Wall Street did not appear to have bought into the latest China’s green shoot story last night.
Asian markets had gone wild in afternoon trading yesterday, after two Chinese newspapers reported that China’s industrial production figures might have grown by as much as 8.3 per cent – far more than what analysts had been anticipating.
Traders based their optimism that both newspapers had been accurate in reporting China’s inflation data – and this was reason enough for them to believe that their latest articles would be correct too.
But given Wall Street’s lacklustre close – Dow Jones ended 24 points lower – it seemed that US investors would rather give the reports a miss and wait for China to release the figures tomorrow, rather than jump the guns and buy now.
Certainly, there is ground for their scepticism.
Those watching the latest John Travolta’s film – The taking of Pelham 123 – will understand why US investors are so wary of taking such an important piece of unsourced information at face value.
In the film, John Travolta had starred as a terrorist who hijacked a New York sub-way train.
While he demanded a US$10 million ransom to let go of his hostages, his prize was really a cool US$307 million in profits from going long on gold futures. As broadcasts of the hijack were beamed live across trading rooms around the world, global stock markets crashed and traders fled to the safety of gold.
As he told Denzel Washington, the point-man who negotiated with him for the release of the hostages, "you can do a lot of things if you know how the day starts".
Having said that, there is another reason for Wall Street’s angst – a fear that the problems plaguing US lenders is not over yet.
The Financial Times Lex column asked the following question this morning:
As an investor, would you touch the following US bank with a cattle prod?
Its total assets dwarf common equity by 25 times to one – higher than the average for US banks over the past decade. Think of this another way: just a 4 per cent hit to the balance sheet and wave goodbye to shareholders’ equity.
What about those assets it owns then? Two-thirds of its outstanding loans are to consumers, with mortgages accounting for quarter and credit cards for 10 per cent – a daunting proposition given the likelihood of more defaults ahead.
Yet this bank has been allowed to repay its loan to the US government and is considered to be the healthiest US bank, by far. Good luck to the rest, Lex concluded.
So after gaining 30 per cent from its March lows, Wall Street is plagued by doubts again.
It is just unfortunate that around the same time, the China growth story is looking frayed as well.