Of Top Ten Hedge Fund Performers In 2009, Four Are Still Underwater

Amusingly, of the top 10 large hedge fund winners in 2010, only 6 are above their high water mark. And if what we are hearing about some of the other "winners" is true, make that less than 50%. Curiously, Jim Simons who is currently enjoying his retirement in some country with no collocation facilities whatsoever, lost out to the robot onslaught: Medallion was up a mere 38%, roughly the same as RIEF's S&P underperformance in 2009. And speaking of, we will have some interesting things to say about Medallion/RIEF in a few days.

Extend And Pretend; Or Why The Inflation/Deflation Debate Is Largely Irrelevant

Greg Mankiw provides a useful primer on runaway inflation done right... and done Ben. Yet his warnings that inflation may be stealthily approaching, sure to risk the ire of deflationists everywhere, may be very much irrelevant: the Fed, which is entering the bottom ninth on the great failed Keynesian experiment realizes it is running out of cards. The one thing that is certain, is that no matter what the true final outcome, the Federal Reserve will certainly miss the Goldilocks landing strip by a mile. And the political and economic ramifications of the Fed's outright failure will be tremendous.

Indirect Bidders Are Fleeing The Short Bond

An extended analysis of TIC, FMS, DTS and TreasuryDirect data confirms that while Indirect bidders (aka Foreign Investors) continue to bid up US Government securities, their interest in the short end of the curve has not only declined, but accelerated redemptions have left Indirects with a heavily weighted long bond exposure. This raises the following questions: are inflation expectations once again vastly premature, who keeps buying the short-end at record low yields, and what kind of event will be responsible for the unwind of the groupthink idea of the day: the curve steepener?

Visualizing The Last Three Bonus Seasons

While banks would be the last entities to reveal disclosure on bonuses during the current time filled with populist agita and froth (it certainly would "destabilize" the financial system if Joe Sixpack was aware that XYZ's main bond trader made $50 million simply by buying short and lending long), none other than Tim Geithner's treasury department provides a convenient way to track aggregate bonus dissemination data in the form of daily tax withholding data from the Financial Management Service. A historical analysis indicates that December and January are traditionally the high outlier months when it comes to tax withholdings, for the simple reason that these two months is when the majority of bonuses payments are disbursed, and being defined as "supplemental income" and taxed at a flat Federal rate per IRS publication 15, they provide the double whammy of increased income tax withholdings and a higher withholding rate. Zero Hedge has compiled daily data from the past three years' bonus seasons to determine whether there is any secular shift to bonus outlays, not just on Wall Street but Main Street as well (surprisingly for the Obama administration, the bulk of withholdings does not come from Wall Street). Our observations were somewhat unexpected.

Guest Post: Taking On The Fed - What The Deflationists Are Missing

"An interesting article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard came my way the other day. It’s worth a read, if for no other reason than that he paints an appropriately dark picture of the current state of the U.S. economy. You can read it here. While I very much share Mr. Evans-Pritchard’s view that the global economy is far from out of the woods, our views diverge in that he sees devastating deflation speeding our way down the tunnel. Casey Research readers of any duration know that we see devastating inflation.
While we could both be right, with deflation first and inflation later, I’m not so convinced." David Galland, Casey Report

Weekly/YTD Credit Summary: January 15

This week has been noticeably weak for credit markets as they underperformed equity markets, fitting with our aggregate capital-structure model perspective. IG-HY has decompressed rather well buy the intrinsics have decompressed considerably more as market breadth is dominated by wideners and steepeners.

We see a slightly different picture evolve as spreads remain slightly tighter from 12/31 close with FINLs still leading the way as non-financials are mostly wider on average. Breadth is negative around 4to3 as the indices have handily outperformed intrinsics in IG and ExHVOL but not so in HY. Credit has underperformed equity since the start of 2010 (once again fitting wit hour model perspective) and their is more room to go yet on this.

Goldman Takes A Stab At Gold Bugs And 'Oil-Peak'ers, Says Dollar Will Flourish

Several observations out of Goldman's Investment Strategy Group which seek to allay fears that even if the Fed were to print another few trillion dollars, the greenback would still reign supreme, never mind that all the currency in circulation now (secondary Fed liability after excess reserves), one could argue, is more than 100% backed by MBS on the asset side of the equation (or in other words, diluted by more than half from solid, and real AAA-rated securities). Goldman is also taking a stab at gold-bugs, claiming that all reports of the dollar's demise are not only premature, but borne out undue fatalism, and in fact are deja vu. Yet is this time really not different?