Morgan Stanley: “Dangerously Close to Recession”

Reasons for the weakness at the open:

Morgan Stanley takes estimates from global GDP growth from 4.2% to 3.8% for 2011.

Scary front page of the WSJ: “Fed Eyes European Banks” which is what they should be doing but it is still scary as presented.

NTAP cut guidance last night and the stock is off 13%. Orders slowed in July and macro concerns exist.

Initial unemployment claims came in 408k, which still not indicative of a recession, or even a slowdown, but the number of initial claims is up 9k from the 399k posted last week (which incorporate revisions).

And for good measure, the French, Spanish, Italian, and German banks are all down some 3-7%.

Tough markets to navigate. The primary investment focus is simply “recession” or “not in recession” this year. Getting this right is far-and-away most important as correlations across stocks have picked up dramatically during the sell-off.