Updated throughout the day
August 28
Good morning. Mr. Market has had a pretty wild week, playing with investors like a cat swatting at a mouse. Is he going to walk away or is he coming in for the kill? China went out all this week to stem the bloodletting but the market still stands sharply lower on the week. And all those funds that wanted to play in the markets like the hedge fund masters? They are learning what some luminaries like Greenlight Capital now knows. You can’t be right always. Mainstay Funds, about as Mom and Pop as you can get, is bleeding assets from its “liquid alts” fund. Assets have dropped to $4.4 billion from a high last year of $21.5 billion. Personal income and spending for July get published today. Expectations that both will rise 0.4% from June. Consumer sentiment will be released today. Look for that number to edge up to 93.3 from 92.9.
U.S. futures trading sharply lower. The Dow is off 100 points. Why? Because. Marketwatch
Jackson Hole will feature Fischer and two Fed presidents. Stanley Fischer will talk about inflation on Saturday. Also speaking: Dennis higher-rates-are-coming Lockhart and several other regional Fed presidents. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney made the trip to the Wyoming confab. Schedule here. MarketWatch
China ends week sharply lower despite back-to-back rallies. Chinese shares ripped higher in the final hour of trading again but it doesn’t appear to be the plunge protection team’s work this time. Whoever it was, the SHCOMP and the SZCOMP are currently up 4.8% and 5.4% respectively. For the week Shanghai’s still down 8.2% while Shenzhen’s a little worse at down 9.7%. Hong Kong and Japan meanwhile traded mixed:
- Nikkei 225 – day: +3% week: -1.7%
- Hang Seng Index – day: -1.04% week: -3.6%
Over in Europe, stocks are getting a little iffy with the FTSE climbing 0.18%, the DAX dropping 0.35%, while the CAC sinks 0.03%. They still have a long way ahead of them though and economic data so far looks good.
Greek GDP gets revised higher. I know, right? In a surprise turn of events, the embattled nation’s GDP growth rate has just been revised from 0.8% to 0.9% – better than the U.K.’s measly 0.7% growth. City AM
U.K. GDP growth remains unchanged. The U.K.’s highly-anticipated GDP growth revision came in at 0.7%, just like in the previous quarter. Don’t be upset though, that’s the second-highest growth reading in the G7, surpassed only by ‘Murica. And it extends the British expansion to 10 quarters. MarketWatch, Guardian
Put this on your calendar. Apple is planning its next event for September 9. They must have something up their sleeves besides the next gen iPhone. They are holding it at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, which seats 7,000 people. The Verge (h/t Quartz)
Japanese inflation beats estimates. The land of the rising sun’s inflation data came in unchanged for July, still below the BOJ’s 2% target but well above analysts’ estimates of a deflationary -0.2% reading. The nation’s unemployment figures meanwhile fell to 3.3% – its lowest level since 1997. It wasn’t all great though, household spending slumped 0.2% from the year earlier, underscoring just how weak consumer spending remains for the nation. Wall Street Journal
Chinese industrial profits drop like a rock. Chinese industrial companies just punched in another disappointing month as July profits tank another 2.9% from the year before. This is the second-largest drop for the indicator this year, eclipsed only by January-February’s harrowing 4.2% decline. Reuters
US crude closes up 10%, biggest rise since 2009. A rally in Chinese and US stocks, and news of diminished crude supplies set off a short-covering surge by bearish traders yesterday, pushing crude up $3.96, or 10.3%. CNBC
The PBOC would like the Fed to hold its horses as well. It’s not just the IMF, Jeffrey Gundlach, or Paul Krugman who thinks a September rate hike is a bad idea – the PBOC thinks so as well, saying that a rate hike at this time might “push some emerging markets into crisis.” ForexLive
Facebook clocks up a billion logins in one day. The insanely popular social network already has 1.5 billion users but on Monday – for the first time – a billion people used Facebook in a single day. Which means for that day 1 in 7 around the globe used facebook. BBC
EU money supply is going through the roof. With the ECB’s gargantuan QE program finally gaining traction, M1 money supply for the EU surged a whopping 12.1% in July, a worrying figure for some who believe it might lead to a disastrous bond selloff. The Telegraph
Fresh Med tragedy as migrant boats holding 500 capsize. Hundreds of people are feared dead after two boats carrying 500 migrants capsized off the Libyan city of Zuwara yesterday. This is a day after 51 people were found dead in the hold of stricken ship off Libya’s coast. BBC
Noah and Emma will be taking over playgrounds in four years. The two topped the list of most popular baby names in the U.S. in 2014. Oliver and Amelia won in England and Wales for the second consecutive year. CNN
You won’t believe this…
Your Ashley Madison lady-friend was a bot. Sorry dudes, but the exposure of Ashley Madison’s customers has also revealed that most of the women weren’t real. Gizmodo editor-in-chief Annalee Newitz did some data digging and found that of the 5 million women’s accounts exposed (compared to 31 million men), the bulk were test accounts or internally monitored accounts. So the cheating men were wasting their time? Too bad. Business Insider
Photo: Steve Jurvetson