If there seems to be more safe haven demand of late, the increasing odds of British exit from the EU is being blamed. According to Yahoo!Finance, Goldman Sachs sees “kinks” in the option structure, an agglomeration of hedging demand that points to maturities around the UK referendum. The absence of any heavy hedging this week suggests that markets have no [...]
Eurodollar futures prices rose again today, the seventh consecutive increase in most maturities. Six of those days were relatively small moves, the biggest jump last Friday with the release of the payroll report. For the benchmark June 2018 contract, the price is heading back up to the upper limit of the post-liquidation cycling. Trading has been confined to a very [...]
It makes for yet another huge dichotomy, but one which is curiously absent from any mainstream commentary. As noted earlier today, Chinese imports were pleasantly surprising for the mainstream as they were just about flat year-over-year. The fact that oil imports surged by nearly 40% seemed only to confirm that whatever might be happening on the export side (another dichotomy [...]
It might be too early in the week, though not likely since only the irrelevant payroll report is really left, and too soon for definitive conclusions, but if I had to pick a chart of the week it would actually be this series. They declare a lot more about the potential intermediate term than the BLS numbers can or will. [...]
China’s official manufacturing PMI was unchanged at 50.1 in May. As such, the media doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s slightly less than the 50.2 “rebound” in March, but still more than the drastic low of 49 in February. Because the index value is above 50, commentary is generally of cautious optimism. We have seen this before, several [...]
Two weeks ago, Chinese stock futures traded in Hong Kong flash crashed. Between 2:14pm and 2:16pm local time on May 17, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index suddenly liquidated due to an intense burst of sell orders that crashed through the whole of the futures market depth. At the start, the index was trading at around +1% but fell to [...]
The People’s Bank of China today fixed the CNY exchange (reference) rate below 6.56 for the first time since early February. That means all the tremendous effort that went into erasing December and January’s “dollar” pressure (not devaluation) has been unwound, as the currency now trades just about where it was at the start of China’s Lunar New Year Golden [...]
With stocks falling today continuing somewhat yesterday’s post-FOMC selloff there was going to be universal citation of monetary policy; or at least these new expectations of monetary policy coming supposedly for June. The dominant narrative remains in favor of Fed power where stocks don’t do well without it. So as the central bank removes so very slowly its “accommodation” we [...]
The Committee For Monetary Research & Education (CMRE) will be holding a discussion on June 6th at the University Club in New York. The topic is China and the Credit Challenge, which should be even more interesting given this weekend's economic update from China. CMRE brings some of top minds on credit and geopolitics to discuss the likelihood and dangers [...]
We often think of liquidation events exclusively in terms of price, but in the real economy there is volume to consider. When financing dries up as financial agents run for cover lest they receive only further margin or collateral calls, it enacts a short run disruption in economic flow. At the margins, some firms are forced to delay activity while [...]
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