Today is Donald Trump’s anniversary and in the short space of a year, he’s repealed Obamacare and replaced it with something better, he’s cut taxes, he’s renegotiated NAFTA, he’s convinced North Korea to abandon their nuclear program, he’s struck a number of trade deals with China that have ushered in a veritable renaissance for U.S. manufacturing, he’s been exonerated of collusion charges, he’s disavowed bigots, he’s united the GOP, and generally speaking, it looks like we were all wrong about him.
I’m just kidding.
He has underperformed even the most pessimistic expectations on the way to becoming a leader so terrible that history will remember him not so much as a bad President, but rather as a historical accident:
It would have been in bad taste for stocks to fall on his big day, so we did close green (and at record highs) although it was hardly a “bigly” session.
Bank stocks were weighed down by fresh political jitters after Democrats’ Tuesday evening electoral triumphs in Virginia and elsewhere raised fresh concerns about taxes and just generally about the stability of the tenuous political backdrop. It has not been a great week:
“The Virginia election bloodbath may push Republicans to take a more populist approach on tax legislation, which could limit the scope of corporate tax changes,” KBW’s Brian Gardner wrote on Wednesday, adding that it “may also signal the House might flip after the 2018 elections, which could lead to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) chairing House Financial Services Cmte.”
I don’t know why anyone even tries with crude anymore:
If you looked at that chart you’d think the EIA data was delayed for an hour and a half, as that pump-and-dump was obviously a much bigger deal price wise than the reaction to inventories, but actually that wild ride was caused by – and I’m not making this up -flaming enchiladas and salsa. Around lunchtime, Anadarko said it shut its Conger field in the Gulf of Mexico after Shell took its Enchilada-Salsa crude and natural gas platform offline due to a fire. Here are the inventory numbers if you missed them:
- Crude +2,237k Bbl, Median Est. -2,454k Bbl
- Cushing crude +720k
- PADD 3 crude +1,631k
- Gasoline -3,312k vs est. -1,850k
- PADD 1B gasoline -433k
- Distillates -3,359k vs est. -1,000k
- PADD 1 Distillates -510k
- Refinery utilization +1.5 ppt vs est. +0.4 ppt
- Refinery crude inputs +290k b/d
- Crude imports -194k b/d
- Crude production +67k b/d
Obviously, the bulls could have done without that surprise build and also without output climbing to a record high 9.62 million barrels a day.
The kiwi spiked late in the U.S. session after the RBNZ forecast hitting the 2% inflation target in 2Q 2018 – so far sooner than the original 3Q 2019.
Saudi stocks are a joke (of course on a certain level, I guess it’s only “right” for the state to step in when the state is to blame for market jitters):
Qatari assets probably could have done without more regional shenanigans:
It’s probably time to start getting concerned about high yield. Dollar junk bonds suffered through their worst session in two months on Wednesday. Panning out, mom-and-pop HY is getting dicey:
JNK ETF down six days in a row, closing near its seven month low. SPX up five of last six days, closing at an all time high. Which is right?
— Jeffrey Gundlach (@TruthGundlach) November 8, 2017
With everyone focused on FANG, don’t forget that EM tech hasn’t been too shabby either this year:
This is a conspiracy by “so-called” bond traders who are pretending like Trump hasn’t made any progress on the fiscal front:
But we all know that’s a lie. He’s gotten all kinds of shit done legislatively and if the bond market wasn’t #fakenews, the curve wouldn’t be pricing in a goddamn recession.
Finally, “this is your brain on Bitcoin fork news”…
Oh, and finally, if you don’t think this has been the greatest 12 months in the history of the country, well then “you know what? it’s fine”…
"so you know what? it's fine".
drunk Donny didn't want to play with you people anyway… pic.twitter.com/LmCWKyyDjD
— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) August 18, 2017
