BlackRock's Gold ETF (IAU) has seen fund inflows every day in 2016 (no outflows at all) and with the stock trading above its NAV for most of the year, the world's largest asset manager has made a significant decision:
BlackRock Statement:
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Just stunning.
German newspaper Der Spiegel reported yesterday that the Bavarian Banking Association has recommended that its member banks start stockpiling PHYSICAL CASH.
Europe, of course, has been battling with negative interest rates for quite some time.
What this means is that commercial banks are being charged interest for holding wholesale deposits at the European Central Bank.
The headline jobs number was certainly good, beating expectations and well higher than last month's disappointing (and upward revised) 182K print. However, a quick look below the headline reveals an amazing statistic: while we already noted that average hourly earnings posted only their first decline since December 2014, and just the 6th in the past decade, declining by -0.1%, what is the real surprise is that average weekly hours worked also dropped substantially by 0.2 from 34.6 to 34.4.
The immediate kneejerk rip in stocks (and bond yields) and dip in gold on the "good" jobs headline rapidly faded as the reality of ugly wage data seeped out. Crude is now notably lower, gold higher, stocks lower, and bond yields rallying back...
Initial rip then dip...
And gold is now soaring back...
As stocks tumble...
If bulls were expecting a February payrolls miss, they did not get it when moments ago the BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls surged by 242K in the past month, smashing expectations of 195K, with the January and December prints both revised higher by 21K and 9K respectively. The unemployment rate at 4.9% printed unchanged from the prior month and as expected.