"I’ve got news for you," warns Bloomberg's Richard Breslow, the world is a complicated place and getting more so, not less...
This is not your happy, some would say mind-numbing, environment where the only thing that ultimately mattered was blind faith in the global commitment of central banks to “do whatever it takes”. It will not serve investors well to fall back on analysis by reductio ad simplicate.
Last February, when Kyle Bass announced the upcoming launch of a dedicated fund to short the Yuan, as part of a bigger macro short unveiled in his report on “The $34 Trillion Experiment: China’s Banking System and the World’s Largest Macro Imbalance”, many were skeptical if not outright mocked the Hayman Capital founder.
With the Dow Jones flirting around 20,000 for the better part of the past two weeks, one prominent commentator remained skeptical: Dennis Gartman was "marginally net short." Well, no more.
Asian stocks rose, led by Hong Kong, while European shares and U.S. equity-index futures are little changed. Euro, yen climb as the dollar posted an unexpected loss following some serious fireworks out of China, which intervened in funding market to crush offshore Yuan shorts.
Top news stories include Macy’s and Kohl’s cutting their outlook after weak holiday season, Deutsche Bank exploring lending money to PE firms buying distressed loans, Apple planning to invest $1b in SoftBank’s new technology fund.
Following another day of upbeat economic data, with growing signs that inflation on both sides of the Atlantic is accelerating, investors rediscovered their faith in the Trumpflation rally, pushing global stocks and US equity futures higher, fuelling a second day of 2017 equity gains ahead of today's release of the Fed's December minutes.