Aussie

Thirsty Californians are pinning their hopes that worried farmers in Australia are right. After months of the Polar Vortex dumping snow on the US east coast and drought on the west coast (and crushing the American Dream of an 'escape velocity' economy), The US Climate Prediction Center issued an El Nino watch bring hope of a big rain year for California, floods in South America, and dismal droughts in Southeast Asia. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said an El Nino could occur during the southern hemisphere winter from May-July. Increased sea surface temperatures suggest an increasing chance of the global weather phenomenon and the great rotation from a Polar Vortex to a Solar Vortex.

While every other asset class in the world has now been found to be subject to some form of manipulation (from LIBOR rates to FX fixes and from commodity warehousing to HFT equity front-running), the stakes in a COMEX silver/gold/copper manipulation lawsuit are staggering. Not only is market manipulation the most serious market crime possible, the markets that have been manipulated and the number of those injured are enormous. It is likely not an exaggeration to say that any finding that JPMorgan and the COMEX did manipulate prices as we contend could very well result in the highest damage awards in history. That’s no small thing considering the tens of billions of dollars that JPMorgan has coughed up recently for infractions in just about every line of their business. Our point is that no legal case could be potentially more lucrative or attention getting than this one. It is clear the CFTC will never act and so class-action lawsuits may just be the only way the data is du into deep enough to uncover the truth.

An overview of the technical condition of the major currencies.  

Copper's China-credit-contraction-driven crash continues as the metal drops to fresh 5-year lows today (on par with Lehman and the US downgrade collapses). Japanese stocks are down over 1000 points from their post-Putin highs. Russian stocks are plunging, Germany's (and Swiss) bonds are surging (as is gold) and European equity and credit markets are in free-fall. But apart from that... Finally we saw the world's angst spill into Yen-carry trades (USDJPY was spanked today - almost biggest drop in 6 months). US equities plunged tick-for-tick with USDJPY (S&P's biggest drop in 6 weeks and red for 2014); Treasury yields were crushed 9-10bps from intraday highs (biggest drop in 2 months); credit spreads banged wider; gold jumped to six-month highs; and EUR weakness (post-Draghi) ramped the USD back near unchanged on the week. VIX was a one-way street higher all day (biggest low-to-high run in 6 weeks) to 6-week highs.

Australia just added the 3rd most full-time jobs ever in a month according to the Aussie Bureau of Statistics. That is 16-times the average monthly gain since 1978. Of course, rather than shrug it off as some idiotic aberration as the nation suffers under the crushing blow of a collapsing commodit market and shrinking China, "traders" bid AUDJPY to the moon (which sparked a mini-rally in US equity futures).

Following a triumvirate of macro misses from AsiaPac (South Korea unemployment surged, Aussie confidence plunged, and Japanese inflation tumbled), the credit concerns running riot through the collateral underlying China's shadow banking system continue to crush Copper (and iron ore) prices. Copper is limit down in Shanghai at its lowest since July 2009 - these size moves have only occurred twice in history (Lehman and the US downgrade). Japanese stocks are ignoring any ramp efforts in USDJPY and US equity futures are fading qucikly with AUDJPY....

A near-term outlook for the dollar against the major foreign currencies.  

A weekly technical outlook for the major currencies.

With iron-ore stockpiles at record highs in China amid the escalating cash-for-steel financing debacles, one can only imagine the squeeze that is about to occur on the banks of a nation that is almost entirely economically dependent on said iron-ore mining production... which made us think when we saw this sign "justifying" holding low cash amounts in an Aussie bank ATM...

A look at the price action among the major currencies for the week ahead. 

New figures show China's credit bubble continues to grow. President Xi Jinping hasn't done nearly enough to arrest the bubble and needs to act fast.

There is a very good chance that the crisis that began in 2008 is actually not over by any stretch – it is merely moving from one place to the next. After all, the developments discussed below are a direct result of the reaction of the world's monetary authorities to the initial crisis. China's credit bubble and ZIRP in the US and Europe are all children of the crisis and have evidently sown the seeds for the next crisis. As we always stress, we expect that the next major crisis will eventually lead to a crisis of confidence in said monetary authorities. At some point, faith in central banks is bound to crumble and then we will really experience 'interesting times'.

A technical look at the currencies.  The phase that has characterized the first few weeks of the year has ended and a new one has begun.

Once again the smell of NAPALM is in the air

USDJPY opened the evening under 102 with JPY holding its losses until aroun 1700ET when it broke back above the crucial level. S&P futures and USDJPY recoupled for a few hours but are now decoupling faster than the Seahawks and Broncos (S&P -1pt, USDJPY +30 pips). The catalyst for the disconnect (which Japan's Nikkei is also following) was weakness in Chinese data. Following Aussie PMI's lowest print in 5 months, China's Services PMI printed at its lowest on record and its biggest 3 month slide in 16 months. Japan's Nikkei 225 is now down 10% in 2014 and 7 of the last 8 days and 20Y JGB yields are testing 9-month lows.