Archive - Feb 2012

Time and left at 3pm after trying to ramp it up then. Weird day. The morning drop seemed overdone based on "fears" of a German vote against the ECB/Bank bailout using Greece as a conduit for the money. The vote was strongly in favor which made markets happy, though someday maybe someone will present an argument other than "give them money or plunge the world into chaos". The lack of news out of the IMF wasn't good, but it keeps the ability to create rumors of new money alive and well, which is probably far more useful on a day to day basis in this market.

Today was another tale of two worlds as stocks outperformed everything as broadly speaking risk assets leaked notably lower post Europe's close and accelerated post Nowotny. Financials led the exuberance (in stocks not credit) on a day when volume was certainly not terrible and credit market indices tracked stocks (ES) almost tick for tick (which along with desk chatter suggested little activity in credit today as credit dealers reracked along with futures movements). HYG dipped significantly into the close - after a decent drop in the middle of the day that was saved - only to be held up by its VWAP. For the second day in a row, VIX closed higher on a higher S&P close and implied correlation is sending those trend fade warnings once again but it was the broad-based disregard for any and every other asset class today (by stocks) - as Treasuries remained near their low yields of the day, Crude, Gold and the commodity complex all sold off, FX carry reverted back to risk-off after Europe closed, and apart from a minor leak higher in the last hour bond curves were notably flatter - that was surprising (and unusual in recent weeks/months). In the medium-term, credit remains considerably less sanguine than stocks here and the late day disappointment from Nowotny ahead of LTRO2 may have just taken the jam out of the equity market's doughnut for now.

From S&P: "We lowered our sovereign credit ratings on Greece to 'SD' following the Greek government's retroactive insertion of collective action clauses (CACs) in the documentation of certain series of its sovereign debt on Feb. 23, 2012....We do not generally view CACs (to the extent that they are included in an original issuance) as changing a government's incentive to pay its obligations in full and on time. However, we believe that the retroactive insertion of CACs will diminish bondholders' bargaining power in an upcoming debt exchange. Indeed, Greece launched such an exchange offer on Feb. 24, 2012." Translation: Greece better have that PSI in the bag or else the "Selective" goes away and "Greece would face an imminent outright payment default." Our question for former Goldmanite and current ECB head Mario Dragi: does the ECB allow defaulted bonds to be pledged as collateral within the Euro System?

It was quite a day for retirement planners everywhere as the decisions to show up to work or not tomorrow have been on-again, off-again no less than 22 times today as the all-important Dow 13,000 maginot line was criss-crossed frequently only to end on a disappointingly negative note - washing away all those glorious gains in the last 30 seconds.

Earlier today, we presented a Top-Down analysis via SocGen of Wednesday's ECB massive extended Discount Window operation, also known as the second 3 Year LTRO operation (whereby we once again remember that unlike the Fed, the ECB is fully unaware of the adverse consequences of the stigma associated with borrowing last ditch liquidity, but when all else has failed, one has to do what one has to do). And while we will conclude our LTRO preview series with LTRO 2 103: Bottoms-Up, as a courtesy fo those who are fine-tuning their LTRO stigma trade (long banks that will not participate in the upcoming LTRO, short banks that will) SocGen's prediction of which banks will take down LTRO 2 funding, and how much. Draghi said there is no stigma trade. We proved him wrong, at least in the interim. LTRO 2 will finally decide who is right and who is wrong.

It should come as no surprise to readers as it has been long pointed out that the need (and expectation) for all "transitory" measures to become permanent and exponentially larger to maintain this mirage of sustainability, but comments from ECB's Nowotny just took the shine off the day as Gold, Oil, Financials, ES, and AAPL all dropped notably (pulling back to TSY's outperformance) as he strongly suggested this is it (via Bloomberg)...

• *NOWOTNY SAYS SMP IS MORE OR LESS ON HOLD
• *NOWOTNY SAYS 3-YEAR LOANS WILL NOT BECOME A REGULAR FEATURE
• *NOWOTNY SAYS NOT `CONVINCED' ABOUT CASE FOR HIGHER FIREWALL
• *NOWOTNY SAYS ECB HAS PROBLEM OF ADDICTED BANKS

Every time we see oil prices go up we hear that it will cause inflation and/or the economy will go into the tank. The premise is wrong because that has never happened.

Large IPOs often mark tops within sectors and within stock markets as a whole. In June 2007, shortly after the s*** had begun to hit the fan in the financial stocks, the Blackstone Group (BX) was able to get a multi-billion dollar IPO in. About a year and a half later, BX was down about as much as the Dow Jones fell between its 1929 peak and its mid-1932 nadir--almost 90%. Major IPOs and runs of hot IPOs in a single sector do not happen in a vacuum. They are not the result of a philanthropic attitude amongst corporate insiders or the financial community. Last year, memories of the crash had finally faded enough that it became time for U.S. investors to become the quacking ducks that, as always, Wall Street had food for. And of course, tech was there as the most palatable food. If they wanted, Facebook could raise every penny it needs, and more, from private sources. So ...

We have repeatedly voiced our views on Buffett's relentless bashing of the only asset that is a guaranteed protection against now exponential currency debasement and central planner, and other PhD economist, stupidity, most recently here. We are happy that other, more politically correct asset managers, have decided to share how they fell, and take the crony capitalist to task. The first (of many we are sure), are Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky of QBAMCO who have just penned "Golden Boy" or the much needed "high society" response to the old man from Omaha: "Buffett may be a sage, a wizard, and an oracle when it comes to nominal relative value pricing of financial assets, but it is well worth noting that Buffett’s proclamations are not necessarily worthy of being considered “fact” in matters unrelated to finance, just as the legendary Joe Paterno’s judgment seems to have been sorely lacking when it came to sorting out matters unrelated to a winning football program....We must assume his aggressive gold comments have been meant to force the price of gold lower. (We do not know why he is so interested in doing so though we do have a reasonable theory, for another time). We strongly disagree with Mr. Buffett’s views and we thought it would be best to explore his comments and provide our counter-arguments."

As the financials ETF, XLF, jumps from down 1.25% to up over 0.75% today, we note that credit markets for the major US banks are anything but exuberant. In the short-term, US bank credit remains significantly weaker, having broken its trend on February 9th, than the broad ETF or individual bank stocks would suggest. We have seen European credit spreads for banks come back off their worst levels - and at the same time, bank stock prices revert downwards to meet that depressed credit perspective. In the US, stocks remain euphoric and credit has not staged any comeback yet inferring a 5-6% drop in XLF (or rally in credit of course). Perhaps the USD-denominated nature of stocks is 'mispriced' relative to the risk-denominated nature of credit spreads as liquidity floats all risk assets on hope of LTRO2 et al.

Beverage Rules Apply...

As the title suggests, please name the latest bubble:

Credit markets are not priced for Greek PSI Nirvana. With the Greek government bonds (GGBs) and CDS basis package trading at its highest in six months (over 96% of Par) and GGBs trading below 20% of Par (compared to considerably higher 'expected' PSI-based valuations), it seems the market is much more convinced of an imminent credit trigger and no PSI deal than headlines are crowing about. Combining the new 30Y bond, 2Y EFSF add-on, and GDP warrant, BARCAP arrives at a price of around 26.6% of Par for PSI-able bonds - considerably above the current depressed price of GGBs and together with S&P's negative outlook change to the EFSF this morning, it would appear that market participants are not expecting a deal to get done by March 20th. Perhaps that is why hope is so high this morning for a quadrillion Euro LTRO2 to see them through? That should help oil prices!

But coincidentally, the ECB’s next Long Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) is set for February 29...