With consensus comes conceit.

Well that’s 2016 done and, for many, 2017 might as well be done as well, because it's all just soooo obvious what will happen. All the positions are loaded and Trump bullish investors might as well go into bear like hibernation only to wake up next December to cash in their riches.

But with consensus comes conceit.


US - Trumponomics backed by price action has reaffirmed the belief in the trade, which is always dangerous. Now today we have a piece of news which is cited as evidence of Trump intentions becoming reality. Ford has cancelled its plans to invest $1.6bln in Mexican production instead opting to spend $700m in Michigan thus creating 3500 jobs. The verbiage from Ford said that they had been influenced by Trump. Whilst everyone is holding this news aloft, much as a holy relic to the church of Trump, I am a little more cynical. Does $700m invested in Michigan really buy you the same output as $1.6bln invested in Mexico? If not then the announcement is more like a reining in of future overall production, cloaked under a patriotic statement. For this to be otherwise Ford would be having to wear an instant labour cost differential as well as the continuing effects of a strengthening dollar.

I am going to refeence an old Anglo-Saxon (actually Danish) king of England here, before you just think I'm being rude (though I leave it to you to decide intention), but with dollar strengthening it is going to get harder and harder for King Cnut to hold back the trade tides. Trade occurs because of price gradients. If the gradients aren't that great then simple regulations are fairly effective as the cost of circumventing them exceeds the price differential to be gained. However as the differential increases more is prepared to be spent in circumvention (if this wasn't the case there would be no cocaine in the USA). However, the price differentials are only increasing as the dollar rallies against the rest of the world. Companies may well like to be seen to be paying lip service to the new President but underlying it they will still be wanting to do what all companies are designed to do - make money for the shareholders. So statements like Ford’s have to be picked through. For example, saying they’ve cancelled a $1.6bln new plant doesn't mean they aren't ramping up investment in existing plants. In my eyes, the Ford statement is an offering of flesh on the altar to Trump, but it certainly doesn't mean that Ford aren't planning on eating the rest of the beast.


UK - PMI storming - UK manufacturing is enjoying the benefits of a weak pound. Meanwhile the UK's ambassador to the EU has resigned. If you look at UK news you have to split out the now from the future. It’s much like trading the steepness of a yield curve. Since Brexit, mainstream forecasts had the UK on a steady downward path arriving in, say 3 years time, at a point of Brexit gloom. As we haven’t had any economic doom yet the gradient towards that gloom point is assumed to be steepening as time decays. The PMI is a lift in the short end of the curve and the resignation is a push lower on longer term expectations. A curve steepener in the negative sense. But playing the curve of UK expectations out to three years also has to involve playing the expectation of Europe's future. I.e. its own curve.

Europe - I am a lot more pesimistic about Europe's ability to hold it together through 2017. Not that it will cease to exist in 2017, no, but just that the edges will start to fray again. The EU project has often been liked to the Titanic. A vessel with design flaws that wont be able to weather hitting the iceberg. There has been an interesting twist to this analogy in that a new theory has emerged as to why the RMS Titanic failed to withstand the impact. A fire, that had been raging in its coal bunkers, had weakened the hull structure.  So applying that theory we could say that previous EU crises have not been the iceberg but the fire in the coal bunkers, critically weakening the main structure of the EU leaving it unable to withstand the next shock.

What will be the shock? Italian debt can only be camouflaged in ECB vaults for so long. German/ RoEU imbalances can only be massaged for so long, France can only fudge it’s social economics for so long and finally the ECB can only keep on buying assets for so long before growth and inflation rise to a point to expose the asset buying as not the flagged cure for deflation but as an internal epoxy resin glooped over the cracks between the Core and the Periphery. When the ECB can no longer be seen to be justifying asset buying for monetary policy reasons then the true value of risk premia will return to the markets. Probably the biggest damage that Trumponomics will inflict on global markets is not directly from how the US faces the world, but in potentially removing the only excuse that central banks have for underwriting private investors' risk. At which point the Emperor will be revealed as Lady Godiva.


Trading- I have been anticipating a reversal of markets once the new year is underway marking the 20th Jan as a good potential turn date but as it gets closer I am geting more twitchy towards signs that turns may occur sooner. Today was certainly interesting and has had e start to build shorts in risk. Oil has had an impressive reversal, as has USD/JPY and US stocks from the highs. Add in copper and it is looking pretty generalised. Except for one index which I would have thought with a turn in US stocks, commodities and the USD should be falling comparatively hard. The FTSE. But it hasn't. So I’ve sold it.

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Post Script..  Re Ford. http://uk.businessinsider.com/ford-ceo-why-were-killing-plan-to-build-mexico-plant-2017-1
There you go.