Archive - Nov 29, 2012

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is an exclusive and somewhat mysterious entity that issues banking guidelines for the world’s largest financial institutions. The Committee’s latest ‘framework’, is referred to as “Basel III”. The regulators have stubbornly held to the view that AAA-government securities constitute the bulk of those high quality assets, even as the rest of the financial world increasingly realizes they are anything but that. As banks move forward in their Basel III compliance efforts, they will be forced to buy ever-increasing amounts of AAA-rated government bonds to meet liquidity and capital ratios. Add to this the additional demand for bonds from governments themselves through various Quantitative Easing programs, and we may soon have a situation where government bond yields are so low that they simply make no sense to hold at all. This is where gold comes into play. If the Basel Committee decides to grant gold a favourable liquidity profile under its proposed Basel III framework, it will open the door for gold to compete with cash and government bonds on bank balance sheets – and provide banks with an asset that actually has the chance to appreciate. The world’s non-Western central banks have already embraced this concept with their foreign exchange reserves, which are vulnerable to erosion from ‘Central Planning’ printing programs. After all – if the banks are ultimately interested in restoring stability and confidence, they could do worse than holding an asset that has gone up by an average of 17% per year for the last 12 years and represented ‘sound money’ throughout history.

The broadest US equity indices began to fall following the 2nd Presidential Debate in mid-October, and stabilized after the 3rd Debate. Weakness was well balanced with the 'most-shorted' names staying in sync with the indices (in a more systemic risk-off manner). Hurricane Sandy appears to the beginning of traders pressing the most-shorted names (we would suspect this was beta chasing on expectations of weakness) and then once the election results were known the most-shorted names really outperformed (i.e. fell considerably more than the index). As the chart below shows, just as the Washington 'cone of silence' began, the Russell 3000 had fallen 6% in November (and 8% from the 2nd debate), while the Russell 3000's Most-Shorted Index had dropped almost 10% for the month (and 12% from the debate) for a massive 400bps outperformance. The following two weeks led to today where the most-shorted index has been squeezed 9.25% higher to catch up to the broad Russell 300's performance for the month. As the month closes, the index and its most-shorted names are perfectly in sync and unchanged with one another - thus reducing dramatically the fast-money ammunition for further squeeze potential.

Doug Casey often gets letters from angry readers who accuse him of hating America, disloyalty, and perhaps even treason. The truth is that he loves the idea that was America. It's the United State it has become for which he has nothing but contempt. Where to begin? ...the US Constitution was essentially a coup; the delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government – only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place, but calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the "United States of America" – a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply, their right to leave the union... and as the government becomes more powerful, it's completely predictable that everything – including the justice system – will become ever more politicized... As great as a US citizen's risk is in the marketplace these days, the greatest single risk to their wealth and health is the government.

Dominoes are lined up. Next in line: one of the world’s largest (but dying) shipyards.

After recently selling the most expensive per-square-foot residential property in the world recently, the liquidity slooshing around the world has been modestly stymied by Hong Kong's curbs on home-buying in the world's most expensive market. But there is always a greater fool to sell to, right? So, that Fed-sponsored liquidity has found a new yield-grabbing spot - parking spaces! Average HK parking space prices have started to surge (up 6.7% in Q3) to its second highest on record and as Bloomberg Businessweek notes, a parking space in the exclusive Repulse Bay are sold for $387,000 (yes, that's a place to park your car; and no, it doesn't come with a happy ending) - double the average US home price! "There's just too much liquidity in the market," said Simon Lo, Hong Kong-based executive director of research and advisory at property broker Colliers International. "The government has set up a firewall for residential properties, but all this money still needs to find a place." Once again we are reminded of the Fed mantra - repeat in monotone: 'there is no inflation and money-printing has no adverse effect'.

After examining data from all public, private, and government sponsored companies, research shows there are 439 undeveloped deposits or producing mines in the world. Visual Capitalist provides the following infographic showing that there are 113.9 billion tonnes of in-situ gold on earth, where it is located, and how rare are the largest gold deposits.

The good news this morning is that the 2nd estimate of the third quarter (3Q) GDP was revised up from 2.0% initially to 2.7%.  This is up sharply from the 2Q print of 1.3%. However, the combination of rising levels of unsold goods (inventory), slowing sales growth and declining incomes all point to weaker GDP growth in Q4 and into the early quarters of 2013.  Look for GDP growth in the 4Q to decelerate to 1.5% to 1.7%. While there is currently not an official recession in the U.S. economy, as of yet, the details of the current economic growth are not ones of robust strength. If we are correct in my assumptions the economic underpinnings will continue to negatively impact fundamental valuations as profit margins continue to be compressed. While most of the media, and mainstream analysts, continue to focus on the state of the economy from one quarter to the next - the trend of the data clearly shows the need for concern.  Of course, this also why Bernanke is already considering QE4.  As we stated previously, while economic growth did pick up this quarter it is the makeup, and more importantly the sustainability, of that growth is what we need to continue to focus on.

Got me thinking about hedge fund cheaters and too-good-to-be-true results.

Credit and equity markets (should they avoid a catalcysmic year-end slump back to reality) are heading for much better results that one might have expected. As JPMorgan's Michael Cembalest somewhat passive aggressively notes, this year looks to be a reward to those who stuck to normal investment allocations despite the macro issues in play, and despite low global economic growth. One way to visualize 2012: the red dot in the chart, which shows global GDP growth and equity market returns each year since 1970. There’s normally a connection between growth and equity returns, with the exception of the dots in the box, which are low-growth equity rallies. If we remove post-recession rallies and rallies based on significant interest-rate declines; what we are left with is the conclusion that 2012 is kind of unique: a low-growth year with double-digit global equity returns not based on a recession rebound or a bond market rally. The only other was 1998. Of course, a huge factor this year was the European rescue. What about 2013?

Salma Hayek is beautiful, rich and famous. Friedrich Hayek is a deceased Austrian economist. He wasn’t very good looking, certainly not wealthy but he did become famous – but only 20 years after his death and then only within the make believe world of nerdy economists. Fortunately for the World today, if we are lucky, Friedrich Hayek may become the most famous Hayek of them all. Until then, the World remains firmly trapped in an economic hell created by Friedrich’s (and therefore Salma’s) arch enemy – John Maynard Keynes. IceCap's Keith Dicker points out that, as most politicians and central bankers view the World in very short time frames, to truly understand the devastation wreaked by Keynesian economics, one has to take a step back and see how the financial destruction accumulated over time. It is true that these policies initially provided sugar highs for the economy – but the 3 step cycle of cutting interest rates, cutting taxes and borrowing money to create growth has finally reached its end point. If Mr. Keynes was alive today, we are confident he would be embarrassed that his lifelong work had been so severely distorted.

Imagine scanning lines and lines of code looking for a specific error which was causing a constant hemorrhage of money through bad trading executions.  Now imagine having a cocktail at a party and discovering through the aid of a napkin drawing exactly what type of order was causing your firm to destroy its Alpha over a consistent 6 month period.  That's the reason we're hammering the table, because it's not merely about reading the information wrong, its about inside connections to the exchanges.  These connections have helped many firms skirt the REG-NMS rules and Rule 610 as exchanges cater to the HFT in effort to garner the most fee's possible. 

Markets sold off earlier today when Boehner commented that "no substantive progress had been made" in the last two weeks, only to recover quite rapidly. The 'rejection' is now in full context as the WSJ has just reported the terms have not changed (or compromised) at all since we first discussed them two weeks ago. A $1.6tn tax increase (upfront), $50 billion economic stimulus, and most importantly (we suspect guided by the miscreant hand of Geithner) the removal of the need for congressional approval to raise the debt ceiling. Overnight futures are down 5-6 points pushing towards Boehner's intraday lows. This should throw a little light on exactly where the negotiations stand (nowhere) and how willing each party is to change and bring hope to the table for compromise (not at all). With DC this far apart still, the game for the next few weeks is not to solve the fiscal cliff but to avoid getting the blame for the cliff-dive.

Regardless if the Fiscal Cliff is resolved tomorrow (impossible), on December 31 (unlikely), or in tandem with the debt ceiling hike some time in March 2013, after all the government fund buffers have been soaked dry as they were back in August 2011 (most likely), one thing is certain: America's wealthiest are about to see their taxes soar - that's more or less a given. The question is what happens then. Will, the wealthiest - those who have access to and can buy banking, incorporation, citizenship and legal services in any global jurisdiction in a world that has never been this decentralized and this , take it all quietly up until that point on the Laffer curve says they will commit mass suicide, or maybe, just maybe, because they don't feel like being force to pay uncle Sam even more than they currently do with the proceeds not used for something constructive like paying down debt, but instead to fund government corruption and inefficiency, they will pick up and leave without saying goodbye or even looking back, and in the process crush future US government tax revenues even more and send the deficit soaring more. "No risk in that", many will say - after all where can they go? Well, apparently many places. Because if the UK, where as the Telegraph reports a stunning two-thirds of domestic millionaires opted to leave the country than pay a "punitive" 50% tax, is any indication it is possible that the imminent tax hike on America's wealthiest is going to be one of the most destructive things that can happen to America's already unsustainable budget deficit.

Generally bullish, sitting back and enjoying the show while it lasts.

Early macro data that was mixed (retail sales, Kansas Fed, Claims, some GDP ugly) saw stocks limp a little off the overnight hope highs but once the day-session opened in the US we were off to the races with stop-runs galore triggered by Boehner (down), Reid (up and down), Schumer (up) as the fiscal cliff idiocy hangs Damocles-like over every algos trigger finger. Treasuries largely ignore the afternoon schizophrenia - trending lower in yields as once Europe closed the USD drifted lower and bonds and stocks were bought in a 'we-heart-USA' style. High-yield credit had outperformed in the mid-afternoon but stumbled a little - notably after news of the SVU PE deal failed to fund. Commodities had a good day in general though we note that Gold/Silver is at its lowest level in nearly nine months as Silver has significantly bounced off its spike lows this week. Gold and stocks continue to recouple with the latter more volatile but the anchoring on VWAP and spike-to-stop-run swings are making the intraday behavior of equity indices become a little more farcical by the day.