Today's market action highlighted the perfect chaos that has engulfed the markets over the past several weeks, with most investors suddenly having no idea what to do with the mountain of cash on the "sidelines", and as a result putting most of it in Treasuries (remember the whole crash the markets hypothesis?), threatening to unwind the steepener trades that have become all the rage over the past several months. This is despite the just voted through $1.9 trillion debt ceiling increase, the ridiculous US budget deficit, looming state and municipal defaults, and the just cancelled MTA bond auction. Adding uncertainty to it all is tomorrow NFP report which as the BLS noted today, could probably see even greater revisions than the 824,000 presented before, coupled with rumblings of an incipient trade war between China and the US which could cause this major buyer of US heavy manufacturing to scale back its purchases. All of this is occurring on the backdrop of plunging markets everywhere, but especially in Europe where sovereign default risks are now spreading like wildfire, hitting stock and corporate levels without discrimination. And the cherry on top is that the contagion fears are spreading globally, with the Bovespa now closing 4.7% and the BZL plunging.All systems eventually lead to chaos. Suddenly the world looks like a scary place. Truth is it always was, but the RAH-RAH smiley face crew ran out of steam.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Elevator Going Down
Dow down 268 to just above the 10,000 mark ahead of tomorrow's jobs report. Tyler's rundown at Zero Hedge:
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