Archive - Dec 17, 2011

But ballet is beset by serious ailments that threaten its future in this country... 

It isn't over yet, but it will be. 

As we wind down 2011, the time for predictions for what is to come as nigh. Having posted what UBS believes their biggest list of surprises for 2012 will be earlier, we next proceed with out long-term favorite - Saxobank's list of "Outrageous Predictions" for what the bank has dubbed "2012: the Perfect Storm." Mostly proposed tongue in cheek (unlike predictions by other pundits who actually believe their own delusions), the list of 10 suggestions represents nothing less than an attempt to force people "out of the box" and look at the world with a set of "what if" eyes. Because if there is anything 2011 taught is, it is not to discount any one event from happening. As Saxo says: "Should one, two or three of our Outrageous Predictions come to pass, it would make 2012 a year of tremendous change. This may not necessarily be a negative thing either - and given the  structure and uncertainties in the marketplace here at the end of 2011, we would suggest that even if none of our predictions come to pass, equally important and totally unanticipated events will. Sometimes we need to get to a new starting point before we can gain the right perspective. We hope 2012 will be the year where we start on the long march towards re-establishing jobs, growth and confidence." Naturally, the best outcome for 2012 would be the end of the broken status quo model, and a global fresh reset... but not even we are that deluded to believe that the quadrillions in credit money (real or synthetic) will allow such a revolutionary event to occur in such a brief period of time. At least not before everything is thrown at the intractable problem unfortunately has just one possible long-term outcome. In the meantime, here, to help readers expand their minds, is Saxo Bank's list of "Outrageous Predictions" for 2012.

Traders in the market (what little is left of them) always seek out the investment thesis with the highest upside/downside ratio to a delta in any fundamental forecast. In other words, what derivative play to a secular trend generates the higher IRR? A good example is the ABX which allowed contrarians in 2006 and early 2007 to bet on a collapse in subprime and put on a "short" at next to now cost of carry, with practically no downside if the thesis ended up being wrong, and unlimited upside (just ask Paolo Pellegrini and Kyle Bass). Well, as we just learned, one of UBS "surprises" for 2012 is that oil could drop below $70/barrell. Is this possible? Absolutely - should the Eurozone collapse, and/or China experience the long-overdue hard landing, a deflationary shock (which will naturally only precipitate the central banks into an even more rapid devaluation of legacy paper currencies) can and likely will send crude tumbling (Iran geopolitical concerns aside) as happened back in early 2009 when crude collapsed to around $30/barrel however briefly. So is there a better option to play crude downside than merely shorting CL? Perhaps one idea with better "upside" in case of a deflationary collapse in crude is to get bearish on Boeing instead. As the following chart from Goldman shows, 3 of the 4 biggest widebody (and thus most profitable) aircraft orders are from Gulf airline companies - Emirates, Qatar and Etihad. Together, they amount to about 450 profitable future orders... which could well be cancelled if Gulf states revert to their panicked state last seen so vividly in the spring of 2009 when they were cancelling orders left and right. 

Unlike other, more humorous instances, such as Byron Wein and his 10 endlessly entertaining year end forecasts, some banks take the smarter approach not of predicting what will happen, because only idiots think they have any clue what tomorrow may bring with any sense of certainty, especially under global central planning - a regime that is by definition irrational, but instead of stating what would be a surprise to a base case forecast. And with "surprise" now the new normal, it would be prudent to anticipate what to the status quo may represent as fat tails in the coming year. Especially since even UBS now mocks the Wall Street consensus, and the traditional upside biad: "Let’s face it: Bottom-up consensus earnings forecasts have a miserable track record. The traditional bias is well known. And even when analysts, as a group, rein in their enthusiasm, they are typically the last ones to anticipate swings in margins." Which is why, with that advance mea culpa in hand, we bring to readers the Ten Surprises for 2012 from UBS' Larry Hatheway: "At the end of each year, in our final strategy note, the global asset allocation and global equity strategy teams join up to consider possible surprises for investors in the year ahead. Inside, we briefly describe ten such outcomes, and also provide a review of how last year’s surprise candidates fared." For those pressed for time, here is the full list: i) The consensus of bottom-up earnings estimates is right; ii) Financials outperform; iii) The euro rallies; iv) Oil prices fall below $70/barrel; v) Sovereign default outside the Eurozone; vi) Rising Treasury yields; vii) An Italian sovereign upgrade; viii) EU or EMU disintegration; ix) Fewer than five governments switch hands and, last but not least, x) Britain does Great at next summer’s Olympics. Let's dig in.

The gloves are off! As the French prepare for the loss of their AAA status, the governor of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, suggests that the UK should be first in the firing line as the data for inflation, real GDP growth and government deficit to GDP are worse across la Manche from where he sits. A month ago French 10 year yields were 3.8%. Today they are just above 3%, so maybe the markets are giving him the benefit of the doubt, but let us not forget that the maturity timeline of French bonds is considerably shorter than the UK. They are about to have a funding problem and that is one of the many issues that the much maligned ratings agencies are concerned about.

If there is one data point that Charles Biderman, of TrimTabs, relies upon, it is the series of salary and wage growth (or real-time tax with-holdings) that his firm keeps an extra special eye on. Critically, in our opinion, he notes the very recent shift from positive growth in income growth (after inflation) to negative for the first time since Q1 2010. The picture is particularly worrying since he notes that this is right before the all important holiday sales period which he suspects will significantly disappoint (as we are already seeing in data post Black Friday). Of course, we have long held that the decoupling of the US with Europe (and Asia for that matter) is more a lag than a simple decoupling, and given Biderman's insight on income growth (after inflation) we tend to agree with the Bay Area brain-box that the slowing economic outlook of Q1 2012 will herald the FOMC's push to QE3. Also noteworthy is that the last time they enacted LSAP (QE2) saw the peak in income growth (after inflation) and so their hope that this printing of money will juice a pre-election-cycle economy and while Obama may hope this brings him back from the edge, we suspect, like Charles, that it will not be enough.

Over the past month we have been closely documenting a major funding squeeze in the all important shadow economy - the "synthetic liquidity" conduit which far more than traditional sources of cash, has become all important for proper bank functioning over the past decade. Courtesy of adverse development in Europe, one by one various components of this unregulated funding scheme have become frozen necessitating the first of many central bank interventions on November 30 to provide liquidity to global banks, primarily to offset such shadow conduits as locked up commercial paper, repo and money markets. Logically, as noted over a week ago, European banks scrambled to obtain cheap dollars by borrowing over $50 billion from the Fed, and plug dollar shortfalls. Yet as all band aid measures designed to offset a broken liquidity equilibrium fail eventually, it was only a matter of time before we saw a direct bail out by the Fed of one or more banks in the aftermath of the November 30 global "bail out." Sure enough, we have our first clue that "something" happened in the week ending Wednesday December 14 that involved an upgrade of the Fed's indirect (and thus untargeted) bailout of global banks, to a focused, and very much targeted rescue of one (or more) banks. And with some additional diligence, it may be possible to narrow down the date of an actual bank bailout: Tuesday, December 13.