Archive - Sep 26, 2011

Last week Zero Hedge as well as many others, noted the observation by UBS' Art Cashin that the market was setting up for a "Thursday/Monday" Crash, which was lining up perfectly going into the European open, until someone, somewhere decided to start buying up everything. Does that change the expecation for a wipe out today? Here is Art himself with his updated take on what (and what not) to expect today.

Warren came, he saw BRK/A trading at $99,000, he took a bath, and decided that this aggression against BRK/A will not stand, man. As a result, after taking a metaphorical bath on BAC, the Octogenarian has just decided to launch a share repurchase program in the company with the massive short S&P put, because "In the opinion of our Board and management, the underlying businesses of Berkshire are worth considerably more than this amount, though any such estimate is necessarily imprecise." In other words, Buffett is slowing starting to realize that he has to put up or shut up, and very soon he will also realize that just because the president allegedly has his back (it is not called the "Buffett Plan" for nothing), he won't have a "perpetual get out of risk card" for life, and America's taxpayers may soon let the world's most crony capitalist just fail.

Anyone trading gold and silver most likely had a heartattack this morning. Of that subset, anyone who survived and traded with conviction made a killing, following an impressive surge in both metals, which saw silver soar from $26 all the way back to $30, after it was made clear that there was no behind the scenes liquidation of the metal but merely more piggybacked margin hikes this time out of China as was first reported by Zero Hedge. Another factor that helped was Marc Faber's appearance on CNBC earlier, who said that gold is now "quite oversold" and that he would be adding to the yellow metal in the "next two days." In retrospect, he should have been adding today to his existing holdings. However, since he already has 25% in gold, he is forgiven. Mutual funds which, however, have about 1% in gold, are not.

• Yuan ‘Fully Convertible’ in 5 Years: Adviser (Bloomberg)
• ‘Barrier’ Around Greece Needed: Merkel (Bloomberg)
• US banks face losses on loan commitments (FT)
• Pentagon may cap executive pay reimbursement at $694,000 (WaPo)
• Debt talks fail to agree solution (FT)
• Europe Split Threatens Rescue Plan (WSJ)
• US tax authorities target bank deals (FT)
• Under fire, Europe works to bolster debt crisis fund (Reuters)
• Asia wooing Japanese companies (WaPo)
• Credible India’ drive to woo investors (FT)

• ECB said to debate new 12-month loans at the October 6th policy meeting where they may discuss a rate cut
• EU may speed up ESM enactment to stem the crisis with Euro aides discussing setting up the fund in 2012 a year early.
• German IFO data higher than expected on all three readings
• CME raises margin requirements for longest dated T-Bond futures by 20%

Markets have reachede extreme levels. Huge Squeeze set up here, that risks killing many of the "new smart" shorts.

While this morning's bout of ridiculous volatility, especially in precious metals, may be briefly over (but certainly not for long) after gold has surged by nearly $100 from overnight lows, the economic weakness persists despite what the futures are saying. As usual European liquidity is at the forefront, with 3M USD Libor rising per usual and every single day for the third straight month in a row, this time from 0.360% to 0.363%, leading to new all time wides in German, French and Belgian CDS to 111 (+3), 201 (+4) and 301 (+6) respectively, which no matter how hard the /ES frontrunning and momentum machines can try, there is little that can be done to dissuade the market that French banks will soon be in need of a full blown bailout.

While we shared our brief summary of last night's lengthy ARD 1 interview with Angela Merkel, the Chancellor's views bear repeating since we are now just 4 days away from the critical EFSF expansion ratification vote to be held this Thursday in Germany. While expectations are for a prompt passage the downside, as improbable as it appears, bears some attention. Here is Goldman's Dirk Schumacher with a summary of what to expect this week out of Germany.

Wondering what caused the dramatic plunge in gold and silver earlier? Wonder no more: the CME's counterpart in China, the Shanghai Gold Exchange, decided to follow through with an identical, if more substantial, action to that undertaken by the CME on Friday, and announced an increase in the Silver T+D contract margin from 15% to 18%, a 20% bump; the SGE also noted an increase in the price range limit from 12% to 15%, which will be promptly fulfilled, as margin hikes traditionally tend to lead to a sudden spike in vol, contrary to well-meaning expectations. There was a second announcement, slightly more cryptic one, noting that if volatility were to persist, the SGE would outright halt silver trading (although the Google Translation of this previously unseen form announcement is a little sketchy). Expect to see more exchange intervention in precious metals today. Regardless, those who bought silver 15% lower a whopping, oh, two hours ago, courtesy of the out and out sheer panic, are quite grateful to the Chinese.

It may not be quite the Lehman weekend when the first ever Sunday CDS trading allowed pros to get out of Dodge early, but those who can't wait to put some insurance on against the market crash that is currently roiling the world, with everything tumbling in what is becoming a carbon copy replica of 2008, will be able to do so 20 minutes earlier. The CBOE has announced that"beginning on Monday, September 26, the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) futures contract opening time moves to 7:00 a.m. from 7:20 a.m., pending regulatory approval. The 3:15 p.m. closing time for VIX futures remains unchanged. The earlier opening offers market participants more time to establish or offset VIX futures positions surrounding potential market-moving events - overnight news, banking actions or key economic reports - before the general market opens." Judging by /ES, something tells us the line around the block to put these on will be longer than for the new iPhone if and when it comes.

In the upcoming week, debate and speculation about any “grand” Eurozone plan will certainly dominate FX markets and risk sentiment. Goldman is cautious. On one hand, it continues to believe that USD downside pressures remain the dominating medium trend in FX, and hence the current rise in risk premia creates attractive opportunities to position for renewed US weakness. On the other, it still sees plenty of Eurozone headline risk. For example, the tug-of-war over the next Greek tranche will likely continue for at least another 10 days. And important parliamentary votes are still outstanding in a number of EMU nations, in particular those with unclear majorities to implement the enhanced EFSF.

All you need to read.

While Friday's dramatic skid lower in the precious metals was later blamed somewhat on a leaked margin hike (as well as the simultaneous and anti-empirical sell-off in 30Y), it seems the liquidations that were rumored (whether hedgie or central banker) are in play once again as both gold and silver (the latter very significantly!) are finding little support. After some early weakness (EUR strength), the China news we noted earlier and general lack of any actionable rescue plan or large-scale money-printing has markets in a decidedly risk-off mode for the last few hours as ES shifts into the red and very early credit runs show 2-3bps widening in the front-end of the European indices.

UPDATE: Silver is now -16%!

The markets are signaling price declines all over the place.  Platinum is trading about $40/ounce below gold. This is anomalous. MIT's Billion Prices Project reported price declines in the U.S. in August (see final chart). The Economic Cycle Research Institute on Friday took the rare step of commenting in print that the stock market is at a significant risk for a further decline. Dangerously, Markit's CMBX index (or, more precisely, some of their constituent indices) that tracks mortgage-backed securities broke Friday to yet another new multi-year low.

Right now, the only investment opportunities I see that are both relatively attractive vis-a-vis the alternatives and offer a likelihood of growing nominal capital are investment grade municipal bonds.