Business

Another night of ugliness in Asia as the 'froth' is blasted out of the exuberant hot-money-chased commodity markets. Chinese steel and iron ore futures tumbled on Wednesday to the lowest prices in months as market sentiment turned bearish on the demand outlook.

As Reuters reports, China's producer price inflation cooled for the first time in seven months in March, pressured by fears that Chinese steel production is higher than demand, leaving a glut of the metal later this year.

With the 30Y trading comfortably in repo today, with no tightness as indicated by the +0.7% repo rate, it seemed possible that the auction would join this week's previous 2 auctions of 3 and 10 Year paper by printing with a modest tail. So when the Treasury announced results from today's 29-Year 10-Month reopening, few were surprised that the High Yield of 2.938% tailed the When Issued of 2.929% by 0.9bps, suggesting yet another mediocre auction. 27.01% of the bids at the high yield were accepted.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In the wake of the United Airlines debacle - in which the airline had airport police assault one of its own customers - customers have begun to ask why there doesn't seem to be more competition for United to contend with. They ask: would United treat its customers so poorly if they had more competition? 

Maybe not. 

Is the Airline Industry Competitive? 

Even as cracks have emerged in Trump's fiscal policy, as well as the overall market, on rising geopolitical concerns, the S&P remains surprisingly resilient, and as JPM's Adam Crisafulli writes in his mid-day recap, "the SPX is stuck in purgatory and hasn’t moved in the last ~1.5 months."

What could change that? According to the JPM strategist, two things could lead to a breakout either higher or lower: a clearing of the "nominal growth clouds" and "the SPX vs. TSY gap is resolved." 

Back in late March, equity markets sold off on the first signs that Republicans were not going to be able to repeal and replace Obamacare as they had promised.  Alas, the pessimism didn't last long as the BTFD crowd was able to quickly convince everyone that the failure of Obamacare was actually good for markets as it would allow the Trump administration to focus it's efforts on tax cuts instead...and, as usual, equities soared.