Archive - Jul 9, 2010

From next January increases in UK's private pensions will be linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of the Retail Prices Index (RPI). Ministers insist the switch in the way annual pension increases are ­calculated was a technical change that would have ­little impact on incomes. But a backlash is spreading among pensioners, savers and experts who say it's another covert raid on the savings of Middle Britain.

Nice stuff ...

D'oh!

As we close on another week replete with ugly economic data and the usual bizarro counterintuitive market, here is a summary of the 50 most underreported facts about the state of the US economy, courtesy of the Coto report. After reading these it almost makes sense that the market has become completely desensitized to the sad reality now pervasive in this country. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations to this list. Surely if the list is doubled, the market will go up to 72,000 instead of just 36,000.

"For the Chinese, restarting the creeping revaluation of the renminbi has many benefits. Near the top of the list is gently moving its manufacturing base toward higher value added items and shifting production from servicing exports to satisfying domestic demand. Way down the list is appeasing the international critics of Chinese policy. The promotion of the domestic market is already underway, but the pace will be glacial – at least from the point of view of bank traders and US politicians – taking at least a decade to have a major impact on the composition of the Chinese economy. And there is no guarantee that any shift is coming, as the Japanese economy remains basically unchanged despite the dramatic increase in the value of the yen. We can only hope that the authorities in Beijing have a more adaptive and global view than those in Tokyo have shown and will adjust their banking and financial support system to integrate the renminbi and the Chinese economy with that of the West. Although the renminbi could rise to the 4.00 area by the end of this decade, the impact of this move will be felt inside of China, not outside. Furthermore, we can be sure that the Chinese leadership will do its best to manage this process in a way that has the most positive feedback for the Chinese society. Although the stronger renminbi will be a boon for China’s neighbors in Asia, it offers no help to the US or Europe." - John Taylor

This morning I read an interesting story in Soundings magazine. It recounted the final voyage of the S.S. Morro Castle, purportedly one of the safest ships afloat back in 1934 when it regularly transported revelers on junkets between New York and Havana. Then, on the night of September 8, a series of unfortunate events occurred that ended with the ship washing up on the New Jersey shore the next day, close to half of its 300 or so passengers dead. The story resonated with me on a number of levels, but first and foremost as a cautionary tale that even when everyone agrees that something is “safe,” events can quickly prove otherwise. For example, in the current economic context, U.S. Treasuries are considered the safest of harbors for storm-weary investors. But that assumption contains within it the further expectation that the status quo will prevail – that, proverbially speaking, no captains will drop dead, or drunken passengers will set a fire by playing a truly mindless parlor game. Further, should such unexpected events occur, a widespread belief holds that the water pressure will be there when needed, and that the power won’t cut out at the worst possible moment. That’s a lot of assumptions. And those just named are specific only to a ship at sea – not the complex system of the U.S. economy, which is, in turn, but a cog in a globally interconnected market. In other words, a system that is unimaginably complex.

The most recent CFTC Commitment of Traders report confirms our expectations that there was a major short covering squeeze in Euros. In fact, with net short positions declining to -38,909, or a 34,761 drop in contracts week over week, this was the second biggest short covering rampage in EURs in recent years. The only bigger one occurred 4 weeks ago, when 50k net short contracts were covered. The current net short speculative interest outstanding is back to early February 2010 levels. Keep in mind that precisely a month ago, on June 8, we saw the biggest net number of EUR short contracts on record at 111,945. All weak hands have now been shaken out, and without any marginal sellers, a long USD positions would be counterintuitive sense, especially with Goldman and CS selling the other side of the trade. Lastly, in the precious metals category, commercial gold shorts dropped materially. Net gold commercial shorts dropped by 40k contracts to -249.1, as over 15% of the entire commercial open interest was covered in the past week. That could help explain the dramatic drop in gold as banks unwound existing paper short hedges as end users were selling their gold holdings. Gross commercial gold positions dropped by 30k from 482k to 452k.

No volume melt ups have become the norm under the Bernanke regime - everyone is forced to expect the most ridiculous, manipulated excreta possible from the primary dealers. When people realize, soon enough, that the fair value of their 401k are about 95% lower, maybe, just maybe, something will change about this broken record. Until then, just bet on the chopper - Benny will make it all good until everything ultimately blows up.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 09/07/10

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 09/07/10

Attached for your viewing pleasure is an artist's (well, reader's) rendering of Ben Bernanke's PC desktop.

It is 3pm on a Friday - do you know where your unsupervised market ramping, Keynesian lie perpetuating algos are? With their masters long gone to the Hamptons, here come the binary terrorists, and they are so enthused to blow the market up to new highs, that they are providing a lovely opportunity for everyone else with sodium/potassium pumps to smack them down a little, with the daily dose of decoupling. As always - sell stocks, buy AUDJPY and wait for the money to come in. Easy as pie plus you get the extra gratification of knowing you caused some stupid computer a paper loss at the end of the day.

A very interesting research paper currently in publication by a team from York University headed by Nadia Massoud asks "Do Hedge Funds Trade on Private Information? Evidence from Syndicated Lending and Short-Selling" and analyzes whether or not hedge funds actively trade in the public securities of companies that had approached said hedge funds with private, capital structure specific (in this case loan syndication and amendment) information. The paper focuses on the period between 2005 and 2007, when the first wave of second- and third-lien debt that had been issued by crappy companies to hedge funds, was starting to become impaired and led to wave after wave of covenant and other bank loan amendments, designed to allow the borrower some breathing room. Massoud also tracks whether or not in the days preceding the public announcement of a covenant amendment, traditionally seen as a sign of weakness by any borrower company, there was a spike in short-selling activity by hedge funds, courtesy of an interval between January 2nd 2005 to July 6th 2007, when RegSHO had made public extensive detail on equity short-selling data (why this is no longer the case one has to ask the corrupt SEC, but that is a question for after the next 10,000 point Dow flash crash when the SEC's headquarters will finally be surrounded by rioting former investors who have had enough). The paper finds conclusive evidence that companies that come to lenders in hopes of amending syndicated credit facilities do indeed see aggressive shorting of their stock into the days preceding the formal announcement, implying that there is obviously material non-public information abuse and frontrunning. Here, the authors of the paper however, make a blatantly wrong assumption that this frontrunning originates almost exclusively from within the hedge funds that had been approached with the material non-public disclosure of weakness. We are happy to demonstrate that not only is that not necessarily the case, but to explain why certain sections of FT holding company Pearson can charge over $100,000 a year for premium subscription to their content by rich hedge fund subscribers, thereby once again creating a very tiered information market. We speak of course of Pearson niche media subsidiary www.debtwire.com

This is an excerpt from part two of a multi-part series on the companies vying for dominance during the 3rd major paradigm shift in personal and enterprise technology over the last 30 years. This one will be a biggie (not smalls) and promises to create an investment behemoth out of the winner and relegate the losers to relatively niche markets. This is saying a lot considering the size of the companies participating in the battle for the pole position. I created this series to provide a truly objective, truly informed, and truly analytical (from an empirical perspective) knowledge source on this very important intersection in personal computing and distributed media.

Brandon Rowley over at Wall Street Cheat Sheet has penned a post conveniently summarizing some of the most critical market structure trends that we have been highlighting for the past year. In a market that is increasingly computerized, the only key benefit presented by the pro-algo lobby has been that liquidity has increased. And while that may indeed be the case for the 50 or so most traded stocks whose trading is dominated by HFTs, the trade offs have been a spike in the average quotes per minute over the past decade, a fake order depth which disappears on a moment's notice, a dramatic shift away from traditional marketplaces and to "gray" venues, and most importantly, a massive surge in the cancellation to execution ratio, which is currently at an all time high, with the Nasdaq seeing 30 cancels for every execution. With so much probing and poking by computers to test which bids and offers are real, it is a miracle we don't have flash crashes every single day, as the bulk of the liquidity, likely well over 90%, is a sham.