Asia

A week ago we highlight the "last bubble standing" was finally bursting, and as China's corporate bond bubble deflates rapidly, it appears investors are catching on to the contagion possibilities this may involve as one analyst warns "the cost has built up in the form of corporate credit risks and bank risks for the whole economy." As Bloomberg reports, local issuers have canceled 61.9 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) of bond sales in April alone, and Standard & Poor’s is cutting its assessment of Chinese firms at a pace unseen since 2003.

If asking traders where stocks and oil would be trading one day after a weekend in which the Doha OPEC meeting resulted in a spectacular failure, few if any would have said the S&P would be over 2,100, WTI would be back over $40 and the VIX would be about to drop to 12 and yet that is precisely where the the S&P500 is set to open today, hitting Goldman's year end target 8 months early, and oblivious of the latest batch of poor earnings news, this time from Intel and Netflix, both of which are sharply down overnight.

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Following yesterday's OPEC "production freeze" meeting in Doha which ended in total failure, where in a seemingly last minute change of heart Saudi Arabia and specifically its deputy crown prince bin Salman revised the terms of the agreement demanding Iran participate in the freeze after all knowing well it won't, oil crashed and with it so did the strategy of jawboning for the past 2 months had been exposed for what it was: a desperate attempt to keep oil prices stable and "crush shorts" while global demand slowly picked up.

Submitted by Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Hungary has become the first Eastern European country to issue a yuan-denominated sovereign bond.

The deal that shows how currying favor with China may be a more important driver for the market than funding.

Reader Steve who sent me the story commented on Hungarian mortgages denominated in Swiss Francs only to see the  Franc jump over 20% in value overnight.

“Pretty clever guys!”, said Steve.

Anyone think this is a good idea?