Nikkei 225

In a note from Goldman's cross-asset strategist Ian Wright, the bank points out something troubling: on one hand, over the past six months, or rather since the US elections, equity markets around the globe have soared, and returns across regions have been "strong" - S&P 500, Stoxx 600, Nikkei 225 and MSCI EM ($) have returned roughly 11%, 16%, 20% and 11% in local currency price terms, respectively, with MSCI World ($) up 12% over the same period.  In other words, everything is up.

In the first few months of the year, a trading desk rumor emerged that even as institutional traders dumped stocks and retail investors piled into ETFs, a "mystery" central bank was quietly bidding up risk assets by aggressively buying stocks.

A year ago, we noted that The Bank of Japan (BoJ) was a Top 10 holder in 90% of Japanese stocks. In December, we showed that BoJ was the biggest buyer of Japanese stocks in 2016. And now, as The FT reports, the real "whale" of the Japanese markets is stepping up its buying (up over 70% YoY) entering the market on down days more than half the time in the last four years.

With much of Europe and Asia, including the U.K., France, Germany and China markets closed for Labor Day, Asian stocks and the dollar rose buoyed by news that Congress had reached a deal to keep the US government funded through the end of September. S&P futures are up 4 points or 0.2%. Oil declined as rigs targeting crude in the U.S. rose for a fifteenth week and output from Libya rebounded.

Despite yesterday's whopping beats by Amazon and Google which sent the Nasdaq to new record highs after hours, and brought Jeff Bezos "this close" to overtaking Bill Gates as the world's richest man, this morning futures S&P futures are little changed ahead of the closely watched Q1 GDP report, European stocks and Asian equities are slightly lower, oil is higher after Russia's energy minister Novak said Russia had reached the 300kbpd oil cut per the OPEC pact, and the dollar was modestly in the red.