Global Macro Perspectives
China trade balance was reported at USD 11.4 billion vs. USD 0.1 billion in March and USD 3.2 billion consensus. Export and import growth were running at 29.9 and 21.8 percent vs. 35.8 and 27.3 percent y-o-y in March
Strong set of figures.
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Baltic dry index rose 5.6% last week; Capesize Index was up 0.1%; Panamax Index rose 22.0%; Supramax Index was down 0.3%; Handysize Index fell 0.6%.
Commodities stockpiles were not released, but judging by the price action I suspect no major changes.
Baltic Dirty Tanker Index fell 4.0%; Baltic Clean Tanker Index fell 2.9%.
Oversupply of vessels is so high that at even increased supply of cargoes rates are sinking.
Number of crude oil drilling rigs in the U.S. rose for 48 in April ; Number of natural gas drilling rigs rose for 13.
On world scale number of oil & gas drilling rigs fell for 341 in April. This is because of a seasonal fall of drilling activity in Canada.
Nonfarm payrolls rose 244.000 in April; Consensus was at 185.000; March reading was an increase of 216.000 (revised +5.000). The unemployment was reported at 9.0% vs. prior reading of 8.8% and consensus of 8.8%.
Private payrolls were up 268.000 vs. 200.000 consensus and 231.000 reading in March (revised +1.000).
Nice positive beat despite all kind of wishful thinking flooding the sentiment…
Down more than 4%….
I am shocked on the scale of commodity fall out today.
The markets felt like something’s up in the last couple day’s but this look’s absolutely overdone.
Even more weird is that stocks held up nicely.
It almost looks like something blew up (hedge fund, trading desk, somebody’s cross-asset hedges) and needed to wind down fast.
We will know in the coming days if something happened or this is self-fueled panic and margin induced sell-off.
I have put some light longs in the last hours of trading. Yeah…maybe not smart, but we are talking here about 4+ standard deviations moves (1 in 15,787 event, so expected to occur once in 43 years) so I felt tempted. Waiting for the commodity plunge protection team. Will close fast if this continues tomorrow.
We will see what happens.
Initial jobless claims in the U.S. were reported at 474.000 vs. 410.000 consensus and last week revised (up 2.000) reading of 431.000.
Again the price of oil is not determined by the fundamentals but the last couple day’s new hit scare – deflation.
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MBA mortgage applications rose 4.0%; Prior reading was a fall of 5.6%; On year level MBA Basic Index is down 17.5%.
Challenger’s count of layoff announcements was reported at 36,490 in April vs. 41,528 in March.
ADP Employment rose 179,000 in April vs. revised (up 6,000) gain of 207,000 in March.
Nonfarm payrolls on Friday could be close to the 185,000 consensus.
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