WHEN IS EXACT HARDLY EXACT?

Yesterday we wrote about big banks and their reporting earnings that were made to look much better than they are by coming in above a lower benchmark, in some cases a lower one that had been revised down at least three or four times.

Well, here's a take from a report on the market today from Reuters that clearly shows how MSM tries to paint a rosier picture than the facts. It's an ongoing process and one as a savvy investor you need to be aware of. Here is our piece posted yesterday, IT WILL CONTINUE OR IT WON'T? 

Keep in mind as you read the below that the person quoted is from JP Morgan, one of the big six, and JPM and its fellow traveler Goldman Sachs just came out with more positive views about the economy and China. Yet, it would be harder than hard to find two firms more closely tied to the Fed.


Here are a couple of paragraphs from the site we've cited below you can read for yourself about what a train wreck China really is.

 
If there’s one thing global investors have come to expect over recent years, it’s China’s ability to generate unbelievable rates of economic growth.

Like clockwork, economic growth in the March quarter increased by 6.7% compared to a year earlier, smack in line with forecasts and continuing a trend seen in the previous five GDP reports — in which the figure either met or exceeded expectations by 0.1%.

This regularity is an irregularity in itself, ensuring widespread scepticism from many in financial markets, particularly as it takes just 15 days to generate the figure.

Whether you believe the validity of the government’s growth figures or not, the more overarching question many investors have is whether China will live up to its reputation as the global growth driver in the decades to come.

For every China bull out there, there now seems to be a bear — a complete about-face from only a few years ago when almost everyone was singing China’s economic credentials.

To Roy Smith, an academic at New York University, the breakneck growth seen in recent decades may be nearing its end, suggesting that he sees parallels with Japan’s build-up of bad loans in the late 1980s, which ended up hobbling the once high-flying economy.

We questioned these figures when they were first announced, especially the exact 6.7% one. With the second largest economy in the world to be that exact is most likely an impossibility. That's for openers. But here's another point about such excitability. Back in those high-flying dot.com bubble days, one of the largest darlings of the time, a big firm still around and highly recognized but hardly the big flyer it was then, reported earnings that for 14 straight quarters beat Wall Street expectations by a single cent.

Anyway, here the Reuters excerpt.

U.S. stock indexes were little changed on Wednesday as encouraging earnings reports offset oil prices sliding on renewed concerns about global oversupply.

Crude fell about 2 percent after Kuwaiti oil workers called off a strike that drove up prices and helped the S&P 500 breach 2,100 on Tuesday, about 30 points shy of its record high. A recent rebound in oil and the U.S. Federal Reserve's accommodative monetary policy helped the index recover from a steep selloff earlier this year. Investors are focused on the earnings season as they seek catalysts to drive stocks higher. Big-bank earnings reports last week were better than expected and helped lift sentiment.

"If earnings continue to surprise on the upside, you could see people ... join the rally and that money from the sidelines will move into the market," said Nadia Lovell, U.S. Equity Specialist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

Lovell expects the market to edge up on Wednesday, but cautioned that investors remained wary.First-quarter earnings at S&P 500 companies are expected to have fallen 7.6 percent on average and revenues are seen dipping 1.3 percent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. http://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-train-wreck-2016-4?utm