Archive - Oct 7, 2011

Yesterday, during a conference organized by Bank of America titled "Banking & Insurance CEO Conference", whose key purpose was to defend insolvent Italian banks such as Intesa Sanpaolo (which was downgraded the very same day by Moody's) against the evil market and people spreading destructive truths, something grotesquely surreal happened. Specifically, Slide 9 from the prepared slide-deck happened. "What is Slide 9" you ask? Basically, it is Intesa's core defense of its "viability" which presents the EBA Stress Test result, according to which its Core Tier 1 ranks "among the best under the adverse scenario." Who is the best? Seek and ye shall find. The rest, as they, say is epic history...

We can’t recall ever having spoken a kind word about Barack Obama, nor do we even imagine him capable of saying or doing something that might bring us around. However, we do not – repeat, do not – blame him for the terminal state of the economy. It was headed irretrievably into a Second Great Depression long before he took office, and the things he has tried so far to forestall a day of reckoning are, for the most part, the same things that any president, Democrat or Republican, would have tried. 

Chinabot is in full fail mode, after a sticksave attempt to save the currency following the Italian downgrade by Fitch was monkeyhammered with the Spanish downgrade which was not only two notches, but sent the country's rating to below that of S&P and Moodys. Adding fuel to the fire is an errant comment from Merkel who has said that Eurobonds are "absolutely the wrong way to go", and lastly, a last minute notification from Fitch which goes for Trifecta by saying that Portugal remains on outlook negative, and the result is visible on the attached chart.

Really close to France now...

Fitch Ratings-London/Milan-07 October 2011: Fitch Ratings has downgraded the Italian Republic's (Italy) foreign and local currency Long-term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) from 'AA-' (AA minus) to 'A+' (A plus) and the short-term rating from 'F1+' to 'F1'. The Outlook on the long-term ratings is Negative. The Country Ceiling of 'AAA' has also been affirmed. The downgrade reflects the intensification of the Euro zone crisis that constitutes a significant financial and economic shock which has weakened Italy's sovereign risk profile. As Fitch has cautioned previously, a credible and comprehensive solution to the crisis is politically and technically complex and will take time to put in place and to earn the trust of investors. In the meantime, the crisis has adversely impacted financial stability and growth prospects across the region. However, the high level of public debt and fiscal financing requirement along with the low rate of potential growth rendered Italy especially vulnerable to such an external shock.

As Peter Tchir, of TF Market Advisors,  observes in the note below, the inevitable as predicted by us a week ago, is about to become a reality. In light of the imminent nationalization of Belgium's biggest bank, it may be time to compress the CDS of Dexia, which also as suggested last week, should trade in line with Belgium, while Belgium itself blows up. The only risk to this trade is that ISDA actually does its job for once, and proclaims Dexia to have experienced a credit event - thus triggering the CDS. Alas, since this will set a very bad precedent for all the other banks due to be nationalized, we would tend to discount the possibility of this happening.

While US equities are well off their post-NFP euphoria highs, the hope that Europe is solved remains. However, today's price action in European equity and credit markets and the very significant divergence between the effervescent equities and calm credits suggests concerns growing among professional traders. We noted yesterday that financials did not rally as much as other credits and equities into the European close and that trend continued today with subordinated financials majorly underperforming and seniors underperforming all other assets. Given that the 'plan' upon which this rally is based is to 'fix' banks, the underperformance of their credits prompts the question - why are we still rallying? In line with equities, and sucked there by the ever-increasing correlations, TSYs, 2s10s30s, precious metals, oil, and carry pairs are all tracking in a risk supportive manner with EUR clinging to 1.35 into the close. US financials are underperforming so far.

Well, a month end update only for those funds who still report their P&L to HSBC. Others, such as Paulson, apparently deem it below them to post an update when they are doing less than swell, shall we say. In other news, redemptions will continue until morale improves.

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."--Theodore Roosevelt [Banzai7: "I can read upside down."]

Gold bottoms when the Dollar Index embarks on an uptrend.

The calendar effect

From the mind that brought you the Great Vega Short comes the next masterpiece on liquidity, volatility, contagion and everything else. "Volatility is change and the world is changing. The truth is that Greece will default. The truth is that if our leaders continue to deny our problems history tells us the US will eventually default. These shocking events will hurt many people, markets will collapse, life savings will be lost, there will be violence, upheaval, and massive political change but you know what? The world will not end. When it is all said and done people will work, they will spend time with their children, they will cry, laugh, and love... life will go on. We will find a way to prosper if we relentlessly search for nothing but the truth, otherwise the truth will find us through volatility."

Several years ago Paolo Pellegrini, Kyle Bass, Michael Burry and several other visionaries were well ahead of the conventional wisdom groupthink curve by not only sensing that the housing market was massively overvalued and riding on the crest of a huge leverage bubble (many others agreed) but by finding a ridiculously cheap, low theta way of expressing an uber-bearish long-term outlook with negligible downside and virtually unlimited upside by purchasing billions in ABX index notional at a cost of a few basis points, and watching it explode as one after another asset manager figured out just what "subprime" means and why it may not be conducive to a healthy career in finance. Virtually all of them ended up being very, very rich in just a few short years having had the foresight and, more importantly, the way to express that vision. Lightning may be about to strike twice as the Subprime implosion of 2007 becomes the Prime implosion of 2011. Back in December 2009, when musing on the very interesting topic of the advent of a new ABX-like index, this time tracking Prime mortgages, we asked, rhetorically as so often happens, "Will The New ABX Prime Index Be The Reason For The Next RMBS (And Thus, FHA/GSE) Collapse?" (for more on this index which MarkIt now markets as PrimeX see here). And while the rest of the world is fretting about Europe, Morgan Stanley, lack of decisive political decision-making in a pseudo union of 17 different countries, lack of decisive monetary intervention, a Chinese hard landing and everything else that makes front pages these days, slowly our prediction is starting to come true. But you won't hear about it anywhere else, because if the market understands that in addition to a global solvency crisis, America has another Subprime contagion on its hands actually being expressed in the markets as we type, and potentially costing banks, pension funds and various asset managers billions in losses behind the scenes, that may well be the last straw.

The headline wholesale inventories number missed +0.6% expectations, rising only 0.4% (from 0.8% prior) with its lowest build since Nov 2010. Under the covers though, non-durables were the most troublesome - unless of course the spin is that a falling inventory implies future growth as inventories 'have' to be rebuilt, right? Non-durables inventories dropped 0.6% - its biggest drop since Sep 2009.