Archive - May 3, 2011

My open letter to our Prime Minister...

The rumormill around who is buying and selling precious metals is getting more ridiculous than daily Radioshack LBO speculation. The latest comes from the WSJ which informs that based on "people close to the matter" Soros and Burbank are now dumping their gold and silver: "George Soros's big hedge fund, a firm operated by high-profile investor John Burbank and some other leading firms have been selling gold and silver, according to people close to the matter, after furiously accumulating precious metals for much of the past two years." Greg Zuckerman's conclusion, assuming a multi billion hedge fund will actually let its competitors know what it is doing concurrently as it is doing it, is merited: "Their selling suggested the sharp, nine-month run-up for precious metals could be entering more dangerous territory." Of course, something tells us that just like Goldman, whose prop desk has a nagging tendency to buy as its sellside "analysts" say sell, we would rather hold off until we see respective 13Fs on the matter. In the meantime, we fail to see where over the past week the central (pardon the pun) thesis has changed: namely that central banks will not print more linen/cotton when the time comes. And if the market is indeed starting to price in QEasing's end, then the deflationary scare will certainly see the RUT plunge and undo months of carefully executed (by NYU interns) POMO operations. For a Fed which equates the economy with the RUT, this is simply unacceptable.

Last week, an article by Fred Kaufman in Foreign Policy magazine ripped off a gangrenous scab: the topic of Goldman manipulating markets, a theme extensively dissected over the past two years, only in this case a rather sensitive one: that of food prices. Since the topic of Goldman being involved in market manipulation is nothing new to Zero Hedge, which first exposed the firm's prop trading shenanigans in 2009, a trope that was merely validated when Lucas van Praag responded to our allegations, to be promptly followed by Volcker making prop trading by banks semi-illegal, we were not surprised to read this piece. What did surprises is that Goldman once again exhibited horrendous PR sense by issuing yet another Lucas van Praag response, literally minutes ago, in the same venue. While van Praag does touch upon some valid points, the overall response is beyond weak and along the lines of the traditional excuse: "we generously provide liquidity/markets/capital, etc." which merely exacerbates the overarching theme: Goldman's relentless condescension, and assumption that it always is dealing with idiots who have no idea how the firm operates. As Goldman is about to find out, this will do nothing but generate a firestorm of angry responses by the "non-faceless" crowd which will now have a scapegoat to blame, since by taking he defensive, Goldman once again validates the allegation. What happens next to Goldman, and the GSCI, is unclear but will likely not be favorable in light of Obama's recent witchhunt against "speculators." Yet at the end of the day what can one expect from a firm that will always have to live with the following classical example of shooting itself in the foot: "When asked about these emails, Mr. Swenson also denied that Goldman had attempted to squeeze the CDS short market. He claimed that the cost of single name CDS shorts had gone too high, and the purpose behind Goldman’s actions was to restore balance to the market. Mr. Swenson could not explain, however, why in an effort to restore balance to the market, he used the phrases “cause maximum pain,” and “this will have people totally demoralized".”

Carl Levin wasn't kidding when he said he would refer Goldman to another set of Goldman subordinates: The DOJ and the SEC. Sure enough, as Bloomberg reports, "Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn, the Democratic chairman and senior Republican on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, have signed a referral letter asking the agencies to examine the panel’s report, Levin said today in an interview." And now Goldman can finally pull all those high-CPM paying ads (for which the FT is very grateful) with photos of puppies and Ethiopian kids on them: obviously the humanitarian PR campaign has been an abysmal failure, and in fact is making the firm appear even shadier. "The scrutiny is a setback for Goldman Sachs, which hired lawyers, lobbyists and public relations specialists to monitor the two-year investigation and tamp down any controversy that arose from the subcommittee’s conclusions." On the other hand, as presaged in the first sentence with the keyword "subordinates" it is obvious that absolutely nothing actual will come out of this. Sure, someone may end up paying a fine that will amount to less than one day's worth of Goldman prop profits, but someone going to jail? Please...

Just like yesterday and the day before, 6:30pm is now the official precious metal "bang the afterhours" launch time. As we predicted minutes ago, silver just got taken to the cleaners on what is now an apparent attempt to push silver around in the no volume part of after hours trading, in the 6-7 pm no man's land. We expect an imminent rebound after this latest attempt to trigger stop losses, probably those around $40, fails. If it succeeds in pushing silver below $40 it is very possible that the metal can promptly trade down to the mid $30s as a result. And while banging the close has been investigated by the CFTC for years (resulting in some modest smacks on the wrist recently for the ex-Moore trader who did this with impunity), we are confident it won't be before 2015 that the CFTC's commissioners investigate this particularly odd behavior in silver and gold. By then it, of course, won't matter.

Stock and credit markets closed weaker today as Europe came back to the party from their long weekend. Equities underperformed credit (beta-adjusted) and HY underperformed IG as we see the debt-equity relationship starting to wave caution flags and skew compression enabling some downside.

And now for something different. From Omid Malekan, the brains behind "the Bernank", and the xtranormal short clip cottage industry, comes this clip of proposed replacement sayings for that old adage of "Sell in May and go away." Alas, since the market is no longer, free, rational, or for lack of a better word, a market, but merely a plaything of the central banks, it is indeed time to provide a new set of slogans, especially since "BTFD" is getting a little stale. Among our favorite proposals: "Buy today's cause it's early May", "Buy tomorrow with funds you borrow", "Buy next week when the market is at a peak", "Buy like crazy when the outlook is crazy", "Buy all commodities without hesitation, but don't dare we have inflation", "Buy the REITs cause real estate is on fire, but don't you dare become an actual home buyer", and, without doubt the best: "Buy everything and laugh all the way to the bank, cause if any market ever goes down, you can sell to the Bernank." As usual, readers are encouraged to provide their own.

One would think that following the total "annihilation" (as it has already been pegged by some) in silver over the past few days, that Comex would promptly reverse its "temporary" reclassification of Registered into Eligible silver, or so the believers in Comex holdings claim. Which is why to our surprise we noticed that today, the Comex announced that the ongoing inverse reclassification from Registered into Eligible continues, with Scotia Mocatta seeing another 186 thousand ounces of physical silver moving into that dark pool known as "eligible" holdings.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 03/05/11

Yesterday we reported that the NYSE was seeking to break a bunch of trades in healthcare related stocks, after an unprecedented surge sent Pfizer up to $90 and Eli Lilly over $60, Abbot Labs to $280, and JNJ to $100. Today, via MarketWatch we learn that this was not a now traditional HFT freak out, but apparently a "brokerage" fat finger. Why a brokerage would be executing in size at 6 pm Eastern, when the market to the best of our knowledge is beyond illiquid, is beyond us. From MarketWatch: "The sharp spikes in dozens of health-care stocks late Monday — trades eventually cancelled by two exchanges — were caused by a brokerage’s bad order on a basket of health-care stocks, said Nasdaq OMX exchange spokesman Frank De Maria. The exchange was not releasing the name of the brokerage, De Maria said by phone Tuesday. Late Monday, Nasdaq said it was cancelling trades in 26 healthcare stocks, and exchange operator Direct Edge decided to cancel trades on 52 stocks that traded more than 30% from their previous print and were executed between 4:57 p.m. and 5:05 p.m. Eastern. Cancelled trades included those of Boston Scientific Corp. , Medtronic Inc. , Aetna Inc. , Bristol-Myers Squibb and Baxter International." That said, if you were short into this flash smash with a stop loss that is 10%, 20% or even 29.99% away from the NBBO, you are fresh out of luck. And let that be a lesson to you: if you carry over a short from one day to the next, and have a sub 30% stop loss limit, you will likely see at least a 30% loss.

It is not a good day for MS, BofA and Aletheia Research, the top 3 holders of SLV respectively. While the next 13F update of SLV holdings will hit in two weeks, below we present the funds with the largest SLV holdings as of December 31. Granted, considering that silver has had a nearly 70% YTD gain since then we will probably not shed too many tears. Curiously, Texas Teachers, not to be confused with University of Texas established its entire 2.8 million share stake in Q4 of last year. We wonder if Kyle Bass is to be thanked for that as well. And more curiously: JPMorgan, with 3.6 million shares is the 5th largest SLV holders.

According to the National Stock Exchange April is so far shaping up to be a very cruel month for banks. After the March spike in trading volume and volatility in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and Fukushima disaster, April saw broad market volume tumble, particularly as represented by the one "synthetic CDO" product that everyone appears to be in: ETFs. While in March, ETFs accounted for 31% of all equity volume, in April, this number dropped to 27.5%, although it is the key components that bear pointing out. The traditionally most popular ETF, the S&P500 SPDR saw its notional volume plummet from $637 billion to just $386 billion, a 40% drop. If this is indicative of broader stock trading, then April will be a disaster for bank trading desks. Other key ETFs fared comparably: QQQ dropped 22%, and the XLF was down 43%. There was, of course, one major exception. See if you can spot it on the chart below and which should make everyone who is in it very concerned about a possible Finra margin hike in the ETF (because Finra will never hike margins in pure equity ETFs) as was discussed previously.

When it comes to precious metals, an often discussed topic is whether one should own precious metal stocks or the actual physical metals. Here's some things to ponder if you are considering placing money into either.

Let's ask the question. Why does one own metals' stocks? Answer? Because you expect metal prices to rise. Any answer you give after this, takes second place, third, fourth, whatever!

Has the time, when the end of QE is ultimately priced in, finally arrived? Following another steep sell off in silver, matched only by the decimation in Chinese stocks, it appears margin calls have finally come to crude, which just plunged by $2 in seconds. And if the answer is yes, is this the expected rotation from the inflationary to deflationary mood which is so very critical for Bernanke to launch his third and final QEasing episode? Expect a major spike in real vol (not VIX) here if we have finally come to the inflection point.

...And that would be bears as in cartoon bears, who are now back for the 6th installment of their periodic, and very much unique and extemely politically incorrect and PG-18 recap of key developments in the silver market. Love them or hate them, they do provide an interesting thought experiment on what happens if silver does finally experience the long-expected technical drop.