"There is a material risk the United States would lose its triple-A if there is a repeat of 2011 wrangling over raising the country's self-imposed debt ceiling, rating firm Fitch said on Tuesday.
"If anything the pressure on the U.S. rating is increasing," Fitch's head of sovereign ratings David Riley said at a conference hosted by the firm.
"If we have a repeat of the August 2011 debt ceiling crisis we will place the U.S. rating under review. There will be a material risk of the U.S rating coming down," he added."
Then comes the US economic data, remember yesterday was very light....
Advance Retail Sales came in amazingly at .3% on consensus of .2%, but as always the devil is in the details, low margin items did well, the hope was electronics and appliance stores would get a kick, instead they dropped 0.6% in December vs the +2.3 increase in November. The details don't look good for stores like Best Buy and specifically Apple.
The real nasty Eco-News came in the form of the Empire State Manufacturing Survey
The real nasty Eco-News came in the form of the Empire State Manufacturing Survey
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The print was also down from the last one which was revised to -7.3. Instead of the first non-negative print, there are now 5 negative Empire State prints of the last six. One has to wonder how much US seasonal adjustments shaved off the bad news?
The "Devil in the Details" part just made the report worse, there's not much point in covering all of it, but you can get a summary here.
The overnight ES action from yesterday's close to the low this morning shed 10 points. However the Empire Manufacturing Survey put in a bottom, most likely on sentiment that the F_E_D can't back away from the table now with the economy sliding again, but after recent comments from the F_E_D, I'm not so sure, they certainly had an advance look at this information.
As for AAPL and $500 this morning, Nomura took care of that with a downgrade price target from $660 to $530 with a worst case downside of $400! Wow, talk about a range. AAPL is down early to $490. The 200+ hedge funds still long AAPL better hope it closes above $500 or they'll be getting calls for increased margin cash which they likely don't have which could lead to something ugly.
So lets see what happens here, remember yesterday's "Nerve Racking" post... It doesn't take much, but I think you'll find despite early a.m. action, Wall St. has much more control over the short end of trading than you might suspect.
The bigger question moving forward is, "What will the F_E_D do?" Will they back off the recent "backing away" line they have been taking? The market will be very interested to find out, especially after yesterday's "Worst the F_E_D could do is prematurely raise interest rates" from Bernie himself.
The "Devil in the Details" part just made the report worse, there's not much point in covering all of it, but you can get a summary here.
The overnight ES action from yesterday's close to the low this morning shed 10 points. However the Empire Manufacturing Survey put in a bottom, most likely on sentiment that the F_E_D can't back away from the table now with the economy sliding again, but after recent comments from the F_E_D, I'm not so sure, they certainly had an advance look at this information.
As for AAPL and $500 this morning, Nomura took care of that with a downgrade price target from $660 to $530 with a worst case downside of $400! Wow, talk about a range. AAPL is down early to $490. The 200+ hedge funds still long AAPL better hope it closes above $500 or they'll be getting calls for increased margin cash which they likely don't have which could lead to something ugly.
So lets see what happens here, remember yesterday's "Nerve Racking" post... It doesn't take much, but I think you'll find despite early a.m. action, Wall St. has much more control over the short end of trading than you might suspect.
The bigger question moving forward is, "What will the F_E_D do?" Will they back off the recent "backing away" line they have been taking? The market will be very interested to find out, especially after yesterday's "Worst the F_E_D could do is prematurely raise interest rates" from Bernie himself.
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