Archive - Dec 2011

Even with the growth in rest of the world slowly grinding to a halt and in many places contracting (more on the in an upcoming post), the US continues to be spared from what increasingly appears as a perfect worldwide economic storm due to one thing and one thing only: resilient US corporate revenues and earnings. So now that Q3 is officially in the books, and we are starting to look for Year End numbers, we decided to do the quarterly Capital IQ analysis looking at S&P 500 companies (ex financials), which amounts to the 420 companies supposed to keep America "decoupled" from the rest of the world, and look at trends in revenue and gross profit. We found something troubling: while topline numbers continue to grow, and rose 2.6% in Q3 over Q2 (a substantial slow down from the 4.3% rise in Q2 compared to Q1), profits as represented by gross margins, fared far less well as total Gross Profit margins declined by 1.9% from 42.6% in Q2, almost on par with the recent historic record high of 42.8% from December 2009, to a two year low of 41.8%: a number seen last in Q1 2011 when commodity input costs soared and crushed both margins and bottom lines. Aside from the 1.9% drop in March 2010, the next worst drop in margins was back in March 2009. This time however there was no surge in commodity prices: in fact in the three months between June and August, input costs on the margin were declining substantially, or so the US government would like us to believe. And while corporate EPS did not broadly surprise to the downside, this was a function of top line pull through still going strong. So how much longer until the revenue potential of these 420 workhorse companies plateaus and start dropping? What happens to record corporate EPS if margin pressures are coupled with top line weakness? We already have one of the components: how long until the stresses in Europe and now China materialize into top line misses? We will find out in just over a month when companies begin reporting their full year numbers. Or worse, look for disappointing revenue preannouncements: while so far avoided, this time around it will be far more difficult to kick the revenue can into the future with Europe now officially entering a recession.

One down, how many to go?

No circuit breaker was triggered as yet another unborn political career was dumped on the trash heap of history. And this even without a Muddy Water Strong Sell report, or Whitney Tilson going activist Cain nomination odds.

Update: Cain out.

Who says ZH humor should be confined only to Fridays. Here is the math major about to either end his campaign or double down.

NATO recently literally shot itself in the foot, imperiling the resupply of International Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan by shooting up two Pakistani border posts in a “hot pursuit’ raid. Given that roughly 100 fuel tanker trucks along with 200 other trucks loaded with NATO supplies cross into Afghanistan each day from Pakistan, Pakistan’s closure of the border has ominous long-term consequences for the logistical resupply of ISAF forces, even as Pentagon officials downplay the issue and scramble for alternative resupply routes. Pakistan, long angry about ISAF/NATO cross border raids, has apparently reached the end of its tether. Following the 26 November NATO aerial assault on two border posts in Mohmand Agency in Pakistan’s turbulent NorthWest Frontier Province, Islamabad promptly sealed its border with Afghanistan to NATO supplies after the allied strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

This is NOT about conspiracy theories ... it is about Cheney's NEGLIGENCE, and what the failure to acknolwedge such negligence has done to our country

About a year ago, we discussed the very troubling moves by insolvent countries such as Ireland and Hungary to "raid" their pensions funds for various fungible purposes, a move which in virtually every way a was a progenitor to the MF Global capital commingling, if not outright bankruptcy, and was explained as reflecting "a willingness by governments to use long-term assets to fill short-term deficits, including Ireland’s announcement last week that it would use the country’s €24bn National Pensions  Reserve Fund “to support the exchequer’s funding programme” and Hungary’s bid to claw $15bn of private pension funds back to the state system." While it was unclear precisely what the use of funds was, back then FN speculated that it pension funds were being tapped to boost sovereign debt bids. Which if true means that Europe's peripheral pensioners have seen about a 20% drop in the NPV of their retirement assets. Today we add Portugal to the list of countries committing an MF Global type crime on a global scale: the Telegraph writes: "Portugal has raided €5.6bn (£4.8bn) of pension fund assets in a controversial scramble to meet its deficit targets." And since the money is once again implicitly and explicitly used to patch broken fiscal models, it is as good as gone. Which in a paradoxical way is almost welcome, as the true Arab Spring will not come to Europe (and America) until the citizens don't read, in clear writing, that their welfare state entitlement benefits are gone.... They are all gone. And at that point there will be truly nothing left to lose.

Social media has become the new job fair for the 13.3 million still unemployed Americans.  Some insight on that based on a recent survey by Jobvite.  

The title says it all: US Portfolio Strategy 2012 Outlook Strategies for Stagnation

Not many know that you can trade physical gold & precious metals OTC through your brokerage account, and take physical delivery on demand. This is the first of several interviews that explores this model.

The United States increasingly resembles a 3rd world country in terms of unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, falling wages, growing poverty and concentration of wealth, government debt, corporate influence over government and weakening rule of law. Federal Reserve monetary policies and federal government economic, regulatory and tax policies seem to favor the largest banks and corporations over the interests of small businesses or of the general population. The potential elimination of the middle class could reshape the socioeconomic strata of American society in the image of a 3rd world country. It seems only a matter of time before the devolution of the United States becomes more visible. As the U.S. economy continues to decline, public health, nutrition and education, as well as the country’s infrastructure, will visibly deteriorate. There is little evidence of political will or leadership for fundamental reforms. All other things being equal, the U.S. will become a post industrial neo-3rd-world country by 2032.

Following yesterday's announcement that the state of Massachusetts would sue 5 mortgage lenders among which the bailed out subprime failure formerly known as GMAC and now known by the much more idiot-friendly name "Ally", the latter has decided to take matters into its own crazy hands and escalate matters by confronting the entire state of Massachusetts in a move that will generate even greater anger among the broader population, aimed squarely and rightfully at the banks all over again. In an email sent out today, GMAC Bank said it would "no longer accept new locks for properties located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." The reason given: "This change is necessary due to the complexity of transacting business in an increasingly difficult legal environment in Massachusetts." By complexity GMAC of course means being confronted with Attorneys General who refuse to be pushed over or jump when the banking cartel says so. In essence, GMAC (with other lenders likely to follow suit) has decided to boycott states that dare to break away from the settlement talks and to pursue unilateral action. Alas, since pretty soon every state will be suing the banks now that the Nash Equilibrium of the settlement negotiations has collapsed and it is every state for itself, GMAC better figure out a way to make money doing something besides lending as very soon the "legal environment" in every state is about to get "increasingly difficult."

Barely has the USD/Renminbi (or RMB) contract started to trade on the CME and already the exchange decided to hike the margin by 18.5%. And not only: in a broad action across the board, the CME hiked margins in some key FX contracts, including Aussie Dollar, Yen, Canadian Dollar, Forint, Zloty, and the Koruna. In addition, CME hiked two Interest Rate products including EM and I3. So if anyone was wondering why the AUDXXX dropped after hours, now you know.

There has been more and more speculation that the Fed is getting ready to launch a new QE program, this one targeting residential mortgages.  With the data coming in better than expected, stocks back up, and Plosser and Bullard both chiming in that improving data would make them hesitate or question the need for more QE, there is some fear that it is off the table. We don't think it is off the table, and if anything see growing signs that they are trying to create the political will to get it done. On a day with a somewhat unusually high number of housing-related negative nabobs on Bloomberg TV, Peter Tchir, of TF Market Advisors, thinks Bernanke is trying to lay the groundwork of why it is so important to buy mortgages.