Archive - Feb 22, 2012

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: The Straw That Potentially Breaks The Camels Back





oil-price-gasoline-022212Back in December I penned an article about the potential for gasoline prices to rise quickly to catch up with surging oil prices.  We said then "If we look at just the nominal price data going back to 1990 we can see that there is indeed a very high correlation between oil prices and gasoline prices.   While divergences from each other do occur on occassion those divergences tend not to last for very long with gasoline usually correcting towards the price of oil."   That is precisely what has happened since the near $3 per gallon of gasoline this summer, which was an effective $60 billion tax break for consumers during the much anticipated retail shopping season, to near $3.50 a gallon today.  That 16% rise in gasoline has now effectively wiped out the entire payroll tax cut being extended into 2012. There has been a lot of media commentary as of late about the recovery in the economy.  The dangerous assumption being made here is that the recent upticks in the economic data have come primarily at the expense of inventory restocking and end of year buying of capital goods by businesses to lock in tax credits.  Extrapolating those bounces in the data well into the future can prove to be disappointing.  Yet this is exactly what the the President's current budget, which has been presented to Congress, has done.  That budget plans for 3% or stronger economic growth over the next 6 years.  This is a pretty lofty goal which considering last years growth was a paltry 1.7%.  However, in order to acheive a 3% plus growth rate the consumer is going to have to should 2.1% of that load through consumption.

 

testosteronepit's picture

The Corporate Tax-Dodge Code





Benefitting from two diametrically opposed systems.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Goldman Goes Long WTI





Goldman's David Greely is no Tom Stolper. In fact his recommendations have been correct more often than not. Which is why we believe that when the market learns that the Goldman commodities strategist just opened a long September WTI position at $107.55, it will merely provide that extra oomph to send WTI up, up and away. Or maybe not: this could be another one of the "fade Goldman" calls. Alas, with the real impact of the recent $2 trillion balance sheet expansion becomes truly felt we have a distinct feeling Goldman is quite right on this one. Evil, evil speculators.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Ben Graham’s Curse On Gold





It seems that the mainstream investment community only takes a break from ignoring gold to berate it: one of gold’s most outspoken critics, uber-investor Warren Buffett, did so recently in his latest shareholder letter. The indictments were familiar; gold is an inanimate object “incapable of producing anything,” so any investor holding it instead of stocks is acting out of irrational fear. How can it be that Buffett, perhaps the most successful (and definitely the most well-known) investor of our time, believes that gold has no place in an intelligently allocated investment portfolio? Perhaps it has something to do with his mentor, Benjamin Graham....for most of Graham's adult life and the most important years of his career, ownership of more than a small amount of gold was outlawed. Banned for private ownership by FDR in 1933, it wasn't re-legalized until late 1974. Graham passed away in 1976; he thus never lived through a period in which gold was unmistakably a better investment than either stocks or bonds. All of which makes us wonder: if Graham had lived to witness the two great bull markets in precious metals during the last 40 years, would he have updated his allocation models to include gold?

 

Bruce Krasting's picture

Chuckles





Chuckles, no laughs.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Europe Is Now China's Sweatshop As Great Wall Starts Building Cars In Bulgaria





When it comes to labor-wage parity, nowhere has this topic been more debated than in the context of China and the US. Specifically, with US wages declining consistently for the past 3 years despite commodity price inflation spiking with a 2-3 month lag following every coordinated central bank printing episode (such as the one we are experiencing now), many have proffered their predictions as to when Chinese secular inflation would make wage pay equivalent on both sides of the Pacific, and stop the exporting of jobs from the US to China (a good discussion on the topic can be found in "With China Forecast To Reach Wage Parity With The US In Five Years, Is A New Manufacturing Golden Age Coming To The US?"). And while labor equivalency between China and the US likely still has a ways to go, we have now crossed a critical Rubicon, as Chinese and European wages, at least in one part of European Union, have caught up. Net result, as Spiegel reports, carmaker "Great Wall this week became the first Chinese automobile manufacturer to open an automobile assembly plant inside the European Union in the latest move suggesting the country's carmakers are seeking to establish a beachhead into the European market." Yes, that's right: it is now cheaper for China to make cars in the European Union: "It used to be that European carmakers opened plants to assemble their cars in China. Now the Chinese have turned the tables with the opening of their first factory in Bulgaria, an EU country with low labor costs and taxes. Increasingly, Chinese carmakers are setting their sights on the European and American automobile markets." The ramifications of this landmark development are massive for virtually every aspect of the economy: for domestic labor migration, for inflation, for the trade balance, and certainly for US workers.

 

George Washington's picture

Would You Support an Iran War If …





Would You Support a War Against Iran If You Knew the True Facts?

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Negative Salaries, Negative Bailout And Now Negative Gold - Greece Just Became The Bankster's Paradise





While Iceland is now known as the country that is the closest earthly approximation to banker hell, it is safe to say that Greece is the terrestrial equivalent of banker heaven. Because as explained earlier today, the country's population is about to get a worse deal than your average run of the mill slave - they may get whipped, but at least never have to pay for the privilege, unlike the Greeks. Hence negative salaries. As also explained, the European bailout of Greece, is now formally a Greek bailout of Europe, funded by the country's already negative primary surplus, or better said - deficit (don't try to make mathematical sense of that - a scene out of Scanners is guaranteed). Hence, negative bailout. But the piece de resistance, and the reason why Greece is the in situ version of bankster heaven is the news from the NYT that Greece is also about to have negative gold.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Gold Explodes As NYSE Volume Re-Implodes





NYSE volume was the 3rd lowest of the year so far (while ES was just below average) as stocks leaked lower all day to small net losses by the close. Financials led the drop in stocks as they start to catch up the credit market weakness we have been pointing to for over a week but while HY (the high yield credit spread index) continues to underperform (and stocks following at a lower beta), IG (investment grade credit spread index) modestly outperforms (the up-in-quality rotation) but HYG (the high-yield bond ETF) surged today into a world of its own once again. We suspect this is driven by 'arbitrage' flows between HY's recent richness and HYG's cheapness (as well as potential HY new issue impacts). Gold (and to a lesser extent Silver) was the story of the day as it exploded (perhaps on the Greek gold-collateral news) over $1780 intraday (now up over $55 in the last 3 days) although the USD did nothing (FX was quiet with JPY inching lower and EUR small higher as DXY leaked higher on the day to -0.25% on the week). The rest of the commodity complex jumped also (with WTI losing ground into the close even as Brent kept going - suggesting the spread decompression was in play). Treasuries rallied from early in the European day with yields dropping 6-8bps from the peaks and shifting the entire curve into the green for the week now (10y and 30Y around 1bps lower in yield). ES couldn't get significantly above VWAP today and CSFB's fear index (which tracks equity option skews) is at record highs which both suggest a preference to sell/cover is appearing (even as VIX diverged modestly from stocks today with implied correlation rising).

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Deja Vu 2011...Or 1997





The S&P 500 has had the best start to the year since 1997, and Gas Prices are accelerating rapidly. Two interesting analogs may be useful to think about the next moves in these markets and whether we see divergence.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Number Of European Money Losing Companies Rises For First Time In 2 Years, Doubles





While the record corporate profit bonanza (if now declining) is still the fallback argument for any bearish allegation that the only reason why the market is up 20% in 3 months is due to $2 trillion in liquidity dumped into markets by central banks, this may be about to end quite abruptly, especially if Europe is a harbinger of things to come. As the following chart from Credit Suisse shows, the number of large companies (>500bn market cap) that lose money on an LTM basis (so not just in the quarter, and thus with a much longer lasting effect) has risen in Q4 for the first time since Q3 2009. And while in nominal terms the change is still relatively modest, the actual change in "losing companies" is a doubling from under 5% to 10%, as for the first time in years the percentage of European money losing companies matches that of the US.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

'Til Debt Did Europe Part





'All is not resolved' is how Morgan Stanley's Arnaud Mares begins his latest diatribe on the debacle that is occurring in Europe. While a disorderly default seems to have been avoided (for now), the Greek problem (as we have discussed extensively) remains unsolved as debt sustainability seems questionable at best, economic recovery a remote hope, and the growing political tensions across Europe (and its people) grow wider. Critically, Mares addresses the seeming complacency towards a Greek exit from the euro area noting that it is no small matter and has dramatic consequences (specifically a la Lehman, the unintended consequences could be catastrophic). Greece (or another nation) leaving the Euro invites concerns over the fungibility of bank deposits across weak and strong nations and with doubt over the Euro, the EU could collapse as free-trade broke down. The key is that, just as in the US downgrade case last year, a Euro-exit implies the impossible is possible and the impact of such an event is much, much higher than most seem to realize. While the likelihood of a Greek euro-exit may remain low (for now), the scale of the impact makes this highly material and suggests the EU will do whatever it takes (print?) within their mandates to hold the status quo. For all practical purposes, it would be the end of the euro as a genuine single currency and to preserve the euro if Greece left would require total federalism in the rest of the area.

 
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