Tuesday 7 April 2015

Complacency Rules.



Baltic Dry Index. 588 Thursday     Brent Crude 57.50

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

“Crisis. What crisis?”

The talking chair, with apologies to “Sunny Jim” Callaghan.

All news is still good news in the global stock and bond markets. The Great Central Bank malinvestment put continues to fuel the multiple bubbles. Even a Grexident, now potentially just three days away, is good news. What could possibly go wrong?

Below, our markets this morning as most of the world returns from a long weekend.

China’s Stocks Resume Rally to Seven-Year High on Stimulus Bets

2:32 AM BST April 7, 2015
China’s stocks rose, sending the benchmark index to the highest level since March 2008, as financial and industrial companies led a rally on speculation the government will do more to support the world’s second-biggest economy.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp., the nation’s biggest lenders, advanced more than 2 percent. CSR Corp. and China CNR Corp. both surged 10 percent after the trainmakers said their merger got regulatory approvals. China Southern Airlines Co. jumped by the daily limit as lower fuel prices bolstered its profit outlook.

The Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.8 percent to 3,933.49 at the 11:30 a.m. break. The gauge has soared 91 percent over the past 12 months, the best performing major global index among 93 measures tracked by Bloomberg, on speculation the central bank will extend cuts in borrowing costs and on increased use of leverage to buy stocks.

“It’s a bull market and funds keep flowing into the market,” said Wang Zheng, the Shanghai-based chief investment officer at Jingxi Investment Management Co. “The market will continue to rise unless we see signals of a crackdown from regulators.”
More

Asia up on Wall Street's lead, Aussie jumps as RBA stands pat

TOKYO | Tue Apr 7, 2015 1:10am EDT
(Reuters) - Asian stocks rose on Tuesday, following a positive lead from Wall Street, while the dollar held onto its gains after rebounding against the euro and yen on higher U.S. Treasury yields.

Spreadbetters saw the upward momentum for equities continuing into Europe, forecasting a higher open for Britain's FTSE .FTSE, Germany's DAX .GDAXI and France's CAC .FCHI.

The Australian dollar jumped after the Reserve Bank of Australia surprised some by standing pat on monetary policy, leaving the cash rate at a record low 2.25 percent.

But given the risks facing the Australian economy like sliding prices of iron ore, the country's biggest export, the central bank did leave the door open for future action, saying further easing might be appropriate.

"We have a cut for May. The key development is that weaker commodity prices, lower terms of trade, and a somewhat sticky currency will push them over the line in May," said Su-Lin Ong, senior economist at RBC Capital Markets.

The Aussie was up 1.3 percent at $0.7686 AUD=D4, pulling away from the six-year low of $0.7534 plumbed last week. Australian shares rose more than 1 percent earlier on easing hopes but were last up 0.4 percent.

Elsewhere in the region, shares in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand gained.

---- Japan's Nikkei .N225 climbed 1.2 percent as the market had an opportunity to gauge how U.S. equities responded to Friday's much weaker-than-expected non-farm payrolls.

"How the U.S. market would react to the weak jobs data was of concern to investors," said Nobuhiko Kuramochi, a strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.

"The market is relieved on views that the Fed will not likely raise interest rates while the economy is seen still fragile."

Wall Street shares rose overnight as the disappointing jobs data fed expectations that the Federal Reserve could wait longer before raising interest rates.
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The Simple Reason Mohamed El-Erian Has Most of His Money in Cash

"...there is a massive gap right now between asset prices and fundamentals"
1:55 PM BST April 6, 2015

In an interview with the Orange County Register, Mohamed El-Erian was asked about everything from life after Pimco to where he is currently putting most of his money. Rather than putting most his money in stocks or bonds, El-Erian reveals that most of it is actually sitting in cash. And the reason is simple: pretty much everything else has gotten too elevated.

Q. Where is your money? Stocks? Treasuries? Bonds? 
A. It is mostly concentrated in cash. That’s not great, given that it gets eaten up by inflation. But I think most asset prices have been pushed by central banks to very elevated levels.

Q. So we’re nearing a bubble?
A. Go back to central banks. Central banks look at growth, at employment, at wages. They are too low. They don’t have the instruments they need, but they feel obliged to do something. So they artificially lift asset prices by maintaining zero interest rates and by using their balance sheet to buy assets.

Why? Because they hope that they will trigger what’s called the wealth effect. That you will open your 401k, see it has gone up in price, and you’ll spend. And that companies will see their shares are going up and they will be more willing to invest. But there is a massive gap right now between asset prices and fundamentals.

The full interview is here.
More

Markets will be caught unaware by a ‘Grexident’

Fears investors are under-pricing the costs of an accidental Greek exit from the eurozone as Athens remains on a collision course with creditors

Financial markets are under-pricing the risk of Greece unwillingly falling out of the eurozone, as the country’s two-month bail-out stalemate shows no sign of easing, economists have warned.

The probability of an accidental Greek exit from the euro, or “Grexident”, has heightened as the Leftist government struggles to stay afloat without a fresh injection of bail-out cash. But these fears have not been reflected in investor sentiment over the last month.

According to a survey of global investors, only a minority of respondents expect Greece to be the first member of the eurozone to leave the bloc over the next year. The poll, carried out by German firm Sentix found only 36.8pc of respondents expect one or more countries to leave the euro within the next 12 months, a lower proportion than those surveyed in February, when the gauge stood at 38pc.

The risks of a potential contagion spreading to other indebted members also seemed not to trouble investors, with a measure of contagion risk falling to an all-time low of 27.5pc in March.

This sanguine outlook comes despite relations between Greece and its international creditors becoming increasingly fraught after a February 20 agreement to extend the country's current bail-out programme.

Germany's Chancellor has maintained the debtor country is "running out of time" to secure its four-month extension, as the Leftist government continues to fall short of creditor demands to hike taxes, cut its social security bill, and implement a series of labour market reforms.

But investors are willing to treat Greece as an exceptional case, said Julian Jessop, chief global economist at Capital Economics.

"The feeling remains there will eventually be some sort of deal, at least to roll over the existing package for the next few months," said Mr Jessop.

"As long as the Greek crisis rumbles on, more people are buying into the belief that the country is a special case, and the ECB will act to make sure the rest of the members stay in the union."

Eurozone government bond yields have also continued to surge to record lows, blanketed from the effects of a potential Grexit by the European Central Bank's €1.1 trillion bond-buying blitz.
More

"Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort."

Antony C. Sutton

At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 63.19 Moz, Eligible 113.04 Moz, Total 176.28 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Not the usual suspects today. Today, our “ally” against our former ally in WW2 China. Time to uphold the Cairo and Potsdam Agreements and force Japan out of the Diaoyu Islands.

American POWs used for live experiments in Japan, according to new museum

Eight crew of a US bomber shot down in May 1945 used in medical experiments in a case that Japan has tried to forget

By Julian Ryall, Tokyo 9:39AM BST 06 Apr 2015
A university museum in Japan has broken a seven-decade taboo on discussing the dissection of live US prisoners of war by medical personnel towards the end of the Second World War.

The museum opened on Saturday in the grounds of Kyushu University, in the city of Fukuoka, and details more than a century of innovation at one of Japan's foremost medical schools. But one small section provides details of a darker chapter in the university's history, according to Kyodo News.

A B-29 Superfortress that had taken off from the Pacific island of Guam and completed a bombing run against an airfield near Fukuoka was rammed by a Japanese fighter on May 5, 1945. Local records indicate that 12 of the crew bailed out, but one died when his parachute cords were severed by another fighter and two others were stabbed to death by local people when they landed.

Nine of the crew were taken into custody, with Capt. Marvin Watkins separated from his men and sent to Tokyo for interrogation. The remainder were handed over to a military physician and transported to Kyoto Imperial University's College of Medicine, the predecessor of the modern-day institution

In testimony against 30 doctors and university personnel presented to a hearing of the Allied War Crimes tribunal in Yokohama in 1948, it was claimed that doctors gave the POWs intravenous injections of seawater to test if it could serve as a substitute for sterile saline solution.

Others had parts of their livers removed to determine if they could survive. Another experiment was to determine whether epilepsy could be controlled through the removal of part of the brain.

None of the crew of the aircraft survived and their remains were preserved in formaldehyde until the end of the war, when the doctors attempted to cover their tracks by destroying the evidence.

One doctor committed suicide in prison before the trial and charges of cannibalism were dropped due to a lack of evidence, but 23 people were found guilty of carrying out vivisection or the wrongful removal of body parts.

Five were sentenced to death, four received life prison terms and the rest received shorter sentences.

Two years later, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the military governor of Japan, commuted all the death sentences and reduced most of the prison terms. By 1958, every one of the people involved in the case had been released.

The university has for seven decades been keen to avoid discussing the incident, but it came up at a meeting of professors in March and it was agreed to include the details of the case in the display.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11517759/American-POWs-used-for-live-experiments-in-Japan-according-to-new-museum.html 

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March

DJIA: +118 Down. NASDAQ: +209 Down. SP500: +161 Down.  

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