Archive - Dec 2010

Earlier today, record interest in what could be Julian Assange's last live chat crashed the Guardian's entire website (which is the 16th top ranked site in Britain on a regular day getting tens of millions of hits). To be sure, the Guardian's exhaustive coverage of Assange's travails have paid off in droves, and as the Alexa chart below shows, the site's rank has surged as ad revenues have exploded. We hope the Guardian is keeping at least some of the proceeds in escrow for the soon to be created "Free Julian" fund. And while a boredom-intolerant world awaits news of the Wikileaks creator's arrest, below is a complete transcript of what could be his last live interview before captivity.

We have a new contender for the Bloomberg list of most inappropriately named people...

And once again we are back to discussing just how the Fed does "not" print money... Or does it? If the data from the just released M2 is to be believed (which is becoming near impossible now that even critical economic data is gamed merely to achieve policy goals - today's NFP number was nothing more than Obama's way to get his desired UI extension; look for a surge in the December NFP numbers as the spin machine picks up back on the economic recovery trope), the $1 trillion in Fed excess reserves continues to trickle into broader currency aggregates. To wit: last week M2 grow by $10.3 billion, which is a fresh all time high of $8,809.2 billion (this was at $4.6 trillion at the beginning of the decade). This more cheap money that is increasingly making its way into commodities and risky assets. For now it is a trickle. Soon, it will be a flood.

Goldman, which continues its near-revolutionary overhaul of its economic and market outlook, after suddenly and very embarrassingly hiking its economic outlook ahead of today's NFP number which confirmed that all those calling for an end to the recession were merely misled by the government (as Albert Edwards once again predicted spot on), was overdue for a change in its bond targets: after all there is no way the 10 Year can remain at 2.50% (the firm's old 10 Year target) if GDP is supposed to somehow grow to 2.7%. Sure enough, FUG (Franc Garzarelli, the man behind the firm's often very disappointing "Top Trade" recommendations) has just released the firm's new bond forecasts. And unfortunately, we get merely yet another indication that instead of being ahead of the curve, Goldman is now firmly behind it, and chasing either momentum or wrong conventional wisdom: the firm now sees the 10 Year going from its current 10 Year spot to 3.75% by the end of 2011, based on an "environment of strong growth, low inflation and a bond-friendly policy set-up." In other words: everyone pile into the reflation trade. We can't wait for two things: i) Rosenberg's retort, and ii) the over/under on how long before this latest flawed recommendation by Goldman is not only revised, but once again starts calling for a few trillion in QE (which just a month ago was supposed to be an addition $4 trillion - how quickly views change after a brief "closed door" meeting).

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 03/12/10

A few days ago we provided a brief overview of Italian insurance company Assicurazioni Generali (whose corporate ticker appropriately is ASSGEN) and shared our view of why its CDS will shortly continue pushing far wider. To be sure, once the brief respite provided by Trichet's drunken sailor-style purchasing of sovereign bonds anywhere and everywhere ends today, we will once again see drifting in Europe (two days of about a billion in notional purchases does exactly nothing about resolving the underlying issues). Although as we noted, betting on a failure of the next batch of distressed countries, among which Italy sticks out like a sore thumb may be short sighted: after all Trichet will merely change the rules once again, the failure of such sovereign risk derivatives as re/insurance companies is far more questionable. Over the weekend, we will provide more on shy we believe ASSGEN is due for a major beatdown, and in the meantime we wanted to provide this teaser courtesy of BNP.

Competitive bidding? Yah right. And, our word of warning to incoming House Speaker John Boehner.

From the exquisite stream of consciousness of Nomura's recent addition: Bob Janjuah, who luckily discovered he was far too smart to be held back by the D-grade bailed out banker-clowns at RBS (we can only hope Bob will next discover the carriage return button): "If you are wondering why the title "Bulls in a China shop", I hope that after reading the [below], it makes sense: financial markets are very fragile right now, and any bullish risk-on phase seems to be based on very hopeful assumptions (“don't fight the Fed”; “beware animal spirits in the US”; “don't position against the US consumer”; “Germany owes us”; and lastly, “China will always grow at 10%”). We prefer to rely less on hope and more on hard reality and sensible and credible policies – even if they may mean more pain in the short term."

Zero Hedge is delighted to have officially gotten on Brian Sack's nerves: after everyone's favorite Fed offer lifter bought another $6.81 billion in bonds due 2013-2014 (at a Submitted to Accepted ratio of 3.2x) the week's last POMO is now over. However, to our delight, after highlighting repeatedly that over the past two weeks the issue monetized most by the Fed was the most recently issued bond in any given bracket, today, for the second day in a row, CUSIP PU8, the November 3 year auction, was once again put on the exclusion list, making life for flipping Primary Dealers just that bit more difficult. But don't worry: with November excluded, the biggest issue monetized by far, with $4.3 billion in purchases was the 3 year issued in... October (PB0). The net result is that instead of pocketing a ~$100 million bonus this year, the RBS/JPM/DB/GS/Jef/etc bond monetization team leader, will instead collect just $99 million of taxpayer money. We will continue tracking the exclusion list and hope to have finally put an end to at least this small farce in the Fed's monetization arsenal. In the meantime: may the farce be with you Brian Sack: please be advised that unless you close the market green we will all lose faith in your market manipulative skills (granted, the Obama mandated UI extension pass at all costs may explain a slightly red close).

According to Reuters, the US deficit panel's recommendation to cut the budget fails to win 14 votes of support from the teleprompter's commission. This means no deficit vote will go to congress. And so the bullshit continues: America will never adopt austerity until the revolt or the Fed's overthrow arrives.

Even as the CFTC is doing its best to postpone indefinitely (and hopefully infinitely) a review of limit speculative positions held by commodity traders (read JPM), commissioner Bart Chilton, who really should shut up if he knows what is good for him, told the CFTC to instead act quickly and actually do something right for investor protection for once (not necessarily in those words). From Reuters: "The regulator, which has a mid-January deadline, has been pushing back
the date to propose new speculative limits in energy and metals markets,
and so far has not given a time for when it will be introduced. This proposal should be discussed on December 9th at the commission's
next meeting; a proposal should be put out for public comment as soon as
possible; and we should commit to meeting the statutory deadline," said
Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner. "We can always find excuses, justifications, or pretexts for inaction --
this rule is too important to let any of those get in the way of
fulfilling our statutory responsibilities, and keeping our promise." The problem is that none of "those" are standing in the way of fulfilling statutory responsibilities: there are only two things that are standing in the way, and they are called Jamie Dimon and Blythe Masters.

Yes, I know the banks are hedged, and that means the are all safe right. We can just ask Ambac, MBIA, Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns investors - to start with...

Last week's advance durable goods report, which everyone promptly forgot about because it showed, gasp, bad data, just got even worse. Today, the final revision of the durable goods number was released, showing an even greater drop in durable goods orders. To wit: instead of a -3.3% decline, the final number in durable goods ended up being -3.4%: "New orders for manufactured durable goods in October, down two of the last three months, decreased $6.9 billion or 3.4 percent to $195.7 billion, revised from the previously published 3.3 percent decrease. This followed a 4.9 percent September increase." And as expected the artificial inventory led "bounce" refuses to relent: "Inventories of manufactured durable goods in October, up ten consecutive months, increased $1.5 billion or 0.5 percent to $316.9 billion, revised from the previously published 0.4 percent increase. This followed a 0.7 percent September increase." In other words: fake recovery, based on increasingly more fake numbers, relying on hoarding of unsellable products (just as GM has been doing lately).

ISM Servies prings at 55.0 compared to expectations of 54.8, now that all difusion indices trade like S&P earnings esmates. Key indices come in as follows as farce of a market goes green.

Today we will highlight the stocks “Gurus” have either recently been adding to their portfolios as new holdings or companies that they have recently increased their position in the last quarter and rate them using the Economic Margin Valuation model. In the coming weeks we will be taking the pros picks and give them letter grades (A,B,C,D,F) based on how we look at the company (based on value score).