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Authored by Richard Breslow via Bloomberg,
Typically, with the advent of September, traders plan to come out of the blocks ready and raring to go. It’s the last obvious time to turn a new leaf and settle on the strategies that will, hopefully, see you through to year-end. There’s supposed to be an excitement in the air that is usually associated with the beginning of January. It just doesn’t feel that way this time around.
Now it may just be that investors are planning to wait for U.S. markets to open officially before there is the expected beehive of activity as new positions are put on and risk ramped up. But there isn’t that feeling of pent-up energy and traders chomping at the bit. There are a couple of reasons this year might be different.
A lot of the trades that have worked for much of the year have left people tired and distrustful, and with a sense they are overdone. Although you might be hard-pressed to find too many quantitative models that think so.
Buying global bonds at these yield levels simultaneously feels like something that must be done but just doesn’t seem right. That’s a real conundrum for those trying to contemplate how their year will end up.
The dollar trades like a champ. Now the decision has to be made whether to buy and hold it at prices that were forecast by very few analysts. Traders are getting very little solace from being told that if they liked the euro versus the dollar at 1.14, they must love it at 1.09. And, frankly, some of the obvious safe-haven trades have been running out of steam. Even as they have done nothing wrong to negate the story of why they are useful items in the best of portfolios. Patience is a virtue often in very short supply.
And equities are being very hard on those who want a clean narrative. They have serially looked really good and bad. Often in quick succession. Which should have meant they had something for everyone, but it seems like the opposite was more typically the case.
The buyers and the sellers are really just talking at cross purposes and not being successful convincing anyone to change their outlook. The jury is most definitely out on the global economy. But not on where you can get some yield.
Making none of this any easier is the long list of central bank meetings on the schedule. Unfortunately, even at this late hour, we are left debating exactly how much they will do. Let alone the fact that now, more than ever, we must consider whether the cure has become worse than the disease. It isn’t only the predictable list of hawks who are warning that enough might be enough. It’s especially concerning because the first thing any rate cuts are greeted with is calls to do more.
And we’re unlikely to get a great deal of clarification from the myriad official speakers later this week. Still, all eyes will have no choice but to be on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell when he gives the last pre-FOMC talk, shortly after the August non-farm payrolls report. Where the whisper number is looking for something on the soft side.
And, of course, the digital nature of so much of the known-unknown risks has left headline danger extreme. Trade talks, Brexit and Hong Kong are hardly localized issues that can be compartmentalized or ring-fenced.
There is a real possibility that September will look a lot more like an August than a January. That’s not necessarily a problem. It just has to be navigated accordingly. But taking a pass shouldn’t be one of the options.
Update (1100ET): Some relative good news - AP reports that Hurricane Dorian has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm.
* * *
This is the worst natural disaster that the Bahamas have ever seen.
A scene of devastation in Abaco #hurricanedorian pic.twitter.com/S2lp1NDXF4
— Tribune242 (@Tribune242) September 1, 2019
For hour after hour, Hurricane Dorian has remained almost stationary over the islands, and the devastation is immense. Power poles are being snapped like twigs, vehicles are being tossed about like toys, and thousands upon thousands of homes have already been destroyed.
However, as End of The American Dream's Michael Snyder notes, while the good news is that Dorian is now just a Category 4 storm, the bad news is that it will continue to move at a “glacial pace” for the rest of this week.
Bands of heavy rain are already pummeling Florida, and the storm is going to slowly crawl up the east coast in the coming days. In fact, according to the latest projection the storm will still be south of Washington D.C. on Friday afternoon.
And remember, this is just a forecast. If the track of the storm deviates to the left just a little bit, Hurricane Dorian will actually make landfall somewhere along the east coast. The following is an excerpt from the update that the National Hurricane Center just released…
Dorian remains nearly stationary just north of Grand Bahama Island. A slow west-northwestward motion is expected to resume overnight and continue into early Tuesday. A turn toward the northwest is forecast by late Tuesday, with a northeastward motion forecast to begin by Wednesday night. On this track, the core of extremely dangerous Hurricane Dorian will continue to pound Grand Bahama Island into Tuesday morning. The hurricane will then move dangerously close to the Florida east coast late Tuesday through Wednesday evening and then move dangerously close to the Georgia and South Carolina coasts on Wednesday night and Thursday.
But even if the eye never makes landfall, this storm will still have a tremendous impact on communities all along the east coast over the course of this upcoming week.
In fact, evacuation orders were just issued for a million more people…
The governors of South Carolina and Georgia ordered at least 1 million people to evacuate their coasts beginning Monday after Hurricane Dorian left devastation in the northwest Bahamas and headed for the U.S. East Coast.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp both announced mandatory evacuation orders to take effect at noon Monday in advance of the slow-moving, Category 5 hurricane.
In addition, it is being reported that more than 1,200 flights were canceled on Monday alone…
Airlines have canceled about 1,275 Monday flights within, into, or out of the United States because of Hurricane Dorian as of 4:30 p.m. Eastern, according to flight tracker FlightAware.
Florida airports account for the bulk of the cancellations, with Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport topping the list after the airportannounced plans to close at noon Monday. According to FlightAware, there are 548 flight cancellations to and from Fort Lauderdale, home to big operations for Southwest, Spirit and JetBlue.
Even though wind speeds have diminished a bit, Dorian remains an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, and everyone should be taking it very seriously.
Just look at what is happening in the Bahamas right now. According to the Daily Mail, the main airport is currently “under five feet of water”…
In the Bahamas, Dorian brought gusts of 225mph and up to 30 inches of rainfall on Sunday, wrecked 13,000 homes, tore down power lines and left Grand Bahama International Airport in Freeport under five feet of water by Monday morning. Experts have also warned of a possible storm surge that could send destructive waves crashing into the coast.
Dorian is the second-strongest Atlantic storm on record, and the joint-strongest ever to make landfall, after it barreled into the Bahamas with wind speeds of 185mph on Sunday.
Of course the Bahamas have seen many hurricanes before, but in all this time there has never been a storm quite like this…
Before Dorian, its worst storm was the 1932 Bahamas hurricane, which passed by with 160 mph winds as a Category 5. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 also passed just south of Dorian’s Bahamian landfall zone but wasn’t nearly as strong as Dorian.
Thousands of homes have literally been swallowed by rising water, and even residences that are 20 to 25 feet above sea level were in danger of being engulfed.
Minister of Agriculture and Marco City MP Michael Pintard, who lives on Grand Bahama, showing some utterly frightening footage of his home during the passage of Hurricane Dorian. pic.twitter.com/gugVsLMroB
— Travis C-Carroll (@TravisCC) September 2, 2019
Many local residents were not able to escape the flooding, and that included an 8-year-old boy that was the very first reported fatality from the storm.
In the end, the total death toll is likely to be quite high, but that isn’t stopping some idiots from going out in the middle of the storm and trying to perfrom ridiculous stunts for social media…
Several videos posted on social media have shown people in the Bahamas braving the dangerous conditions during the Category 5 hurricane.
One man shared a clip of himself battling strong winds and being soaked by rain, saying he was 80 miles away from the eye and yet still dealing with awful weather.
While footage thought to have been filmed in Marsh Harbour, Nassau, the Bahamas, showed a man trying to navigate a small boat in the choppy waters.
The east coast is the next target for Dorian, and meteorologists are telling us that it will be pummeling the coastline all week long.
And this could potentially just be the beginning, because at this point the National Hurricane Center is tracking four more storms…
As Hurricane Dorian approaches Florida, the National Hurricane Center is keeping track of four potential tropical systems that could become the next tropical depression and possibly Tropical Storm Fernand.
As of 8 a.m. Monday, the most likely candidate is a tropical wave that formed off Africa that was first investigated on Friday is now located 300 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. It’s moving northwest across the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean, the hurricane center said.
So if you live in the Southeast, continue to get prepared, because it looks like this could definitely be “a September to remember”.
We live at a time when hurricanes are getting bigger and more powerful than ever before, and scientists tell us that it is just a matter of time before a disaster even worse than Hurricane Katrina happens.
Let us pray that such a disaster is put off for as long as possible, and let us also be in prayer for those in the Bahamas that are suffering so much right now.
