Archive - Aug 2011

Where is the bottom?

And now for something different. For all our fixed income/credit-focused readers we have two things to say. The first: if you were in High Yield in the past month, our condolences. The second is: if you survived the past month, here is the definitive breakdown of the 50 largest credits in the US with the all important and often times oh so expensive capital structure diagrams. So next time your PM asks you which HoldCo is the parent od what OpCo debt, there will be no excuses.

The first shot was just fired in today's battle with daily record gold prices. IB always tends to be a few minutes ahead of the CME. And following last week's 22% margin hike in gold, we are confident the CME will do everything in its power to pull a "silver" on gold. Are we about to experience a barrage of margin hikes in gold? Stay tuned and find out.

[WARNING: THIS IS A FOOD AND BEVERAGE RESTRICTED POST] 

RANsquawk ' Weekly Wrap ': Video now available on RANsquawk website.

The Fed has reopened FX swap lines to Switzerland. The Fed ONLY does this when things are on RED ALERT. It’s now only a matter of time before a big bank goes down and takes the European banking system with it. Forget al the headlines, the ECB and regulators over there have lost control.

A quick look at the top 40 holders of HPQ stock, which has tumbled 20% today (as ZH predicted yesterday), shows that i) it will be a very unpleasant weekend for a lot of people but ii) none more so than Paulson & Co, which was already down 33% or something YTD in Advantage Plus and which is eating another $141 million loss today alone. If there was any doubt that the once legendary hedge fund has become the punching bag of 2011, this should eliminate it all. Which is not to say we feel bad for JP: with billions in his checking account, we doubt he will lose much sleep over what is increasingly appearing like an inevitable unwind of the fund. We do feel bad however for holders of paper gold, as the day of the gold share class unwind draws nearer by the day. And with 31.5 million GLD shares for a total of $5.5 billion, the unwind will be, for lack of a better word, epic. The only question is when.

RANsquawk Weekly Wrap - we answer questions that have come to the desk, and we highlight some of next weeks important news and data to look out for.

When we first commented on our expectations about the "efficacy" of the short selling ban instituted last Thursday, we said: "There are those who say the upcoming short selling ban in all stocks in Italy and France, which according to CNBC will take place as soon as after the close today, or in one hour, will be beneficial to stocks. Then there are facts." And the facts are that one short week after the ban, European banks are already unchanged compared to the day of the ban and in France they are now negative! What next: selling is illegal or "Speculation" is a felony? We expect to find out soon...

The funny thing about the boiling frog is that every day, the pot gets a little bit warmer. First they start by fondling 5-year old girls at the airports, then it’s train stations. Train stations become bus stations, bus stations become shopping malls, etc. This erosion of civil liberty and economic opportunity is a slippery slope, and only YOU know your breaking point. Having a plan ensures that, when you reach your breaking point and/or social upheaval hits, you’ll at least know exactly where to go and what to do when you get there. This is not a decision you’ll want to make while packing your suitcase.

Today's hilarious commentary comes from the ECB's own Jurgen Stark, whose blood pressure has obviously peaked and at this point it is just a matter of the realization that ECB (and other Central bank lies) no longer work filtering through to reality.

• ECB'S STARK SAY NOT CENTRAL BANK'S JOB TO FUND DEFICITS (but, but, MMT says debt, and hence central bank monetization thereof, does not fund deficits. Heck, MMT says monetization does not exist...hmm)
  
• ECB'S STARK: UNRESPONSIBLE TO CALL ECB A `BAD BANK' (right: the correct word is "overdue")
  
• ECB'S STARK: ECB HASN'T TAKE ON AS BIG RISKS AS OTHER CEN BANKS (right: the risk the ECB has taken does not even fit on the same axis compared to other banks)
  
• ECB'S STARK SAYS NOT CENTRAL BANK JOB TO LOWER RATES FOR DEBT
• ECB'S STARK SAYS ECB BOND BUYS DON'T CREATE INFLATION RISKS
• ECB'S STARK: BANKS USING PSI HAVE FULL GUARANTEE OF NO LOSS

And the kicker

• ECB'S STARK: ALL DEVELOPED ECONOMIES HAVE PUB FINANCE PROBLEMS- said otherwise, it's everyone else's fault

I think if we had the global leader app functioning, we would find that most are on vacation somewhere, making it highly unlikely we get any big intervention over the weekend.  Merkel and Sarkozy just finished a summit.  Obama is definitely on vacation.  I just don't think they feel the level of urgency the market wants them to have.  Trichet has done a lot already, more than any other entity in the past couple of weeks.  What more can he do?  When does he get replaced?  I don't see the ECB announcing anything new.  And what about Ben?  He seems to like Jackson Hole, and he has been far less keen on making weekend announcements anyways.

Note to the future participants of Bretton Woods III – fiat currencies can only be floated with extremely tight and transparent banking laws, nothing like what we have today and this includes central banks. And if you decide to go down the gold standard path, same thing applies, transparency and low leverage are keys to long-term stability. Banks should operate like utilities with tremendous amounts of transparency, low levels of leverage and huge limitations on market size; read: granularity. How we are stumbling around today with the same banks that almost crashed in 2008 with even greater market shares and low-visibility accounting is beyond my understanding. Read the quote above to understand why the status quo is so eager to defeat anything that would reign in these black holes. It was as true then as it is today.

There are daily lies by the HFT defenders that all little innocuous HFT does is provide substantial liquidity for capital markets. Then there is reality. Courtesy of this latest catch by Nanex, we have now witnessed a $10 bid/ask spread (!) on a $14 stock. And with that we can cross out the assumption that HFT is i) beneficial for stocks and ii) tightens bid/ask spreads.

Yo, It's rough out there...