Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
You may have seen these charts before, but they tell the story of a middle class in decline.
For any system to endure, it must maintain a built-in capacity to self-correct: that is, it must generate accurate informational feedback about dangerous asymmetries and auto-correct with behavioral feedback.
With Bloomberg recently writing articles such as "Mnuchin to Wall Street: U.S. Is Serious About Ultra-Long Bonds", "Mnuchin Says Ultra-Long U.S. Bonds Can Absolutely Make Sense" and "Wall Street Sees Treasury Paying Up for Ultra-Long Bond Issuance", there was a tangible buildup of confusion and excitement that the US Treasury under Steven Mnuchin may follow in Europe's footsteps and announced 50, if not 100 year Treasurys in the near future.
After reaching one month highs on Monday, copper futures prices have tumbled to near 3-week lows amid slowing China credit impulse-driven economic signals (PMIs weak) and a surge in LME stockpiles.
And the market reacted...
Authored by ConvergEx's Nicholas Colas,
After somewhat surprsingly surging to its highest levels since Dec 2014 in March (4 sigma beat), April ADP tumbled to 177k (and March was revised lower from 263k to 255k). This is the lowest growth in jobs since October 2016 - pre-Trump - with service-producing jobs gaining dramaticaly more than goods-producing (165k vs 12k).
The collapse in both ISM's Manufacturing and Services Employment sub-indices suggested notable downside for jobs in April and sure enough the ADP print corrected and was revised lower...