Archive - Jun 2011

We have not recovered from the Great Recession and thus our current economic stagnation is less a new event than a continuation of the original collapse. The basis for the so-called “recovery” was a rise in GDP, that measure of what we have spent in the economy. It’s a fairly useless bit of data.

Many pundits talk about Europe, and we hear about experts on CNBC discussing the Greek situation, but have never understood what Europe is. It is not the United States of Europe. Geography, history, religion makes it very hard to integrate the different countries in Europe on the ideological front, but even harder when it comes to the Economy. Below a great summary for all those experts that don’t have a clue what Europe really is. Courtesey of Stratfor’s Papic.

Bank of America may be about to part with more money than it has earned since 2008 in what will soon be the biggest financial settlement in the industry to date According to the WSJ, the Charlotte, NC-based bank is preparing to pay $8.5 billion to settle mortgage (mis)representation claims (aka the Mortgage putback issue) brought on by such high profile figures as BlackRock, Pimco, MetLife and, of course, the Federal Reserve, previously discussed on Zero Hedge. "A deal would end a nine-month fight with a group of 22 investors that hold more than $56 billion in mortgage-backed securities at the center of the dispute, including giant money manager BlackRock Inc., insurer MetLife Inc. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York." Keep in mind that this is actually not good news for the bank, contrary to what the company's stock is doing after hours, as this still keeps the company exposed to a multitude of other rep and warranty litigation (which will now be largely underreserved), not to mention fraudclosure issues, which are totally unrelated, and which will plague the bank for years and years. Lastly, BAC is largley underreserved (see below) for a settlement of this size which means its Tier 1 capital ratio will likely be impacted due to a major outflow of cash.

Making money is an objective task, either one succeeds or fails. Results are easily testable and outcomes are binary. A trade or investment matures or is closed in the black or red. A trader has never ended up permanently on the “street” (no pun intended) as a result of losing money on a popular trade. People in finance are incentivized to follow the herd. Behavioral economists have studied this idea in-depth and can shoulder the burden of explaining this phenomenon much better than I, so I’ll leave the rest to them. The herd is often blamed for causing the overshooting and mass panics that cause “fat” tails. What I suggest is a different dynamic at play that the ”godfathers” understand.

A quick look at the below chart of Microsoft trading into the close would lead one to believe that i) SkyNet is now fully self-aware, of ii) Muddy Waters came out with a strong buy on the world's most "underappreciated" value stock. Apparently, neither of these happened (well, at least not at the close: after all SkyNet has been aware since April 19), and instead the stock responded so violently only due to a completely unconfirmed so far rumor that Steve Balmer is stepping down. And while broken markets on no news is one thing, at least one can blame overheated vacuum tubes for crop circle trading formations, the kind of ridiculous trading, amounting to nearly 15 million shares, on what for now appears unvalidated rumors (which may have come after the move to justify it), in one of the world's most widely held stocks, indicates that there is way too much "other people's money" sloshing around, and should truly put the fear of god in anyone who still picks the S&P over the Encore Las Vegas (and especially the Shore Club).

China boasts world-class infrastructure on a truly impressive scale. Beijing, Shenzhen, and especially Shanghai, have all become modern metropolises with facilities on par with any in the world. Every taxi driver from Melbourne to Manitoba, and every money manager from London to L.A., recite the same mantra: insatiable demand from China (and India) will guarantee decades of prosperity for countries such as Australia and Canada which are blessed with the raw materials that billions of Chinese and Indian consumers require to emulate western lifestyles. So the story goes… Thing is, once anything has become mainstream knowledge in financial markets, it’s usually a sign we’re nearing the END of the boom. Or, at the very least, that all the positive news is already baked in the price. That’s where we are today with China.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 28/06/11

In what may be the most prophetic news of the day, we learn that the head of Afghanistan's central bank, Abdul Fitrat (what an oddly appropriate name for a central banker), has escaped the country, emigrated to the US and "isn't expected to return because he fears for his safety after investigating fraud allegations at the country's largest lender, according to two Western officials." It gets funnier. From the WSJ: "Mr. Fitrat said he left the country because his life had been threatened and that the Karzai government was refusing to prosecute those allegedly involved in fraudulent loans, the Associated Press reported. "My life has become completely endangered," he told the AP. "Since I exposed the fraudulent practices on April 27 in parliament I have received information about threats on my life." Mr. Fitrat's family lives in the Washington suburbs, and he has permanent resident status in the U.S., according to a person close to the banker." Surely, Mr. Fitrat had nothing to do with the $850 million in "suspect loans" made by Kabul Bank which is at the core of the scandal. After all, central banks are never involved in such things as massive money laundering schemes and fund flows that are respectable fractions of a host country's GDP. Oddly enough, when it comes to matters of central bank kleptocracy, we are willing to side with the position of the so called despotic domestic regime: "Mr. Fitrat "has escaped Afghanistan and is in the list of those responsible for wrongdoing at Kabul Bank," Mr. Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer said on Monday. "This is not a resignation but [an] escape from legal implication of his having failed to act responsibly as the head of the Central Bank." Fear not, Mr. Karzai, we can assure you that when our own ponzi scheme unravels, you can be the host of our own central bank head. Then at some point, an exchange can be effected.

The story that the world forgot, and that everyone wishes could just be buried under a 10 foot lead plate, not only refuses to go away but is getting worse by the day. The latest news from Fukushima is that the highly radioactive water has started leaking from Reactor #2, into a trench which is located just 180 feet away from the sea, prompting more fears that the most radioactive water recorded to date would soon seep into the ocean. The Telegraph reports: "The water seeping into a trench outside the Number two reactor at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan had a radiation level of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour." To be expected, here's captain "all is fine" aka TEPCO, to remind us that this is perfectly normal and 1 sievert water is no cause for concern: "we do not believe it is leaking into the ocean. We are now working out where the cause of the leak is and finding ways to remove the water as soon as possible." Luckily, nobody believes the lies out of Japan anymore: "Speculation surrounding the extent to which the radiation may be leaking into the Pacific Ocean was also mounting after tests last weekend found nearby seawater contaminated 1,850 above legal limits." Too bad they still believe the lies out of the US government. And while this recent development is happening, people in Fukushima have finally started getting full body radiation screens from the prefecture.. a move that is about 3 months overdue.

The stock is up 35% on news of a non-exclusive content deal. To sell content into a market unaccustomed to paying for it. How could this possibly go wrong?

Regardless of what Greece does, the facts remain that we are headed into another Crisis in the near future. The global economy has already begun to roll over. Social unrest has spread from the Middle East to Europe. The US is now actively raiding pension funds to fund its debt issuance, and more.

Remember how 4 very long days ago, the 60 million barrel SPR release was vaunted as being the reason for the second consumer renaissance after it was largely expected it would lead to sub $90 crude, and low $3/gallon gas, and result in every Joe Sixpack going out and buying 3 houses at least? Well, so much for that: the IEA's action has now been fully priced in and WTI is back to precisely where it was before the IEA announcement on Thursday. Which means that what some said was a shadow QE (and don't get us started on all the mainstream media "journalists", among which Bloomberg and CNN, who continue to confuse QE Lite with something they call QE 2.5) had a half life of just over 3 days. Expect future intervention half lives to continue declining, as the criminal banking cartel's ammunition is now down to just one thing, the only thing, printing.

May the farce be with you...

The magical RISK (commodities, rates, carry FX)-ES spread trade which we pointed out yesterday as soon as it blew out, providing a 7.5 ES equivalent pick up, suggesting a compression trade at this divergence level usually leads to a happy ending, has just closed (although in a classic reminder why trading just one leg of the spread can lead to hazardous conclusions - remember: this is a pair trade). Oddly, today RISK has notably outperformed the ES for three main reasons: the outperformance of crude, the plunge in the JPY, and the big move in the butterfly as a result of two consecutive abysmal bond trades. On an intraday indexed basis, the spread is actually favoring going long ES here while shorting the entire risk basket. The bad thing for the IEA and the administration is that today's move in crude higher is more than offsetting the jump in stocks (which intuitively should now be moving in opposite directions as Brian Sack has gotten his marching orders to kill oil and send stocks back to 1350).

Nothing new in the latest S&P 500 insider selling (and occasional buying). There were 2 (count them: two) purchases of stock by corporate insiders, of which one, which accounted for 97% of all purchases, came from Berkshire Hathaway. As usual selling dominated, with a ratio of 41 in notional sales to buys. And while we have been exposing this relentless dumping by insiders for years now, TrimTabs has added some voice to these ongoing warnings in which insiders sell their holdings to far less knowledgeable investors who are happy to burn "other people's money." Specifically, TrimTabs looks at the corporate share repurhcase-to-insider stock buying ratio, and gets some shocking results, namely that companies that have enacted $168 billion in corporate buybacks in 2011 have matched this with just $10 million in insider buying, a 16,800-to-1 ratio.