Reversal?
I’ll interrupt my blogging silence with a short update on markets. Usual service continues as scheduled on Monday.
Looks we have trading themes reversing course.
Market summary: Shanghai down; U.S. Dollar up; PIGS spreads record wide…
Global Macro Perspectives
I’ll interrupt my blogging silence with a short update on markets. Usual service continues as scheduled on Monday.
Looks we have trading themes reversing course.
Market summary: Shanghai down; U.S. Dollar up; PIGS spreads record wide…
Belisarius was mentally away from the market as he was taking an industry exam… He is sorry for wasting half a year on that, but that’s a thing of a past now… Thanks to my much relaxed time schedule, the TaintedAlpha.com Blog will have receive some new and improved content and features in following weeks. Returning to the markets. Things don’t look good. The […]
A lot of economic announcements from China today. So, let’s start. China’s industrial production rose 16.1% in October from a year before following 13.9% rise in September. The export decline slowed to 13.8% in October (year-on-year). If we adjust for holidays, it was down only 9.1% . The trade surplus rose to 23.99 billion USD […]
The S&P 500 hit the new high for the year yesterday, but it didn’t sparked interest from the mainstream media. The market looks as it is looking for clues in which direction to move. Its similar like in June/July, everything was pointing to move lower but all went in the other direction on “better than expected” earnings. Earnings season is months away and I’m feeling tempted to start a short position.
The short term top I wrote about in earlier posts evolved to nothing more than just a dip buying opportunity and it looks like we are going to stay range bound unless we have some surprise news. The economic data from the last week was boring, nothing interesting even a bit, and nothing that would change my views. Only piece of data that occupied my mind (for few second at least) was unemployment report. Non farm payrolls for August came at -216k vs -230k consensus and -276k in July (as usual revised downwards from -247k). Unemployment rate hit 9.7% vs. 9.5% consensus. Obviously the pace of job losses has slowed down, but with such high unemployment the recovery is not just around the corner. Off course, media can find optimism in the worst piece of data. According to Bloomberg this is positive for company earnings. Yeah, sure…. Bloomberg link: U.S. Recovery Leaving Workers Jobless May Spur Company Profits
Shanghai Composite down -6.7% today. No comment needed.
Same as the day before, yesterday we saw mostly “better than expected” data from the US. Most notably new home sales were up 9.6% in July. Durable goods orders came 4.9% higher in July vs. 3% consensus and -2.5% the month before. Better than expected orders were mostly result of US government “cash for clunkers” program from which, by the way, mostly benefited Japanese auto makers. Durable goods ex transportation came at 0.8% vs. 0.9% consensus and 2.5% the month before.
We have had some spectacular runs from the recent lows both in the equity arena and among commodities. As I am writing this introductory post markets are hitting new highs for the year. Common to these diverse markets is that we have seen little or no material improvement in underlying fundamentals only consolidation at initially depressed levels.