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All “recovery watchers” are urged to look somewhere else than the just released monthly Caterpillar dealer retail sales. Because while in September there was some hope that North American industrial demand may finally be picking up when retail sales on the continent posted the first two month sequential increase since 2012 even as the rest of the world was stuck deep in negative territory, that hope too was just been dashed with October North American retail sales posting the first decline of -2% since July. And unfortunately while North American sales just rejected any glimmer of a localized recovery, the rest of the world just keeps getting worse and worse, with negative sales prints across the board for every region – the first time this has happened since February 2010. The only difference is that then the trend was higher. Now, well, it isn’t.

As for the rest of the CAT story: we have covered it more than enough in the past – find more here, here, here and here. And then there is, of course, Jim Chanos.

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Talking-heads and commission-takers have momentum-chased clients’ hard-earned money into Europe’s ‘what works now’ markets – on the basis of what has now proved to be entirely fallacious macro- and micro-fundamental improvement (as we noted here and here). But, while “whatever it takes” has smashed bond spreads lower and has blown stock prices higher; most critically, the ‘confidence’ has seen the EUR rise almost 15% against the USD from its July 2012 “whatever It Takes” lows. The effect of this EUR strength is to collapse earnings growth expectations as European competitiveness is crushed (core or periphery). Of course, bulls can rest assured, as the following chart shows, 2014 is expected to hockey-stock back to record EPS growth (just like 2013 was supposed to?).

 

So it would seem, “whetever it takes” now means – jawbone the EUR down whenever we can… (and we wonder what that will do to US earnings as the USD is ramped)…

 

Source: UBS

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/l_8LQ0FP5CM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Talking-heads and commission-takers have momentum-chased clients’ hard-earned money into Europe’s ‘what works now’ markets – on the basis of what has now proved to be entirely fallacious macro- and micro-fundamental improvement (as we noted here and here). But, while “whatever it takes” has smashed bond spreads lower and has blown stock prices higher; most critically, the ‘confidence’ has seen the EUR rise almost 15% against the USD from its July 2012 “whatever It Takes” lows. The effect of this EUR strength is to collapse earnings growth expectations as European competitiveness is crushed (core or periphery). Of course, bulls can rest assured, as the following chart shows, 2014 is expected to hockey-stock back to record EPS growth (just like 2013 was supposed to?).

 

So it would seem, “whetever it takes” now means – jawbone the EUR down whenever we can… (and we wonder what that will do to US earnings as the USD is ramped)…

 

Source: UBS

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/l_8LQ0FP5CM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Following several months of disappointing retail sales, and two months of missed expectations, October finally saw the best beat in headline expectations since April, with retail sales rising 0.4% vs 0.1% expected. However, as has been the case in all of 2013, the bulk of this beat was driven by car sales, which rose by 1.3%, leaving sales ex autos beating by the tiniest of fractions at 0.2% vs 0.1% expected, and ex autos and gas +0.3%, vs 0.2% expected.

Looking at the components, following month after month of clothing store
sales misses, this category finally posted a modest 1.4%
rebound, together with an increase in Electronic and Sporting goods
sales, amounting to 1.4% and 1.6%, respecitvely. This was offset by the
traditionally strong Building materials sales which declined by 1.9% in
October.

 

Unlike the exuberant inflation-spree that government-provided CPI showed during the Fed’s QE2, since the start of QE3, inflation data (according to the never-manipulated government providers) has been on a downtrend. The latest print  – at expectations of 1.0% year-over-year – is the lowest CPI since October 2009. What is perhaps more notable is the drop into deflation on MoM basis (CPI -0.1% MoM vs +0.1% exp). Of course, the market’s reaction is exuberance as this clearly gives the Fed a green light to provide more life-giving liquidity to enable nominal stock prices to rise. However, a glance at the chart below might just remind traders (and the Fed) of the Einsteinian foolishness that expectation.

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/NZhq3jr6m5c/story01.htm Tyler Durden