A Reprieve, But For How Long?

Good morning. Given all the excitement we've seen this week, I personally find it remarkable that this is only the fifth trading day of 2016! And after the worst 4-day start to a new calendar year ever, it looks like today is going to be another wild one. Only this time, it looks like the screens could have some green on them for a change. (Well, in the early going anyway.)

There are really three issues to deal with on this fine Friday morning. First, there is China. Second, there is China. And third, there is the U.S. jobs report.

China Update

After what appears to have been a misguided move, Chinese regulators pulled their brand new circuit breaker system yesterday. Yep, that's right; after four days, two early halts to trading, and two declines of 7% or more, the market regulators decided they had seen enough and pulled the plug on the new system.

Instead of shiny new trading halt system, officials instead turned to the old playbook - government intervention. And voila, both the Shanghai composite and the CSI 300 put up gains of about 2%.

In other words, reports indicated that state-controlled funds were busy buying equities on the Chinese markets for the second time this week. So, the game plan appears to be whenever stocks aren't going the direction officials would like, the government comes in and starts buying with both hands.

Now let's move on to the yuan. To review, the concern is that continued depreciation of the Chinese currency could unleash a wave of deflationary pressure across global markets/economy.

The good news this morning is the PBoC fixed the rate higher for first time in nine days. In addition, there were reports of central bank intervention in both onshore and offshore markets for the ...

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