The Overnight Report: Still Waiting

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By Greg Peel

The Dow closed down 11 points or 0.1% while the S&P was flat at 1316 and the Nasdaq lost 0.1%.

The final announcement of a Greek haircut deal is supposedly very close. Mind you, that's what has been said for the past week. As the eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels, again the final issue is cited as that of the interest rate to be charged on the long bonds which will replace the short date bonds on which private investors are taking a haircut of some 65-70%.

We must appreciate, however, that were an announcement to be made that everyone has reached agreement, we're looking less at a “beginning of the end” situation for the European debt crisis and more at an “end of the beginning”. Greece will not avoid default, it will simply postpone default. In the meantime, austerity requirements for Greece become more and more strict and the troika will not be handing out anymore than the originally determined bail-out tranches. Greece's target is to get its debt-GDP ratio down to 120%. Argentina defaulted at 45% after two haircut restructures.

On February 19, Greece holds a general election. No prizes for guessing what the opposition's main platform is – too much austerity. And if the Greek restructure is finally completed, will Portugal begin to like the idea too? Could we do this all again? I think the most relevant catch phrase running around markets at the moment, at a time when fears continue to ease and risk gradually regains its attraction, is “We're only one headline away from another market pullback”.

Wall Street began with another kick start to the upside last night, matching gains in Europe ahead of market-close. Then along came Germany's central bank to pour some cold water of reality on things. Germany's official December quarter GDP result is yet to be finalised, but the Bundesbank is tipping 0.25% contraction. Manufacturing has slowed and private consumption has been weak despite low German unemployment (6.8%). The Bundesbank is forecasting a flat GDP result in 2012 following two consecutive years of over 3% growth, driven by Germany's export strength. On this announcement, European markets fell back to their close and Wall Street headed south.

With no economic data releases and no big name earnings results last night, the highlight of Wall Street's session was an announcement that should have Australia's enthusiastic LNG investors taking notice. Chesapeake Energy – America's second biggest producer of natural gas after Exxon – will move to cut gas production by almost half over the year. This is simply a response to the US gas glut which has seen prices fall 50% since mid last year. An unusually mild northern winter has been a big issue, but so too has relentless shale gas production which has driven prices to uncommercial levels for producers. 

Chesapeake's announcement sparked a 9% bounce in the US natural gas price to US$2.56/mmbtu and gas producing stocks saw some significant jumps on short-covering. Otherwise Wall Street wobbled its way to an uneventful close.

The euro continued to tick up last night in anticipation of a Greek announcement, to regain the US$1.30 mark. The US dollar index fell 0.5% to 79.75 so the Aussie is up half a cent since Friday night at US$1.0538 (never mind everyone's expectation of another rate cut in a fortnight) and gold added another US$9.70 to US$1676.00/oz.

Base metals have been using the euro as their guide recently so last night saw moves higher of 1-2%. Nickel, however, just keeps doing its own thing which usually means going in the opposite direction to the others every session. The Chesapeake announcement flowed through to oil markets in which Brent was up US75c to US$110.63/bbl and West Texas was up US$1.56 to US$99.89/bbl.

The SPI Overnight was up 16 points or 0.4%.

It's a big night for earnings in the US tonight which sees Apple and Yahoo reporting along with Dow components DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, McDonalds, Travelers and Verizon.

Ahead of those there are quite a number of Australian resource sector production reports out today, including Newcrest ((NCM)) and Oil Search ((OSH)), while GUD Holdings ((GUD)) will be an early runner in the local results season (mostly late February) with its interim report.
 

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