year global credit binge which has now reached its apogee. The apparent global boom during that period was actually a central bank driven excursion into the false economics of household borrowing to inflate consumption in the DM economies; and frenzied, uneconomic investing to inflate GDP in China and the EM. The common denominator was falsification of financial prices. By destroying honest price discovery in the financial markets, the world’s convoy of money-printing central banks led by the Fed elicited a huge excess of financialization relative to economic output.

As the following org chart of Glencore shows, the company - at least on the surface - appears to be far "simpler" than Enron was in the days preceding its biggest, for the time, and quite unexpected, bankruptcy.

On the heels of China's, Japan's, Brazil's, and Europe's Services PMI weakness (and US Manufacturing PMI and ISM weakness), Markit's US Services PMI printed 55.1 (missing exectations of 55.6) and dropping to its lowest since June. This catch-down to Manufacturing weakness suggests the mid-year bounce is well and truly dead as even Markit admits, "it remains unclear as to whether growth will weaken further as we move into Q4." Additionally, after its exuberant spike to 10 year highs in July, ISM Services continued to drop back (to 56.9 missing expectations) with the biggest collapse in New Orders since Lehman.

 "The reason the markets aren't going lower is people are holding and hoping." Incidentally, there is a reason why hope is not a strategy: in the end, it always fails.

"The dollar fx basis declined further over the past two months. The 5-year dollar fx basis weighted across six DM currencies declined to a new  low for the year and the lowest level since the summer of 2012 during the euro debt crisis. In all, continued monetary policy divergence between the US and the rest of the world as well as retrenchment of EM corporates from dollar funding markets are sustaining an imbalance in funding markets making it likely that the current episode of dollar funding shortage will persist."

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

"It's obvious the U.S. is headed for deep deflation, hurt by the strong dollar... The Fed raising rates in this environment is not only ridiculous but harmful. U.S. stocks are plunging, not because of the prospect of a Fed rate hike, but to prevent it."

It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that “nothing is happening” in the financial world right now.

Since the start of June, global equity markets have lost over $13 trillion. World market capitalization has fallen back below $60 trillion for the first time since February 2014 as it appears the world's central planners' print-or-die policy to create wealth (and in some magical thinking - economic growth) has failed - and failed dramatically. To rub more salt in the wounds of monetray policy mumbo-jumbo, despite endless rate cuts and balance sheet expansion around the world, the last 4 months have seen an 18% collapse - the largest since Lehman.

Asian markets are bouncing modestly off a weak US session, buoyed by more unbelievable propaganda from Japan. Abe's proclamations that "deflationary mindset" has been shrugged off was met with calls for more stimulus, more debt monetization, and an admission by Etsuro Honda (Abe's closest adviser) that Japan "is not growing positively" and more QE is required despite trillions of Yen in money-printing having failed miserably, warning that raising taxes to pay for extra budget "would be suicidal." Japanese data was a disaster with factory output unexpectedly dropping 0.5% and retail trade missing. Markets are relatively stable at the open as China margin debt drop sto a 9-month low. PBOC strengthened the Yuan fix for the 3rd day in a row to its strongest in 3 weeks.

Over the past few years three things have 'worked' - Buybacks, Biotechs, and Buying IPOs. Those days are now over...

IPOs have underperformed the S&P 500 by a stunning 17% year-to-date, extending losses today to 26% year-to-date. With private valuations still sky high in the minds of their VC 'guru' investors, we suspect the fact that this year is now the worst year for IPOs since 2008 will begin to raise doubts about even the most unicorn-y opportunity.