Archive - Mar 2011

After an attempt by the BTFD brigade to restore balance to the central planning force just after mid day was thwarted by developments out of Saudi Arabia, the upward bias gave up the ghost and correlation trading took over, with complete flight to safety overtaking all novel factors, and the market closed below key technical support levels, including both the 50 and 55 DMA. In fact the market closed below the 55 DMA for the first time since September 1, 2010. The stunningly resilient Euro also plunged, as all capital flew to the 10 Year. The last time we had an open to close move as large as today's was August 11 2010, when the market was spooked by the then downgrade of the economy by Jan Hatzius. As a reminder, the only thing that saved the market in August, and why stocks took off and never looked back at the end of August, was because the Fed announced QE Lite in mid August, and then leaked QE 2. What will have it this time, nobody knows.

Newsflow tomorrow is going to be heavy as Saudi, Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain all prepare for protests. And if today's actions are any harbinger of what to expect, there will be serious unrest, quite possible turning violent even lethal. The wildcard still continues to be Iran, also a hotbed of recent protest, which has so far not made much noise about the crackdown on Shi'ites in the wealthy Saudi kingdom. Reuters summarizes what to look forward to: " Arab uprisings that have spread to the conservative Gulf region face a crucial test this week in Saudi Arabia where activists have made unprecedented calls for mass protests against the kingdom's absolute monarchy. Protests are planned in other Gulf countries such as Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain on Friday, the region's weekend. The time after Friday prayers has proved to be crucial in popular uprisings that have brought down Tunisian and Egyptian rulers who once seemed invulnerable. More than 32,000 people have backed a Facebook call to hold two demonstrations in the country, the first of them on Friday. Saudi police dispersed a protest by a Shi'ite minority in the OPEC member's oil-producing Eastern province near Bahrain on Thursday with one to four people wounded as shots were heard, witnesses said." Furthermore, as we disclosed earlier, the Fed may have made a major error by not conducting a market stabilizing POMO tomorrow - arguably the day it will be needed more than ever. Those so inclined are urged to put on some fat tails insurance ahead of tomrrow's events which will most certainly result in some very violent swings in either direction.

If one would have looked at the actual numbers versus what is consistently reported in the media, one could very well have grounded oneself profitably and firmly in the fastest growing and largest mobile market in the world. Then again, if Grandma had balls, she'd be Grandpa. Wouldn't she???

Today the Fed released its quarterly Flow of Funds report which is traditionally used to keep track of household net worth and general leverage. While the far more important use of this data, namely tracking shadow banking data is never in the headlines (we will present an updated version later today), the media is more than happy to present any simplistic information without much thought. To be sure, based on nothing but a jump in the stock market, household net worth increased by $2.1 trillion to $56.8 trillion. This increase was due entirely to a change in the value of Corporate Stocks held by the public ($7.6 trillion to $8.5 trillion), Pension Funds ($12.3 trillion to $13 trillion) and Mutual Funds ($4.4 trillion to $4.7 trillion), for a total change of $2 trillion. What did not go up were tangible assets such as housing, which after reversing its plunge from an all time high of $25 trillion in Q4 2006, and hitting a low of $18.5 trillion in Q1 2009, has now officially double dipped, dropping to $18.2 trillion in Q4 2010: the lowest in over 6 years. In other words, the wealth effect is working, but only as long as the Fed can continue to keep the market high. Other real assets are losing value fast. And while consumers continue to deleverage, and non-financial businesses are just barely adding new debt ($11.1 trillion in Q4 2010, a $100 billion increase Q/Q), the government, both federal and state and local, continue to binge like a drunken sailor on debt, which combined for the two increased to an all time record of $11.9 trillion. So while USA Today may rejoice at its simplistic interpretation that we are all getting richer even as real assets decline in value, UBS' Andy Lees thinks that the household leverage trends will ultimately result in stagflation.

So, let's see which of the things we've been ignoring suddenly matter today...

Right now, it's ALL about the dollar and how it performs at it's current inflection point. We are expecting that the situation in Europe will not stabilize and that the Mid-East will, which should drive money out of commodities, out of the Euro and into the dollar...

After the Fed "purchased" just over $97 billion in bonds in the last POMO schedule, according to the just released POMO schedule, Sack-Frost will monetize $102 billion in bonds between March 14 and April 11. From the release: "Across all operations in the schedule listed below, the Desk plans to purchase approximately $102 billion.
This represents $80 billion in purchases of the announced $600 billion
purchase program and $22 billion in purchases associated with principal
payments from agency debt and agency MBS expected to be received
between mid-March and mid-April" What should be disturbing for stock market bulls is that tomorrow, on the critical Day of Rage in Saudi, there will be no POMO, and thus stocks will be on their own...

It's on

AP reports that the Saudi police open fire at protesters in Qatif after government warns demonstrators it will not tolerate protests. "A witness in the eastern city of Qatif says gunfire and stun grenades were fired at several hundred protesters marching in the city streets Thursday. The witness, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal, said police in the area opened fire. The witness saw at least one protester injured." In other words, the shootings will continue until morale is restored. Look for crude to go antigravitational here.

This is not 2008, it is much, much worse and far more dangerous. This will not simply be the collapse of the banking system (although I fully expect that), rather it will be the collapse of the central banking system. This will not be the temporary collapse of some phony paper wealth, it will be the permanent destruction of real wealth and the end of how the economy functions today which we can simply call “the system.” While many people think the stock market will fly up 5,000% as it did in the Zimbabwe hyperinflation I have never held this view and still do not. I do however believe that the Dow Industrials and the price of gold will trade at a 1:1 ratio. If I had to take my best guess that level will be around 5,000. That said, I may change my mind about this depending on what happens going forward but I still think that is the most likely scenario.

Flight to safety into US Treasuries is back: today's $13 billion 30 Year bond priced at 4.569%, the first drop in issuance yield since September 2010, but the stunner was the Bid To Cover, which at 3.02 (compared to last month's 2.51) was the highest ever. The said, Primary Dealers did come in and buy more than half the auction or 53% to be precise with the knowledge they will promptly flip it back to the Fed in the next few months (we will find out when after the new POMO schedule is posted at 2 PM today). Indirects were 40.7%, higher than the LTM average of 37.7%, and Direct Bidders filled out the take down at 6.4%. Altogether a strong auction if one can make that statement in an environment when the PDs are well aware there is no auction purchasing risk at all courtesy of Brian Sack.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 10/03/11

"Create is to resist...Resist is to create." George Hessel, Indignez Vous (2011)

Auntie Angela has finally snapped at the panhandlers begging for handouts, making it clear what the quid pro quo considerations are for interest rate concessions:

• MERKEL SAYS GREECE MUST SELL ASSETS IN RETURN FOR RATE CUTS
• MERKEL SAYS IRELAND MUST BACK JOINT CORPORATE TAX BASE FOR CUTS
• GERMAN LAWMAKERS CITING MERKEL AS COMMENTING IN CLOSED SESSION
• GERMAN LAWMAKERS SPEAKING ON CONDITION OF ANONYMITY

This is great news for Goldman prop traders and for John Paulson as (a non extradition) Santorini will be back on the market very soon.

Under the guise of engineering a "Goldilocks" recovery, the Federal Reserve has instead heated up yet another bubble which is now imploding. The Fed has long played Goldilocks to the U.S. economy, claiming the ability to avoid overheating ("too hot") or contraction ("too cold") and thus engineer a "Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold" economy. Let's look at a long-term chart of the S&P 500 to see how successfully the Fed's Goldilocks has achieved a steady-state of merely "warm." Things swung from mighty hot to mighty cold and then back to boiling from about 1995 on. This chart shows that the Fed's claim to Goldilocks powers is pure hubris: what the Fed excels at is not maintaining a "warm" economy of steady employment and low inflation but a bubble economy of rampant speculation that inflates huge asset bubbles which then boil over and take down the real economy, which quickly chills to contraction and recession. In its hubris-soaked over-confidence with matches and the gasoline of credit creation and market intervention, the Fed has cranked up the heat and lit a conflagration which is burning down the three bears' home and indeed the entire global economy.