US Federal Reserve

Now that the Fed has commenced its rate hike cycle, the jobs report suddenly takes on far less significance because only a massively "outlier" print will have an impact on Fed thinking, thinking which so far appears undented despite a raging manufacturing recession across the US. This means that the December jobs could be the "most important ever" only in retrospect, with either a huge miss (think < 100,000) or huge beat (> 275,000) having a material impact at a time when algos are much more focused on China scrambling to prevent its economy - and market - crashing, hard.

Having correctly foreseen in September that "China's devaluations are not over yet" it appears Nomura's infamous 'bear' Bob Janjuah has also nailed The Fed's subsequent actions (hiking rates into a fundamentally weakening economy in a desperate bid to "convince markets that strong growth and inflation are on their way back").

JPM, Citi, UBS, and now one of the Wall Street strategists whose perspective we respect the most, BofA's Michael Harnett, who quite clearly disagrees with the official BofA "straight to CNBC" mouthpiece Savita Subramanian, is out with a note in which he is telling reders to get out of stocks, go into cash expecting a short sharp pullbacks in risk assets (e.g. SPX to 1850-1900), and be long volatility.

From his report:

Two words - "policy" and "error"

Gold up 3%, Long bonds up 2%, Stocks down 5% since the Fed hiked rates: This was not supposed to happen!

And money markets are not buying what The Fed is selling.

What rate hike? The market is starting to whisper about an imminent rate cut.

Last month, in what will likely be viewed in hindsight as an ill-fated attempt to begin the long and painful process of normalizing monetary policy, the Fed "went there." Janet Yellen raised rates. 

Investors were meant to take solace in the FOMC's use of the term "gradual" to describe the trajectory for rates going forward, as well as from the apparent unanimity, but as is becoming more clear with each passing week, "liftoff" was a policy mistake and may well go down as the worst timed rate hike in history.