Oh let's just get this global rout over with already. You have Chinese exports for the month of February down 20%, getting them back to the level where they were in 2016, when the nadir was reached in the last Chinese economic meltdown. Thank heavens the Baltic Freight - the best indicator I know of Chinese development - is "only" at 657, down from 2330 at the peak of Chinese growth in December of 2013, but well above 290 where it was when exports last fell this far.
There's an 11 day shift in the Lunar New Year celebration that is said to have been responsible for about as much as 500 basis points of decline. But still, the trade war is crushing the invincible Chinese. How do they still have all of that foreign aid money to toss around? Many countries are counting on it for growth, including the weakest man of Europe, Italy. Will it continue?
Speaking of Italy, we know that the third largest economy in Europe is now in a recession that I expect to only grow deeper given how horrible their banking community is and how work rules and regulations have gone through no reform whatsoever. They remain in immigrant crisis mode.
Europe really is rout-justifiable, isn't it? You had Draghi yesterday stripping away the fiction of a recovery and trying once again to keep the euro down to get exports going. But if China buys 25% of their goods what does it matter? It won't work. I don't even think that the economy of 770 million people can do 1% growth if we have a hard Brexit.
Ah, yes, Brexit, which is freezing so much of the world's economy that our trade war with China hasn't. That's a global routable reason of the first order.
What can I say? Brexit, Europe, China. All bad.
All worth selling off on? Yes. For five straight days?
Yes.
But then what?
I think that the then what will be known by the end of this day.
Sit on your hands. Buy small if you have to buy. Sell small if you have to. Remember, though, the global rout story will be written all next week, too. Until everyone knows there is a global rout.
And that's when the selling usually ends in this, our, I don't know, tenth, twelfth global rout of the last eight years?
Oh, and one more thing, as my pal Dougie likes to remind, how did our stock market do during these endless global routs?
One word: WELL. We did WELL. Better than everyone else.
It will be the same again, this time.
