Archive - Jan 2012

The “signature” appetizer is the “Linda Green Onion Dip.”

Courtesy of reszatonline, who brings us the following allegory by way of Tim Coldwell, we are happy to distill (no pun intended) all of modern economics and finance in a narrative that is 500 words long, and involved booze and broke alcoholics: in other words everyone should be able to understand the underlying message. And while the immediate application of this allegory is to explain events in Europe, it succeeds in capturing all the moving pieces of modern finance.

In an effort to reach the angry mob, CNBC's Rick Santelli goes all Sesame Street on the numbers behind the US Debt Ceiling Rise. Focusing for two minutes on what this practically means for every man, woman, child, and politician, the shouting Chicagoan points out that when the US breaches this new limit then the world's entire population will be on the hook for $2,346 each (and $52,409 per US person).

Festive Friday fun:

• FITCH TAKES RATING ACTIONS ON SIX EUROZONE SOVEREIGNS
• ITALY LT IDR CUT TO A- FROM A+ BY FITCH
• SPAIN ST IDR DOWNGRADED TO F1 FROM F1+ BY FITCH
• IRELAND L-T IDR AFFIRMED BY FITCH; OUTLOOK NEGATIVE
• BELGIUM LT IDR CUT TO AA FROM AA+ BY FITCH
• SLOVENIA LT IDR CUT TO A FROM AA- BY FITCH
• CYPRUS LT IDR CUT TO BBB- FROM BBB BY FITCH, OUTLOOK NEGATIVE

And some sheer brilliance from Fitch:

• In Fitch's opinion, the eurozone crisis will only be resolved as and when there is broad economic recovery.

And just as EUR shorts were starting to sweat bullets. Naturally no downgrade of France. French Fitch won't downgrade France. In other news, Fitch's Italian office is about to be sacked by an errant roving vandal tribe (or so the local Police will claim).

Also, if we were Mexico (or is that East LA?) we would be nervous. Very, very nervous. On the other hand, long-opressed Mexican crude may soon be liberated.

While the ubiquitous pre-European close smash reversal in EURUSD (up if day-down and down if day-up) was largely ignored by risk markets today (as ES - the e-mini S&P 500 futures contract  - did not charge higher and in fact rejected its VWAP three times), some cracks in the wondrously self-fulfilling exuberance that is European's solved crisis are appearing. For the first day in a long time (year to date on our data), European stocks significantly diverged (negatively) from credit markets today. While EURUSD is up near 1.3175 (those EUR shorts still feeling squeezed into a newsy weekend), only Senior financials and the investment grade credit index rallied today, while the higher beta (and better proxy for risk appetite) Crossover and Subordinated financial credit index were unchanged to modestly weaker today (significantly underperforming their less risky peers). European financial stocks have dropped since late yesterday - extending losses today - ending the week up but basically unch from the opening levels on Monday. High visibility sovereigns had a good week (Spain, Italy, Belgium) but the rest were practically unchanged and Portugal blew wider (+67bps on 10Y versus Bunds, +138bps on 5Y spread, and now over 430bps wider in the last two weeks as 5Y bond yields broke to 19% today). The Greek CDS-Cash basis package price has dropped again which we see indicating a desperation among banks to offload their GGBs and needing to cut the package price to entice Hedgies to pick it up (and of course some profit-taking/unwinds perhaps). All-in-all, Europe's euphoric performance has started to stall as perhaps the reality of unemployment and crisis in Europe combine again with US's GDP miss to bring recoupling and reinforcement back.

In what is likely a long overdue move, Iran has finally decided to give Europe a harsh lesson in game theory. Instead of letting Euro-area politicians score brownie points at its expense by threatening to halt imports and cut off the Iranian economy, the Iranian government will instead propose a bill calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week. And why not? After all if Europe is indeed serious, sooner or later Iran will be cut off but in the meantime experience significant policy uncertainty, which is precisely what the flipflops on the ground need. The one thing that Europe, however is forgetting, is that all that whopping 0.8 Mb/d will simply find a new buyer. And with China, India and Russia already having bilateral agreements with Iran in place, we are confident that said buyer will have a contract signed, sealed and delivered within an hour of the proposed bill's passage. Furthermore, as SocGen speculated, the fact that Europe will be even more bottlenecked in its crude supplies (good luck Saudi Arabia with that imaginary excess capacity), and which just may force the IEA to release some more of that strategic petroleum reserve (and thus give JPM some more free money on the replenishment arbitrage) will send Brent to $125-150 - something which Iran will be delighted by. That is of course unless some "experts" discover that Iran may or may not have a complete arsenal of shark with fricking nuclear warheads attached to their heads (despite what Paneta has already said) which gives the US the green light for a full blown incursion, which in turn will send oil over $200, and the world economy into a global coordinated re-depression.

Something different from me today. A BK video!

With everything from stocks and bonds to 'roo bellies rising as one trade, it may be a good time to ask: what's priced into the market's uptrend? We say "bad news is priced in" when negative news is well-known and the market has absorbed that information via the repricing process. When the market has absorbed all the "good news," then we say the market is "priced to perfection:" that is, the market has not just priced in good news, it has priced in the expectation of further good news. Markets that are priced to perfection are fiendishly sensitive to unexpected bad news that disrupts the expectation of continuing positive news. So what have global markets priced into this uptrend across virtually all markets? 

Remember back in long distant memories (from a month ago) when all the chatter was for the US to decouple from Europe as the former (US) macro data was positive and a 'muddle-through' consensus relative to the European debacle took hold. Since 12/14, European markets have significantly outperformed US markets (both broadly speaking and even more massively in financials - which is impressive given the strength in US financials). Furthermore, we saw a decoupling of correlation (de-correlating) between EUR and risk as a weaker EUR was positive for risk as USD strength showed that the world was not coming to an end (and Europe was 'contained'). Well things are changing - dramatically. EUR and risk were anti-correlated for the first two weeks of the year and since then have re-correlated. The last few days have seen EUR weakness (Greek PSI and Portugal fears) coincident with risk weakness (ES and AUD lower for instance as US macro data disappoints and a dreary Fed outlook with no imminent QE). Given the high expectations of LTRO's savior status, European financials have been the big winners (+20% from 12/14 and +15% YTD in USD terms) compared to a meager +12% and +8.8% YTD for US financials - with most of the outperformance looking like an overshoot from angst at the start of the year in Europe (which disappeared 1/9). With EUR and risk re-correlating (and derisking very recently), perhaps it is time to reposition the decoupling trade (short EU financials vs long US financials) though derisking seems more advisable overall with such binary risk-drivers as Greek PSI failure, Portuguese restructuring (yields have crashed higher), and the Feb LTRO pending (which perhaps explains the steepness of vol curves everywhere).

When commenting earlier on the GDP number we noted that the sellside brigade is about to start coming out with Q1 GDP "warnings" now that inventories will likely subtract between 0.5% and 1% from growth in the current quarter. Sure enough here is Goldman with the first warning saying that "The composition of growth was slightly negative for the Q1 outlook, in our view." That's not surprising. What is is that also according to Goldman, the auto sector contributed 0.3% to the overall GDP number. Which means that ex inventories and autos (sold courtesy of NINJA loans provided by Uncle Sam as discussed extensively every month with the release of the Fed's Consumer Credit number), the US economy grew a meaningless 0.5%! And this in the quarter when the US economy was supposed to be on a tear. We are now fairly concerned that there is an outright chance of economic contraction in Q1.

Yesterday we asked rhetorically if Ben Bernanke has become the gold bug's best friend courtesy of his FOMC announcement which led to a surge in gold, and a kneejerk whimper in stocks, which has now been completely wiped out courtesy of a subpar GDP number. Today we note that it is not only the Fed, but the US Treasury, and specifically the ravenous Mr. Geithner, who just got a green light to issue another $1.2 trillion in debt, and bring total debt to $16.4 trillion, which would still be 107% of today's GDP (which we don't see growing much if at all over the next year), that can be added to the list of best Goldbug friends. As the chart below demonstrates quite vividly, in addition to global and local monetary expansion, the price of gold tends to correlate quite well with the US debt ceiling. Which means that per yesterday's Senate 52-44 vote authorizing Timmy to go hog wild (which in turn means that Bernanke will have to step in and monetize much of this new debt issuance), the price of gold just got a green light for at least $250 in upside - the implied price just got raised to $1960. Of course, anyone who thinks the US will stop issuing debt there needs a brain MRI stat. Thank you Senate. And thank you Timmy. And, of course, thank you Ben.

The US economy grew at a 2.8% annualized pace in the supposedly blistering fourth quarter, yet the number was a disappointment not only in that it missed estimates of 3.0% (and far higher whisper numbers) but when one looks at the components, where a whopping 1.94% of the upside was attributable to a rise in inventories as restocking took place. And as everyone knows in this day and age a spike in inventories only leads to sub-cost dumping a few months later. In other words, the economy grew at a 0.8% pace ex inventories. Yet for all intents and purposes, this is considered "growth." Personal consumption was also weaker than expected coming in at 2.0% on estimates of 2.4%. Perhaps the only silver lining was Core PCE which came at 1.1% on expectations of 0.9%, however as discussed extensively before, this was driven by an unsustainable surge in credit-binge spending, primarily for iStore trinkets, and is hardly sustainable especially as the US Savings Rate fell to 3.7% in the fourth quarter, the lowest since Q4 2007. In other words Joe Sixpack is living large, especially since Joe Sixpack no longer has to pay his mortgage. Unfortunately this is a collision course with every economic principle and the next taxpayer funded bank bailout is only a matter of time. Bottom line: the artificial economic pick up is over and Q1 will see inventories actually detract from GDP: as a reminder Q1 2011 GDP subtracted 1.8% points from the final 0.4% GDP, and that was following only a 0.9% inventory rise in the preceding quarter, Q4 2010. And that is not even mentioning the tight fiscal situation no longer being a benefit to growth. Oh yes, and gas is no longer falling. And not to even mention that the GDP deflator mysteriously imploded from 2.6% to 0.4%: that's odd - not even edible ipads seem to be coming down in price. Which means that using a reslitic deflator would have resulted in virtually no GDP growth. To paraphrase Lester Burnham, "It's all downhill from here."

Greek debt negotiations continue. They do seem less afraid of triggering a Credit Event (and some even think it could be a good thing - as we have argued for some time). Estimates are that only EUR100bn of Greek bonds are actually in hands that will follow the IIF recommendations but it is clear that the negotiations are getting tricky (actually they have always been tricky, it’s just that until recently no one was actually negotiating).  The IMF seems insistent that they won’t provide new money without a high participation rate in an exchange with worse terms than many thought.  There are questions about whether the ECB should participate or not and this is in direct opposition to the IMF's need for very high participation and while losses could be hidden by off-market trades to the EFSF, there will be lots more political bickering if that were the case. More importantly, we think, is the Portuguese debt problem, which is much smaller than that of Greece, but should be attracting more attention as we note Portuguese debt hitting new lows (especially post LTRO) unlike the rest of Europe's exuberance.

Ok, I exaggerate. But that’s my cynical first impression after finding the following diagram in the briefing book for the gathering of the good and the great at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As you can see “Severe income disparity” is #1 on the Top 5 risks list this year, after having failed to make the short list for the preceding 5 years. Now it’s not as though the attendees of Davos were completely inattentive to the economic plight of the less fortunate all this time. “Economic disparities” was on last year’s laundry list of risks and was featured prominently in the executive summary of 2011's report. But the urgency has been ratcheted up quite a bit this year: note the new modifier “severe” and the use of the more specific “income” rather than “economic”. But wait, there’s more.