Archive - May 9, 2010

Unbelievable.

The message to speculators is clear: you no longer have free reign to mount destructive speculative attacks on European sovereign debt or the Euro. Even though it's late, Europe's show of force is resolute and decisive. In my opinion, this will have a profound impact on markets, helping shore up confidence and it will stem the slide to deflationary depression.

According to stories circulating around the trading floor, Dow’s a thousand points of fright on May 6 is the result of a "fat finger" trade. However, trade data seems to suggest the catalyst could be some big fat cats doing "sell in May and go away".

Just plain insanity - EURJPY goes from session highs to session lows, a 100 pip swing, in 2 minutes. Same with EURUSD. And as for the EU conference, don't expect it to happen until a leak finally drives the EUR up for at least 5 minutes straight. We may be at 1 trillion before the night is over.

More flags, more fun - 500 billion flags! A 50 pip move in an FX pair in a week is big. A 50 pip move in an FX pair in a minute is a several hundred sigma event. As all correlation algos are near unity, we believe the risk of Thursday's 2:40 pm festivities to recur in the afterhours session (either up or down) is frighteningly high.

Germany proposed on Sunday evening the establishment of a comprehensive plan of financial aid can be used for countries in the euro area, totaling 500 billion euros and involves the IMF, told AFP European diplomatic source. "Germany has put on the table a proposal of 500 billion euros," she said. It would include 60 billion euros in loans from the European Commission, he was in the last day, and 440 billion would accrue if necessary, the euro zone countries and the International Monetary Fund. This envelope would be established "bilateral loans, collateral for loans and lines of credit from the IMF," the source said. It would be in scale, if the subject of an agreement, an assistance plan is unprecedented in history.

Uhm, we have one simple question - where will the money come from? The EUR is surging currently on the kneejerk, although for all those who realize that the next step in this now entirely Federal Reserve mandated playbook is debt monetization, it provides just a good re-shorting opportunity. Of course, before our own Maestro Junior finds a new and improved way to pummel the greenback.

Courtesy of ShadowCap contributor Logan Schuler.

With less than 2 hours before Asia opens, the EU is scrambling - on net, the newsflow this weekend has been far more negative than Europe had hoped, with just the token minimum provided so far by the IMF (thank you Joe Sixpack) which the political situation in the UK and Germany deteriorating substantially. The live webcast from the Counsil of the European Union, the Extraordinary meeting of finance ministers - press conference is starting imminently at the following link.

First posted 17 November 2008, this column's analysis is more relevant than ever. It asks why investors rush to government securities when the US was at the epicentre of the financial crisis? This column attributes the paradox to key emerging market economies’ exchange practices, which require reserves most often invested in US government securities. America’s exorbitant privilege comes with a cost and a responsibility that US policy makers should bear in mind as they address financial reform. - Carmen Reinhart and Vince Reinhart

Political doctrine - meet Newton's third law. Headline from Reuters. This will serve as a huge setback to a consolidated European rescue of not only Greece but all PIIGS (and then all of Europe itself). Polls are now closed and the first preliminary read is as follows: 34.5 CDU, SPD 34.5, 12.5 Green, FDP 6.5 Left 5.5.And the biggest losers from this, aside from the line of willing bailout recipients may be German public utility: as Bloomberg notes: "Chancellor Angela Merkel’s parliamentary spokesman for economy and energy, Joachim Pfeiffer, said that the German government may not have to get approval from the federal parliament’s upper chamber to extend the operating life of nuclear power plants." EON, RWE and other utilities may not appricate their 10 year ultimatum in tomorrow's DAX.

The reason given by Reuters why the FinMin is in the hospital is due to an adverse reaction to a new medicine. While we wish Schaeuble all the best, his the timing could not possibly have been worse: the whole world is watching with baited breath to see what happens in Europe before 6pm eastern tonight. Anything less than an "ironclad" bailout program will result in a total market wipeout tomorrow.

The story of financial markets in the past twelve months has not been one of organic growth. It has been a central bank accommodated liquidity story. This melt up will end in melt down when unsustainable liquidity policy is insufficient to address deleveraging and default. Macro trade positioning needs functional measures of liquidity. As has been said before, liquidity will always be around until you need it.
Given the explosion of financial product innovation, international capital flows, and leverage some measures of liquidity are not as informative as they once were. New ones are needed. Further, thinking through liquidity phenomena to their essence is really about understanding connections to market-maker and/or seller distress, manifested in the bid-ask. So measures that exhibit a myopic view on credit risk of market players in some ways serve as a function liquidity measures.

Now that we’re all honorary members of the “Halfway To Hell Club”, a group of nineteen men who seemingly fell to their deaths while constructing the Golden Gate Bridge only to be saved by a crude and rudimentary net halfway down, I present this entirely fictional account of last Thursday’s market crash. Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.

Yes, it is really happening. After years and years and years of market manipulation, JPMorgan is about to realize there is only so far you can push your luck against the criminal envelope.In other news, when silver doubles shortly, Andrew Maguire is about to become a patron saint to generations of long-suffering gold and silver "bugs" the world throughout.

Greek blog DosePasa has released several smoking gun documents in which Boston-based Hayman Private Equity (no relation to the Kyle Bass firm, at least none that we can find), discloses it intention to offer a E20 billion loan through a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to Greece at roughly LIBOR+125bps in February 2010. If the documents are proven legitimate, and with a plethora of executive-level signatures it appears they would be difficult to forge, Athens will likely now demand G-Pap's head on a platter, or at least a coherent explanation why he refused to do this transaction at massively beneficial to Greece terms, which most importantly, did not involve the IMF's austerity measures, which have been the source of so much consternation to date, not to mention a proximal cause for the biggest market drop in history.