Archive - Sep 9, 2010

Markets will do whatever they have to do to screw the most people. In every election since 1950, markets rallied for six months after the midterms, setting up for a nice yearend rally. One more flush in the indexes, and a 950 SPX gives you a PE multiple of 10, the lowest it has been for years. After firing people to boost productivity and profitability, the end September earnings reports should be pretty good. (SPX), (ECH), (TF), (IDX), (EPOL).

It has been a while since the IMF sold gold directly to sovereign countries. Today that changed, as once again the IMF is either telegraphing it is happy with a gold price of $1,250 (although its sales last year did not prevent gold from surging to record highs as of two days ago), or that it is increasingly poorer (as it is now solely supporting a broke Europe, that would not be surprising). Dow Jones reports that the IMF just sold $403 million dollars, or 10 metric tons, to Bangladesh (yeah Bangladesh). As the IMF has sold 190 tons in off market transactions, and another 90 tons in the open market, the entity that has been pitching the SDR rather aggressively lately may soon hit its 400 ton quota. Although just like the US debt ceiling, that is merely a limit to be broken. Oddly enough, the direct buyers from the IMF continue to be monetary backwaters such as Mauritius, Sri Lanka and India... and now Bangladesh: at least ever more Asian countries are starting to get the gist of what is happening with the dollar. And once China is discovered to be directly or indirectly buying IMF gold, the all bets are off on the gold price hitting $1,600 in under two years.

If you had a previously incurable genetic condition and scientists came up with a treatment for it, you’d jump at the chance to take advantage. That’s a no-brainer. But what if you had the opportunity to invest in a company deeply involved in just such cutting-edge research?

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

Feel free to call your broker or sell side analyst who tries to get you to buy RIMM and show him this post. If they challenge further, my contact info is available on my site. The writing is on the wall.

Zero Hedge will be out of pocket for several hours: please use this post as an open thread opportunity to discuss how honest and transparent the government economic data dissemination complex is, how efficient the stock market is, how free of monopoly the Wall Street Fixed Income trading complex is, how altruistic the Federal Reserve is, and everything else that tickles your fancy. In the meantime, here is the latest controversial, and very much must read letter from Mike Krieger: Conscious Capitalism.

There are the usual market observations (no volume - shocker), but, for once, Nic Lenoir is getting angry: "People started voting a bit more, and it seems all they want is change, but change they are not getting. You want change? Well how about the truth for a change: we are bankrupt, your investments are in their totality worth 35 cents on the dollar including your house, you need to move in with your parents because we are slashing their pension payments and you can't afford a home. Now start from scratch! To me it sounds better than 4-day school weeks in Oregon where we are not educating the future generation so they can be even angrier and counter-productive revolutionary protesters when they grow up."

More fireworks out of Europe, following in the footsteps of the disclosure about Deutsche Bank's dramatic underfunding and need to raise capital, is JC Trichet's stunning announcement that Eurozone members that break the region's rules on public finances should be excluded temporarily from Europe’s political decision-making, according to the FT. Obviously, where there is smoke there is fire, and the ECB president has sufficient reasons to make this demand. It can only mean that major European political turbulence is imminent, precisely as we had been expecting. That it coincides with the end of vacation season is also right in line with our expectations. In essence, JCT's proposal will make a the explusion of member countries symbolic - they won't be fully thrown out, but for all intents and purposes, will be (while still lacking their own monetary independence: the worst of all worlds). That this will not inspire any confidence in Europe is beyond any doubt. Somehow we don't expect a massive surge in the EUR any time soon (and predict a very stressful week for Phillip Hildebrand who will soon be battling with USDCHF parity and a EURCHF in the mid 1.20s).

One of the biggest bond bulls, whose recommendations have yielded a 25% return YTD, is shifting out of bonds, arguing that continued "deflation is unsustainable." So does this mean jumping into stocks? Not so fast, says Yves Lamoureux and explains why there are several key catalysts that have to occur first before putting any capital into public equities.

Today's auction of $16 billion in 30 Year Bonds came more or less as expected, printing at a near record low 3.82%, highest only compared to the 3.5-3.6% yields achieved in February and March of 2009. The Bid To Cover was 2.73, a decline from recent prints, yet the biggest surprise was the surge in the Primary Dealer takedown, which at 55.6% was the highest since October 2009. In essence the Primary Dealers carried nearly 60% of the auction (and we all know that the PDs are nothing but the Fed lite). The other surprise - direct bidders represented just 8.3% of the take down: this was the lowest since February, even as Indirects were responsible for just 36.1% of the auction. This once again confirms that starving for yield foreigners like the curve, but not so much to bet on inflation staying low in 30 Years.

Rumors circulating in the market that the biggest German bank, the one whose assets are about as large as the GDP of its host country, is considering a share sale of up to €9 billion. DB is rumored to have approached banks about arranging a stock sale, although the firm has still not decided to whether to pull the trigger. This development is nothing less than a direct response to Basel III which is expected to require European banks to shore up tens if not hundreds of billions in new equity capital. And as usual the first one loses the least. This only means that all the ugly toxic waste accumulated under the rug in Europe's financial institutions is about to emerge.

Many skeptics enjoy pointing out that the fear and loathing toward stocks as exhibited by the seemingly endless mutual funds outflows, now in the 18th consecutive week, is nothing but a contrarian play, and when the masses are stepping out is when the smart money should invest. Under other circumstances we would totally agree. However, in this case, we make the argument that it is in fact these "contrarians" (with the assistance of the Fed, the Primary Dealers, and the HFT scalpers) who have ramped the market in advance of this move for many months now, anticipating an inflow which never comes. In other words, the true contrarian move is to fade the market here. Why? Because as the below chart from ICI shows, stocks have experienced the biggest short-term equity return upswing in history on the smallest net amount of positive inflows also in history. The argument would go that the entire upswing is nothing but an engineered push on nothing but momentum, and QE, and that fair values are far, far lower. Once GDP passes below zero, and once S&P EPS forecasts are revised to +/- 60, as the double dip unwinds, and applying an appropriate multiple of 10-12x, the market will be far more credible, and will see far more inflows when it is at 600-700. For now, however, nobody is foolish enough to enter. And those buying on hopes that Joe Sixpack will finally put in his two remaining cents in Amazon will continue to be disappointed, entrusting their entire risk capital to the like of the Federal Reserve, Goldman and Getco.

I gave President Barrack Obama six months to roll-out his doomed Keynesian policies, twelve months to discover they were flawed and eighteen months to realize that the solution to America’s problems must lie within a different economic framework. I had hoped by the end of twenty-four months to see new policies closer to an Austrian economic philosophy emerge. I was wrong. Though, even the Wall Street Journal recently featured an article on the re-emergence of the Austrian School of Economic philosophy, it would appear that President Obama’s administration still neither gets it, nor I am afraid ever will. Key defections by his leading economic advisors, talk of the need for QE II and a Stimulus II, and a political collapse in public confidence suggests a growing awareness that Keynesian policies are not working, as many predicted they wouldn’t. Obama's exciting rhetoric of Hope and Change has left myself and the majority of recent polled Americans disillusioned and disappointed. - Gordon T. Long

This story, more than anything else I’ve seen in recent weeks, sums beautifully the current political/ economic situation for the US today.