Archive - Nov 2010

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

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.

This is an article I did for a local newspaper for which I write a regular column on economics. It was meant for a general audience. Size limitations required the article to be very concise, thus a "deep" philosophical treatise on theory, epistemology, and intellectual trends was not possible. But I think it came out well. What do you think?

After recent reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other government officials received bags of cash from Iran, it's no surprise that Afghanistan would be near the top of a ranking published last week of the most corrupt countries in the world. The Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization based in Berlin and operating in 70 countries, ranked the Central Asian country second only to Somalia and tied with Myanmar for its perceived level of government corruption.

China just metaphorically flipped off the US, and the G-20, by not only beating trade expectations, but trouncing them, with a net positive trade surplus of $27.1 billion, compared to estimates of $25 billion. This was the second highest number since January 2009, and lower only to July's $28.7 billion. The main reason for the surge in exports was the trade balance with the EU, which at $14.5 billion is the highest since October 2008. In other words, Europe's strong currency is already impacting the continent's economic output, as end users opt to import stuff from China, instead of having it produced domestically, and not to mention stockpiling inventory in hopes that pricing power will allow prices to go up (instead of just squeezing margins even more). Ultimately, Europe is the one that is now getting hit by a double whammy of the CNY-USD peg (as the CNY is now at very low levels to the euro), as well as the recent surge in the EURUSD, due to the Fed's policies. Therefore, Europe has to continue battling not one monetary regime, but two, as its net trade balance with both the US and China are getting worse by the month. As for the all important Chinese trade balance with the US, it came flat with September, both at $18 billion, even though both imports and exports declined proportionally. Elsewhere, and possibly in anticipation of increasing inflation dangers and overheating, but still unwilling to depeg from the USD, Bloomberg reports that China has ordered some banks to raise reserve ratios by another 50 bps. This will be the second such move in under a month - last time it was another 50 bps move to 17.5%. Of course, this is no different than putting a cork in the proverbial dam.

LA TIMES--[T]he curiosity over what exactly was spotted some 35 miles off the coast was met Tuesday only by a puzzling lack of answers from federal officials.

While QE2 stirs up passions, the truth is nobody really knows how this is going to end. It might turn out to be a disaster, or it might turn out to be a stroke of genius...

The first casualty of Goldman's new "client facing" regime, now that prop trading is presumably dead and all prop traders have shifted one seat to the left, pretending they all do flow (even as they still take massive inventory positions) is Alexandre Harfouche - a managing director and head of the firms' European block trading divions. Harfouche was sacked for "failing to make proper disclosures to the bank’s compliance department" according to the FT. And now that Goldman is spreading the lie that it no longer does prop trading even thought it, well does, block trading is basically the latest iteration in the nomenclature of what Goldman does when commingling prop and client order flow, before it proceeds to split up an order block via internalized algos, or dumping it in the market. It is thereby precisely at the level of block order aggregation that potential front-running violations can occur, which is why Zero Hedge would be very interested to find out just what were the circumstances associated with Harfouce's termination. Unfortunately, "while
Goldman did not specify the reasons for Mr Harfouche’s departure,
people close to the situation stressed that no securities law had been
violated and no client had been harmed by the events that led to his
dismissal." So he was just fired on general principle? Yeah, right. And while we were trying to access Harfouce's FSA record, we had no luck as the now defunct English regulator's website is down. Lovely.

It was another lackluster day in the market as investors are still trying to regain their bearings from last week's quadruple news high of elections, QE2, the jobs report, and Kat Dennings nude photos being released. With all of the excitement...

A couple of luminaries share their perspectives on recent developments in the precious metal space. First, we have Jim Rickards sharing his thoughts on what today's Comex margin hike means for trading. And second, and just as important, is Peter Schiff, who grades WB president Robert Zoellick's call for a new gold standards, and its implications for the future. Both are as always insightful and enlightening.

In an exclusive collaboration between Nanex and Zero Hedge, we are pleased to present to our readers the first part of a multi-series project that will demonstrate the flash crashes of 2010, and subsequently, of 2009 and 2008. The concern is that since the number of mini crashes, precipitated in most part by HFT algorithms gone wild, is simply staggering, it is impossible to present all the individual events in one presentation due to size limitations. The reason - there have been 549 "flash crash" events in 2010 to date alone! We dare anyone at the SEC to go through this list and look anyone in the eye and tell them that i) the market is not broken and ii) that High Frequency Trading is not a major scourge to proper and efficiently operating markets. And while we do not want to take away from the recent uproar at ETFs, courtesy of the Kauffman foundation (and its chairman who as we presented earlier has a rather sizable conflict of interest in DST Systems, Inc) none of the presented 549 crashes are ETFs implicated: this is (mostly) all HFT, baby, all the way.

Ouch ...

Presented without comment.

In these crazy times, all one could ask for is sanity. Yes, sanity – a clear mind, free of noise, with which to face the insanity that the volatile, noisy stock market thrusts upon us. We find ourselves glued to our computer screens or CNBC, waiting to find out what the Dow’s next tick is going to be. What do we get out of it? Only a headache and wasted time.

Here is my advice: read.

Both of Bernanke’s claims (that QE will help housing and spur business investment) are a crock. So what’s the REAL reason he’s frantic to kep interst rates low?

Derivatives.

According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities for the Second Quarter 2010 (most recent), the notional value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks is around $223.4 TRILLION.

Five banks account for 95% of this. Can you guess which five?