Rumors persisted about Iran, Russia or OPEC close to declaring productions cuts, so that has to factor at least into sentiment about oil trading. However, with rumors being denied, the physical universe of crude oil especially in the US has been fundamentally more negative again. Yet, oil prices have reached back to almost $34 (front month futures) again today just [...]
It makes for quite the juxtaposition, though perhaps not so jarring given that global banks are still enormous and disparate operations. On the one hand, Citigroup’s CEO was eminently confident from within the confines of Davos and the status quo: The market is "adjusting" to a series of headwinds that can be overcome, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said Thursday, a [...]
For everything that has gone wrong over the past year or so, there was and is a benign interpretation to accompany each negative factor. Oil prices were “transitory”, longer run inflation expectations didn’t matter because “professional forecasters” remained steadfastly devoted, and no matter which market has gone highly askew it’s just “normal” worry. All of these nonthreatening rationalizations trace back [...]
The Chinese central bank has managed to instill some order in both onshore and offshore RMB markets, but at what cost? The amount of intervention that was induced severely strains only the future at those maturities. Central banks are nothing if not short-termists in the purest sense, so repeating what doesn’t work never factors; all that matters is right now. [...]
More and more the media are finally starting to get the message about Chinese liquidity and its tendency for or against “devaluation.” For their part, the PBOC has been quite clear about its intentions all along; it was only the impenetrable fog of orthodox economics that prevented more widespread acknowledgement and understanding. There are no “reserves” at least not in [...]
The November update for TIC figures shows relatively few surprises given what was witnessed November into December then January. The heavy downdraft of October was somewhat reversed, and even the official sector was probably less strained (outside of China) than at any time in 2015. But these are reactive symptoms to the greater problem of “dollar” availability, so the most [...]
The official word from China, in the sense that whispers and unofficial back channels counts for any kind of imprimatur, was that last week’s huge surge in offshore yuan money rates was at the request of the PBOC using state banks to squeeze those damned speculators. It was perhaps an usual step to take in that the PBOC’s major efforts [...]
China’s economic update for December and Q4 were uniformly ugly. GDP fell to 6.8% and 6.9% for the full year. Industrial production was back below 6%, estimated at just 5.9% and once more denying all those that claimed November’s slight uptick was the start of renewal. Retail sales disappointed at 11.1%, down from 11.2% in November (no difference) while Fixed [...]
The US economy is supposed to be nothing like its Chinese counterpart, a sentiment that extends in the mainstream well past that into genuine surprise about how it would be possible US financial markets tripping over Chinese stumbles. Though the US might be fighting, too, a manufacturing slump that looks more like recession every day, convention still holds that the [...]
Chinese exports in December were better than feared, declining by just 1.4% against some expectations for an 8% decline. However, there were significant questions in the data, starting with year-end contract projections, unverified accounts that don’t match other countries’ trade figures and the return of Hong Kong as a potential falsification point. As ZeroHedge points out, without the huge jump [...]
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