Crude Oil

1. Dollar doesn’t matter, indicates strong economy relative to the world
2. Dollar matters for oil, but lower oil prices mean stronger consumer
3. Manufacturing slump doesn’t matter, only temporary
4. Manufacturing declines are consumer spending, but only a small part
5. Manufacturing declines are becoming serious, but only from overseas
6. US consumer demand is strong, except everywhere you look to actually find it.
7. ...

The 30 stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average currently trade for an average of 14.8x next year’s consensus earnings.  But... Everyone knows Wall Street analysts are always too optimistic, so what if we just look at the lowest estimate for each company? The driver of market pessimism sits at the top of the income statement – the Street’s worst case revenue estimates call for a decline of 1.7% in 2016.  Now, Q3 earnings season is unlikely to provide much comfort here; why should corporate managements go out on a guidance limb when their stocks are down on the year?  All this points to further volatility in October, and with a bias to the downside.

With China markets closed for holiday until the middle of next week, and little in terms of global macro data overnight (the only notable central banker comment overnight came from Mario Draghi who confidently proclaimed that "economic growth is returning" which on its own is bad for risk assets), it was all about the USDJPY which has seen the usual no-volume levitation overnight, dragging both the Nikkei higher with it, and US equity futures, which as of this moment were at session highs, up 7 points. The calm may be broken, though, as soon as two hours from now when the September "most important ever until the next" payrolls report is released.

"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."

News That Matters

Good news! Bad news is again great for stocks, and overnight we had just the right amount of bad news from Japan, China and Europe to send stocks surging on the first day of the final quarter.

News That Matters

Terrible economic news is wonderful news for markets, all over again, and with the worst S&P500 quarter since 2011 set to close today, some horribly "great" news is just what the window-dressing hedge funds, most of whom are deeply underperforming the broader market (not to mention Dennis Gartman) ordered.

News That Matters

Forget China, Volkswagen, Glencore, Noble, and pretty much everything else. The only catalyst that matters for today's price action has just been revealed. Earlier today, Dennis Gartman, whose flop-flip-flop-flipping calls on stocks, commodities and everything else have become a blur, just went mega bearish, and is predicting that the S&P has some 400 points of imminent downside.

It was a tale of two markets overnight: Asia first - where all commodity hell broke loose - and then Europe (and the US), where central banks did everything they could to stabilize the already terrible sentiment.

As part of his UN speech seeking to restore a crumbling Pax Americana, president Obama, eager to cover up US involvement in the Ukraine presidential coup of early 2014 (who can forget Victoria Nuland "strategy" interception in which she laid out the post-coup lay of the land, while saying to "fuck the EU"), just said that "America has few economic interest in Ukraine." Few, perhaps, but quite substantial.

It was all about China once again, where following a report of a historic layoff in which China's second biggest coal producer Longmay Group fired an unprecedented 100,000 or 40% of its workforce, overnight we got the latest industrial profits figure which plunging -8.8% Y/Y was the biggest drop since at least 2011, and which the National Bureau of Statistics attributed to "exchange rate losses, weak stock markets, falling industrial goods prices as well as a bigger rise in costs than increases in revenue." In not so many words: a "hard-landing."

Yellen's reaffirmation of a likely rate before year-end helped lift the dollar.  Look for some consolidation ahead of the US jobs data.  

The market, which clearly ignored the glaring contradictions in Yellen's speech which said that overseas events should not affect the Fed's policy path just a week after the Fed statement admitted it is "monitoring developments abroad", and also ignored Yellen explicit hint that NIRP is coming (only the size is unclear), and focused on the one thing it wanted to hear: a call to buy the all-critical USDJPY carry pair - because more dollar strength apparently is what the revenue and earnings recessioning S&P500 needs - which after trading around 120 in the past few days, had a 100 pip breakout overnight, hitting 121 just around 5am, in the process pushing US equity futures some 25 points higher at last check.