Archive - May 26, 2011

Tyler Durden's picture

Second Biggest Weekly Drop Ever In Treasurys Held In The Fed's Custodial Account As Foreigners Dump





There was one truly interesting observation in this week's Fed balance sheet update: not that the actual balance sheet hit a new all time record (which it did at $2.779 trillion), or that the Fed added another $24 billion in Treasurys to its balance sheet, or that total reserves hit a new all time record, increasing by $53 billion to $1.59 trillion. No. The biggest surprise was that in the just ended week, Treasury securities held in custodial accounts at the Fed, considered by some the best real-time representation of foreign holdings of US Treasurys considering that the TIC update is not only wildly inaccurate in its monthly update, but is also 3 months delayed, dropped by the largest amount in 4 years. From a total of $2.704 trillion, USTs held in custodial accounts declined by $18.7 billion to $2.685 billion. This is the second largest decline in history, only topped by the $22.1 billion in the week of August 15, 2007 which is the week that followed the great quant crash of 2007 that wiped out, among others, Goldman Alpha. This observation is in stark contrast to the recent record strength of bond issuance, after both the 5 and 7 Years auctions posted record Bid to Cover investor interest.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

The Blessing (And Curse) That Is The "Linda Green" Signature





When we presented our follow up post on Sarah Palin's recent house purchase, various elements from the Pavlovian fringe decided to make the idiotic assumption that the post, and the one preceding it, were some hit piece targeting the presidential candidate. Actually, no. Frankly, we have absolutely no opinion of Ms. Palin, and as such have no intention of writing "hit pieces", or any pieces, targeting her. The whole point of the posts was to demonstrate that even a person, who soon may or may not be president of America, could have fallen for what is now the most massive mortgage fraud scheme in the history of this country (which will certainly cost banks tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to ultimately resolve). And while we will have many more discoveries on the matter soon, as we pointed out, the key link in the whole story is the mythical entity known as "Linda Green." While the backstory is by now very well known by most, for those to whom the reference is still unclear, we present the following investigative reporting piece by WHDH.com which explains why the Linda Green signature appearing anywhere in one's mortgage doc history, is a "blessing" and comparable to winning the lottery. Furthermore, we make no ethical judgments about whether strategically defaulting on one's mortgage is "good" or "bad" - the reality is that we are where we are. As Marie McDonnell, a Forensic Mortgage Analyst says, "I'm speechless. The scope of the problem is unimaginable, the depth of the fraud is shocking." And therein lies the rub: when all is said and done, banks will ultimately be saddled with another massive round of losses, which will then necessitate another round of taxpayer bailouts, which will then likely be orchestrated by the mainstream media machine as a conflict between those who pay their mortgages and those who don't, instead of focusing on the core problem: unimaginable greed by the financial system to do whatever it takes to fatten the bottom line, which includes breaking the law. And the longer we pretend the problem does not exist, the bigger the ultimate bail out (see Greece).

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Marc Faber Is Shocked By How Many Ferraris And Bentleys He Sees In Newport Beach During His Smoke Break





Yesterday Marc Faber first made a guest appearance at the Ira Sohn conference, warning his audience to prepare for war, then promptly shifted to Bloomberg's offices where he discussed his outlook primarily on China, but also on the US, with Carol Massar, once again warning about war. As usual, he did not mince his words, warning of a "recession", and predicting that China is simply not growing fast enough in real terms. Nothing new. He did however branch out into the topic of class divergence in both emerging and developed economies: "in front of far too many luxury hotels there are far too many Ferraris, Maseratis, Bentleys... I see a boom everywhere, except for the working class, except for the lower, middle class. But among the well to do people the wealth that is floating around and the prices you pay for high end properties is incredible, and I think that will come to an end, and a lot of people will lose a lot of money... I was in La Jolla, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, I was in front of a restaurant smoking and I've never seen so many Ferraris, Maseratis, Bentleys and fancy cars anywhere in the world, and this is in America. I am not saying this is wrong, but there is an opulence among a small group of people that is huge when there are lots of people that are struggling. This gives me a bad feeling because I've seen so many emerging economies when they were booming, that was the time to get out." As for the US economy, Faber agrees that the only thing that can help is a massive crisis (or "conflagration" as David Stockman calls it) that jars America out of its hypnotic state. And, sure enough, it will come.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: If Greece Default Would Wreak Havoc On European Banks Then CEO’s Should Be Fired





Every day there is at least one headline about how catastrophic a Greek default would be. These headlines aren’t coming from the doom and gloom crowd, they are coming from senior government officials throughout Europe. There is great concern that a Greek default would hurt European banks. The potential domino effect to other countries scares these senior officials. If these fears are valid, then some senior bankers should be fired immediately because they have wasted the opportunity to reduce their exposures with reasonable losses. Banks have had ample opportunity to cut their exposure to Greece. The original bailout and the announcement of EFSF gave these banks an incredible chance to get out of their Greek debt with manageable losses...If banks didn’t massively reduce exposure when they had these windows of opportunity, and the EU is busy negotiating to save these same banks, someone needs to be fired. It is mind boggling that banks were either so afraid of taking a reasonable loss or so greedy that they thought they could do better that they kept these exposures. It had to have been clear to everyone at the banks how bad it could get, the only prudent, not even smart, just prudent, action was to cut exposures. Even if you missed the May rally which was the best opportunity to get out, how could you sit through the summer fear and not sell heavily into the October rally? Any explanation involves either stupidity, negligence, or complete faith in the government to bail you out.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

CME Changes Numerous Margin Requirements, Lowers Platinum, Palladium Outrights





Thursday market close brings another release out of the CME which has changed a plethora of outright margins, intra-commodity spreads and tiering modifications. Probably the most interesting changes to those burned by the exchange's scorched earth campaign against silver speculators, is the margin decrease in Platinum, Palladium and Hot Rolled Steel futures. Additionally, a variety of nat gas and petrochemical outright margins were increased, even as crude intra spreads were decreased across the board (no outright crude margins were affected). Neither gold nor silver margins were touched in the presentation of this latest margin adjustment.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Super Typhoon Songda Projected To Pass Over Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant





So far the only good news to accompany the Fukushima catastrophe has been that for all the fallout, the radiation has been mostly contained due to Northwesterly winds which have been blowing any radioactivity mostly out and into the Pacific (coupled with relatively little rainfall), as well as the dispersion of irradiated cooling water which promptly enters the Pacific after which it is never heard of or seen again (there is at least a several year period before 3 eyed tuna fish feature prominently in restaurants across the country). This may be changing soon now that Super Typhoon Songda, which according to Weather Underground will form shortly as a Category 5 storm with 156+ mph winds, will take a northeasterly direction and 2 days later will pass right above Fukushima. The good news: by the time it passes over Fukushima it will be merely a Tropical storm. The bad news: by the time it passes over Fukushima it will be a Tropical storm. As the latest dispersion projection from ZAMG shows, over the next two days the I-131 plume will be covering all of the mainland. Although judging by how prominent this whole topic is in the MSM lately, it seems that conventional wisdom now agrees with Ann Coulter that radioactivity is actually quite good for you.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Update: Intraday Attempt To Push Stocks Higher Presents Attractive RISK Spread Compression Opportunity





The now traditional mid-day attempt to boost stocks by the FRBNY has once again resulted in a substantial divergence between the ES (aka the S&P) and all other risk indicators (10y, curve butterfly, EURUSD, AUDJPY, Crude and Gold), the spread henceforth known as the "RISK spread" (courtesy of Capital Context), meaning that the "buyer" of last resort is throwing what little money it has left purely into ES keeping the stock market, aka the Russell 2000, aka the "Economy" afloat. Those who enjoy closing the spread divergence would be encouraged to take the opposite sides of this pair trade with the expected compression bent by EOD.

 

RANSquawk Video's picture

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 26/05/11





RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 26/05/11

 

williambanzai7's picture

WTF? (What Fraud?)





Shill will be shills and Eric ("Inaction Jackson") Holder will be Shinola.

 

ilene's picture

Thrill-Ride Thursday - Fake, Fake, Fake





It is simply not physically possible for 400M, or even 40M barrels of oil to actually be delivered to Cushing, I can tell you FOR A FACT that over 90% of those contracts will not only be cancelled before the expiration date, but that they will then be rolled over to August.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

It's Greek Protest Time All Over Again - Follow The Latest From Athens Live





The past few days have not been good for Greek GDP, since every single day we have seen thousands of protesters occupy the Athens parliament square, the location of so much more of the same back in 2010, in what has so far been a series of peaceful protests. Today's, however, appears to be the biggest. Luckily, the market is about to close which means no restraining order on Waddell and Reed is necessary. Then again, ES does trades all the night... when liquidity is negligible to begin with. Hmm. Anyway, watch live developments from Athens at the link below.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

SocGen's Dylan Grice On The (F)utility Of Trading The News





The 'other' of SocGen's strategist dynamic duo, Dylan Grice, chimes in with some off the beaten path observations on the (f)utility of following and trading the news. In experimenting with the impact of newsflow absence on one's trading record, reaches the Nassim Taleb conclusion that news "makes idiots of us because it gives us confidence, not insight." What Grice does find, however, is that living without news nonetheless is difficult as it removes the entertainment aspect of sub-stories spawned by any given news thread. His words: "Without the news, I was missing the joy of a good story." And for those who have not read "Fooled by Randomness", and find the topic interesting, we suggest going through Nassim Taleb's seminal book which does a far more in depth analysis on the topic. On the other hand, since the average Zero Hedge reader has the attention span of an HFT algorithm, here is Grice's abbreviated perspective. (Of course, since Grice is right, and news are fundamentally irrelevant, we sometimes wonder why we have any readers at all).

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: A Former Marine's Outlook On Inflation, Life Expectancy, And Future Returns





Recently, I have been thinking about a former marine I know that recently "retired" from the federal government after a couple of decades as an US postal inspector. During his entire career in government service, he carried a weapon, and spent most of his time conducting narcotics investigations. He has photos of himself beside giant mountains of cash and drugs that he had seized on raids. Several months ago, before he retired, he shared a little bit about his financial situation; specifically that he has several hundred thousand dollars in a federal retirement account invested in U.S. treasuries. He said it was essentially all that he and his wife had saved, and that he knew it was not going to be enough for him to truly retire, especially because they still have kids to put through college. Being a bit of an instigator, I asked this ex-marine/postal worker what his assumptions were regarding inflation, his life expectancy, and future returns...

 

Tyler Durden's picture

What Will Rally Bonds After QE2? Nothing Short Of A Double Dip, According To Jeff Gundlach





And continuing with the rates discussion from the prior post, next up we have that "other" bond manager, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach, chiming in on what would cause a treasury rally following QE2. His assessment: nothing short of a confirmed double dip, or "zero GDP growth." Dow Jones reports: "Over the past two months, government bond market participants have fiercely debated whether the end of the Fed's $600 billion in Treasury bond purchases in June will trigger a market sell-off or rally...the U.S. government bonds' rally in recent weeks shows investors have already bet the Fed's exit from the market will boost safe-harbor Treasurys because the economy will slow. So any gains will be limited.  "The 10-year Treasury yield has hit the moment of truth," Gundlach said in an interview with Dow Jones." Needless to say, 0% growth, which is already in the cards according to a simple correlation analysis between Y/Y GDP growth and initial jobless claims, will force the Fed, in the absence of another fiscal stimulus (which everyone knows is not coming from DC this year and possibly next year either), to step up double time and to launch far more easing to offset the economic weakness which we have been predicting for 6 months, and which the recent Japanese earthquake, and Chinese slowdown, merely accentuated. The only wildcard continues to be Japan, which many have expected would take up the monetary slack and issue tens of trillions in yen in QE, yet which has so far been slow to come, leaving the ball in either the US or European court. However, with the ECB in transition as JCT wishes to cement his hawkish legacy, the only real alternative continues to be the Fed. Oddly enough, stocks today appear to have started to already price in the start of QE3. When this sentiments shifts to precious metals and crude, our advice would be to hide you kids, and hide your wife...

 

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