Toon Time.

Well, here it is Wednesday afternoon and since the close of business on Tuesday we’ve learned that Donald Trump is building a literal space army and also that Larry Kudlow will now be effectively in charge of U.S. economic policy.

We are living in a cartoon.

Which is exactly what lots of folks warned would probably happen around this time last year.

C’est la vie.

Retail sales were a disaster in the U.S. and that doesn’t bode well for the economic outlook. Here’s the obligatory embedded Atlanta GDP Now tweet:

Stocks were sharply lower on Wall Street. This is three straight days of losses for the S&P:

SPX

Since Rexit:

RexitES

3% on 10s looks increasingly remote:

yields

It’s starting to seem like stocks are worried more about a recession than they are runaway inflation – curve is starting to flatten pretty aggressively:

Curve

Here’s the dollar on the day (interpretations welcome):

DXY

Crude was all over the place after the EIA report sent conflicting signals (products draw, crude build, production up):

WTI

Russian stocks were sharply lower because the Kremlin is poisoning people again and it turns out the international community frowns on that (who knew?).

Russia

European shares were lower for a second day, fading into the close although the DAX did manage to eke out a gain. Here’s a two-day snapshot that captures the Rexit-related declines.

Europe

Overnight, markets were on edge despite the apparent resilience of the Chinese economic machine. As noted first thing this morning, both Hong Kong and mainland shares were lower, suggesting that for the time being, trade jitters and worries about the Trump administration’s foreign policy slant are driving sentiment.

HongKong

Small caps were hit especially hard on the mainland:

Mainland

Bitcoin is all to hell – it’s down something like 21% in March and Wednesday’s declines are tied to Google’s decision to crack down on cryptocurrency ads, a positive development for reasons that should be obvious (hint: the whole space is a joke), but in case they’re not, you can read more here:

Bitcoin

Nobody even cares anymore:

Bitcoin

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3 thoughts on “Toon Time.

  1. It is the increase in the short rates that has me amazed. Seems as though the 1 month and 3 month rates go up a few basis points every day. The Libor 3 month USD rate has gone up every day for over 2 weeks now. With long yields just sitting around doing nothing the curve is flattening pretty quickly. With floating rate notes and floating rate preferred shares tied to the 3 month Libor corporate interest payments must be climbing fast.

  2. That GDPNow graph could wind up looking like the 2018 expected earnings squiggle — revised up at first, followed by many more downward revisions.

NEWSROOM crewneck & prints