Archive - May 18, 2011

We are about to experience the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.

Forget the hype abut passive commodities indexes. In this space, you want to focus on active management...

A public service info announcement...

Confirming once again that Wall Street economist (and sell side in general) is the most useless profession in the world (though gladly accepting a 7 figures compensation), is the latest data out of Japan which is yet another stunner to most, as nobody, nobody, could have possible predicted that the Japanese economy would literally fall off a cliff in Q1, plunging at a 3.7% rate (down from -3% previously), which is double the consensus print of -1.9%. DOUBLE. And in nominal terms the collapse was simply epic: -5.2%! And yes, this is officially a recession. Of course, anyone reading Zero Hedge would have been perfectly aware of this outcome. 4 short days ago we said: "Increasingly we have come to believe that the real marginal economy over
the next several quarters will be neither that of the contracting US,
nor that of the rapidly tightening, yet still very much inflationary
China, but the (arguably) third largest one: that of Japan." Today our prediction is more than confirmed. And instead of hiding deep in the whatever holes these morlocks cralwed out of, Bloomberg for some inexplicable reason continues to look to their blatantly horrendous opinion. “The negative economic impact from the disaster will be on full display during the second quarter,” Hiroshi Watanabe, a senior economist at the Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo, said before the report. “This recession may be deep, but short.” Yeah, sure. Short. We'll just hold our breath. And for it to be short, it means that the BOJ will be forced to print a few hundred trillion in Yen asap (just as we predicted here and here) right? Which in turn means that the USDJPY will surge and shift the Japanese recession even faster over to the US. And yes it means that the turbo print button among the central banks will get the F5 treatment as the second round of currency devaluation completes a lap.

All told, we spent some $600 billion and only got about three months’ worth of improved economic data (not to mention that this “improved” data was massaged heavily). So it’s pretty obvious why the Fed hasn’t announced QE 3 yet… it needs things to get terrible in the financial markets again so everyone will be clamoring for it to intervene.

When we first speculated that many women would step up and claim they were being abused by DSK a few days back, we had no idea just how right we would be. Yet even we had no idea about the moral caliber of the women doing the "stepping up." Well, The Telegraph has just released the bombshell. "Dominique Strauss-Kahn hired prostitutes from the "Manhattan Madam" who infamously also served Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former Governor of New York, she claimed on Wednesday night. Kristin Davis said she provided young women for the IMF chief in 2006, as he ran for the French Socialists' presidential nomination, and that one complained about his "aggressive" behaviour. "He was a client of my agency," she told The Daily Telegraph. "When men abuse women I'm no longer going to protect their identities". As for DSK's preference: ""He wanted an 'All-American girl', with a fresh face, from the
mid-West," she said. "A girl in January 2006 complained he was rough and
angry, and said she didn't want to see him again"."And the hits just keep on coming...

While many outside observers have correctly been arguing that the Fed's third mandate, that of the "wealth effect" has done little if anything to improve the lives of those not at the very top of the wealth food chain, there has been no confirmation of this "speculation" from the Fed. Not for much longer though. In its first quarter community outlook survey looking at the economic factors of services focused on low- and moderate-income households in the Third Fed District, the Philly Fed finds the the lower and middle classes are not only not benefiting from the Fed's financial experimentation, but that they are in fact being adversely affected by changes in the broader economy from Q4 2010 to Q1 2010 as the table below demonstrates. As the Fed confirms: "Overall, the negative trend identified in the first Community Outlook Survey
in January 2011 continued. All diffusion index values remained below 50 except
for demand for service providers’ services. All seven indicators for this survey
were below the future expectations reported by respondents to the previous
survey." In other words, while the lower and middle classes, as proxied by services geared toward them, continue to hold on the "hope and change" their current existence and living conditions are deteriorating.

Following various outright margin hikes in commodities such as precious metals and crude, the CME is now moving on to swaps and other interproduct and intraproduct contract pairs. As of a few minutes ago, the CME just hiked the CL intraproduct spreads Tier 1 through 6 for both New and Initial Margins by about 33.3%, and assorted other CL pairings by a lower amount. It also did the same for a variety of RBOB contract intraproduct spreads by a comparable amount. Curiously, intercommodity spreads actually declined between gold, silver and copper pairings by anywhere from 10% and 20%. For now the market appears not to be reacting to this latest margin move by the CME.

There have been quite a few spoof and comedic versions floating around, but here, courtesy of the NYPD, is the official version.

Activity in spread land was very muted today with only a handful of names really making any moves. Equity outperformed credit but single-name credit was disappointing as up-in-quality continued. Primary issuance dominated thoughts today as 2s10s30s seemed to run S&P futures nicely up as credit ignored it.

When we discussed yesterday's miss in April Industrial Production, and noted the plunge in the vehicle assembly rate, we merely said what anyone with half a brain would have seen as glaringly obvious ever since the Japan earthquake in March. "The immediate impact: the drop in the industrial production already
seen, but the bulk of it due to delayed aftereffects, will likely impact
the May number, as the follow through from the Japanese supply chain
halt starts ringing a loud alarm bell across Wall Street. Of course,
this is another thing that all those calling for a 4% H2 GDP could have
absolutely not foreseen (and in fact it was originally supposed to be
positive for the economy, eh Deutsche Bank?). Expect to see drastic
downward cuts to May Industrial Production and next, to Q2 GDP." Fast forward to today when we read in Reuters precisely what was predicted less than 24 hours ago: "here are fears auto production, which added 1.4
percentage points to growth in U.S. gross domestic product in the first
three months of the year, may now be a drag." And irony of ironies: "Some financial
institutions, including Deutsche Bank, are already trimming their second
quarter GDP estimates." But, but, wasn't it Deutsche Bank's very own Joe LaVorgna who first said that the disaster would actually be beneficial for world GDP, and subsequently that the world is "overreacting." Guess not: "Before Tuesday's industrial production data, Deutsche Bank had been expecting economic growth to accelerate to a 3.7 percent annual pace during this quarter after a sluggish 1.8 percent rate in the January-March period. "We lowered it by half-a-percentage point to 3.2 percent. We are going for a more conservative narrowing because other manufacturing activity is still expanding despite the supply disruptions in the auto sector."  And there you have that very dirty NC 17 three word phrase: "Wall Street Strategist."

The market was called to open $13 higher today, entering back into the meat of the trading range for the last two weeks. One would think that this retracement of a down move would be accompanied by a retracement of the volatility but we’ve come to learn from this market that skew and its implications are more volatile than volatility itself. Volatility should have been lower today. Calls should have been slammed today. Having attained break-even for the day, one wouldn’t expect back-month options to be of interest when the gamma lies with the shorter-dated months. If you thought any of those things you would be wrong. Here’s what happened: The market opened at 1493 and a buyer of the June 1500 Call came in, purchasing approximately 1000 lots. The market absorbed the balance as there is plenty of two-way business at the strike. Subsequently, a buyer surfaced in the December 1600 Call. The MO of the buyer was very similar to the MO of the August 1600 Call buyer we saw two months ago. As a quick review, between 10,000 and 15,000 August 1600 Calls were bought over the course of roughly a week and afterwards the market went to 1570. Today, 4,000 of the December 1600 Calls traded and it was this option that single-handedly changed the term structure of volatility. By the end of the day the front months were down, the back months were up and October served as the fulcrum (see chart below). Who is this buyer? We don’t know. Its most likely a fund or a dealing bank executing an order for a fund. We can’t tell you the market is definitely going to go higher from here but we can tell you that if it does volatility will firm up.

Telomeres, bit©#ez!

It is no secret that Geoffrey Raymond, the author of the infamous "Annotated ____" series, is one of Zero Hedge's favorite artists, in no small part due to the crowdsourced method of artistic creation. Indeed, it was only last summer that a copy of the Annotated Cramer (who can forget that prominent third nipple) was sold to a mysterious collector for a stately sum after it was annotated (in addition to the comments from the usual disgruntled suspect scribbling directly on the canvas) with comments compiled from our own post revealing this masterpiece. And once again, just as it should be, Zero Hedge and it's readers get the last word.  Prior to shipping his portrait of Ayn Rand to its new buyer, Geoffrey Raymond has invited ZH readers to submit a final round of comments, which he will then transcribe, more or less verbatim, onto the painting. He painted The Annotated Rand to coincide with last month's release of the Atlas Shrugged movie (a truly terrible flick, we are told) and the annotations inscribed in black were taken outside the premiere, then later at theaters around NYC.  The blue comments were taken at his usual stomping grounds outside the NYSE.  The Raymond market, as we've predicted here before, remains hot, with prices for this best work now flirting with six figures.  Might make sense to go to www.annotatedpaintings.blogspot.com and pick up a choice one while they still cost just a little more than a handful of gold coins in CME-adjusted terms. Regarding the Rand painting, our favorite annotation is "Rand + Greenspan = Bonnie + Clyde". All you closet Objectivists can now step up to the plate and have at it...

If this does not go to show how rigged the foreclosure game is, I do not know what will.