The Overnight Report: Central Bank Tango

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By Greg Peel

The Dow closed down 46 points or 0.3% while the S&P lost 0.2% to 2181 and the Nasdaq fell 0.5%.

Sell Australia

There were a lot of stockbrokers and traders running around yesterday morning shouting “What the hell just happened?” As the opening rotation concluded on the ASX, the index was down 66 points.

Initial selling took the ASX200 down through the 5400 support level so at that point technical selling was triggered. And of course, as has been the case all week and will continue to be the case, albeit on a diminishing basis throughout the month, the index started with an ex-dividend handicap.

But it appears the selling began in the futures, thus triggering selling in the physical market. A big Sell Australia order hit the boards, most likely from offshore. As it was, this order provided a re-basing of the index from which point we could say the session featured a 28 point rally.

Australia’s July trade data were released yesterday and they looked good at first glance. Exports were up 3% on better commodity prices and imports were down 0.4% on the stronger Aussie. But it was notable that one small and typically volatile component of exports – gold sales – had made a difference in leaping 21%.

Take out gold and exports were still up 2%, and that number should continue to be supported in coming months given big moves up in coal prices and the ramp-up of production and sales of LNG. Bear in mind there’s always a lag effect as contract prices are set before actual sales are completed.

China also released its trade data yesterday, in this case for August, as it only takes Beijing a week to tally up the trade activity of 1.4bn people or whatever the count is these days. Surprisingly, imports rose by 1.5% year on year having fallen 12.5% in July, when economists had expected a 4.9% fall. It was the first monthly rise in imports in almost two years.

Within that imports number was plenty of coal and iron ore. Exports fell 2.8% year on year, but again this was a better result than the 4.0% decline anticipated.

The interesting point about the Chinese trade data, or any Chinese data for that matter, of the last few months is that they’ve generally been pretty bad but haven’t caused any sort of angst for the Australian market. That’s because the assumption is bad numbers simply imply further stimulus from the PBoC and/or Chinese government. So how do we interpret good numbers?

Well if bad numbers evoke a benign response then presumably good numbers do too – it’s just a balance of how much stimulus is required. And as I suggested, we could argue the ASX200 rallied over the course of yesterday as both the local and Chinese trade numbers were published, just from a lower starting point.

All sectors took a beating yesterday, as one would expect from index selling, with the exception of healthcare, thanks to a solid result and 11% share price jump for Sigma Pharmaceuticals ((SIP)). The biggest losses were reserved for the resource sectors which of course contain some of the bigger market cap names. Iron ore and gold prices were also weaker, but a jump in the oil price could not save energy. Consumer staples also took a beating but Woolies went ex.

Another 13 point drop in the futures this morning suggests this bout of weakness is not yet over. On the back of an increased chance of a Fed rate rise in September (if Fedspeak is anything at all to go by), a decreased chance of another RBA rate cut (if we assume the GDP to be too strong), nothing yet out of Japan, perhaps not so much out of China, and as was apparent last night, nothing out of the ECB, the net central bank influence on the Australian market is presently negative, or at least potentially negative.

Not Even Discussed

A rate cut wasn’t expected from the ECB last night but there was an assumption something would be suggested, particularly an extension to the QE program which is scheduled to end in March. The eurozone economy is not exactly firing and Brexit remains a threat.

As it was, Mario Draghi said in his press conference that a QE extension “wasn’t even discussed”. That was enough to send the euro flying.

And enough to foster weakness on Wall Street. The major indices were further hit by a slump in Apple shares prompted by early reviews of the new iPhone7 failing to excite.

The counterpoint was a solid rally in energy stocks on the back of another 2.5% jump in oil prices. If we consider that the inventory data released on Wednesday night hit the wires after Wall Street’s close, oil prices were up over 5%.

There are two organisations which each week publish US oil inventory data – the American Petroleum Institute and the Energy Information Administration — a day apart. Half the time the two sets of data don’t even come close to matching. But there was no doubting the correlation last night as the EIA numbers suggested the biggest weekly drawdown of crude since 1999.

This result left the oil market pondering whether there is a cyclical indicator here – have we finally reached the point where the supply glut is easing? The problem is, there was a hurricane in the Gulf, which cut off supply. So it’s difficult to tell. Now that Gulf supply is running again, next week’s data will be closely watched.

Commodities

Over 24 hours West Texas crude is up US$1.17 or 2.5% to US$47.31/bbl.

Once again there was not a lot of action in base metals and moves were again mixed. Nickel rose 1% and zinc fell 0.5%.

Iron ore fell US90c to US$57.40/t.

While the US dollar index was up only slightly at 95.04, the ECB’s lack of action was enough to send gold down US$6.80 to US$1338.20/oz.

The Aussie is down 0.4% at US$0.7639.

Today

The SPI Overnight closed down 13 points or 0.2%. The next level to watch for the ASX200 is 5350.

Australian housing finance data are out today and China will release inflation numbers.

There are only a handful of small ex-divs today and Premier Investments ((PMV)) will release its earnings report.

Rudi's link-up with Sky Business via Skype has been delayed this morning and should occur around 11.45am.
 

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