Business

While most western central bankers are slowly, if grudgingly, admitting that everything they have done since the start of the "most hated rally in history" has been to create precisely this rally (also explaining why it remains so deeply "hated" as none of it is in any remote way natural) at least in Hungary they are dead honest from the onset, that when it comes to propping up the economy it all starts (and ends) with the stock market.

DOE's 3.88mm inventory build confirms API's print and is the 8th weekly rise in the last 9 for overall crude levels. Cushing also saw a build (690k) -- the 17th week of the last 18. But the market - for now - is focused on the 4.5mm barrel draw in gasoline inventories - the biggest in a year, as the seasonals pickup. Crude jumped on the news, seemingly ignoring the fact that Cushing inventories now stand at a record high 66.9mm barrels. Also notably, US production rose for the first time in 7 weeks.

DOE:

Worst.Case.Scenario. In 24 years, the ratio of wholesale inventories to sales has only been higher than the current 1.35x once - at the peak of the recession in the last financial crisis. Wholesale sales tumbled 1.3% MoM (worse than the -0.3% exp) and inventories rose 0.3% MoM while expectations were for a drop of 0.1% (inventories over sales difference rose from $143.6BN to $151.2BN in one month, a new record high.) And finally, automotive inventories rose to 1.78x sales - the highest since the crisis.

Someone at the New York Fed messed up.

On February 5, Bill Dudley was “penetrated” when “hackers” (of supposed Chinese origin) stole $100 million from accounts belonging to the Bangladesh central bank.

As we reported on Tuesday, the money was apparently channeled to the Philippines where it was sold on the black market and funneled to “local casinos” (to quote AFP). After the casino laundering, it was sent back to the same black market FX broker who promptly moved it to “overseas accounts within days.”

As most financial media will remind you, today is the 7 year anniversary of the market's lows hit on March 9, 2009, a day when the Wall Street Journal wondered "How low can stocks go", which took less than a week after Obama said on March 3 that "what you're now seeing is profit-and-earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it" (sic) and just days before the Fed officially launched its expanded QE1 asset purchasing program.