Category: zerohedge

First it was the Manufacturing ISM posting its first drop since September, and now it was the Services ISM’s turn to not only record its second miss to expectations (of 54.5) in a row, but drop from 53.9 to 53.0, for the lowest print since June. However, the most notable development in today’s release in addition to the slide in Inventories from 54.0 to 48.0 (impacting Q4 GDP) was the tumble in New Orders down from 56.4 to 49.4 – back to contraction territory: this was the first contraction in the New Orders index since July 2009 after 52 consecutive months of growth. Is it time to start worrying about the Untaper yet?

Is the spike in economic activity in Q3 now over:

The full breakdown:

From the report:

The report was issued today by Anthony Nieves, CPSM, C.P.M., CFPM, chair of the Institute for Supply Management™ Non-Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. “The NMI® registered 53 percent in December, 0.9 percentage point lower than November’s reading of 53.9 percent. This indicates continued growth at a slightly slower rate in the non-manufacturing sector. The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index decreased to 55.2 percent, which is 0.3 percentage point lower than the 55.5 percent reported in November, reflecting growth for the 53rd consecutive month, but at a slightly slower rate. The New Orders Index contracted after 52 consecutive months of growth for the first time since July 2009, when it registered 48 percent. The index decreased significantly by 7 percentage points to 49.4 percent, and the Employment Index increased 3.3 percentage points to 55.8 percent, indicating growth in employment for the 17th consecutive month and at a faster rate. The Prices Index increased 2.9 percentage points to 55.1 percent, indicating prices increased at a faster rate in December when compared to November. According to the NMI®, eight non-manufacturing industries reported growth in December. Despite the substantial decrease in the New Orders Index, respondents’ comments predominately reflect that business conditions are stable.”

These industries contracted in December:

The eight industries reporting contraction in December — listed in order — are: Mining; Arts, Entertainment & Recreation; Educational Services; Transportation & Warehousing; Real Estate, Rental & Leasing; Utilities; Wholesale Trade; and Accommodation & Food Services.

From the respondents:

• “Hiring activity seems to remain steady at mid- to senior-level management positions. However, it is uncertain what impact the Affordable Healthcare Act will have on hiring and full-time status in 2014 as more companies are re-evaluating their healthcare benefits strategies for all positions.” (Management of Companies & Support Services)
• “Business is steady. We are at year-end and the holidays, so it’s a little quiet. Expect things to pick up after the first [of the year].” (Construction)
• “Early, severe winter weather has had a major impact on business. Both customers and employees were unable to reach the workplace.” (Arts, Entertainment & Recreation)
• “Steady, with no significant shifts in demand or supply.” (Finance & Insurance)
• “Overall, we are still seeing the pickup in business which began in the 3rd quarter.” (Wholesale Trade)
• “General business conditions have improved.” (Information)

Finally, a look at commodity prices and availability:

Commodities Up in Price

• Airfares; Beef Items; Dairy; Diesel Fuel; Gasoline*; Milk; and Shrimp.

Commodities Down in Price

• Chicken; Computer & Peripherals (2); #1 Diesel Fuel (2); #2 Diesel Fuel (3); Fuel (3); Gasoline* (4); Soybean Oil; and Tires.

Commodities in Short Supply

• Shrimp is the only commodity reported in short supply.

So… buy shrimp?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Xju2EdsNWiI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Just when funds thought it was safe to buy short-term Treasuries and rehypothecate them to immeasurable leverage, yields on Bills due after the February 7th debt-ceiling suspension ends are lifting significantly in recent days. Since the year-end liquidity squeeze, yields on the March bills have developed a hump indicating concerns beginning. Of course, levels remain very low for now but the ‘kink’ is notable.

 

 

Congress suspended the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling on Oct. 16 – a day before officials estimated the government would have exhausted its emergency borrowing authority. The suspension will last through Feb. 7, 2014. On Feb. 8, the debt limit will be reinstated reflecting the debt issued between Oct. 17 and Feb. 7, increasing the ceiling to roughly $17.3 trillion by then.

If lawmakers don’t act on the debt limit before Feb. 8, then the Treasury will employ “extraordinary measures” to keep the government afloat for a bit longer.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/TAwXYOwZLTc/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Just when funds thought it was safe to buy short-term Treasuries and rehypothecate them to immeasurable leverage, yields on Bills due after the February 7th debt-ceiling suspension ends are lifting significantly in recent days. Since the year-end liquidity squeeze, yields on the March bills have developed a hump indicating concerns beginning. Of course, levels remain very low for now but the ‘kink’ is notable.

 

 

Congress suspended the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling on Oct. 16 – a day before officials estimated the government would have exhausted its emergency borrowing authority. The suspension will last through Feb. 7, 2014. On Feb. 8, the debt limit will be reinstated reflecting the debt issued between Oct. 17 and Feb. 7, increasing the ceiling to roughly $17.3 trillion by then.

If lawmakers don’t act on the debt limit before Feb. 8, then the Treasury will employ “extraordinary measures” to keep the government afloat for a bit longer.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/TAwXYOwZLTc/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Bai Zhongren, the president of state-run China Railway Group – the state-owned engineering giant behind many of the country’s largest railway projects – committed suicide over the weekend. As SCMP reports, Bai is among several senior railway officials and executives who have committed suicide since corruption scandals implicating the senior railway officials began to come to light three years ago.

However, there have been no direct links between China Railway Group and the corruption cases (yet); but Chinese courts are about to hand down verdicts for Zhang Shuguang, a former deputy chief engineer of the now-defunct Ministry of Railways, and Ding Shumiao, a businesswoman with close tie with disgraced former railway minister Liu Zhijun. Xinhua quotes a colleague as saying that part of the cause of Bai’s depression might be the heavy debts that his company has run up.

Via South China Morning Post,

Bai Zhongren, the president of China Railway Group, a state-owned engineering giant behind many of the country’s largest railway projects, jumped to his death over the weekend, Chinese media reported on Monday.

 

…

 

The 53-year-old executive jumped to his death after suffering from depression in recent years

 

…

 

Economic Information, a newspaper published by the official Xinhua News Agency, quoted a colleague as saying that part of the cause of Bai’s depression might be the heavy debts that his company has run up.

 

…

 

By the end of October, 2013, China Railways Group had total assets worth 626.5 billion yuan, and total outstanding debts of 531.9 billion yuan, with a debt-to-asset ratio of almost 85 per cent, according to the company’s Q3 filings.

 

Bai’s suicide came as Chinese courts are about to hand down verdicts for Zhang Shuguang, a former deputy chief engineer of the now-defunct Ministry and of Railways, and Ding Shumiao, a businesswoman with close tie with disgraced former railway minister Liu Zhijun.

 

…

 

Bai is among several senior railway officials and executives who have committed suicide since corruption scandals implicating the senior railway officials began to come to light three years ago. However, there have been no direct links between China Railway Group and the corruption cases.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KrhVNMAIGtM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Bai Zhongren, the president of state-run China Railway Group – the state-owned engineering giant behind many of the country’s largest railway projects – committed suicide over the weekend. As SCMP reports, Bai is among several senior railway officials and executives who have committed suicide since corruption scandals implicating the senior railway officials began to come to light three years ago.

However, there have been no direct links between China Railway Group and the corruption cases (yet); but Chinese courts are about to hand down verdicts for Zhang Shuguang, a former deputy chief engineer of the now-defunct Ministry of Railways, and Ding Shumiao, a businesswoman with close tie with disgraced former railway minister Liu Zhijun. Xinhua quotes a colleague as saying that part of the cause of Bai’s depression might be the heavy debts that his company has run up.

Via South China Morning Post,

Bai Zhongren, the president of China Railway Group, a state-owned engineering giant behind many of the country’s largest railway projects, jumped to his death over the weekend, Chinese media reported on Monday.

 

…

 

The 53-year-old executive jumped to his death after suffering from depression in recent years

 

…

 

Economic Information, a newspaper published by the official Xinhua News Agency, quoted a colleague as saying that part of the cause of Bai’s depression might be the heavy debts that his company has run up.

 

…

 

By the end of October, 2013, China Railways Group had total assets worth 626.5 billion yuan, and total outstanding debts of 531.9 billion yuan, with a debt-to-asset ratio of almost 85 per cent, according to the company’s Q3 filings.

 

Bai’s suicide came as Chinese courts are about to hand down verdicts for Zhang Shuguang, a former deputy chief engineer of the now-defunct Ministry and of Railways, and Ding Shumiao, a businesswoman with close tie with disgraced former railway minister Liu Zhijun.

 

…

 

Bai is among several senior railway officials and executives who have committed suicide since corruption scandals implicating the senior railway officials began to come to light three years ago. However, there have been no direct links between China Railway Group and the corruption cases.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KrhVNMAIGtM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

“It’s a very straightforward result,” UCSD professors Joseph Engleberg calmly states, hospitalizations rise on days when shares fall, and “people are hospitalized disproportionately for mental conditions.” Equity-market losses appeared to induce 3,700 market-related hospitalizations a year in California, which implies visits add roughly $650 million a year to U.S. health-care costs when data from the most-populous state are extrapolated nationally – another additional cost of QE? The findings, Bloomberg reports, show a one-day drop in equities of around 1.5% is followed by about a 0.26% increase in hospital admissions on average over the next two days.

 

Via Bloomberg,

Declining stocks worry people sick, if hospital records are any guide.

 

A one-day drop in equities of around 1.5 percent is followed by about a 0.26 percent increase in hospital admissions on average over the next two days, according to a March 2013 study by Joseph Engelberg and Christopher Parsons, associate professors of finance at the University of California at San Diego. The impact on psychological conditions such as anxiety or panic attacks is even stronger and more immediate, with admissions jumping twice that much in one day.

 

“It’s a very straightforward result,” Engelberg said yesterday at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, where he presented the findings. The results were based on almost three decades of daily admission data for California hospitals. Hospitalizations rise on days when shares fall, and “people are hospitalized disproportionately for mental conditions.”

 

Equity-market losses appeared to induce 3,700 market-related hospitalizations a year in California, which implies visits add roughly $650 million a year to U.S. health-care costs when data from the most-populous state are extrapolated nationally, Engelberg and Parsons estimated. They cited Census Bureau data showing an average hospitalization event costs around $21,000.

 

…

 

“People get stressed out and anxious and depressed when the stock market performs poorly,” Engelberg said in an interview after his presentation. “That may be very obvious, but I think this is the first paper to come along and try to take a good step at quantifying how big that is.”

 

The effect of a large market drop is twice as strong during periods of low volatility because “extreme returns are more surprising to investors,” Engelberg and Parsons concluded.

 

“Your expectations are set by what you experienced in the recent past,” Engelberg said in the interview. “If it wasn’t very bumpy and you see a big bump down today, that’s more likely to get you depressed or stressed or anxious than if you saw a lot of bumps in the past year.”

 

…

 

“When the market tanked, heart attack rates went up,” she said.

 

…

 

“A lot of behavioral finance is about how your mind affects markets and very little talks about the other way around,” Engelberg said in the interview. “We have evidence of causality coming from markets coming back to investor psychology, and that’s been a missing component in terms of empirical findings in a lot of prior research.”

So it would seem that Obamacare is perfectly timed as the bubbles the Fed has blown (and volatility suppression) will end up causing widespread illness…?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/dPis8ELiuOo/story01.htm Tyler Durden

“It’s a very straightforward result,” UCSD professors Joseph Engleberg calmly states, hospitalizations rise on days when shares fall, and “people are hospitalized disproportionately for mental conditions.” Equity-market losses appeared to induce 3,700 market-related hospitalizations a year in California, which implies visits add roughly $650 million a year to U.S. health-care costs when data from the most-populous state are extrapolated nationally – another additional cost of QE? The findings, Bloomberg reports, show a one-day drop in equities of around 1.5% is followed by about a 0.26% increase in hospital admissions on average over the next two days.

 

Via Bloomberg,

Declining stocks worry people sick, if hospital records are any guide.

 

A one-day drop in equities of around 1.5 percent is followed by about a 0.26 percent increase in hospital admissions on average over the next two days, according to a March 2013 study by Joseph Engelberg and Christopher Parsons, associate professors of finance at the University of California at San Diego. The impact on psychological conditions such as anxiety or panic attacks is even stronger and more immediate, with admissions jumping twice that much in one day.

 

“It’s a very straightforward result,” Engelberg said yesterday at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, where he presented the findings. The results were based on almost three decades of daily admission data for California hospitals. Hospitalizations rise on days when shares fall, and “people are hospitalized disproportionately for mental conditions.”

 

Equity-market losses appeared to induce 3,700 market-related hospitalizations a year in California, which implies visits add roughly $650 million a year to U.S. health-care costs when data from the most-populous state are extrapolated nationally, Engelberg and Parsons estimated. They cited Census Bureau data showing an average hospitalization event costs around $21,000.

 

…

 

“People get stressed out and anxious and depressed when the stock market performs poorly,” Engelberg said in an interview after his presentation. “That may be very obvious, but I think this is the first paper to come along and try to take a good step at quantifying how big that is.”

 

The effect of a large market drop is twice as strong during periods of low volatility because “extreme returns are more surprising to investors,” Engelberg and Parsons concluded.

 

“Your expectations are set by what you experienced in the recent past,” Engelberg said in the interview. “If it wasn’t very bumpy and you see a big bump down today, that’s more likely to get you depressed or stressed or anxious than if you saw a lot of bumps in the past year.”

 

…

 

“When the market tanked, heart attack rates went up,” she said.

 

…

 

“A lot of behavioral finance is about how your mind affects markets and very little talks about the other way around,” Engelberg said in the interview. “We have evidence of causality coming from markets coming back to investor psychology, and that’s been a missing component in terms of empirical findings in a lot of prior research.”

So it would seem that Obamacare is perfectly timed as the bubbles the Fed has blown (and volatility suppression) will end up causing widespread illness…?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/dPis8ELiuOo/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,238.00, EUR 909.56 and GBP 756.54 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,232.25, EUR 903.01 and GBP 748.45 per ounce.

Gold rose $12.10 or 0.99% Friday, closing at $1,236.40/oz. Silver edged up $0.19 or 0.95% closing at $20.16/oz. Platinum climbed $6.24, or 0.4%, to $1,406.74/oz and palladium fell $0.53 or 0.1%, to $725.72/oz. Gold and silver were both up on the week at 1.83% and 0.63%.

Gold rallied for its fifth day and last week showed its highest margin growth since October on signs of stronger demand from China. Gold ETF products have dropped to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. With speculative hands exiting the market, physical demand may again drive prices.

The IMF published research by Harvard professors, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, that highlighted that most countries in the Western world will require defaults, higher inflation and a savings tax to save their economies as debt levels reach an astounding 200 year high.

The debt crisis crippling sovereign economies may even require 1930’s style write offs or IMF tools for austerity as seen in the past.  The authors are familiar to the IMF, Rogoff was a former chief economist. They were lauded for their work, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,  but stirred controversy latter by suggesting that that growth slows sharply once public debt exceeds 90pc of GDP.

The crux of the paper highlights the following:
 
1. Wealthy nation’s policy makers are in denial that they are different than poorer nations and feel that their debt can be reduced by austerity cuts, growth, and tinkering.

2. Advanced economies wrote of debt in the 1930s. First World War loans from the U.S. were forgiven when the Hoover Moratorium ended in 1934, giving debt relief worth 24% of GDP to France, 22% to Britain and 19% to Italy.

3. During a further restructuring of the war reparations regime on Germany under the Versailles Treaty, the U.S. itself imposed haircuts on its own creditors worth 16% of GDP in April 1933 when it abandoned the Gold Standard.

4. The policy is essentially a confiscation of savings, mostly achieved by increasing inflation while rigging the system to stop markets taking evasive action. The UK and the U.S. ran negative real interest rates of -2% to -4% for several years after the Second World War. Real rates in Italy and Australia were -5%.

The Telegraph article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, illuminates that opponents of the present system find that extreme austerity without offsetting monetary stimulus is the main reason why debts have been spiralling upwards even faster in parts of Southern Europe.

Unstable eurozone states are particularly vulnerable to default because they no longer have their own sovereign currencies, putting them in a similar position as emerging countries that borrowed in U.S. dollars in the 1980s and 1990s. The eurozone is further troubled with an unstable banking system that may still require significant recapitalization.

As seen with the 2008 financial crisis, a catastrophe across the pond will ripple and affect all trading partners in our interdependent world. These type of macro economic risks continue to support the need for safe haven investments like gold and precious metals.

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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/FBzWDbuC2pM/story01.htm GoldCore

Everyone knows that the Fed, through the bank excess reserves/cash deposit pathway, participated in indirectly purchasing some $1 trillion in risk assets in 2013 through POMO – a process that many have confused with economic recovery. It is also known that corporate stock buybacks have managed to keep S&P500 EPS rising by removing the total number of shares outstanding (and thus lowering the S in EPS in a world where absolute E stubbornly refuses to grow): after all, someone has to keep those activist shareholders happy or else they release unpleasant letters about corporate CEOs.

However, what may not be known is just how large the total amount of corporate buybacks in the past year was. The answer: the second highest in history, just shy record of 2007 (when there was no additional $1 trillion in stock purchases coming from the Fed/Primary Dealer complex), amounting to $500 billion (even if non-US buybacks have been a tiny fraction of US).

Presented otherwise, corporations injected roughly half of the total POMO cash used by the Fed to push the S&P straight-line higher.

For the sake of stocks, and with QE tapering, let’s hope that this critical buyer remains in the market or else the tapped out retail investor may have a tough time to keep the S&P at its now more expensive than 2007 level for long.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KAd1Pa-E5xc/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The rise in equities does not mean stocks "buy" more commodities in the real world–they buy less.

Thank you, Harun, for an insightful assessment of value and the unsustainable absurdity of a political and financial system dependent on debt, propaganda and falsehoods for its survival. Here are the charts, with comments by Harun and myself as noted.

Federal debt:

The rise in equities does not mean stocks "buy" more goods in the real world–they buy less. So much for "new highs"–the nominal new highs in equities is pure illusion in terms of purchasing power.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/t4rXzKG9Q8U/story01.htm Tyler Durden