Archive - Feb 2011

There was a time when news, especially very bad news, moved stocks. The last time that occurred was in the middle of 2009, before most robots had any idea just how massive the chairsatan's schizoid break with reality was. Now, that the appropriate sociopathology is fully priced in, bad news tends to have an even more profound upside impact on stocks than good news, as it guarantees that the Zimbabwe stock market will be upon us far sooner than if the economy were to have to go through another inter-QE episode. Which is why the just released news out of US Bankruptcy Judge Robert Grossman of Central Islip, New York, that MERS lacks rights to transfer mortgages will likely send the entire S&P circuit breaker up.

Today, in what is supposed to be an original piece, the NYT suddenly discovered that the stock market is no longer relevant.... it is probably our turn to say thanks - to think of all the jeers we got when we said that nobody really cares about stocks any more back in the spring of 2010, and in the summer... and in the fall... and winter... not to mention every single other time when we demonstrate that volume in stocks is now below abysmal. But just to validate with one charts what it takes some bloggers several pages of extended narrative to convey, here is today's ES volume chart. 884k shares traded, on 1.387MM average. This is nearly 40% below average. Perhaps it is time for some more essays about just how worthless and how irrelevant the stock market is, now that only a few machines trade it. After all, the NYT sure can do with the page views... And yes, some people are rotating their decimated muni holdings into stocks. The Golden Age for the ponzi scheme is back!

Today's dose of late afternoon S&P deux ex machina comes from the Fed Advisory Council, presumable a council populated by bankers, which basically gives a reprieve to the credit card companies.

• FED DURBIN RULES DRAW `BROAD AND DEEP OPPOSITION' FROM BANKS
• FED RULES 'EXTREMELY DAMAGING' TO CONSUMERS, BANKS, CARD FIRMS
• FED ADVISORY COUNCIL SAYS REGULATOR SHOULD WITHDRAW PROPOSAL

Mistakes are not be made as billions more are stolen from the populace.

Now that the $25 million AUM Egypt ETF is expected to be indicative of the entire Egyptian stock market, and which will likely be claimed to be correct even if its underlying securities never manage to trade up to parity, when and if it reopens, there is little that can surprise us anymore. With that in mind, we would like to present the MUB ETF, whose recent surge has left it trading at a premium to NAV that has not been seen since just before the March 2009 666 lows. As the chart below shows, the last time the MUB was trading at 100.79, it did so at a record discount to NAV. Now - about three months later, it is the inverse, as the municipal tracker has now inverted and is trading at a multi-year premium. This begs the question: does underlying value chase the synthetic price? And if so, does it mean that it is time for a compression trade in which the MCDX is sold coupled with selling of the MUB in anticipation of a return to parity spread. That would be the case in a normal world. In this one, in which the WTI-Brent spread just hit another fresh all time wide, who knows...

Remember, Wall Street is nothing more than an exchange: a place where deals of hundreds of varieties are made. In this sense it’s nothing more than a corporate-scale version of Facebook or some other social network platform. That’s it. Wall Street doesn’t generate any real goods. It doesn’t produce drugs that cure illnesses. It doesn’t design cars or vehicles needed to get around. It hasn’t invented ANYTHING of real value in decades (unless you count make believe crap like derivatives and CDOs as goods).

"Mark", a member of the ever growing cadre of disillusioned, disenchanted and disgruntled millions of American unemployed, has written a letter shared by A Company of One, in which he explains the plight of 99'ers (those whose extended unemployment benefits are set to expire) in which he chronicles his plight and his terminal disappointment with the American system. One can only imagine how all the "99'ers" would feel if they did not have the benefit of living at least partially subsidized for 2 years in the socialist state of America. If Bahrain is any indication, where the government's attempt to purchase the love of its people just failed today, pretty soon not even the 99 weeks of EUCs will do much to suppress what is an unmistakably rising anger among the broad US population. "This new America is alien to me -- it is an America of greed and corruption and avarice and mean spirited selfishness and hatred of the common good -- it is an America of savage beasts roaring and tearing at the weak, and bullying the humble and peacemakers and poor and those without means to defend themselves. I am not welcome here anymore. I don't belong here anymore. It's as if some evil beast controls government, the economy, and our lives now."

On February 12, 1973, after the second Treasury announced devaluation of the dollar, George Shultz said, “there is no doubt that we have achieved a major improvement in the competitive position of American workers and American business.” Translated, a weak dollar would stoke an exporting bonanza for U.S. businesses that would need to hire new workers to help fulfill all the demand driven by the dollar’s debasement. That Shultz was soon enough revealed as tragically incorrect is a classic understatement. Needless to say, the dollar’s devaluation predictably unleashed a lost decade of inflation and economic misery for the U.S. and the world.

Blink and you will miss the latest revolution. Algeria riots yesterday, Bahrain earlier today, and Iran now. Per AP: "Clashes between Iranian police and tens of thousands of protesters wrecked central Tehran on Monday as security forces beat and fired tear gas at opposition supporters hoping to evoke Egypt's recent popular uprising. The opposition called for a demonstration Monday in solidarity with Egypt's popular revolt that a few days earlier forced the president there to resign after nearly 30 years in office. The rally is the first major show of strength for Iran's cowed opposition in more than a year. Police used tear gas against the protesters in central Tehran's Enghelab, or Revolution, square and in Imam Hossein square, as well as in other nearby main streets. Demonstrators responded by setting garbage cans on fire to protect themselves from the stinging white clouds." And a quick refresher in Geopolitics 101: Iran has lots of oil...and, supposedly, nukes (assuming Norton anti-virus has a Stuxnet patch).

The comedy value of the various interpretations of this chart is simply priceless. We leave it up to our readers to share their views on why Tungsten has almost doubled in the past year, and what that means for the cost-benefit analysis for central banks in substituting "one metal" with "another"...

Up for more searches of private property without notice, free reign of government access to your private business records, roving wiretaps without true search warrants, or covert access to your electronic data without any due process or oversight? No? Well get on the phones...

Unless we are reading this just released 13G from the China Investment Corporation wrong, Morgan Stanley has just gotten a new second largest holder of its stock. According to the 13G, CIC now owns 150,782,379 shares, or 9.97% of the outstanding stock, compared to 34,719,468 as of August 9, 2010, which in turn was a sneaky decline of 1.6 million shares from the prior period. Instead of buying our bonds, are the Chinese now looking at purchasing our banks directly? The attached chart shows how MS' holdings looked just before this 13G filing. CIC is now the top 2 holder of MS stock, just behind State Street with 163.7 million shares.

Will people die unnecessarily? You better believe it.

This is simply stunning. A quick parsing of the data released every ten days by the National Bureau Of Statistics of China indicates that the average price of food in 50 cities in the January 21-31 period has increased by 4.6% compared to the prior 10 day period (and 416% annualized)! Granted, this is a simple average calculation of the 29 food items tracked without any weighing, although a quick glance at the components confirms that tonight's Chinese CPI will likely be a doozy. Some of the key changes: cucumbers up 28.2% in ten days, kidney beans up 21.9%, rapes [no pun] up 14.5%, tomatoes up 12.9%, hair tails up 4.7%, bananas up 3.6%, chickens up 3.1%. And this, again, is in the past 10 days! But not all is lost: Soybean oil actually dropped by 0.1%. Time for China to release an adjusted adjusted CPI which excludes all foodstuffs except for Soybean oil (and remember, in China, food is 31.4% of CPI)... which actually is exactly what is about to happen.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 14/02/11

We will spare you drinking (or reading as the case may be) the latest Koolaid from the White House. The only thing one needs to know about Obama's latest budget is that projected revenues are expected to grow from $2.2 trillion in 2011 to $3 trillion in 2013 (and $3.6 trillion in 2015). We wonder just where the tax increases will come from considering the new "compromising" administration has pretty much given up on the option of tax increases in order to get republican complicity to extend national looting and pillaging until the end of Obama's last term. What is unclear is whether the Treasury counts as revenues the interest payments remitted back to Geithner by the Fed on the trillions in monetized debt. In other words, the more debt monetized, the stronger the "revenues!"