Business

On the last day of an extremely volatile first quarter, following the latest torrid push higher in risk assets over the past two days following Yellen's dovish Tuesday comments, today has seen a modest pull back in risk, whether because the market is massively overbought, because someone finally looked at what record multiple expansion that has taken place in Q1 as earnings are set to collapse by nearly 10%, or simply due to fears that tomorrow's payrolls number will show an abnormal amount of minimum wage waiters and bartenders added.

Ripley's believe it or not world continues. Earlier today, Hong Kong's Hang Seng market entered a bull market, rising 20% from its February lows, just as Hong Kong retail sales plunged 20.6%, the bigest drop since 1999...

... and then moments ago, in a move that pushed the Chinese Yuan stronger at least initially, S&P revised its Chinese outlook to negative, saying , the economic rebalancing is likely to proceed more slowly than had expected over next 5 years.

Among the report highlights:

There has been some confusion in recent months about the unprecedented M&A buying spree unleashed by Chinese investors on international, but mostly U.S. targets, a spree which has already resulted in a record amount of Chinese outbound M&A capital, manifesting in $41 billion in US deals in just the first quarter, already double the full amount for 2015...

... funded by just as ridiculous amounts of debt:

After The Fed jawboned the world into the largest aggregate net short position in Treasuries in Q4 since 2010, its rapid realization that all is not well in the real world - and subsequent talking (and walking) back of rate-hike expectations - has sparked the biggest short-squeeze in 6 years and sent Treasuries up by the most since 2012. With odds collapsing for any more rate-hikes in 2016, as Yellen admits their forecasts are worthless, it seems - just as in 2010 - the bonds shorts have a way to go.

On Tuesday, Janet Yellen delivered what some observers called her finest “performance” since ascending to the monetary throne in February of 2014.

Of course in the post-crisis world, central bankers are only praised when they make dovish pronouncements. Hawks are heretical. To tighten is to sin.