Archive - Nov 2010

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX – 16/11/10

Retail traders are notoriously wrong at picking market direction/tops and bottoms. Most retail traders very naturally seem to adopt a counter-trend stance and this offers very accurate signals for individuals looking to trade against this group. This daily report is designed to help traders focus their efforts on higher probability pairs.

A flurry of buyouts, headline-y good macro news (just don't read the "not so" fine print), and the Fed promising to print enough dollars to make everyone a millionaire as Bernanke mimics the First Citiwide Change Bank "volume" strategy caused investors to celebrate in the morning by doing the Dougie.

The question of the night is whether Wal-Mart can absorb a 30% price increase in cotton products, because as Bloomberg reports, it will very soon have to. Gap Inc., J.C. Penney Co. and other U.S. retailers may have to pay Chinese suppliers as much as 30 percent more for clothes as surging cotton prices boost costs. Reports Bloomberg: "It’s a little terrifying to deal with cotton suppliers now," said Vicky Wu, a sales manager at Suzhou Unitedtex Enterprise Ltd., a closely held, Jiangsu province-based clothes maker that counts Gap and J.C. Penney among its clients. This is not an exaggeration - in last week's What I Learned This Week, 13D.com's Kiril Sokoloff, a China expert, noted: "We bought cotton back at around $0.99 because we thought the fundamentals were still very powerful. We liquidated the entire position on October 26 at around $1.29 because many Chinese clothing manufacturers were nearing bankruptcy and the Chinese government was cracking down on hoarders, speculators and investigating position sizes." Note the completely unwanton use of the word "bankruptcy" by the otherwise mellow Bulgarian - what has happened in cotton prices is setting off a seismic shift for low-margin retailers, and many traditionally safe and stable companies will soon be forced to attempt to pass on surging costs, or go out of business, especially as the ranks of low-cost vendors goes up in smoke. Bernanke's inflation exporting model is about to backfire with a vengeance. In this most direct consequences of excess liquidity-driven near-hyperinflation, the best possible outcome would merely a total collapse in margins. If you think a very irrelevant Dick Bove hates Bernanke now, wait until you listen to the Walton family's thanksgiving dinner...

Earlier, we pointed out that over the past five years (with an emphasis on the past two), government worker compensation has exploded. As the topic appears to have touched a nerve, and will shortly become the topic du jour across every radio and talk show, here are some additional observations on this parabolic blow off top of a different nature from ConfluentResearch.

PROBLEM “The problems were lurking in the files, as long as people were paying and values went up nobody cared. Fraud that happens during boom times comes to light in the bust.” SOLUTION “If the assignment is missing, you can create it by having the old assignee reassign it to you,” 4CLOSUREFRAUD QUESTION "What if the old assignee no longer exists?"

Speaking at the Bank of England on Monday, Ros Altmann, director-general of the Saga Group, warned that historically low interest rates could lead to another financial crash that would leave pension pots “decimated”. And it's not just a UK problem...

Once again option speculators confirm they are nothing but macro momentum chasing lemmings who never anticipate an inflection point until it is well in the rear-view mirror. Last week's CFTC data, which was released with a delay today, due to Veterans' Day, shows that after the reflation trade appeared to be peaking in the past two weeks, so has non-commercial spec demand for commodities, all of which were virtually unchanged from the prior week. In currencies, we saw a resumption of the same old, with the brief renaissance in the USD tapering, and net positions once again declining toward a short bias. CHF sentiment was flat, JPY was down, while the GBP was up: in essence mimicking the actions in the underlying. And the most important chart which we believe is the UST spec distribution by 2/5/10Y, showed that bets for a decline in the 2 year accelerated, the 5 Year was flat, and speculation that the 10 Y would strengthen increased: precisely the opposite of what has since happened, even as expectations that the UST curve would continue surging near 2010 highs.

"Danger, Will Robinson, danger!"

As the whole financial world now knows, Ben Bernanke wants to actively foster inflation by trashing the US Dollar. Setting aside the fact that this is absolute insanity (inflation has already hit the US), Bernanke’s made it clear that he wants to trash cash to keep stocks up.

The only problem for our esteemed Fed Chairman is that Europe’s banking system appears to be even MORE adept at currency destruction than Bernanke’s money printing trigger finger.

For all those wondering how to cut down on government expenditures, here's a thought: cut the skyrocketing salaries! A study by USA Today, using US Office of Personnel Management data, confirms what has been widely known: that the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse over the past 5 years as a worker cohort, are none other than Federal workers themselves. The numbers are stunning: those earning over $150,000 in the past five years have grown from 7,420 to 82,034, a 1,006% increase. More shockingly, those earning over $180,000 has surged from just 805 in 2005, to 16,912 in 2010: a 2,001% increase. And it is on the background of this that Congress is planning on giving 2.1 million federal workers another 1.4% across the board pay raise! Additionally, it appears that the bulk of the gains have taken place since Obama took office. Can someone please stop the lunacy: this country is beyond bankrupt and it turns out that in addition to Wall Street (which everyone knows does nothing but transfer wealth from the middle class to a few choice CEOs and groupthinking Bloomberg terminal operators), the biggest thief is the very government itself, which has perfected the art of giving with one hand, and taking with 10, almost as well as those enclosed in glass corner offices on Park, Lexington and Broad (and now West).

Risk is rising higher and higher, owing to mid term elections and Quantitative Easing (QE) resulting in breakouts across
the board. Even the late coming financials have broken the pattern and now pulling back to retrace some gains. The
overall outlook is bullish – however, in the short-term, the market is aggressively overbought and a setback albeit milder
one is on cards.

Tomorrow's Guardian front page - pretty much self-explanatory. Domino 2 is done.

John Paulson's September 30 13F has been released. Total long stock holdings reported amounted to $22.9 billion, unchanged from June 30. As expected, and following hot in the footsteps of David Tepper, Paulson dumped nearly 20% of his Bank of America and Citi stakes (30 million shares and 82.7 million shares respectively), sold about 11% of Wells Fargo and Capital One, and dumped his entire 1.1 million Goldman position. Keep in mind all this was before BofA stock got crushed in October: the next 13F will be even more interesting.Other divestitures included two thirds of his stake in Family Dollar Stores, a third of his position in Starwood Hotels, and over half of his Mead Johnson Nutrition position. While Paulson did not touch much of his gold exposure (he did sell 6% of Anglogold Ashanti), he kept GLD is biggest position (for the gold denominated holdings) at $4 billion, and added about 17 new positions, the biggest of which were Anadarko (13.4 MM shares), Hewitt Associates (7.6MM shares), NBTY (6.1 MM shares), McAfee (5 MM shares), and then some notable Merger arbs: Genzyme, Burger King and Potash, in which he added 500,000 shares. Either Paulson will now have to like Potash on its fundamentals, or he will have to sell this position. Oddly enough, today's market showed remarkable unwillingness on behalf of the arbs to dump their POT holdings. One wonders how long this will continue. Additionally, Paulson sold his entire half a billion dollar stake in Exxon, a position that he held for just one quarter. In other news, obviously, the love affair with financials is at least partially over, and at this point the future of the Recovery Fund may well be in doubt if even Paulson does not see the upside case for names such as BofA which a year ago he had a PT of $30 as of 2012.

Do all branches of government serve the oligarchy?