The ferrous complex was to the moon again on January 18, 2022 as everything flew with Chinese stimmies: I am still of the view that we will see steel demand fall further this year. As well, China is flooded with iron ore inventory with oodles more to come this year from big miners. Not to
Did you say MOAR? Goldman on the PBoC: PBOC held a press conference this afternoon on the MLF and OMO policy rate cut on Monday (January 17). In general the tone from PBOC is very dovish and pro-growth. PBOC stated the need to expand the monetary policy toolkit, hinted at an LPR (Loan Prime Rate)
DXY is back and charging as EUR falls: The AUD was hit: Oil is one way rocket ship: Dirt is trying but largely failing to follow: Big miners were stable amid falls: EM stocks are breaking down again: Led by EM junk which is a screaming meteor of doom for risk assets: As yields spike.
FTAlphaville with the update: Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Just when you thought you might have got away with ripping some images from the internet to make a cartoon about a fake crypto paradise island that some people seem to believe might actually one day exist and flogging some NFTs on the back of it
Ah yes, freedom Morrison Government style. Freedom for mates that is: The shortage of rapid antigen tests for consumers is being exacerbated by state and federal governments and large corporates placing mammoth orders for the kits, causing stock to be diverted from online retailers and pharmacies. Australia is in the middle of a huge Omicron
From RIO’s freshly minted Dec QTR production report: Iron ore shipments and bauxite production guidance remain subject to weather and market conditions. Our guidance assumes development of the pandemic does not lead to government-imposed restrictions and widespread protracted cases related to new highly contagious variants with high severity, which could result in a significant number
From the ANZ: ANZ Roy Morgan Australian Consumer Confidence dropped 7.6% last week, to its lowest reading since October, as Omicron case numbers surge. #ausecon @DavidPlank12 @RoyMorganAus pic.twitter.com/5fFBMqvpqi — ANZ_Research (@ANZ_Research) January 17, 2022 Hoocoodanode that the people of Australia would react so badly to being sprayed by plague while their government withdrew all health
The ferrous complex fell further on January 17: Chinese data delivered pretty much what I expected. Property starts are in free fall, down 31% in December and at their deepest falls ever on year-on-year in the quarter: There is some offset in infrastructure coming. Pantheon: As with exports, the pivot toward consumption will likely fade
According to a useless AFR: I assume the subbies are joking. Yesterday’s stimulus was minor and, in context, dangerously so for those dependent upon Chinese property demand. The Chinese property market has a much larger problem than yesterday’s stimulus suggests. The liquidity crisis engulfing property developers is accelerating as it sucks in the good as
Hoocoodanode that unleashing a plague on an unsuspecting and unsupported polity would make you unpopular? In my view, the Resolve Political Monitor is the most Coalition-biased political survey in the press. Yet even it has delivered a bowel-shaking crash in Morrison Government support: Soaring virus infections have fuelled a backlash against Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Anyone with a memory longer than a goldfish will know that the last time Australia was fighting a combined falling commodity price and rising wages outlook was in the late 1980s: The Prices and Incomes Accord was an agreement between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer (later Prime Minister) Paul Keating in 1983. Employers
DXY was up again last night: Australian dollar was mixed: Oil is still hot: Dirt mixed: Miners soft: EM stocks softer: EM debt softest: US markets were closed for Martin Luther King Day. Westpac has the wrap: Event Wrap Italian CPI inflation in December was finalised unchanged from the preliminary at 4.2%y/y). Canadian manufacturing sales rose 2.6%m/m
Chinese data for December is out and is a mess. The headline numbers were fine owing to resumptions in output after recent energy-related shutdowns. Q4 GDP was a respectable 1.6% to deliver a lousy 4% over the year: Growth internals were mixed for the month of December. Industrial production was decent year on year at
WES with the warning today: OMICRON cases will peak soon but they will also remain elevated for months given the private sector lockdown and second stage surge as schooling resumes. So expect a slew of similar warnings. I remain of the view that Q1 will return us to the “Morricession“, the phenomenon in which a
ZH has a couple of good wraps. First, bearish: For the past year BofA Chief Investment Strategist, Michael Hartnett, has been one of Wall Street’s gloomiest strategists (perhaps just below Albert Edwards and Michael Wilson on the permabear scale) warning that global markets are on the precipice of a very ugly turn of events, and
The Australia Institute has a new report out that should be the headline around the country but barely gets a mention: Australia’s giant offshore gasfields are paying almost no royalties, create few jobs and are a large and rising source of greenhouse gases, according to a new report from the Australia Institute. The “Gas-fired robbery”
Deutsche with the note. To my mind, if get anywhere near this outcome then stocks are going to crash. Put another way, stocks are going to crash to prevent it: Introduction Last week we adjusted our Fed view to bring forward liftoff to March and accelerate quantitative tightening (QT) to begin during the summer (see
What is China’s endgame for its property shakeout? In short, the days of blistering home-price gains and debt-fueled building sprees by billionaire property tycoons are set to fade. They’ll be replaced by a much more staid market where authorities are quick to clamp down on speculative frenzies and development is dominated by state-run companies earning
The ferrous complex flamed out on January 14, 2022 as everything fell: It looks like the pre-Olympics restock is sputtering and a slew of bad data landed on the market as well. CISA output for the first 10 days of January fell back sharply and is down roughly 10% year-on-year. Inventories climbed sharply which is
Playing the Joker card worked a treat in the left and right weekend press for the Morrison Government: This immense distraction has only one purpose, to bury the lede of the collapse of government service delivery during Morrison’s “let it rip” recession. ACOSS has summed up what is missing: The ACOSS policy recommendations are organised
DXY caught a bid Friday night as EUR swooned: AUD was hit across the board: Oil has declared OMICRON over: Dirt flamed out: As did miners: The EM stocks bear market is setting up another down leg: As it chases the screaming meteor of EM junk: Be warned that EM and DM equity do not
Kyle Bass on why China must crush real estate and why it is uninvestiable. Absolutely!
Deutsche with the note: Omicron detected in Tianjin and Henan China’s first Omicron outbreak was detected in the city of Tianjin over the weekend. On the morning of Jan 8, two patients in Tianjin who actively sought medical treatment were confirmed as being infected with the Omicron variant. The local government immediately locked down certain
The Windsor’s know what to do when institutions are overwhelmed by sleaze: The Duke of York was stripped of all military titles and patronages by the Queen and agreed no longer to use the moniker “His Royal Highness”, in an attempt to protect the Royal family from the fallout of his sexual abuse case. That
Westpac credit card data is the latest to record the shock: After hitting new post-COVID highs in the lead-in to Christmas, the Westpac Card Tracker Index has fallen away sharply since the turn of the year, average index reads over the weeks ending Jan 1 and Jan 8 down 10pts compared to the last two weeks of Dec.
The ferrous complex flamed out on January 13, 2022 as Chinese property hit the kids: Is that it? Who knows! What we can observe is that the recent bullish hysteria will have nicely bloated the holdings of speculators and steel mills even as the demand outlook doesn’t improve at all and we head into both
As much as markets would like it to be over, it isn’t. It’s getting worse. Developer junk spreads exploded yesterday to new records: It took in all of the usual suspects: But, more alarmingly, it is dragging in the largest and most well-regarded developers in the country. Country Garden is the largest in the market
DXY continued to swoon last night as it shakes out the longs: That was enough to lift the Australian dollar despite falling markets though not so much versus crosses: Dirt remained bid: Miners were softer: EM stocks flamed out: As EM junk sends a crystal clear warnig that all is not well. The divergence from
It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the robots: We are all bond traders now. Well, bond traders have always been bond traders, but even 18-year-old teenage equity and crypto “portfolio managers” now have to follow bond prices and yields more than any other market indicator for a sense of what happens next.
The arguments for an Australian Republic are very underwhelming: The steady stream of dramas and scandals emanating from the royal family continues apace. Prince Andrew’s friendship with the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, the Sussexes’ endless soap opera, and now a “cash for honours” affair right under Prince Charles’s nose. As the next generation of Windsors supplants
