Following weakness in the middle-east and as WTI prices slide back into the red (on the heels of record speculative shorts in crude oil), Asia-Pac stocks are opening to the downside (but only modestly). On the bright side, the ZARpocalypse has been delayed briefly as the Rand is rallying on the back of Zuma hiring a new finance minister.
Despite the bloodbath in corporate credit markets, talking heads remain cognitively dissonant as to the reality lurking under the surface of this colossal leap in cost of funds for every firm. However, Credit Suisse is "worried" about the implications of these two disheartening charts expose, suggesting a default environment that might abort the Fed hiking cycle - which in this case is not a market-reassuring outcome.
And just like that last week's junk bond debt fund liquidation and redemption suspension, which first struck at the mutual fund giant Third Avenue and promptly spread to a hedge fund launched by the former heads of distressed and high yield trading from, get this, Bear Stearns, and was supposed to be quietly buried, went front page and nuclear following a WSJ report that the CEO of Third Avenue, David M. Barse, who had been with the company for 23 years, has been fired.
Submitted by Salil Mehta via Staistical Ideas blog,
Confirming what we explained here, Goldman Sachs notes that the publication of a new CNY exchange rate index suggests an increased focus on broader CNY moves against other non-USDollar currencies and reinforces the likelihood of further depreciation versus the USD.
Goldman Sachs writes...