During the last week we have highlighted the frightening similarity between the speculative spike in China commodity trading (which has sent industrial metals prices soaring in yet another 'error' signal for real supply and demand) and the pump-n-dump in Chinese stocks.
It had already been a very bad several years for hedge funds with 2016 starting off especially brutally, as Goldman's own Hedge Fund VIP basket demonstrates...
... when moments ago we learned that it is about to get even worse for one of the most iconic names in the macro hedge fund space, Brevan Howard, which according to Bloomberg has been served with $1.4 billion in cash redemption requests.
Brevan Howard co-founder Alan Howard
"Forgive the macros – they know not what they do."
If there was some confusion why the Atlanta Fed recently revised its GDP Nowcast higher following the recent retail sales miss, that confusion will be even more acute today when moments ago the Atlanta Fed plugged today's weaker than expected durable goods print (and downward revision to past month's data), and ended up with... a GDP forecast that was higher than previously, or an increase from 0.3% to 0.4%.
From the Atlanta Fed's Nowcast:
Exxon Mobil has been rate AAA by S&P since 1930 according to Bloomberg. Today that ended as the global crude explorer with sales that dwarf the economies of most nations was cut to AA+ (Outlook stable). Having been put on notice in February (negative watch), citing concern that credit measures would remain weak through 2018.
Credit measures will be weak for a AAA rating due, in part, to low commodity prices, high reinvestment requirements and large dividend payments, S&P says.