The Real Message Of Plunging Commodities

The Chinese stock market recently saw its biggest selloff in 8 years as the dramatic 8.5% fall in Shanghai.

“A” shares also rattled markets around the world.

For the past few weeks China has been balancing its desire to keep the equity market from a complete meltdown, while still courting the international investment community with hopes of being a dominant player in the capital and currency markets.

But recently The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned China's government about its concern over limiting investors' freedom to take equity out of financial markets. These concerns were raised when the IMF met with officials in to discuss the chances of including the yuan in the fund's basket of currencies, also known as Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

As China tries to balance the demise of its equity bubble while still keeping the illusion of free markets intact, two delusional narratives have started to circulate around Wall Street.

The first such Wall Street inspired delusion is that the collapsing Shanghai stock market will have no effect on the underlying Chinese economy. However, even though China's 260 million trading accounts may be a relatively small percentage of its total population, it's also the richest and most productive portion of its citizenry, which also happens to be equal to the entire U.S. population in 1993. And Chinese GDP growth accounts for 1/3 of total global growth. Therefore, we can already find the manifestation of slowing Chinese growth from the nascent fall in equity prices. 

For example, the profit of China's industrial firms dropped 0.3% in June from a year earlier, that reversed a 0.6% rise in May and 2.6% gain in April. For the first six months of 2015, industrial profits were 0.7% lower than a year earlier.

In June, China's producer price index fell 4.8% on an annual basis, its 39th straight month of declines. In fact, the economy is headed for its poorest overall performance in a quarter of a century.

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