Three words... "not unequivocally good."

For the first time since February 2009, WTI Crude is trading with a $35 handle...

Earlier we reported that in response to the escalation in the Syria proxy war, where the latest development was yesterday's arrival of German warplanes and supporting troops in Turkey, Putin gave one simple command: "I order to act extremely tough. Any targets that threaten Russian forces or our infrastructure on the ground should be immediately destroyed."

We have been almost alone in our exclamations at the collapsing offshore Yuan in the last few days but since The IMF blessed China's currency with inclusion in The SDR, CNH is down 13 handles. However, now we appear to have an answer. Overnight saw commentary from CFETS (China's FX market 'manager') that indicated implicitly that Trade-Weighted Yuan was still trading too high.

Following a miss in retail sales (if slight beat in core spending), the final key economic update the Fed will look at before its "first rate hike in nine years" meeting next week is today's Producer Price Inflation report which rose 0.3%, above the expected unchanged print and even higher compared to October's -0.4% decline.

Despite all the industry's exuberance over auto sales in America, the government's retail sales data shows vehicle sales dropped 0.4% in October (in other words, automakers are channel-stuffing). This rolled through the various headline data leaving a 4th miss in a row MoM and the weakest YoY growth for retail sales since Nov 2009 - deep in recession territory.

This is the 4th miss in a row for the headline retail sales data...

And sends the annual growth rate well into recession territory...