Archive - May 2011

We have all heard the saying that the market is like a bug in search of a windshield. Today, courtesy of Peter Tchir we proposed another one: the market is like a child in search of a Santa Claus (and Bernanke will likely be the jolly fat man).To clarify: "Tthe markets are waiting for the ECB or FED or both, or Santa Claus, to announce some new program to stop this horrific decline of a couple percent in the market. Smart money is betting that the ECB, FED, or some other government agency will step up and give us a reason to rally. The data shows that the economy is taking a leg lower. Very few of the 'macro' problems have been fixed. Japan is still spewing radiation. MENA, with the possible exception of Egypt is worse than ever. Killing Osama eliminated one man, only to expose the potential danger from a nation, that we half considered allies while never trusting them or treating them well. The PIGS are back at the trough with their unending appetite for cheaper debt. We are using accounting tricks to keep exactly 25 million under our debt ceiling until at least August 2nd (or whatever date that Tim deems appropriate). Against the logic that things are getting worse and nothing has worked, is the Pavlovian response that governments bailout the markets and it is stupid to bet against a fresh round of stupid intervention. On data alone, the market would be lower, but we are so conditioned to expecting support at every crisis that no one is willing to miss the next rally. We all know St. Nicholas comes on December 25th, and we all know Trichet, Ben, and crew come every time the Dow drops 3%."

Last week David Stockman was on Tom Keene, making the usual media rounds (sometimes we marvel at his patience and endurance), as one of the few voices of fiscal prudence available to TV producers who seek to hold a balanced debate on the topic of US insolvency. Today, Reagan's budget director was again on Bloomberg TV explaining the reality of the situation to Matt Miller for the nth time (by now even a 2 year old will understand the cul-de-sac facing the US), although presenting a new spin on the situation, namely that we have gotten to a point where both parties are implicitly pushing for a US default, while though their inability to reach a political compromise, blaming each other for this inevitable outcome. "The real problem is the de facto policy of both parties is default. When the Republicans say no tax increases, they're saying we want the U.S. government to default. Because there isn't enough political will in this country to solve the problem even halfway on spending cuts. When the Democrats say you can't touch Social Security, when you have Obama sponsoring a war budget for defense that is even bigger than Bush, then I say the policy of the White House is default as well...That is the question that really needs to be understood better and appraised by the bond market. Both parties are advocating default even as they point the finger at each other."

The DSK soap opera continues. The latest revelations about the alleged rape that occurred last Saturday at the Sofitel now detail the specific language attemptedly used by the former IMF head, in what is becoming apparent was nothing more than a case of entitlement gone horribly wrong, and unchecked, thus encouraged, for many years. Per Fox news: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a New York hotel maid, “Don’t you know who I am! Don’t you know who I am?” while pinning her down during the alleged sexual assault, law enforcement sources close to the investigation told FoxNews.com. The 32-year-old African immigrant repeatedly told her alleged attacker, “Please, please stop. No!” Strauss-Kahn allegedly responded: “No, baby. Don’t worry, you’re not going to lose your job. Please, baby, don’t worry,” Strauss-Kahn responded, according to investigators. “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?." As usual, with most opinions on the matter appear to have been already determined well in advance of the actual jury trial, the one reasonable assumption is to take everything with a grain of salt.

HY credit reached its widest level of the year today as IG and HY intrinsics are now unch YTD! Significant decompression since mid Feb in HY spreads, increasing amounts of net selling in secondary bonds, and a clear preference for up-in-quality and up-in-capital-structure leaves equity valuations looking precarious.

Little can be added to the ongoing discussion of insider selling (and occasionally, buying): while last week the ratio of selling to buying was over 350x, Bloomberg reports that the just ended week saw the ratio drop to the still massive 60x, primarily courtesy of the Titanium Metals Buyer appearing on the scene again, whose $7.6 million purchase accounted for 61% of total purchases of $12.4 million, spread among 14 transactions. The selling, meanwhile, barely abated, and while it was not last week's nearly record $1 billion, insiders did sell just about $750 million worth of stock in 130 transactions. The top 5 sales were in Microsoft, where $377 million was sold, either before or after the company's earnings. MSFT was followed by 3M, Pepsi, Estee Lauder and Praxair. All in all, total selling-to-buying was roughly 2 times the threshold of the bearish barrier, which however has been the case for the bulk of the past two years.

Cash is not our enemy right now - cash is your friend.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 23/05/11

For the most part Chinese micro fraudcaps, as most Chinese companies trading in the US are now affectionately known to most, have so far been small companies, with market caps topping at around $250 million. They have also been a veritable gold mine of P&L as short after short has generated massive returns, to the point where our proprietary ZH short basket has just hit a record low and has returned over 38%. Most have been happy as the SEC has continued to largely ignore the topic of Chinese reverse-merger (and other) IPOs on US exchanges, meaning free money would likely continue as many, many more such frauds would continue to be exposed by share sleuths armed with lots of time. All this is about to change, courtesy of the biggest Chinese (alleged) fraud to date: $1 billion market cap (said market cap will be a fraction of this number once LFC is unfrozen for trading), whose largest investors are not some mom and pop retail investors, but Fidelity, as well as investment "legends" Maverick and Tiger Global (and JPMorgan in 4th). And with Maverick standing to lose as much as up to $200 million, one can be sure the SEC is suddenly going to promptly move to pop the Chinese fraud bubble, after over 6 months of warnings by the likes of Zero Hedge, thereby finally removing the "market efficiency" function that speculative shorters (who are apparently the only ones who actually do their homework) truly provide in this case, as well as in all others.

Certainly no one should expect Europe’s banks to suffer their own losses after making idiotic loans to corrupt governments. It’s much easier to stick the people with the bill by establishing a trillion dollar bailout fund with taxpayer money. Problem is, people in Europe are starting to wake up and get it. The anti-euro “True Finn” party in Finland recently surged in the polls to become the country’s third-largest political party and a major obstacle for any European bailout. This weekend, Spain’s ruling Socialist party was hammered with losses as voters voiced their utter disgust with the current government’s handling of the economy. In Germany, this year’s state election results are showing that voters are sick and tired of shouldering the financial burden for the rest of Europe. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling party is losing miserably, though in a pathetically desperate move, some local governments are changing suffrage limits and allowing 16-year olds to vote. This is the strongest indicator yet of how bad the situation in Europe has become: German banks are so over-exposed to the PIIGS sovereign debt that, in the face of political revolt all across Europe, German politicians have resorted to recruiting the Justin Bieber crowd to maintain the status quo.

What a difference a year makes. It was just over a year ago that Greece received its first (and certainly not last) $1 trillion + bailout package from the EU, the ECB and the IMF. Just over 12 months later, all those who peddled Greek bonds to the rest of the world (ahem Germany) are now furiously backtracking, having finally realized what we, and everyone else with half a brain realized from the beginning: it's over for the euro. But fine, let's kick the can down the road for a few more months, which will allow banks, with access to interest-free central bank capital, to literally steal Greece's soon to be privatized assets for pennies on the dollar, and then send the carcass, now picked dry, to the international bankruptcy court. In the meantime, we would like expose all the idiots who like various anchors on Comcast's bubblevision channel, pitched Greek paper to hapless investors, only to see losses (this is not some speculative asset - this is fixed income) of over 40% in one year, and for some reason continue to have a podium from which to spread their lunacy, greed and outright stupidity.

What's with these tornadoes?

They're back...and sicker than ever!

When it comes to currency warfare, one can be polite and gentlemanly about it, like Brazil for instance, which every day, and sometimes on several occasions during the day, will proceed to buy dollars in an attempt to keep one's own currency lower. Or one can do what the Belarus central bank just did, and officially devalue one's currency, in this case the Belarus ruble, by 56% overnight, against every currency out there.

At this point, it sucks to be holding any exposure in BYR. Luckily for those who held their "money" in the form of gold and silver, they just got an instantaneous 56% value preservation and a relative boost in their purchasing power with just one central bank announcement. Also, any and all indebted parties who have BYR-denominated debts are throwing one big party tonight, as their debt was just cut by more than half. And yes, the Greeks are jealous with envy.

When the Fed takes its foot off the money pedal starting in June, money growth momentum will slow down. The consequences of this will be falling equity prices and higher unemployment. Bernanke would rather see higher inflation than higher unemployment, especially during an election year. His only choice will be the political one: QE3.

Conventional wisdom continues to believe that soon enough, as has been paraded by the various Fed presidents, the Fed will commence various tightening steps, commencing with the termination of reinvestments of various maturing securities holdings, a process that would lead to gyrations in the IOER (and thus the IOER-GC spread which as has been discussed recently has gone negative due to the FDIC assessment fee). Following the reinvestment decision, the Fed would next proceed to drain excess reserves using various operations such as reverse repos, term deposits, and SFBs (a process which many doubt would success when the total amount of excess reserves is set to hit $1.6 trillion shortly). The last step in the Fed's balance sheet renormalization would be to proceed with outright asset sales of its $2.6 trillion in Treasury and agency holdings (as for those billions in Other Assets, nobody knows). Barclays' Joseph Abate does a great summary of the pitfalls attendant each and every step in the process: "In asserting the supremacy of the Fed funds rate as the primary policy tool, the minutes outline the central bank’s longer term objective. The Fed hopes to eventually establish a corridor system – where the FF target is set between a lower bound of IOER and an upper bound of the discount rate. This would require the Fed to drain enough and to shrink its balance sheet sufficiently to push the effective funds rate over IOER and not merely eliminate the current -16bp spread. This might take a few years to accomplish. And in the process, the Fed would probably need to restore bank confidence in the discount window, which was shaken after the central bank was forced to disclose who had borrowed from the facility during the financial crisis." Abate concludes: "Taking all these into consideration, the April FOMC minutes indicate the Fed faces a pretty complicated task." Luckily, the Fed is most certainly aware of this complexity awaiting it as things return to normal. Of course, this whole discussion will be moot if and when the Fed, instead of tightening, proceeds with another monetary loosening episode, which as Jim Grant explained will go from QE 3 to QE n, in which case none of the below is even remotely relevant.