Markit

It would appear that monetizing more than 100% of your debt and constant daily reassurances that everything is awesome are not enough to create real world economic growth. Japanese manufacturing PMI slipped to 51.5 in February (missing expectations of 52.2), its lowest since July 2014 as New Orders & Employment slowed. Perhaps most worrying for the deflation-death match Abe is wagering, Output prices tumbled. Japanese stocks don't care of course, having entirely decoupled from JPY when The BoJ scared the FX carry markets with its 'hawkish' bias and 5-4 vote.

The bond market may have gotten so fragmented in recent months that even Bloomberg was amazed at how little trading volume it necessary to make a price impact, the amount of bond traders (and certainly salesmen), and certainly their bonuses, appeared to only go up. "Appeared" being the key word, however, because as Bloomberg reports, "the average number of dealers providing prices for European corporate bonds dropped to a low of 3.2 per trade last month, down from 8.8 in 2009, according to data compiled by Morgan Stanley."

ECB's Jazbec: QE Could End Sooner Than Sept. 2016

Earlier today, when the Markit PMI and the ISM non-manufacturing data disagreed violently over a key aspect of the economy, namely that according to the first, the all important, forward-looking New Orders had dropped to the lowest since the great financial crisis, while according to the latter, they rebounded modestly in January, we decided to go straight to the source: the unadjusted data which does not incorporate any gratuitous seasonal adjustments (which for the ISM, were just adjusted as part of its annual revision spectacle).  This is what we found.

Markit Services PMI rose modestly but hovered at one-year lows at 54.2 in January suggesting, as Markit notes, "the near-halving in the pace of economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2014," as companies struggle with new orders seeing the smallest increase since the financial crisis over six years ago. This comes on the heels of Decembers big miss in ISM Services, which rose - like PMI - very modestly to 56.7 (from a revised 56.5) with prices-paid tumbling to its lowest sinceJuly 2009 and employment lowest since Feb 2014. That said, it wouldn't be a Baffle with BS economy if the two releases, which are supposed to at least agree on the direction of the move, did not report two diametrically opposite trends, with the ISM reporting that while Employment tumbled from 55.7 to 51.6, New Orders actually rose from 56.5 to 56.7. Markit? The other way around, with New Orders dropping from 53.4 to 52.3 as Employment rose from 51.5 to 52.3!

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Following the torrid surge in crude in the past 4 days, overnight oil price have taken a step back - if only until the "newer normal" 2:30pm ramp into the Nymex close -  with both Brent and WTI down nearly 3%, with yesterday's latest API inventory data showing another massive crude build when it was released after the close, which in turn is pressuing futures modestly if decidedly, and not even the surprise PBOC RRR-cut (which many had seen as likely if only in advance of the liquidity sapping Chinese New Year) which hit the tape an hour ago managed to push ES into the green, at least for now. Curiously, not even the now standard low volume levitation in the USDJPY in recent trading has had any impact on US futures, which appear to have found a new correlation regime for the time being, one which tracks what oil does more than any other asset class.

Having fallen 4 months in a row in December to its lowest since last January, one could have been forgiuven for expecting the ubiquitous hope-driven bounce we so often see in soft-survey-based data and sure enough, Markit's US Manufacturing PMI eked out a very small (53.9 vs 53.7 previous) rise in January - hovering at practically one-year lows. On the heels of China's disappointment, it appears the cleanest dirty short of America is not decoupling too much (if at all). This is not the "crisis has passed", "economy is strong" narrative-confirming data that Obama and The Fed would have everyone believe and as markit notes, “Manufacturing remains in a lower gear compared to that seen last summer... adding to the suspicion that the pace of economic expansion in the first quarter could even fall below the 2.6% rate seen in the final quarter of last year."

The overnight session had been mostly quiet until minutes ago, when unexpectedly WTI, which had traded down as low as the mid $46 range following the weakest Chinese manufacturing data in two years, saw another bout of algo-driven buying momentum which pushed it sharply, if briefly, above $50, and was last trading about 2.6% higher on the day. In today's highly correlated market, this was likely catalyzed by a brief period of dollar weakness as well as the jump of EURCHF above 1.05, within the rumored corridor implemented by the Swiss National Bank, which apparently has not learned its lesson and is a glutton for a second punishment, after its hard Swissy cap was so dramatically breached, it hopes to repeat the experience with a softer one around 1.05. Expect to see even more FX brokers blowing up once the EURCHF 1.05 floor fails to hold next.

Just when you hoped the bad news was bad enough to warrant an uber-dovish Fed statement, Markit's US Services PMI prints 54.0, beating estimates of 53.8 and up from December's 53.0. After 6 months of dropping, January's preliminary data rose; however, as Markit notes, new business expansion fell to a post-recession low, “The 5.0% an nualised rate of GDP expansion in the third quarter certainly looks like a peaking in the pace of expansion, with the surveys pointing to 2.5% annualised growth at the start of the year."

Following yesterday's earnings disappointments, most notably from Microsoft which is down 7% this morning following the usual after-the-fact downgrades from JPM, Citi and Nomura, futures were already on a the back foot heading into this morning - no doubt impacted by the deja vu ridiculous move in the EURCHF noted earlier - when the latest batch of earnings just hit, of which Dow component Procter and Gamble stood out and which missed the top and bottom line.  But the punchline, and in direct refutation of what Jack Lew said previously about a strong dollar being good for the US economy, was this:"The outlook for the year will remain challenging. Foreign exchange will reduce fiscal 2015 sales by 5% and net earnings by 12%, or at least $1.4 billion after tax." In other words, P&G will "offset" the surge in the USD with more layoffs. So when Jack Lew said "good" he really meant "bad."

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Today's market action is largely a continuation of the QE relief rally, where - at least for the time being - the market bought the rumor for over 2 years and is desperate to show it can aslo buy the news. As a result, the European multiple-expansion based stock ramp has resumed with the Eurostoxx advancing for a 7th day to extend their highest level since Dec. 2007. As we showed yesterday, none of the equity action in Europe is based on fundamentals, but is the result of multiple expansion, with the PE on European equities now approaching 20x, a surge of nearly 70% in the past 2 years. But the real story is not in equities but in bonds where the perfectly expected frontrunning of some €800 billion in European debt issuance over the next year, taking more than 100% of European net supply, has hit new record level.

Just two days ago we detailed the possibility that Russia could accelerate debt repayment on a $3 billion loan it granted to Ukraine that has broken its covenants. While there is no word yet from Russia on a decision whether to demand the payment, it appears, as Reuters reports, the US taxpayer - just as we warned - is quite willing to step up (thanks to their leaders in Washington) and guarantee $2 billion in loans to the world's 2nd most credit risky nation (after Venezuela).

Goldman Sachs expects nonfarm payroll job growth of 230k in December, slightly below the consensus forecast of 240k. Labor market indicators continue to point to a strong pace of employment gains, but softened on balance in December. In particular, jobless claims rose modestly and the employment components of service sector business surveys weakened somewhat. With respect to wages, we expect a softer +0.1% gain in average hourly earnings following an unusually large gain in November. On balance, labor market indicators looked somewhat softer in December, but remain consistent with a solid trend rate of employment growth.