Business

Following the wholesale inventories-to-sales jump, business inventories-to-sales just shifted once again to cycle highs, deep in recessionary territory. With inventories unchanged in October, slightkly lower than thge expected 0.1% increase, Q4 GDP will start to be affected (and Q3 as prior data was revised lower). Nevertheless, with sales dropping 0.2%, with manufacturers tumbling 0.5% MoM, the looming production cuts set up The Fed for an epic policy error.

Three words... "not unequivocally good."

For the first time since February 2009, WTI Crude is trading with a $35 handle...

We have been almost alone in our exclamations at the collapsing offshore Yuan in the last few days but since The IMF blessed China's currency with inclusion in The SDR, CNH is down 13 handles. However, now we appear to have an answer. Overnight saw commentary from CFETS (China's FX market 'manager') that indicated implicitly that Trade-Weighted Yuan was still trading too high.

Following a miss in retail sales (if slight beat in core spending), the final key economic update the Fed will look at before its "first rate hike in nine years" meeting next week is today's Producer Price Inflation report which rose 0.3%, above the expected unchanged print and even higher compared to October's -0.4% decline.

Despite all the industry's exuberance over auto sales in America, the government's retail sales data shows vehicle sales dropped 0.4% in October (in other words, automakers are channel-stuffing). This rolled through the various headline data leaving a 4th miss in a row MoM and the weakest YoY growth for retail sales since Nov 2009 - deep in recession territory.

This is the 4th miss in a row for the headline retail sales data...

And sends the annual growth rate well into recession territory...