Trade Deficit Surges, Hits $50.2 Billion, On Expectations Of $44.1 Billion, Major Downward Revisions To Q2 GDP Coming 

When we reported on the record surge in Chinese exports over the weekend we said that "the official read of the US trade deficit which will be reported on Tuesday, will almost certainly spike, pushing GDP expectations lower yet again." Sure enough, the US May trade deficit just exploded to $50.2 billion, far above the consensus of $44.1 billion, and much worse than April's revised $43.6 billion. Imports, not surprisingly, surged to an all time high $225.1 billion with exports lagging, even despite the relatively weak dollar in May, which declined modestly to $174.9 billion. From the report: "The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that total May exports of $174.9 billion and imports of $225.1 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $50.2 billion, up from $43.6 billion in April, revised. May exports were $1.0 billion less than April exports of $175.8 billion. May imports were $5.6 billion more than April imports of $219.4 billion." Accoding to Bloomberg's Brusuelas, the key culprits were petroleum and industrial supplies. For those wondering what America exports and imports: "In May, the goods deficit increased $6.7 billion from April to $64.9 billion, and the services surplus increased $0.1 billion to $14.7 billion." So why do people care about the manufacturing CPI again? Bottom line: the bean counters will now be forced to revise their Q2 GDP forecasts well lower. And while Q2 is now a scratch, the problem is that this weakness is now continuing into Q3.

Gold In Euros At New Record As Fears Of European Contagion Get Worse 

Equities internationally and bonds in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Italy have fallen this morning while gold rose to new record nominal highs in euros and pounds (over EUR1,118/oz GBP980/oz respectively). The Italian 10 year rose above 6% for the first time and the Spanish 10 year yield rose to 6.12%. US stock futures are pointing to losses on the U.S. opening. Irish government bonds have reached a new euro era record high with the 10 year rising to 13.57% - up from 11.6% only 5 days ago. Ireland’s “bail out” is clearly not working as contagion deepens in the eurozone. 

Italy Succeeds Placing 1 Year Bill As ECB, China Buying Bonds In Secondary Market 

One of the main catalysts for today's European market action was the Italian 1 year Bill issuance which was supposed to set the tone for Italian bond demand, especially since thanks to ISDA's stupidity (which had made it clear CDS will not trigger in any event as the organization is completely spineless), there is no reason to any longer hedge a negative basis at issuance. Well, Italy did pull it off, although at terms that a month ago would have inspired shock within the market. "The 6.75 billion euro sale was the first test of appetite for Italian paper since a surge in nerves that it will be next to fall in the euro zone's debt crisis due to domestic political tensions and a combination of high public debt and low growth. The gross yield on the 12-month BOT bills rose to 3.67 percent from 2.147 percent at a previous auction in June. This was the highest level since September 2008, according to Reuters calculations on Italian Treasury data. The bid-to-cover ratio fell to 1.55 times from 1.71 in June, when the treasury sold a slightly lower 6 billion euros in total." However, even this data was very suspect after 10 Year Italian-Bund spreads hit a new record wide of 355 bps earlier as the Italian contagion is now fully on. In response, both the ECB and China are now rumored to be scooping up all peripheral bonds in the secondary after a long hiatus as the ECB is on the verge of panicking, side by side with European bond investors, following remarks by Dutch Finance Minister De Jager who said, as predicted yesterday, that a Greek selective default "Is not excluded anymore." 

 

 

 

 

China's Bailout Of Europe Has Started, As The PBOC Joins The SNB 

As of this morning China has migrated from a purely symbolic European White Knight to an actual one. While overnight trading action was set to recreate the panic from September 15, 2008, suddenly something changed. That something? China. Per Dow Jones: "Bunds give up nearly all of Tuesday's early gains with the September contract just 12 ticks higher on the day at 129.26 after making a spike at 130.91, a gain of 177 ticks from the open. The latest, unconfirmed, rumor pushing bunds lower is that China is behind the supposed ECB enquiries for peripheral debt prices. As yet no official confirmation from market sources of any central bank buying. In the cash space, the 2-year yields 1.235% and the 10-year 2.65%." As China has been actively buying up EURs over the past two months and is now massively underwater on a cost position that may be in the hundreds, but is certainly in the tens of billions of dollars, the ongoing collapse in the EUR currency will now force the PBOC to resort to increasingly more drastic measures to protect its strategic investment. The irony of this is that the Swiss National Bank, which this morning had to watch in horror as the EURCHF plummeted to 1.15 and for the longest time has been fighting the Fed (which loves a strong EUR) has been joined by the PBOC, which is now also trading on its behalf. The First Central Bank War is now officially on.

Why The Sudden Surge In Fixed Income Vol May Have Serious Consequences For The Market 

It looks like SOVX completely broke down for periods of time yesterday where bid/offer widened, and in spite of that, the index moved on no trades. For a brief period this morning, that looked like it affected MAIN as well. So far U.S. credit markets have been far more stable and the technicals seem better, though I'm not sure how true that would have been if people were trading IG when Main went to 127 bid earlier. Main is back to 120. That is a very large swing. This heightened volatility needs to subside soon, or we will see weakness in the market as investors (particularly hedge funds) are forced to shrink their positions because they do not (cannot) tolerate the P&L volatility from these sorts of moves. Main traded in a 10 bp range (95.75 to 105.75) from March 20th until June 8th. Almost 3 months and the entire range was 10 bps, and most of the time it traded in a tighter band. Today it has traded in a 7 bp range. That level of volatility is unsustainable, but even if we continue at the pace of the past couple of weeks, investors will have to scale back their positions as the only way to manage their P&L. We may continue the bounce, but without real evidence of some new plan, I think the upside is credit is very limited short term. 

 

 

 

 

 

Willem Buiter Says If ECB Does Not Intervene In Thursday's Italian Bond Auction, It Will Likely Fail 

Willem Buiter, Citigroup's chief economist and former BOE policy maker, told reporters in London today that "the ECB will intervene on whatever scale is necessary to allow Italy to conduct its auction on Thursday. If the ECB doesn’t come in, the Italian bond auction is likely to fail. What we’re going to have is the ECB are going to be doing the heavy lifting." To anyone who watched the sharp move in Italian sovereigns, so reminiscent of central bank FX intervention overnight, Buiter's conclusion is all too obvious. As we reported, there were extensive rumors, and certainly validated by trading activity, that either the ECB or the PBOC or both, intervened in the Italian bond market to make sure today's Bill auction priced, which it did, but absent the reinforcement of the central banks could have very likely failed. What is amusing is that it was just last week that reporters were querying Trichet why the ECB's SMP bond purchasing operation had been all but abandoned. Well, here's your answer: JCT was simply preserving his dry powder for all the upcoming contagion casualties, such as Italy first, then everyone else.

JOLTS Summary: More Government Workers Quitting Voluntarily, More Private Sector Workers Getting Fired 

There was nothing to smile about in today's May JOLTS release from the BLS. Those expecting a pick up in job openings (traditionally the key requirement for an sustained increase in NFP) will have to wait some more, after the May number came at 3.0 million, the same as April. This is modestly better than the all time low of 2.1 million in July 2009, but is a far cry from the 4.4 million when the Depression started. And while there was no good news in Job Openings, there was some bad news in Total Separations which increased by over 200K sequentially from 3.833 MM to 4.059 MM. And for the first time since late 2010, the separations rates (defined to include voluntary quits, involuntary layoffs and discharges) rose to 3.1%, the same as the hires rate. Should the separations rate (especially if driven by involuntary departures) surpass the hires rate it will likely portend another period of NFP weakness ahead. What is most surprising is that contrary to conventional wisdom, the voluntary quits level among government workers increased from 38% to 41% of total, while the layoffs and discharges level dropped from 44% to 38%, which means that government workers were not "let go" - they left voluntarily. This throws a bit of a wrench in generic interpretations of the surge in the government component of the unemployment rate. What is worse is that the quits rate in the Private employment stayed flat at 50%, while the layoff and discharges rate increased from 42% to 44%. Ironically, it is Private workers who are getting fired more, while it is government workers who are quitting voluntarily. 

 

 

 

 

 

In The News Today

July 11, 2011, at 7:17 pm
by Jim Sinclair 

 

"At least once, everyone should have to run for his life, so he will know that eggs don’t come from stores, that safety does not come from police, and that ‘news’ is not something that happens to other people." –Robert Heinlein

Dear Friends,
Two battles are on the horizon. One for Gold $1600 and the next at $1650.
Regards,
Jim