Overnight

Blame it on oil, as some did. Asian shares softened in overnight trading as oil prices receded putting a touch of hesitancy in buying more risky assets. That mixed with some conflicting economic data in the U.S. along with a weaker dollar against the yen dampened some investor spirits.

The Nikkei was off  slightly as the yen strengthened ahead of what is expected to be a concession by Prime Minister Shinto Abe today on delaying what was to be a sales tax hike in an anemic economy. The move is not without consequences as some are calling his commitment to shore up the nation's deep debt problems and stimulating the economy into question.

Australian stocks also backed off while Shanghai shares remained flat despite yesterday's rally on news stocks could be added to a major emerging market index. An aside, and that seems how investors took the news, as an aside, was China's Purchasing Managers' Index, while up slightly for the third month in a row, suffered from weak orders. Reuters reported: "The official PMI was unchanged from April at 50.1 last month, barely above the 50-Mark that separates expansion in activity from contraction on a monthly basis."

The Hang Seng Index and South Korea’s Kospi were flat. The Nikkei Stock Average was down 0.6%, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.3%. Brent crude oil was last down 0.6% at $49.61 a barrel after U.S. prices slipped below the $50-a-barrel threshold overnight.

Beware of MSM Hype

Here's just one of many MSM's hype the report attempts.

Despite glowing mainstream media reports on personal consumption expenditures and income, the Atlanta Fed GDPNow Model forecast for second quarter GDP did not budge.
Rate hike odds for June shrank substantially.

Latest forecast: 2.9 percent — May 31, 2016

 
 mishtalk.com/2016/05/31/gdpnow-flat-after-pce-report-rate-hike-odds-sink/

How We Doing?

So how's the economy doing? Well, it depends on whom you choose to believe. Here's a report from the state that produces more than 11% of U.S. manufacturing.

Texas manufacturers in May posted their weakest month of production in a year at the tail end of a spring season that previously showed some signs of optimism.

The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell from 5.8 all the way down to minus-13.1. An index below zero indicates a decline in activity, according to a monthly survey data from the Dallas Federal Reserve.

The state’s manufacturing sector has in part felt the ripple effects of the ongoing oil bust, although crude prices have begun to rebound since possibly bottoming out in February.

The index is calculated by the Dallas Fed after receiving survey responses from 111 Texas manufacturing firms. May represented the fifth straight month that both employee counts and work hours declined.

The price of oil could stabilize in the second half of the year, giving some reason for optimism, said one fabricated metal product manufacturing executive whose survey responses were highlighted. “However, rapidly escalating raw material (hot rolled coil steel) prices are very difficult to pass through to the end user, thus further compressing our gross margins,” the executive added.

Several respondents complained about business uncertainty during a crazy election season, as well as the Labor Department’s new rule to expand overtime protections to workers making less than $47,476 per year.he

A machinery manufacturing executive said, “Things are pretty bleak in the oil patch …  I’ve cut payroll, suspended 401(k) matches, etc. trying to hold on, but I’m not optimistic about the options moving forward.”

The survey’s “company outlook” and “general business activity” outlooks also are continuing to see further worsening conditions, according to the Dallas Fed. Those indices measure the perceptions of broader business conditions that are becoming increasingly pessimistic.

Texas produces more than 11 percent of the total manufactured goods in the U.S., behind only California. Many of those goods support the energy industry. The Dallas Fed conducts the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey each month.

 fuelfix.com/blog/2016/05/31/texas-manufacturers-post-weakest-month-in-a-year/

Don't Let Them Scare You

 We've written about the upcoming Brexit vote before.

We told you if you love your sovereignty--now thanks to the globalist pushers and it's MSM friends, a dirty word--you'll vote to leave. There are Quislings among you, make no mistake. Here's piece from The Daily Bell. thedailybell.com/news-analysis/anti-brexit-shocker-economists-and-faith-leaders-plot-britains-downfall.

There are currently reports that the EU is pushing hard for the federalization of Europe via a new tax ID number and also via plans for a pan-European army.

A national insurance number will allow Brussels to identify European (and British) taxpayers and would be a further step toward the institution of an aggressive European tax.Additionally, new legislation will ban sovereign states from reducing corporate taxation to below 15 percent.

Neither plans for a European army nor the new tax ID number are apparently getting much coverage in Britain. It really doesn’t matter though. Brussels have proven several times over that the EU’s goal is a United States of Europe.

Surely the economists involved in the survey understand the level of corruption currently infecting the EU.Those affiliated with the EU receive enormous compensation for useless activities. Regulatory advantages are routinely sold to the highest bidder.

And surely they understand that the decision-making bodies have been purposefully divorced from Parliament. The entire setup of the EU is aimed at producing a mega-state responsible only to a handful of bureaucrats.

How on earth British economists, let alone “faith leaders” can endorse the EU is difficult to imagine.If Britain stays in the EU, within a decade the country – as it has existed for perhaps a thousand years – will be disassembled.

These economists and faith leaders are content to support the end of Britain. Faith will not be diminished and industry will not leave if Brexit occurs. But the country will not survive as a historical entity if it remains within Europe.

Don't let them scare you out of your freedom.

On The Bottom Looking Up

In my short stay here, I realized that without a deep understanding of human psychology, without the acceptance that we are all crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven animals, all the raw intelligence and mathematical logic in the world is little help in the fraught, shifting interplay of two people negotiating
                            Chris Voss, Never Split The Difference, p. 8.

If that sounds like the stock market, two people, buyer and seller, negotiating without any intervention, government or otherwise, you're on to something. But it should also tell you much more about the data-driven crowd, especially those who in their slavery to data and in their ignorance of reality can cause you and yours serious, even irretrievable harm.

There's something else it should remind you of in case you have not figured it out by now, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America. And since we intend to cast a broad net, that includes central bankers the globe over. These are people who most likely never had to change a flat tire on a lonely country road during a down pour at two in the morning or scramble together enough money to take theirs kids to Disneyland all the while chewing on the gnawing thought they might not have enough money left over to buy them lunch.

What Voss is referring to in his book is his experience at Harvard and their world renown negotiating program. Until the robots succeed them, markets are comprised of people, crazy, irrational, emotionally-driven animals, not always but just persistently enough to fall outside the short comings of the data-dependent bureaucrats and party wonks. And you can take that to the bank if you can find one today still worth frequenting.

 A friend recently told me he went to see his family doctor about a month ago. Medicine today is computer and electronically medical record driven, otherwise known as EMR. He said after his young doctor walked into the room offering a brief hello, he sat down at the computer with his back to the patient, firing off a litany of questions but never once lifting his gaze from the computer screen. After a brief exam the doctor politically excused himself with a passing word an aid would shortly be in with his instructions. My friend, smile on his face, told me the whole experience changed forever his definition of a "quickie."

There's another quickie on the horizon, one most likely that will be a lot less enjoyable than even my friend's doctor visit. We'll have more on that as the summer blooms and fades.You can see, though it was obviously never intended to, just where the American people are on that pyramid.

Overnight

The dollar softened a bit against the yen from its recent high after the Fed last week noted higher interest rates are in the offing sometime this summer. Against the yen, the dollar slipped 0.3 percent to 110.83. But it rose to as high as 111.455 in the previous session, its loftiest peak in a month, and was on track to notch a gain of 4 percent in May, Reuters reported. With the U.S. And UK markets closed Monday volume was expected to be lighter as investors looked to the EU action.

The Nikkei dropped 0.3% after a strong 1.4% rally in the previous session. The MSCI's broadest index outside Japan remained flat, ending the month down 2% for the month. In later trading, the Nikkei 225 edged up 0.49% while the Kospi was up 0.39%. In China, mainland markets were performing better, with the Shanghai Composite up 2.12 percent and the Shenzhen composite up 2.418 percent. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index was 0.94 percent higher. Japanese household spending fell for second straight month in April, 0.4%, after dropping 5.3% the previous month according to a report released Tuesday.

The Nikkei 225 was up 0.49 percent after trading flat earlier in the session, while Australia's ASX 200 was 0.42 percent lower, weighed by its energy subindex, which shed 1.35 percent, but that follows a 5.6 percent gain over the past. Brent crude trade at $49.67 a barrel

Overnight

A weaker yen and a stronger dollar help push the Nikkei to one month high as most Asian sharesrallied slightly especially Japanese exporting firms. The Nikkei was up 0.9% as the yen hit 111 against the dollar aided by Fed Chair Janet Yellen's comments on interest rates Friday going into the long U.S. Memorial Day weekend. The Nikkei traded at 16,985.62 in midmorning trade, the highest level since April 28.

Shares also got a boost from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's decision to delay a sales tax hike scheduled for next April by 2-1/2 years. The tax was expected to hit in 2017. Still investors are concerned about next month's Brexit election though recent UK polls favor the stay versus the go vote. Abe's announcement didn't come without some who questioned it, however, as some officials were calling for Abe to clarify hoe the country was going to handle its defict.

Elsewhere, the WSJ reported: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, which tracks the movement of Chinese companies listed in the city, edged up 0.8% after falling more than 11% so far this year. The broader Hang Seng Index also gained 0.8%, while stocks in Australia, South Korea and Shanghai were roughly flat. In Singapore, shares of Noble Group fell 3.3% after the commodities trader announced the resignation of its chief executive and the planned sale of its North America energy-solutions business, capping months of difficulties for the company. Brent crude oil was down 0.1% at $49.90 a barrel during the Asian trading day.

The Upcoming Week

The upcoming week though shortened by the Monday holiday still has some interesting notes investors might be searching through starting with Tuesday when personal income and spending for April, consumer confidence and the Chicago PMI for May get released.

Wednesday the ISM Manufacturing Index for May and the auto makers report for May are out. The famous Fed's beige book on regional economic conditions hits the airways and the OECD issues its economic data. Thursday and Friday look a bit like the week that was last week with more central bankers stepping into the cynosure.

Thursday the ECB meets and is expected to follow the steady-she-goes route it's been on in interest rates and ECB President Mario "Whatever It Takes" Draghi is holding a news conference. While on this side of the pond, New York Fed President William Dudley, never one to find a television he camera he doesn't like, heads up a meeting at the New York Economic Club. Fed Governor Jerome Powell addresses the role of regulation in today's banking system, no doubt will have many interested listeners, some probably asking: "What is it: Friend or Foe?"

Friday caps the week off with non-farm payrolls for May, factory orders for April and the ISM Non-manufacturing Index reports are out. Two Fed Presidents, Chicago's Charles Evans and Cleveland's Loretta Mester speak, Evans on monetary policy divergence between the Fed and the ECB; Mester on macro and financial stability.

And there you have it, the Upcoming Week.

Last We Looked

Think about this for a minute.

What are people less resistant to? Try the familiar. A smile is more disarming than a frown. Think now about the week that just was with all those Federal Reserve voices speaking around the country, mostly in unison about coming higher interest rates.

One could call it softening up the beachhead for what is to come. Last time around just one hike in rates wreaked an equity havoc of sorts. Investors caught off guard maybe? The creditability of the Fed to all but the lame, limp and lazy is at stake, mostly owing to no one's fault except their own inability to act.

We'd suggest decisively but that term appears to be devoid from the DNA of this and previous Fed leaders. Data-dependent is code for: "What the hell's up with this recovery?" A cynic might argue there's no criticism too harsh for this Federal Reserve crowd and the possible terrible fallout from their cavalier lack of action. But cynics are about as welcome today as vending machines filled with candy bars at an elementary school.

What the denizens of the globe's largest economy, not to mention a few billion others, got was this cute little phrase, "probably appropriate." Apparently, the Fed has never heard the tale about the dog and the rabbit. Meanwhile, Fed Chair Yellen gets to continue playing Pretend, a Fed parlor game that she has a clue about what's happening.

The whole set up of the Harvard interview was staged, no intended pun. Fine for the doting MSM crowd, but pathetic entertainment for a public that deserves far better. But, then again, last we looked this is an election year.

SOBERING READ

Here's sobering read or at least it should be. We've been talking about it for a while.
zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-28/dont-listen-ruling-elite-world-economy-real-trouble.

Note what gold has been doing for the last eight or so sessions versus the dollar. If anyone out there can prove that we have any connections to or any way to make a profit by pushing gold, let them speak now or forever sew their mouths shut.

Do we own gold? Yes. Not a crime yet, though it has been in the past. Are central bankers around the world piling up gold of late? Yes.  Do we trade gold or have any open positions that would profit near term? No. We own gold for one reason, risk management.

And despite what you might think and hear, we believe you're going to need some, lots of, risk management in the not too far off future. Do we have a time limit or specific date? No. We don't know when and neither does anyone else. Does that make us or them wrong? You decide.

There's a lady, Annie Duke, a champion poker player, author and consultant to businesses. We don't know and have never met her. Deception in poker, she notes, is necessary. It's a zero sum game. But not in relationships and business, especially if you want to have a long term meaningful, healthy relationship.

That should be your first question: Is there and has there been any deception going on out there? If so, can you make a reasonable case for it and support your points? It's called expository writing by another name. Deception when it comes to the ruling class is the norm not the exception.

Here's an excerpt.

Andy Xie says the world's elite that are attending the G7, G20, Davos and other wasteful meetings are wrong to try to pin the blame for the turmoil on people’s psychology; all signs point to a prolonged period of global stagnation and instability.

Before the current G7 meetings waste of time, The G20 working group meeting in Shanghai didn’t come up with any constructive proposals for reviving the global economy and, instead, complained that the recent market turmoil didn’t reflect the “underlying fundamentals of the global economy”. The oil price has declined by 70 per cent since June 2014, while the Brazilian real has halved, and the Russian rouble is down by 60 per cent. The global economy is on the cusp of another recession, and these important people blamed it all on some sort of psychological problem of the people.

Over the past two decades, the global economy has been blessed with the entry and participation of 800 million hard-working Chinese, plus the information revolution. The pie should have increased enough in size to make most people happier. Yet, the opposite has happened. The world has gone from one crisis to another. People are complaining everywhere. This is due to mismanagement by the very people who attend the G20 meetings, the Davos boondoggle, and so many other global meetings that waste taxpayers’ money and put inept leaders in the limelight.

One major complaint that people have is that the system is rigged – that is, the rising income concentration is not due to free market competition, but a rigged system that favours the politically powerful. This is largely true. The new billionaires over the past two decades have come mostly from finance and property. Few made it the way Steve Jobs or Bill Gates did, creating something that makes people more productive.

That rigged system that favors the powerful is called intervention.

WARTS: POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE

Negatives are like warts. Some go away on their own, some don't.

The WSJ just released the results of their WSJ/NBC News poll for May 12 and May 16. The gist of  it supposedly compared the popularity of the two presidential front runners, Clinton and Trump, with their so-called core constituents in their own political parties and that of Barack Obama's in 2012.

The first thing you want to know about these meaningless excursions into utter nonsense is these people have way too much time on their hands. And they're probably overpaid in the process.

The second thing is Clinton and Trump are most likely running against each other. The third thing there is a large block of folks going to vote for one or the other in this election who could care less about either party, If we had to guess Trump will get more of these votes than Clinton. Some might call them independents. Others might just call them believers in the Second Amendment.

The implication here seems to be neither of these two candidates is greatly popular with the American public. We needed a silly poll to conclude that? MSM's been tell us for months, starting first with the often described dangerous, shoot from the hip Trump and now lately with Ms Baggage.

This once eminent newspaper opens with this gem:

By now, it is broadly accepted that both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump generate a lot of negative vibes among voters. Less appreciated perhaps is how broadly those bad vibes are, and how much they extend into segments of the electorate that normally would be more enthused.

Obviously, what--at least among some of the Trump voters-- many are trying to bypass is that segment of the electorate--most likely core party wonks--who would normally be more enthused. They are the problem. The problem this writer and his talking political heads never get.

We could go on, but here's the link. Look at it for yourself. They apparently removed the written versin that we quoted from the Weekend Edition. This is nothing against the writer. He's just being himself, amiable at being dull, writing as if he and his colleagues have their finger on the electoral pulse of things. They don't. And given their condescending attitudes they most likely never will. They are about as estranged from understanding the average voter as one of these candidates is from telling the truth.

Now when it comes to warts, if Trump wins we think his warts will fade away on their own. With Clinton, well, we're not so sure.

 wsj.com/video/clinton-trump-polling-poorly-with-key-demographics

BUBBLE UP

Let the market decide!

When's the last time you heard that in MSM. That's become as politically incorrect today as spanking your kid.

In a recent CNBC interview real estate billionaire Sam Zell, who's been in his selling mode for a while now, said:

“You know what the problem is? The problem is I think the Fed should have raised interest rates two years ago, and therefore today would be able to make a much more rational decision as to what to do. The problem is that they’ve so deferred reality for so long that I think they have a serious credibility problem if they don’t raise rates.”

Then he added another twist to this conundrum: “So now we’re talking about raising interest rates because of credibility and not because of economics.”

wolfstreet.com/2016/05/27/market-timer-sam-zell-fed-interest-rate-commercial-real-estate/

Just today we got more of what we call the "probably" meme from Fed Chair Janet Yellen when she informed raising rates soon will probably be appropriate. 

Another point Zell made is we've had too much intervention. If you bother to spell that backwards it translates: Not enough letting the market decide.

Until the pin prick gets put to this bubbling along there's an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a real estate bubble, a rent bubble, a student loan bubble, a health care insurance bubble and probably--there's that term again--a few more we've missed.

We had a business acquaintance a while back who liked to drown his gin in BubbleUp. We now know he's not alone.

STICKING TO IT

 
We once knew a professional safe cracker, a neighborhood kid. He was good. Enjoyed his work. And he did real well until one chilly, dark autumn night a petrol car pulled him over to the side of a lonely country road because half of a big safe was sticking out of the trunk of his battered old red Buick.

When the officer asked him how it got there, he said that he didn't know, that someone else must have put it there. Claimed he never noticed it before. "That's my story," he said, as the officer pressed him for more details. "I have no song and I'm sticking to it."

This too is a story about the "new normal" guy, the blackjack card counter, the kid from Butler Creek. The famous bond investor from Fashion Island. The new normal ain't so normal anymore. At least, that seems to be his story and from what we read he's sticking to it.

Bill Gross has recently come out and said that the "system itself is at risk" and that a "day of reckoning is coming". Ominous words indeed, but sadly, the truth.

Putting his money where his mouth is, Bill Gross is defying all of his instincts as a bond investor and is revamping his $1.3 billion "Janus Global Unconstrained" Bond Fund. He is moving his fund into a position to sell insurance and credit risk.

These actions are brought on by his deep fear that the market is going to break down in the future. He believes Central Banker stimulus has artificially propped up the markets and this illusion we live in is no longer going to last. The proof of this is in the fact that stimulus by Central Bankers is having less and less effect, even as more and more money is printed.

He also fears that the US government is heading down the path of Japan and envisions a day when the government buys up all the debt, eliminating and forgiving it. This of course would be wildly inflationary and be an admittance that the end is nigh on their own part, likely ending in an epic collapse of the Western monetary system.

The thing that troubles is not so much Gross' outlook. Sounds more than plausible to us. A rumor we recently heard is what's really bothering us, though we can't at this time vouchsafed for it. But we'll share it anyway: We've heard those central bankers, like that kid from the neighborhood, own an old, battered red Buick.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-26/bill-gross-goes-against-his-insticts-turns-bearish-bond-markets