European Stocks Soar, US Futures, Euro Jump After Failed Italian Referendum

Blink, and you missed the “sell off” from Italy’s failed referendum vote.

In the initial hours after yesterday’s vote which has cost Italy’s PM his job and ushered in a period of political limbo and potential chaos, markets were jolted by the scale of Renzi’s defeat which, as Reuters put it, “pointed to further turbulence and political crisis in the euro zone’s heavily indebted third-largest economy and particular uncertainty was focused on the country’s fragile banks.”  The euro fell to a 20 month low, as low as $1.0508 and the Milan bourse shed as much as 2% while Italian bond yields spiked sharply higher.

As confirmed by the following headlines, there was a palpable sense of panic about how markets would react:

• Renzi Quits as Italy Referendum Defeat Deepens Europe’s Turmoil
• Shares of Monte Paschi, UniCredit don’t immediately set opening price, limit down
• Pop. Milano drops as much as 6%, Banco Popolare as much as 5.9%
• While ‘No’ outcome shouldn’t be major surprise, “margin of rejection and news of Renzi’s resignation will spook the markets”
• Spread on Italian government debt seen widening further when markets open, stock market down
• Italy ‘No’ a Lost Opportunity; Won’t Impact Utilities: Bernstein
• Markets to Correct on Italy Vote, EU Survival in Spotlight: Citi

And then, just before the European open, everything changed on a dime, or rather in “three minutes” as Guillermo Hernandez Sampere, head of trading at MPPM EK put it: “After Brexit, it took three days for markets to shake it off, with Trump it took three hours, with Italy it took three minutes.The fast money, who expected markets to fall further with this outcome, are now covering their positions.”

Well, maybe not exactly three minutes but, well see for yourselves: the rebound was enough to prompt questions if the ECB now has its own plunge protection team.

What happened was the following: after global stock futures slid on Sunday night, European equities shrugged off the outcome of the Italian referendum to rally the most since the U.S. election, with the Stoxx Europe 600 rising as much as 1.4% in early London. In fact, European shares soared the most since the Trump presidential victory, even as Italian banks sustained losses and the cost of insuring their bonds against default jumped. Gold erased earlier gains to head for the lowest close since February, while equity volatility indices slid in Europe and the US.

Italian financials rose 0.5 percent having fallen more than 4 percent and shares in the world’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi were flat on the day after being suspended at the opening.

Political risk from Italy hasn’t spread beyond its borders as markets were correctly positioned for the anti-establishment mood sweeping around the world. This was a departure from the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s surprise election, when traders were caught out by populist votes.

The Euro, likewise, after falling to 20 month lows, rebounded strongly, and was trading virtually unchanged from its Friday levels, as the dollar and gold sold off, while 10y Treasury futures dropped to session lows, with the March contract touching lows of 124-09+ after block trade.

To be sure, not everyone was a winner on the news associated with Italy’s political limbo, and Italian namls Banca Popolare di Milano Scarl and UniCredit SpA both slid at least 2% as the outcome of the referendum raised questions about the nation’s plans to plug holes in the banking sector. Renzi’s reforms were aimed at simplifying the legislative process in a nation that’s seen 63 governments since the end of World War II. However, even Italy’s banks seemed ready to forget anything ever happened on Sunday night and were poised to move into the green at the first possible opportunity.

Bonds remained under pressure though. Italy’s benchmark 10-year bond yield jumped 11 basis points (bps) to 2.01%, widening the premium investors demand for holding Italian bonds over safer German bonds to 175 bps, before easing slightly.

“What the market is watching for is not so much the vote itself,” but the potential fallout from a Renzi resignation, said Ric Spooner, chief market analyst in Sydney at CMC Markets Asia Pacific Ltd. Payrolls “showed an improvement in the U.S. labor market and it’s all moving in the right direction for the Fed to continue raising rates.”

This is where we stand as US traders walk in: The Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 1.3 percent at 10:05 a.m. in London. Italy’s FTSE MIB Index, one of the worst-performing stock indexes in the world this year, rose 0.3 percent.  Futures on the S&P 500 Index were up 0.4 percent, after the underlying benchmark ended Friday up less than 0.1 percent.

Credit-default swaps on Italy jumped 14 basis points to 186 basis points, the highest since June. The cost of insuring Banca Monte dei Paschi SpA’s senior bonds against losses for five years jumped 27 basis points to 482 basis points, the highest since July, according to data compiled by CMA. Credit-default swap contracts insuring UniCredit’s senior bonds against losses rose 13 basis points to 224 basis points. 

However, while there was some Italy-focused risk, 10Y Treasury yields rose two basis points to 2.40% after shedding seven basis points on Friday, as concerns about a short covering squeeze in US Treasuries quickly faded.

As a result of the price action, a favorable narrative was quickly spun: “Our base scenario is a caretaker government which could be in place before Christmas, and no new elections before 2018,” Indosuez Wealth Management chief economist Marie Owens Thomsen said. “If indeed things pan out according to our base scenario, there would be little reason for any broad-based turmoil. It is still utterly unlikely that Italy would leave the EU or the euro.“

Others jumped on the bullish bandwagon: “Rather than fretting about political risk, companies appear to be gearing up for further expansion. Employment is rising at one of the fastest rates seen over the past five years,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit.

In short, it is as if Italy’s referendum not only never happened, but was a good thing all along, and with that S&P is set to rise back to new all time highs.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures up 0.6% to 2205
• Stoxx 600 up 1.3% to 344
• FTSE 100 up 0.8% to 6788
• DAX up 1.8% to 10704
• German 10Yr yield up 3bps to 0.31%
• Italian 10Yr yield up 8bps to 1.99%
• Spanish 10Yr yield up 2bps to 1.57%
• S&P GSCI Index up 0.6% to 388.8
• MSCI Asia Pacific down 0.6% to 135
• Nikkei 225 down 0.8% to 18275
• Hang Seng down 0.3% to 22506
• Shanghai Composite down 1.2% to 3205
• S&P/ASX 200 down 0.8% to 5400
• US 10-yr yield up 2bps to 2.4%
• Dollar Index up 0.18% to 100.95
• WTI Crude futures up 0.6% to $52.00
• Brent Futures up 0.6% to $54.79
• Gold spot down 1.1% to $1,165
• Silver spot down 1% to $16.57

Bulletin Headline Summary from RanSquawk:

• European equities enter the North American crossover in positive territory despite the victory for the ‘No’ camp in the Italian referendum
• FX price action this morning has been all risk based, with the sharp comeback in equities after Italy’s referendum vote mirroring that seen in the wake of the US election result
• Looking ahead, highlights include UK and US Services PMI, ISM non-Manufacturing PMI, Fed’s Dudley, Evans, Bullard, Draghi

Top Global Headlines:

• Italy Sinks Into Political Limbo as Defeat Sweeps Renzi Away: Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced his resignation, Finance minister cancels trip to Brussels as cabinet meets
• Trump Takes On China in Tweets on Currency, South China Sea: President-elect had been criticized after call with Taiwan, offshore yuan drops amid concern China to be named manipulator
• Trump Warns U.S. Companies Against ‘Very Expensive Mistake’
• Norwegian Surges After U.S. Approves Trans-Atlantic Expansion: Carrier’s Irish unit receives approval for U.S.- Europe routes
• Dakota Access Oil Pipeline in New Setback as U.S. Permit Denied: Analysis, exploration of alternative sites needed, Army says
• Citi Makes a Clarion Call for Commodity Bulls With 2017 View: Bank bullish on oil, copper, zinc on 6 to 12-month horizon
• Novartis CAR-T Has 82% Remission Rate in Pediatric Study
• Burberry Gains After FT Says Retailer Rejected Coach Approach

* * *

Asian stock markets, many of which were not open long enough to take advantage of Europe’s miraculous ramp, traded lower amid European political uncertainty after the Italian referendum in which PM Renzi lost and announced that he is to resign. This pressured Nikkei 225 (-0.8%) and ASX (-0.7%), alongside weakness in US equity futures. Chinese markets conformed to the negative tone with Shanghai Comp. (-1.3%) further weighed by a disappointing liquidity injection by the PBoC, while the launch of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connect only briefly helped stem downside for the Hang Seng (-0.4%) and Shenzhen Comp. (-0.8%). 10yr JGBs traded higher as risk averse sentiment resulted in a flight to safety, although upside was limited after the BoJ’s buying operations were for a relatively paltry JPY 370bn of JGBs.

Top Asian News

• Billionaire Li Ka-Shing Offers $5.4 Billion for Australia’s Duet: Cheung Kong Infrastructure offers A$3 per share in cash
• Modi’s Cash Clampdown Set to Shrink India’s Key Services Sector: Nikkei Services PMI plunges to lowest since December 2013
• China Regulator Slams Leveraged Stock Acquirers as ‘Robbers’: CSRC chairman questions funding sources of some acquisitions
• New Zealand’s John Key to Step Down as Prime Minister: Key says he couldn’t commit to serving another full term
• Trump Takes On China in Tweets on Currency, South China Sea: President-elect had been criticized after call with Taiwan
• Man GLG Asia Hedge Fund Managers Walsh and Vidale Said to Leave: Departure came after April closure of a GLG Asian equity fund
• Shenzhen Opens Stock Market Up to the World, Is Little Noticed

In Europe, as noted above, it was a story of a major rebound, even as the Italian referendum has stolen the headlines so far this morning, with the week kicking off in a busy fashion. The price action seen across asset classes has been remarkably similar to that seen in the wake of the Brexit and Trump victories, with initial risk off sentiment dictating play, before a sense of calm returns to markets to see the entirety of the risk-off price action reversed. This sees equities trade firmly in the green by mid-morning, including the FTSE MIB (+0.4%). However it is worth noting that Italian banks remain the underperformers, with Unicredit lower by 4.7%. In terms of reasons behind the reversal, views vary across major banks with Nomura highlighting that the No vote was already priced in, however with the likes of Citi and MS suggesting that a correction could be seen due to political volatility in the form of the likelihood of elections and the possibility of an ‘Italexit’. Also of note BNP Paribas suggest that the ECB are less likely to announce a scaling back of QE at their meeting. Bunds opened higher this morning, before paring their opening gains and falling to see a total move of over a point, while the GE/IT spread widened this morning by approximately 6bps.

Top European News

• Aixtron Sees Slim Path to Save China Sale After Obama Order: Decision leaves door open for sale if U.S. unit is split off
• RBS Will Pay Up to $1 Billion Over 2008 Rights Issue Claims: The bank says the settlement covered by existing provisions
• $38 Billion Finnish Fund Moves Assets to U.S. as Europe Founders: Ilmarinen used to be underweight U.S. assets
• U.K. Supreme Court Brexit Hearing Moves EU Exit Decision Closer: All 11 judges to hear government case on triggering Brexit
• VW’s German Ranks Gird to Face Questions as U.S. Pursues Execs: Dozens hire lawyers as Justice Department seeks cooperators

In currencies, the euro was unchanged from Friday’s close 1.0674, paring a slump of as much as 1.5% earlier in the session. Polls show an early election in Italy would see the anti-euro Five Star Movement sweep into power. The offshore yuan lost 0.1 percent as Chinese shares declined. U.S. President-elect Trump rejected criticism of his decision to take a phone call from Taiwan’s president and reiterated concerns over China’s currency and trade policies to his 16.6 million Twitter followers. The kiwi weakened 0.6 percent as New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he’ll stand down and backed Finance Minister Bill English to succeed him. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, a gauge of the greenback against 10 major peers, jumped 0.3 percent following its first weekly retreat since Trump’s victory.

In commodities, gold swung fell 1 percent, extending a 0.5 percent decline last week that was its fourth straight weekly loss. Oil prices are also continuing higher, in line with risk sentiment, but driven by the coordinated intentions on production levels emanating from the OPEC meeting next week. Another OPEC meeting scheduled for the weekend ahead in Vienna. Base metals are also showing some modest gains in the early part of the week, with the risk on mood benefitting from growth/infrastructure spending prospects. Copper for three-month delivery rallied 1.6 percent, while zinc gained 1.8 percent and Nickel rallied 1.4 percent.

US Event Calendar

• 8:30am: Fed’s Dudley speaks in New York
• 9:25am: Fed’s Evans speaks in Chicago
• 9:45am: Markit U.S. Services PMI, Nov. F, est. 54.8 (prior 54.7)
• 10am: Labor Market Conditions Index Change, Nov. est. -0.2 (prior 0.7)
• 10am: ISM Non-Manufacturing Composite, Nov., est. 55.5 (prior 54.8)
• 2:05pm: Fed’s Bullard speaks in Phoenix

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Only one place to start this morning and that’s with the Italian referendum vote. With almost all votes accounted for, PM Renzi has formally announced defeat after a relatively wide margin of 60% versus 40% voted in favour of rejecting the reforms. Renzi has said that he will submit his resignation to Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, this afternoon and also said that he will not be available to lead a caretaker government. The reaction in markets has been fairly orderly so far although we may have to wait for the European open to see the full impact. The Euro is down a little over 1%, dragging a number of other European currencies with it. Equity markets in Asia are down anywhere from -0.50% to -1.50% while equity index futures are down -0.30% in the US. In rates 10y Treasury yields are just over 3bps lower.

The obvious question now is what next? Well clearly the immediate risk is political instability. We’ll refer back to DB’s Marco Stringa’s report from last week where he highlighted that the short term tail risk is an immediate election (not his base case but perhaps a higher risk with the large no vote yesterday). The trigger would be failure to form a new government due to unbridgeable divisions among traditional parties. A failure to find a compromise on a new electoral law could also have a similar impact but with a longer time horizon. All eyes would be on the banking sector in such a scenario and if a solution wasn’t found then stress could eclipse July 2016 levels. Marco’s central case is that a new government supported by a similar parliamentary majority to the current one, with a narrow objective – writing a new electoral law – and limited duration will be formed. This muddle through scenario means that Italy’s economy will continue to perform poorly in both absolute and relative terms and over the medium term there will have to been a convergence to either pro-reform government or a euro-sceptic government. So this is only the beginning of a long path ahead for Italy but expect swift political manoeuvrings this week as the country will need to try to find a solution quickly.

The other populist test this weekend was the Austria presidential election where the Green party backed independent candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, came out on top versus the far right Freedom party candidate, Nobert Hofer, by a score of 53.3% to 46.7%. Hofer has since conceded defeat. As our economists highlight, despite this result, Austria still faces a complex political outlook. First, the populist FPO party is leading in the opinion polls by about 8pp and it will be interesting to see whether Hofer’s defeat narrows this lead. They note that at the moment, the FPO is heading towards the late 2018 parliamentary election in a position of strength. Secondly, Chancellor Kern, sitting atop a mainstream coalition of SPO/OVP, is struggling with his reforms. He rules out early elections, but there is nevertheless a non-negligible risk that his government collapses already in 2017, giving a second opportunity to test support for populism in Austria. For example, the longer the muddling-through of the grand coalition last and the stronger their underperformance in the polls, the more likely there will be an early election.

Continuing with the politics theme, the remaining weekend newsflow is focused on the latest round of comments from President-elect Trump. In a social media posting, Trump warned of heavy import tax tariffs for US companies moving production overseas and selling back into the US, suggesting a possible 35% tariff for those companies that do. Clearly the statement is pretty ambiguous for now and throws open a whole wide range of questions particularly for businesses with multiple entities and so forth. A wider question also might be how other countries respond to such possible tariffs. One to keep an eye on.

Switching over to this week’s main event, that being the ECB meeting this Thursday. As a base case our European economists expect the ECB to announce a 6-month extension of the current €80bn QE programme (an extension from March 2017 to September 2017). This is likely to be complemented by a move to improve the supply of eligible bonds, perhaps by the removal or softening of the yield floor. This would facilitate a steeper yield curve and incentive transmission. In an alternative scenario our economists believe that the market would react negatively to say a slowing in the pace of purchases to €60bn. Indeed our economists have derived three rules that need to be satisfied by spot and forward core inflation in order for the ECB to taper. The soonest these are likely to be satisfied is mid-2017. They go on to highlight that if the ECB’s above-consensus view on growth is correct, the euro exchange rate depreciates in line with DB’s house view and systematic financial crisis is avoided, tapering could be announced in June 2017. On the other hand if their below-consensus view on growth is correct and the growth/inflation relationship is weak, tapering could wait until end-2017. The last thing to note is today’s market reaction to the referendum result which also has the potential to influence Thursday’s meeting actions.

Wrapping up the rest of the markets in Asia this morning where the other focus in FX has been on the New Zealand Dollar which is down close to 1% following the unexpected resignation of the country’s Prime Minister, John Key. The PM has since backed his deputy for the role and said that he is stepping down for personal reasons. There’s also been a bit of data out of China this morning. The Caixin services PMI was reported as rising 0.7pts to 53.1 in November which is the highest level since July 2015. Combined with a weaker manufacturing reading however, the composite has held steady at 52.9.

A quick recap now of how we closed out Friday. For those that missed it, the focus in what was an otherwise fairly quiet session ahead of the weekend events, was on the US November employment report. In a nutshell it was a fairly mixed batch of data. The headline nonfarm payrolls gain of 178k pretty much matched expectations (180k) while cumulative net revisions amounted to a modest -2k drop. Most noteworthy was the unexpected drop in the unemployment rate from 4.9% to 4.6% (vs. 4.9% expected) and to the lowest level since August 2007. The broader U-6 measure also dipped two-tenths to 9.3% and to the lowest since April 2008. The interesting take on this came with the fact that the unemployment rate dipped as the labour force participation rate dropped one-tenth to 62.7%. Meanwhile the other interesting take away was the softness in average hourly earnings (-0.1% mom vs. +0.2% expected). It was actually the first monthly decline in earnings since December 2014 and had the effect of lowering the YoY rate to +2.5% from +2.8%.

Onto this week’s calendar now. This morning in Europe we’re kicking off the week with the remainder of the November PMI’s which includes the final services and composite revisions for the Euro area, Germany and France, as well as a first look at the data for the UK and non-core. Euro area retail sales data for the month of October is also out today. In the US this afternoon we’ll also get the remaining PMI’s as well as the ISM non-manufacturing print for November and labour market conditions index. Tuesday kicks off in Germany with the latest factory orders data before we then get the final Q3 GDP reading for the Euro area. In the US tomorrow we’ll get the October trade balance reading, Q3 unit labour costs and nonfarm productivity, October factory orders, December IBD/TIPP economic optimism reading and the final durable and capital goods orders revisions. Germany gets things going again on Wednesday when we’ll get the latest industrial production report. French trade data and UK industrial and manufacturing production will also be released. The only data due out in the US on Wednesday is JOLTS job openings and consumer credit for October. China will also release November foreign reserves data at some stage. The early data to get things going on Thursday comes from Japan where the final Q3 GDP reading will be released. China will then be following with important November trade data. There’s no data in Europe on Thursday but all eyes will be on the main event of the week, the ECB policy meeting outcome just after midday. The only data out of the US on Thursday will be initial jobless claims. We close out the week in Asia on Friday with the November CPI and PPI prints in China. In Europe we’ll get trade data in Germany, industrial production data in France and trade data in the UK. Over in the US we’ll get the final October wholesale inventories report along with a first look at the University of Michigan consumer sentiment report. Away from the data the Fedspeak this week all comes today with Dudley, Evans and Bullard scheduled.

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