Jan 16. AAPL’s loss off the top greater than $200B. Congress approves $50B for Sandy damage
–Retail sales were stronger than expected yesterday (+0.5), providing some support for most (but not all, see below) stocks. Transports made new highs. Comments by Amari (Japan Econ minister) warning about the yen becoming too weak and Juncker warning that the euro was ‘dangerously high’ caused unsurprising weakness in EUR/JPY…down to 118, (-150) and this morning it’s just above 117. Actually, given the 20% rally of the past two months the sell off appears modest. JGB’s have retraced about half of the yield increase from 68 to 82 bps, and US 10yr yield eased as well, falling almost 3 bps to 1.827.
–Today’s news includes CPI expected 0.0 with Core +0.1. Industrial Prod expected +0.2 from 1.1 last. Beige Book in the afternoon. Boston Fed’s Rosengren said yesterday more QE might be needed, he’s a voter this year.
–The World Bank cut its global growth forecast for 2013, from 3.0 to 2.4, vs last year’s 2.3.
–Apple closed solidly below 500 at 485, down 3%. It has lost $207b of market value in the past 4 months and is now back to levels from last Feb. To give an indication of the magnitude of the capital swing, Google’s market cap is only $237b. AAPL has lost an IBM, or more than the combined value of YHOO, FB, HPQ, Dell, RIMM and AOL, AND the total notional Feb gold open interest outstanding in COMEX with $15b left over. (204k contracts open in GCG3). Given that the entire consuming world seems emotionally tied into the company, I would think the wealth effect of AAPL in terms of increasing uncertainty might be palpable.
