Focus Is Increasingly On How Similar Conditions Are To The Lead Up To WW2: Rabobank
Back with a bang
As mentioned on Friday, welcome to both La Grande rentrée and weltschmerz: and combining the two, this week we are ‘back with a bang’. That seems appropriate given yesterday marked 80 years since the start of WW2, which one would have thought would have received far more media coverage than it did: instead, far more focus was on how similar some conditions are to the lead up to WW2.
For just one market example, yesterday saw new US and Chinese tariffs kick in, taking a further step down the trade war path – if that is what one still insists on calling it. I underline that more holistic view of the US-China standoff as the Wall Street Journal reports that “SEC Revives Fight Over Inability to Inspect Chinese Auditors of Alibaba, Baidu”. The SEC could yet “impose more oversight on US-listed companies that rely upon those [Chinese] auditors. The measures could include forcing the firms to disclose more about their business or accounting and restricting their ability to sell new shares.” Given the Chinese firms are unlikely to comply, that is a potential step towards an eventual US delisting; and don’t forget there is also a push in the US Congress to stop US capital flows into China via bill S. 1731, which will get a further bipartisan tailwind when Congress returns on 4 September. In short, this is a whole other new front in the US-China struggle (capital flows, following tech limits and tariffs), not a ‘trade war’.
Markets May Focus on Dissenters in FOMC Minutes: Rabobank’s Foley
Let’s see just how weak CNY fixing, and CNY itself, are today. Indeed, after the Chinese manufacturing PMI stayed well below 50 over the weekend, will we take out the low of 7.1926 on the back of this news-flow? If not today, then soon, surely. And then where?
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