I’m streamlining my twitter feed a bit to cut down on noise and to make it easier to keep track of key information links to refer to later. In Quick Takes I post links I find of interest & relevant on any given day. These links will cover a broad spectrum of items, from the market impacting/relevant to economic & political news, social and the occasional potpourri/humorous and I may add a quick thought/impression.

If you, as I am, sift through tons of news throughout the day to stay informed then you may come to find these Quick Takes as a useful resource.

A few days ago I wrote about UK inflation (Careful What You Wish For), its impact on real wage growth and my concerns that we are seeing basically a test case here on how sensitive the consumer is to price pressure.

The answer was immediate:

“Sales dropped 0.8 percent from August, far more than the 0.1 percent estimated in a Bloomberg survey. Over the third quarter, annual growth slowed to 1.5 percent, the worst performance since October 2013, according to data from the Office for National Statistics in London.”

I say test case because we haven’t really seen inflation on a core basis elsewhere and this inflation data here may be a side product of Brexit. But it highlights the sensitivity of consumers to inflation and it raises the big question: How trapped are central banks? How fast before they lose control?

Junk-Bond Traders Are Increasingly Just Buying Stocks

QT: The greatest trick central banks ever pulled is convince people that risk no longer exists. This works as long as capital keeps flowing into all the same asset classes. What happens when people actually do want to sell?

China’s central bank just warned of a sudden collapse in asset prices

QT: Last night we saw a little preview as the persistent bid disappeared suddenly. While the $DJIA had risen for 13 hours straight the day before it all but disappeared in an instant:

And poof! It was gone. pic.twitter.com/vjmzzDUf60

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) October 19, 2017

While it’s all giggles here in this artificial liquidity drenched market environment I maintain that organic market equilibrium is much lower and this low volatility environment will come to an end.

Siemens Plans Thousands of Job Cuts Over Two Divisions

Spain Unleashes Historic Power to End Catalan Independence Push

Fewest Jobless Claims Since 1973 Show Firm U.S. Job Market

QT: How do you spell “Cycle coming to an end” in #MAGA terms?

North Korea warns US faces ‘unimaginable’ strike if it continues military drills with South Korea

QT: Markets will continue to ignore NK headlines unless something actually happens which it hopefully won’t, the consequences for the region could be horrendous. Good thing we currently have cool and level headed leadership in case things get tense and require a delicate approach. 😳

Apple is slipping after reports of iPhone 8 production cuts

Did $AAPL make a strategic error releasing the X & 8 at the same time? The 8 seems outdated by sheer appearance perhaps. Guess we’ll find out. The stock certainly is not happy today & the technical retrace opportunities are plentiful.

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