MONDAY 3/10/14

The Malaysian Flight 370 missing aircraft mystery continues. A window fragment from an airplane door is found floating in the sea but the fragment may not be from the plane. The incident remains perplexing since a debris field is not found. The BA 777 airplane simply vanished. A BA Dreamliner 787 has to make an emergency landing due to oil system problems. This airplane is the same plane involved with the battery fire last year. Pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine protestors clash. Journalists are prevented from entering Crimea. Gazprom is raising Ukraine natural gas prices by 37% for Q2.

Aussie dollar drops to 0.9029. Japan’s Q4 GDP is 0.7% under the 0.9% consensus estimate. The Chinese trade data creates negativity in Asia. Copper continues collapsing dropping another -1.5%. Overnight the dollar/yen drops from 103.24 to 103.05 so the NIKK sells off -1% and US futures are lower. China markets are beaten with the SSEC collapsing -3% and HIS -1.8%. S&P -9. Dow -55. Nasdaq –13. WTIC oil 101.34. Commodities, oil and metals are lower. The dollar is 79.655 continuing to dance along the 80 level. Dollar/yuan 6.1274. Indonesian Rupiah 11442. South Korean Won spot 1060.820.

The weak China data, lower copper and weaker Asian markets action cascades to Europe creating negativity......




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The session ends with flat markets. The Dow was down 118 points and recovered to down only 34 points. The dip-buyers are there to support equities and the consensus sentiment remains very bullish. The SPX recovers from a 10-handle loss back to the flat line. The 10-year yield is flat at 2.78%. VIX 14.20 remaining above 14 maintaining selling pressure on equities. Oil companies are winners today. XOM +0.5%. CVX +0.7%. VLO +0.9%. FB gains +3.2% printing above 72 at a new record high. HD loses -0.5% but recovers off the lows. IBM -0.7%. Freescale Semi, FSL, the company that had numerous employees on the troubled Flight 370 airplane, drops -1.3%.

Colorado takes in $2 million in marijuana taxes. Congress launches an investigation into the General Motors ignition switch deaths. GM executives may have hid the problems for years. GM should have restructured under bankruptcy a few years ago. Instead, the government provided a bailout for the troubled car maker, not allowing the cleansing side of capitalism to occur, so, by association, has blood on its hands with the vehicle deaths. GM lost -1.6% today.

Whistleblower Snowden, at the center of the NSA spy scandal, says he “would absolutely” do it again. Snowden speaks from a remote location in Russia to the South by Southwest (SXSW) tech and film conference audience. He says tech companies should take a leading role in addressing privacy concerns since they can move far faster than government. He feels vindicated since the NSA is now forced to make changes in its spying policies (not that the NSA will ever implement the changes).