Archive - Mar 2012

The overnight news that China's economic growth forecast was cut is notable in that it brings to mind the complexities (and realities) of the shift from an investment-led economy to consumption-led sustainability. As Bloomberg BRIEF's Economics note pointed out this morning, China is ranked fourth highest out of 170 countries for its reliance on investment (investment-to-GDP of 49%). The fix requires increasing incomes, internationalization of the yuan, and liberalization of interest rates. The latter is perhaps most troublesome (though all are hard to centrally plan together) as the mis-allocation of capital to large cash-rich SOEs relative to the broader (and potentially more growth-tastic) individual borrower or SME leaves what George Magnus of UBS calls a 'sequencing' problem for the powers that be. His concern is that China gets the downside risks of an investment decline before the upside potential from restructuring the economy towards household spending occurs. Critically, the investment-centric economy is not one of industrial capex or export-oriented expansion but inward-facing construction and infrastructure meaning a slowing of investment-led strength is implicitly ending the property boom. In China it’s very simple: you want to keep both eyes on the state of property markets.

Central banks are printing money all over the world. New names have been given to what is really an age old phenomenon. Desperate governments have traditionally debased their currencies when they have no other way of financing their deficits. So far the world’s central banks have been “lucky”. Thanks to the prior global bubble ending in 2008 and the realization that the so-called advanced countries are reaching the end of their borrowing capacity, the world is in a massive deleveraging mode which tends to be deflationary. For the moment the central banks can get away with printing all the money they want without massive increases in consumer price indexes. The public doesn’t connect increases in prices of commodities like gold or oil with the current bout of money printing. But if history is any guide, this money printing will matter and the age of deflation and deleveraging will be followed by an age of inflation.The coming battles over solving the problems of the bankrupt American government will not be pretty. It will be a bit more difficult for an American president to preach patriotism to the affluent in these circumstances. Although, if there is a war with Iran, he might try.

In what was likely the most ominous news from last week (and a near certain top for the stock) we reported that now none other than the Israel Central Bank was going long shares of AAPL. While the implications for stocks in general are extensive and were previously discussed, it is worth noting that the Israel Monetary Authority now has a big MTM loss on its Apple investment (although as Greece and the ECB have taught us, a central bank can book a "profit" even when a given security is trading at an all time low, and completely irrelevant of what one's cost basis is). And where Israel is, it is quite certain that other central banks have boldly ventured as well. So how long until the Fed has to open an FX swap line with Tel Aviv to bailout Stanley Fischer in this latest of hare brained schemes to keep the Ponzi system going? And how long until it has to be extended to the nearly 250 hedge funds who are now also long the stock, with the universe of incremental buyers disappearing by the day? What is most stunning is that Apple dipped a modest 3% intraday... Which just happened to be the biggest decline since November 2010.

Blinded by the light of the European equity market, one could be forgiven for thinking that LTRO 2 has indeed had some stabilizing impact on the European (and even the world) economy market. However, just as we have been aggressively pointing out, this is not the case (or at least not a sustainable case) as we see the 'LTRO-stigma' rising - now 10-15bps wide of its post-LTRO best levels - as LTRO-behooven banks trade notably wider (worse) than non-LTRO-subservient banks. What is very clear is that European credit markets, which are now trading at their worst levels post LTRO are much more concerned at the unintended consequences of the massive subordination and dependency than the equity market appears to be. Senior financial credit spreads are underperforming as they re-price for the broad subordination that has occurred but investment grade and high-yield credit in Europe is dramatically wider today even as stocks levitate. With ECB deposits breaking records and bank funding costs rising (as opposed to the hoped for drop), it seems unlikely that all this freshly minted collateralized cash will find its way out to the real economy and do anything but further zombify European banks and implicitly drag economic growth down (as credit markets appear to be better at discounting once again). As Europe closes, credit is pushing even lower to its worst in over a week.

"Emotions exceeding known parameters cause extreme events, such as stock market booms and busts. They are self-reinforcing spirals upward and especially downward that, once established, keep diverging from equilibrium until the driving forces fade or stronger counter forces reverse them. Ever-increasing desires for accumulating ever greater wealth faster and faster ignited a credit bubble that spiralled upwards until it burst in 2007 from a lack of new borrowers. The multi decade credit bubble and its bursting were extreme events. No model recognized the credit bubble or its collapse and no model is giving any indication of the plethora of problems now brewing in Europe."

Is Apple going to $1,000 per share and dragging the market higher with it? Sometimes one chart tells us more than a thicket of charts. Every analyst and punter seeks an "edge" by plotting and comparing innumerable indicators, ratios, correlations and data points. Sometimes all this complexity pays dividends, but if it did so consistently then 90% of hedge funds and mutual funds wouldn't be underperforming index funds. Sometimes a single chart says it all.

Last Thursday, following the second in one day GDP forecast tweak lower by Goldman on disappointing Consumer and ISM data, we said "And this, ladies and gents, is ultra high frequency economics, where HFT machines push the market up and down without reason, and where this has an immediate impact on economic indicators, all changed around in real time." Sure enough, today, following the better than expected Services ISM print, Goldman has now revised its GDP tracking number, this time higher, from 1.9% to 2.0%! At this rate GDP will soon become a coincident indicator of nothing more than consumer confidence that record high gas prices are a bullish indicator for consumption. That it is already a coincident indicator to real-time economic data, and merely shows the prevalent confusion within the strategist community, is a given.

While headlines may evoke underlying strength (despite a slowing China, underlying employment indices lagging, and rising-price concerns growing) the expectations of our elite economists has once again extrapolated, Birinyi-style, a self-sustaining recovery to infinity and beyond. Unfortunately, economic data is disappointing in the last few weeks relative to expectations as the Citi Economic Surprise Indicator drops to three-month lows. It appears to us that the economic data in the US, driven up in the (cyclical) short-term by tax cuts, fuel cost drops, and very recently the warm weather according to Morgan Stanley, is set to repeat the 2008 pattern as ECRI data did not confirm the improvement. The mean-reversion in the Citi ECO index suggests at best a significant slowing in equity performance but more likely a negative return in the three-months ahead. It would appear that our hopium-filled expectations have once again become unsustainable.

Don't get lost...

Okay, we don’t know if that is a good translation of Dead Bank Walking into Portuguese, but we didn’t think zombie banks was sufficient. As Portugal's sovereign spreads have risen by 200bps in the last 3 weeks and now trade at a wholly unsustainable 1200bps over Bunds, we thought it worth looking at how large (and under-capitalized) the Portuguese banking system was. Perhaps more critically just how zombified they were with regards to their Central Bank liquidity needs - the picture is not encouraging. As tensions continue to mount internally, it seems the LTRO's lull should be used to wipe out the weak banks or recap the less-than-dismal banks as that is the only real firewall. With the Greek PSI/restructuring dangling in the dust, it seems increasingly likely (as the IIF just noted) that Portugal is next and imminent given market pricing, despite the 'uniqueness' of their Hellenic neighbors.

In 2011 it was Europe's turn to baffle everyone with bullshit. it still is, but now it has added China (whose Services ISM printed both below and above 50 depending on which data one uses, whether Markit or HSBC), and the US, as it is now the turn of the Services ISM to beat expectations and print at 57.3, on expectations of 56.0, and higher than the prior 56.8 - this beat comes just as the market was expecting a major drop in the aftermath of the big manufacturing ISM miss (Goldman was well below the consensus on today's number), and appears to have printed where it did just to keep the confusion about the true state of the US economy in place as Bernanke vacillates whether or not to proceed with QE3 and when. Curiously, the most important subindex ahead of this Friday's NFP data, the employment indicator, showed a decline from 57.4 to 55.7, just to make an NFP beat all that much more 'surprising.' That said, as Bloomberg's Joe Brusuelas notes, this data is stale and does not reflect the recent gasoline price shock, which as of today has regular has at a 2012 high of $3.767, compared to $3.503 this time last year. Elsewhere, and in keeping with the Mfg ISM data, US Factory Orders slid 1.0% on expectations of an unchanged print from last month's 1.4% increase. Finally, stocks are completely unmoved on all of this data.

Another day, another reminder that all those who listened to "pundit" calls for loading up on Greek 1 year bonds which hit 100% for the first time ever in September of last year, are now broke to quite broke. As of this morning the Greek 1 Year Bond has just passed 1000% and was down to just 20.5 in cash terms, further making the case for a Greek redefault in just over a year, as pre-petition bondholders make it abundanatly clear they don't expect to collect much more than one cash coupon in the "fresh start" country. In other news, Greek CDS just hit a new all time high of 77 pts, and the basis package is at a record of 98.5. It appears that the IIF fearmongering has not stopped all those who wish to have a basis package going into Thursday from doing just that (because for the cheap seats, CDS prices go up when there are more buyers than sellers).

Having spent this money, your next concern becomes avoiding popular outrage as sooner or later folks will find out that this money was practically given away and that everyone else got a raw deal. Let’s say that you just spent a large sum, to the tune of several trillion Dollars, bailing out various businesses that were literally run into insolvency by shortsighted and greedy business practices. 

Readers know that among the things the we find most meaningless in the New Normal are those anachronisms known as 'charts' - after all when it comes to central planners exclusively running the market, this has never occurred before in history at this level. Yet the impact of technical analysis should not to be discounted, as it does create a self-fulfilling prophecy (far weaker than the impact of marginal liquidity but it is there nonetheless), in which case today's note from Art Cashin may have an impact on risk appetite. Or not - all it takes for any bout of selling to end is a sideways glance from the Chairsatan and we see a 20% surge in risk in the next few months on nothing but a whisper of a new multi-trillion liquidity injection.