Archive - Nov 12, 2012

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Two months ago, when we commented on Apple's pyrrhic courtroom victory in which it managed to halt sales of older generation Samsung smartphones - a "victory" which would backfire with Samsung phone sales soaring, while AAPL results missed, forcing the company to accelerate its product launch cadence to a ridiculous 3 months with news that the iPhone 5s is already in the works a month after the launch of the iphone 5 -  we said "The paradox here is that AAPL's victory is quite pyrrhic: if and when Samsung feels sufficiently threatened, it can just pull a Gazprom and halt the supply of mission critical components to the world's biggest publicly traded company." Naturally, the hyperbolic all out response would mean an immediate nuclear war of attrition between the two electronics giants. Instead Samsung would be even better served to show Apple who is boss in quantized increments. Today, it has done just that, forcing Apple to swallow a 20% price increase on hundreds of millions of Samsung application processors used in iPads and iPhones. "Apple first disapproved it, but finding no replacement supplier, it accepted the (increase.)" Game, set, match Samsung.

Following the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima last year, nearly all of Japan’s reactors have been shut down. The only power plant to remain operational today is the Oi nuclear plant in western Japan. A geologist working as part of team looking at the power plant, its location, and the geological history of the area, has now stated that the power plant is built on top of a fault line that can be described as ‘active’, and advises that it be shut down immediately. Watanabe fears that any seismic activity on this fault line could cause a catastrophe similar to the one at Fukushima; although his colleagues on the advisory panel disagree.

With the S&P 500 down a staggering 6.5% from its post-QEtc highs, the world and their wealth adviser is beginning to get that Deja Deja Deja Vu feeling all over again. The commission-takers are being trotted out left, right, and center to spew forth every market myth from "money-on-the-sidelines" to "markets-hate-uncertainty"; from "valuation is cheap" and "whatcha' gonna do - buy bonds at 1.5% yield?"; and from "healthy retracement" to "long-term horizon". In today's episode of epic realizations of the truth, we thought we would look at year-end multiple expansion (contraction) seasonals - since we suspect earnings expectations (which are still running dramatically high; even though recently trending lower) - remain exorbitantly hopeful of a fiscal cliff resolution bringing joy and happiness to the world. Fact: post-election-year multiples have on average contracted around 1x versus a 0.6x expansion in non-election years.

Just when the newsflow surrounding America's military-industrial complex couldn't get any more surreal, and on Veterans day on top of everything, here comes the WaPo with news that virtually assures all defense companies should open limit up tomorrow: "President Obama is considering asking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to serve as his next defense secretary, part of an extensive rearrangement of his national security team that will include a permanent replacement for former CIA director David H. Petraeus." That's right: John "Swiftboat" Kerry, the same John Kerry who accused Vietnam vets of committing war crimes; the same John Kerry of the whole military service controversy. More "Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations." As to Petraeus, who may or may not testify over the Benghazi affair, but apparently is excused due to his familial infidelities, and whose sexual dalliances were (not) ironically captured best by The Onion, his replacement is also becoming clear: "John O. Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, is a leading contender for the CIA job if he wants it, officials said. If Brennan goes ahead with his plan to leave government, Michael J. Morell, the agency’s acting director, is the prohibitive favorite to take over permanently. Officials cautioned that the White House discussions are still in the early phases and that no decisions have been made."

Many Americans voted for “the lesser of two evils” and were disappointed in the result.  This must have been an emotional double whammy in the sense that not only did the guy you disliked so much that you were willing to vote for a candidate you didn’t like win, but you didn’t vote your conscience. What allowed Mike Krieger to do this was the complete and total recognition that under both major candidates America loses. His major issues are:

1. The Federal Reserve scam and Wall Street theft.
2. Civil liberties and the destruction of the Constitution.
3. Our aggressive foreign policy and imperial wars abroad that help only the oligarchs and impoverish the masses.

The country has cancer, not a common cold, and our response therefore must be much more serious than either of these corporate candidates are willing to commit to. Unfortunately, it will get ten times worse in the coming years, and we strongly believe that 2013-2016 will be a historic period in the political transformation of the United States.  The show is over.  It’s time to buckle up.

Bridgewater's Ray Dalio believes four factors drive relative economic growth: competitiveness, indebtedness, culture, and luck. The returns from his machine-like investment process clearly indicate he is on to something as he notes that the most powerful influences of this relative income (and power) are 1) the psychology that drives people’s desires to work, borrow and consume and 2) war (which we measure in the “luck” gauge). Throughout history, Dalio advises these two influences have changed countries’ competitiveness and indebtedness which have caused changes in their relative wealth and power. He goes on to add that since different experiences lead to different psychological biases that lead to different experiences, etc., certain common cause-effect linkages drive the typical cycle of a nation's growth, power and influence - and that countries typically evolve through five stages of that cycle.

The patriotic thing preoccupying the lucky successor to Chinese President Hu Juntao will be a simple one: how to promote the well-being, and equality among the people. After all, caring about the people is the primary preoccupation of any good communist country. As such, key concern for the new leader and his government will be the income distribution inequalities and corruption among the Chinese population, something outgoing leader Hu himself stressed. Indeed, as the most recent Chinese Gini coefficient (the measurement of inequality of income in a given society) reading shows, in China this has risen from 0.42 in 2007 to 0.48 in 2009. It is this reason why the Chinese society will have to engage in far more effective wealth redistribution because the last thing the country with no real social safety net can afford is social unrest and upheaval in a time of declining economic growth. So far so good. Where there does arise some confusion, is when juxtaposing Chinese social inequality with that of the US. Recall that China is a de facto communist country, whose society is, at least on paper, equal. One wonders, then, how it happened that US society now has a Gini coefficient that is lower than that of China: did communist China "outcapitalism" the US, or has the US simply, and quite successfully, "outcommunism" China?

While Google's historic tagline of 'Don't Be Evil' has occasionally been questioned, it would seem Facebook has taken up the mantle (Chinese censorship style). As ekatherimini reports, the third most-supported political party in Greece - the neo-nazi Golden Dawn - has been blocked by Facebook in what the party calls "an act of censorship" and a "relentless attack against nationalist users" of the site. With over 10% of the Greek population currently polled as voting for this nationalist party, evidently Facebook did not 'like' the posting of various Nazi symbols. See no evil, do no evil, 'like' no evil; as it appears Zuckerberg and his California crew will have no evil on their servers (or any other popular political parties' insignia we presume). Raises lots of questions this one...

OPEC, in its World Oil Report, said there's an overall sense that developing shale oil and natural gas could start to redefine the global energy mix. In the United States, the cartel said shale natural gas production alone grew by more than 60 percent from 2010 to 2012.  For shale oil, supplies in the United States have already passed the 1 million barrel-per-day mark. Though shale reserves may ultimately be a game changer, said OPEC, outside the United States, the sector is in its infancy.

Sigh... Volume is around 50% of average. USD ends the day unchanged; Treasury futures imply an unchanged cash market; Equity indices close practically unchanged but there are some odd-ones-out on the day. Utilities were sold much more heavily that the rest of the S&P sectors (with Tech the only other red sector). Copper managed an outlier gain while oil/gold/silver all dropped. Individual stocks suffered from some exchange drama but all eyes were on JCP (which potentially lost Mr. Ackman $106mm today and ended with a $17 handle (-13%) - its lowest since March 2009; AAPL slid from 'exciting' opening highs to close -0.75% finding every ramp to VWAP was sold into. VIX was the story of the day as much was made of the collapse in front-end risk premia - this (as we explained earlier) was only half the picture as the longer-dated VIX rose relatively as the fiscal-cliff event risk is gradually priced in at year-end. Stocks were considerably more volatile intraday than broad risk-assets (thanks to Treasuries closure) especially after Europe's close, but they ended the day pretty much recoupled.

Here’s something crazy to think about. Roughly 200,000 people were born today. That’s net world population growth, births minus deaths. Each one of them constitutes a new mouth to feed. And when they come of age, those 200,000 people will consume, conservatively, about 1,250 Calories per day. Collectively, that’s 91.25 billion Calories per year for the entire 200,000 people that were born today. Where will they get that food from?  Increasing demand. Tightening supply. Destructive policy. All of these point to a long-term trend in food. And the trend is enormous. The best case scenario is steep food prices. The worst case scenario is severe shortages. This makes agriculture probably THE place to be over the next ten years. Like owning physical gold, farmland gives you not only the financial upside of rising agricultural prices, but also the personal assurance of a guaranteed food supply.

With the market largely flat in October (the biggest market selloff in one year took place after Obama's reelection), it is no surprise that the most prominent hedge funds performed largely in line with no notable outliers either in the positive or negative columns.

It may seem blasphemous on such an important day of remembrance to suggest that what is being protected is somehow not as worthwhile as it once was but as Street Talk Live's Lance Roberts shows America is no longer the greatest country in the world - based on numerous statistics... 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 12th in prosperity...You get the idea.  The rise of economic strength was built on the backs of hard working Americans who built stuff from skyscrapers to railroads.  We farmed, we produced and we raised families.   The pride of "built in America" was the flag that we waved. America has become a debtor nation and the cancer of debt has eroded our economic prosperity. Can America be great again?  Absolutely.  America has an indomitable spirit and a will to succeed unmatched my any on this planet.  It just requires a spark to bring us together. It's not too late for America.  Newsroom's Will McAvoy is right: "The first step in solving any problem is recognizing that there is one."

Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, you may have noticed that I have been completely turned upside down by this week's developments.  Let me be clear, my crazed compromised counter comportment has nothing to do with the fact that the sitting U.S. president was re-elected.  After all, every single national poll, swing state survey, and comprehensive electoral college considerations, had the President as the winner by a cushy considerably comfortable count.  In this age of definitive digital data mining, why anyone would have been surprised by the well known outcome entirely eludes even eye.  The only truly shocking surprise, would have been if the dastardly dog delivery dirtbag had beaten the coy corrupt community creep.  So what has utterly upset & upended your favorite Idiot Savant's uneven universe?