Market Week in Review

• S&P 500 1,961.05 +.51%*

The Weekly Wrap by Briefing.com.

*5-Day Change

Weekly Scoreboard*

Indices

• S&P 500 1,961.05 +.51%

• DJIA 16,433.09 +.36%

• NASDAQ 4,822.34 +1.88%

• Russell 2000 1,157.79 +1.1%

• S&P 500 High Beta 30.11 +.30%

• Goldman 50 Most Shorted 120.93 -2.10% 

• Wilshire 5000 20,502.23 +.56%

• Russell 1000 Growth 965.09 +1.21%

• Russell 1000 Value 935.52 -.2%

• S&P 500 Consumer Staples 480.52 -.63%

• Solactive US Cyclical 120.47 +2.07%

• Morgan Stanley Technology 1,009.97 +1.20%

• Transports 8.051.62 +2.29%

• Utilities 549.46 -.14%

• Bloomberg European Bank/Financial Services 104.88 +1.01%

• MSCI Emerging Markets 33.25 +2.28%

• HFRX Equity Hedge 1,165.02 +.21%

• HFRX Equity Market Neutral 1,020.75 +.63%

Sentiment/Internals

• NYSE Cumulative A/D Line 227,051 -.51%

• Bloomberg New Highs-Lows Index -328 -40

• Bloomberg Crude Oil % Bulls 27.27 unch.

• CFTC Oil Net Speculative Position 231,430 +5.03%

• CFTC Oil Total Open Interest 1,704,251 +.91%

• Total Put/Call 1.23 -14.0%

• OEX Put/Call 1.89 -10.24%

• ISE Sentiment 82.0 -13.98%

• NYSE Arms 1.11 +49.33%

• Volatility(VIX) 24.06 -6.25%

• S&P 500 Implied Correlation 63.83 -.54%

• G7 Currency Volatility (VXY) 10.66 -2.11%

• Emerging Markets Currency Volatility (EM-VXY) 12.64 +1.36%

• Smart Money Flow Index 16,505.20 -1.14%

• ICI Money Mkt Mutual Fund Assets $2.663 Trillion -.58%

• ICI US Equity Weekly Net New Cash Flow +$1.779 Billion

• AAII % Bulls 34.7 +7.0%

• AAII % Bears 35.0 +10.6%

Futures Spot Prices

• CRB Index 196.72 -.9%

• Crude Oil 44.79 -4.11%

• Reformulated Gasoline 137.40 -4.0%

• Natural Gas 2.70 -.52%

• Heating Oil 155.15 -3.98%

• Gold 1,106.50 -1.51%

• Bloomberg Base Metals Index 151.94 +2.50%

• Copper 245.40 +3.30%

• US No. 1 Heavy Melt Scrap Steel 210.67 USD/Ton unch.

• China Iron Ore Spot 59.01 USD/Ton +4.44%

• Lumber 248.20 +9.45%

• UBS-Bloomberg Agriculture 1,022.22 +1.91%

Economy

• ECRI Weekly Leading Economic Index Growth Rate -2.0% -30.0 basis points

• Philly Fed ADS Real-Time Business Conditions Index .0408 +7.09%

• S&P 500 Blended Forward 12 Months Mean EPS Estimate 126.42 -.05%

• Citi US Economic Surprise Index -22.2 -6.6 points

• Citi Eurozone Economic Surprise Index 24.6 -.8 point

• Citi Emerging Markets Economic Surprise Index -22.8 +1.0 point

• Fed Fund Futures imply 72.0% chance of no change, 28.0% chance of 25 basis point hike on 9/17
• # of Months to 1st Fed Rate Hike(Morgan Stanley) 3.95 -9.4%

• US Dollar Index 95.19 -1.06%

• Euro/Yen Carry Return Index 142.76 +3.13%

• Yield Curve 148.0 +5.0 basis points

• 10-Year US Treasury Yield 2.19% +6.0 basis points

• Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet $4.440 Trillion +.05%

• U.S. Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 15.83 -4.03%

• Illinois Municipal Debt Credit Default Swap 245.0 +.13%

• Western Europe Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap Index 21.47 -1.85%

• Asia Pacific Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap Index 86.33 +3.49%
  

• Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt CDS Index 273.53 -.50%
  

• Israel Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 68.38 -.48%

• Iraq Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 805.39 +6.43%

• Russia Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 369.51 -3.23%

• iBoxx Offshore RMB China Corporates High Yield Index 117.86 +.85%

• 10-Year TIPS Spread 1.59% +7.0 basis points

• TED Spread 31.25 -.5 basis point

• 2-Year Swap Spread 14.5 +1.25 basis points

• 3-Month EUR/USD Cross-Currency Basis Swap -24.0 unch.

• N. America Investment Grade Credit Default Swap Index 79.58 -4.82%

• America Energy Sector High-Yield Credit Default Swap Index 1,905 +5.75%

• European Financial Sector Credit Default Swap Index 82.21 -2.18%
  

• Emerging Markets Credit Default Swap Index 354.37 -1.80%
  

• CMBS AAA Super Senior 10-Year Treasury Spread  to Swaps 116.0 +1.5 basis points

• M1 Money Supply $3.041 Trillion -.41%

• Commercial Paper Outstanding 1,043.2 +1.10%

• 4-Week Moving Average of Jobless Claims 275,750 +250

• Continuing Claims Unemployment Rate 1.7% unch.

• Average 30-Year Mortgage Rate 3.90% +1 basis point

• Weekly Mortgage Applications 430.80 -6.25%

• Bloomberg Consumer Comfort 41.4 unch.

• Weekly Retail Sales +1.30% -30.0 basis points

• Nationwide Gas $2.36/gallon -.06/gallon

• Baltic Dry Index 830.0 -5.14%

• China (Export) Containerized Freight Index 819.87 -.13%

• Oil Tanker Rate(Arabian Gulf to U.S. Gulf Coast) 27.5 +22.2%

• Rail Freight Carloads 279,867 -1.64%

Best Performing Style

• Small-Cap Growth +1.6%

Worst Performing Style

• Large-Cap Value -.5%

Leading Sectors

• Biotech +4.4%

• Airlines +3.5%

• HMOs +2.2%

• Internet +1.8%

• Computer Hardware +1.8%

Lagging Sectors

• Gaming -2.1% 

• Telecom -2.2%

• Energy -2.4%

• Oil Service -5.4%

• Coal -14.0%

Weekly High-Volume Stock Gainers (18)

• VTAE, STRP, ZSPH, CNW, MRTX, TRR, TE, TITN, LJPC, FARM, PLAY, KOP, PGI, MDP, CFI, MSI, APLE and BGS

Weekly High-Volume Stock Losers (8)

• JOY, BSFT, CONN, FLXN, MEG, KKD, MW and BKS

Weekly Charts

ETFs

• High-Volume Gainers

• High-Volume Losers

Stocks

• High-Volume Gainers

• High-Volume Losers

*5-Day Change

Stocks Reversing Slightly Higher into Final Hour on Central Bank Hopes, Lower Long-Term Rates, Technical Buying, Restaurant/Homebuilding Sector Strength

Broad Equity Market Tone:

• Advance/Decline Line: Modestly Lower
  

• Sector Performance: Mixed
  

• Volume: Below Average

• Market Leading Stocks: Performing In Line

Equity Investor Angst:

• Volatility(VIX) 24.53 +.66%

• Euro/Yen Carry Return Index 142.79 +.50%

• Emerging Markets Currency Volatility(VXY) 12.64 -1.56%

• S&P 500 Implied Correlation 64.46 -.51%

• ISE Sentiment Index 81.0 +10.96%

• Total Put/Call 1.39 +17.80%

• NYSE Arms 1.27 +62.55% 

Credit Investor Angst:

• North American Investment Grade CDS Index 79.73 -.11%

• America Energy Sector High-Yield CDS Index 1,905.0 +.29%

• European Financial Sector CDS Index 82.21 +.91%

• Western Europe Sovereign Debt CDS Index 21.47 +1.80%

• Asia Pacific Sovereign Debt CDS Index 86.33 +1.05%

• Emerging Market CDS Index 354.03 +.62%
  

• iBoxx Offshore RMB China Corporates High Yield Index 117.86 +.52%

• 2-Year Swap Spread 14.5 +1.25 basis points

• TED Spread 31.25 unch.

• 3-Month EUR/USD Cross-Currency Basis Swap -24.0 -.75 basis point

Economic Gauges:

• 3-Month T-Bill Yield .03% +1.0 basis point

• Yield Curve 148.0 -1.0 basis point

• China Import Iron Ore Spot $59.01/Metric Tonne unch.

• Citi US Economic Surprise Index -22.2 -5.6 points

• Citi Eurozone Economic Surprise Index 24.6 +1.6 poins

• Citi Emerging Markets Economic Surprise Index -22.8 +.7 point

• 10-Year TIPS Spread 1.59 -1.0 basis point
• # of Months to 1st Fed Rate Hike(Morgan Stanley) 3.95 -.03

Overseas Futures:

• Nikkei 225 Futures: Indicating -119 open in Japan 
• China A50 Futures: Indicating -157 open in China

• DAX Futures: Indicating +26 open in Germany

Portfolio: 

• Higher: On gains in my biotech/tech/medical sector longs

• Disclosed Trades: Covered some of my (IWM)/(QQQ) hedges 

• Market Exposure: Moved to 75% Net Long

Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• Citi's Chief Economist Says China Is 'Financially Out of Control'. (video) Corporate debt is the elephant in Beijing's room. Willem Buiter, Citigroup chief economist, sees a storm brewing in China. This week, he estimated that there is a 55 percent chance of a made-in-China global recession in the not too distant future, which he defines as a period of sub-2 percent global growth. Without a massive, consumer-focused stimulus plan, he argues, Chinese growth will slip below 4 percent. This would constitute a recession for the world's second-largest economy, according to Buiter, and the rest of the world wouldn't be insulated from the slowdown. Buiter appeared on BloombergTV to discuss his headline-grabbing call.

• Brazil's Junk Relapse Makes Its Bonds Even Riskier Than Russia. (graph) Brazil’s plunge into junk status may be far from finished. On Wednesday, Standard & Poor’s stripped Latin America’s biggest country of its investment grade, lowering it to BB+ and keeping a negative outlook on its debt. With Brazil headed for its longest recession since the 1930s, bond traders are bracing for more rating cuts as political gridlock stymies desperately needed economic reforms. Brazil’s borrowing costs have soared and its $2.15 billion of bonds due in 2023 now yield just 0.06 percentage point less than similar-maturity debt from Bolivia -- which is rated one level lower and is South America’s poorest nation. The advantage is the smallest on record. It also now costs 0.22 percentage point more to protect Brazil’s debt securities than those issued by Russia, a nation battered by sanctions and plunging oil prices.

• El-Erian: Brazil Is Stuck in a Vicious Cycle. (video)

• Daimler Trucks Expects Brazil Crisis to Get Worse Before Revival. Daimler AG said it expects demand for trucks and buses in Brazil to plunge as much as 50 percent this year as the crisis in South America’s largest economy gets worse. The market in Brazil, struggling to overcome a crippling recession, will need one to three years to return to growth, Wolfgang Bernhard, head of Daimler’s commercial-vehicle unit, said at the Hamburg club of business journalists late Thursday. “We expect to continue hibernating,” Bernhard said. Industrywide truck sales plunged 44 percent in the first half of the year, the Stuttgart, Germany-based company said in August. Brazil is one of several markets in which “there’s a strong, very cold headwind,” he said. 

• Europe Stocks Trim Weekly Gain, Unable to Shake Off Fed Concern. (video) Concern persisted over an impending Federal Reserve rate decision, sending European stocks lower for a second day. Declines in telecommunications shares contributed to losses after opposition from the European Union led Telenor ASA and TeliaSonera AB to scrap a merger of their Danish businesses. Rival TDS A/S slid 7.7 percent as the news ended its prospects of facing less competition. Telecom Italia SpA, a target of takeover speculation, slipped 3.1 percent. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index dropped 1 percent at the close of trading, paring its weekly advance to 0.7 percent.

• How Low Can Oil Go? Goldman Says $20 a Barrel Is a Possibility. (video) The global surplus of oil is even bigger than Goldman Sachs Group Inc. thought and that could drive prices as low as $20 a barrel. While it’s not the base-case scenario, a failure to reduce production fast enough may require prices near that level to clear the oversupply, Goldman said in a report e-mailed Friday while cutting its Brent and WTI crude forecasts through 2016. “The oil market is even more oversupplied than we had expected and we now forecast this surplus to persist in 2016,” Goldman analysts including Damien Courvalin wrote in the report. “We continue to view U.S. shale as the likely near-term source of supply adjustment.”

• Why Vladimir Putin Won't Be Helping OPEC to Cut Oil Production. (video) Few things have more potential to spook the oil market than the prospect of Russia joining forces with OPEC. Speculation that such a move was afoot last month drove crude to its biggest three-day gain in 25 years. Despite the market buzz, there are sound economic and technical reasons why this is unlikely to happen. “Russia and OPEC have talked about cooperation in cutting production many times in the past, but the results of that were always dismal and disappointing,” said Nordine Ait-Laoussine, president of Geneva-based consultant Nalcosa and former energy minister of Algeria. “Russia has assumed that when oil prices go down, OPEC countries are in a weaker position and are more likely to be the first to cut its production, and they always did.”  

• Fed Signals: Too Much Information for Wall Street? (video)

• Commercial Credit is the New Mortgage Credit. Corporate debt products are the hot thing. Meet the incredible, shrinking mortgage bond market. In the wake of an unprecedented U.S. housing bust that evolved into a global financial crisis, the business of bundling home loans that aren't backed by the American government into bonds that can be sold to investors has all but disappeared. It's a point underscored on Friday by Laurie Goodman, Director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, in a paper titled: "The Rebirth of Securitization: Where Is the Private-Label Mortgage Market?"

• Venture Capital Legend Says Trouble Lies Ahead for Some of the World's Hottest Startups. Being a highly-prized unicorn can be tough. As growth slows in emerging markets and stock volatility picks up, there have been some questions about the future of so-called unicorns, or startups with valuations upwards of a billion dollars. Yesterday on Bloomberg TV, Alan Patricof, co-founder of venture capital firm Greycroft Partners, said there could be troubled times ahead for startups that have so far been much loved by flush investors.

Zero Hedge:

• "Be Our Guest": Russia Warns Washington Of "Unintended Incidents" In Syria.

• Oblivious To Risk – Investors In La-La-Land.

• "They're Making Idiots Of Us!": Eastern Europe Furious At West For Doing Gas Deals With Russian Devils.

• This Is Another "Subprime" Waiting To Blow.

• Wal-Mart Wage Hike Debacle Continues As Suppliers Forced To Layoff Employees Amid New Fees.

• Last Thing The Fed Sees Before Its Rate Hike Decision Will Be Very Ugly. (graph)

• UMich Consumer Confidence Tumbles To 12-Month Lows With Biggest Miss On Record. (graph)

• Glencore's "Doomsday" Plan Disappoints As CDS Resumes Rise; Question Emerges: "What Happens If Company Fails". (graph)

• German FinMin Warns Monetary Policy Is "Moving In A Very Dangerous Direction".

Telegraph:

• No more bail-outs: Germany blocks Juncker's eurozone reform drive. Berlin brands Juncker's visions to deepen monetary union as 'unacceptable', rejecting taxpayer rescues for banks and sovereigns.

Bear Radar

Style Underperformer:

• Large-Cap Value -.22%

Sector Underperformers:

• 1) Coal -4.36% 2) Oil Service -2.92% 3) Steel -1.72%

Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume:

• ZUMZ, CHKE, MFRM, EFOI, FNSR, BRC, AMAG, USAC, CBPX, DCM, MBLY, ANET, COMM, FSTR, WCIC, NWPX, RRMS, WRLD, MSI, SEP, BAH, ITG, GCO, AJRD, CLW, CQP and GPRO

Stocks With Unusual Put Option Activity:

• 1) VNQ 2) CMI 3) ADBE 4) WMB 5) EWT
  

Stocks With Most Negative News Mentions:

• 1) FNSR 2) PBR 3) COP 4) MRVL 5) BHI
  

Charts:

• ETFs Falling on Unusual Volume

• Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume

Bull Radar

Style Outperformer:

• Large-Cap Growth +.09%

Sector Outperformers:

• 1) Restaurants +1.26% 2) HMOs +1.19% 3) REITs +1.08%
  

Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:

• PGI, RH, XPO, STAR, AKBA, SODA, KR and CONN

Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:

• 1) NCR 2) RH 3) LLY 4) KR 5) AVP
  

Stocks With Most Positive News Mentions:

• 1) KR 2) LULU 3) VMW 4) DHR 5) COTY
  

Charts:

• ETFs Rising on Unusual Volume 

• Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume