Archive - May 9, 2012

Charles Biderman (CEO of TrimTabs) is not shocked that "Europeans who have been getting something for nothing, want to continue getting something for nothing" as they chant that Austerity is evil. Charles provides context for the revolt that the Europeans find themselves fulfilling as he looks back at how they/we got here. Briefly covering the key aspects of the last 25 years, of why and how various parabolic growths (be it stocks, real estate, the internet, or debt) have led us to believe we "deserve something for nothing"; he vehemently argues that the European mess will not resolve itself until the fundamental belief that we all deserve to be taken care of from cradle-to-grave dissolves. In one of his best rants, the BLS-belittler explains how Europe has started the endgame and why the end of this year could well see the US move front-and-center in the crisis.  Harsh but fair, in a little under 4 minutes, summarizes all that is wrong with societal values and suggests catalysts for next steps - dismal next steps.

Investors should be questioning their positive assumptions after the events of the past two weeks. Things have changed a great deal and rumors abound on how the authorities plan to support the market now. At the end of last month, only ten calendar days ago, the perky US equity market, the placid foreign exchange scene, calm credit spreads and rock-bottom volatility implied to us and anyone paying even cursory attention that the world was happy with the way things were turning out in 2012, no matter what the Mayan calendar might be saying. But now, after the Socialist victory in France, the Greek electoral disintegration, the poor US employment numbers and the disastrous European PMI readings the market is very uncertain with the EUR/USD below 1.30, Spanish 10-year Bonds back over 6.00% and equity markets down sharply around the world. Our cyclical analysis finds this weakness very appropriate as we should be in a decline. What makes the ground so uncertain beneath our feet is the reality of our current position: interest rates are at zero, fiscal budgets are stretched to the maximum, total national financial liabilities are at a breaking point and national monetary bases are a multiple of the highest they have ever been. Quite simply, there are no good borrowers. No one wants to loan anyone any money.

Sign of Japan's "declining economic power"

Two weeks ago, we showed that when it comes to parabolic charts, Europe sure has a variety to choose from. Yet none are quite as parabolic as the chart enabling it all: the Bundesbank's TARGET2 claims toward the rest of the Eurosystem, or as we have repeatedly explained (and as Jens Wiedmann confirmed), the sunk cost that Germany will have to foot once the Euro experiment ends, and the EMU falls apart.. which judging by recent developments in Greece, and now Spain, could be as soon as in a few weeks. The number as of April 30? €644,182,010,456.05, which is exactly 25% of German GDP, and an increase of €28.6 billion in April and €181 billion in 2012 alone! Putting this number in perspective, imagine that the Fed had "assets" totalling $3.85 trillion that everyone knew are totally worthless, and meant that it would have to print a like amount in fresh money as replacement "capital" when D-Day came. This "money" represents a receivable that the Bundesbank will never, repeat never, get back, once Greece exits the Eurozone, and sets a precedent for all the other insolvent European countries, leading to the end of the European monetary experiment. It also means that the asset base backing the liability side of the Bundesbank will soon get obliterated. So the real question is: do German taxpayers feel like sinking costs which will never be repaid, and which serve merely to preserve the myth of viable German export markets, thereby keeping the illusion that the German intra-Eurozone export industry is alive and well, while in the process obliterating the balance sheet of their far more prudent central bank? Or will the German population say "genug" and force the Bundesbank to stop funding the current account deficit ways that it has been enabling for years? The choice is theirs. Just don't come crying to the Fed when this number is 100% of GDP and everything falls apart.

What's important is that good markets are for selling and bad markets are for buying; it's counterintuitive. Your perception of how events will play out in the future is determined mostly by your experience in the immediate past; and if the last three investment decisions that you've made have rewarded you – if you feel good about your precepts – you begin to do something natural, which is confuse a bull market with brains, and you begin to become very aggressive. If your last three decisions – irrespective of whether they were well thought out – haven't played out so well, you become cautious. What you need to do is teach your brain to overwhelm or overrule your heart and understand that cheaper is better and more expensive is less good. It's difficult, but it must be done. Many things that are rewarding are difficult.

Not many changes in this month's Total Return Fund (PIMCO) flagship fund update: Bill Gross kept his MBS exposure at 53%, while lowering his net margin cash position from -23% to -18%, courtesy of a decline in Emerging Markets exposure from 10% to 7%. Exposure to all other products remained relatively flat. The one major difference is that TRF AUM rose from $252.5 billion to $258.7 billion, a $6 billion inflow in one month, and an all time high for the fund. As a result, the proportional exposure to MBS rose to $137 billion from $134 billion in absolute notional: also an all time record. Despite recent jawboning by both good and bad Fed cops, Gross is not wavering and is certain that when QE comes, and it will, it will not be some sterilized intervention (which is impossible as the Fed no longer has short-term bonds to sell), but outright MBS/QE, most likely in a 5/3 ratio. Additionally, we also learned that the effective duration of the TRF portfolio slumped to 4.61 years, the lowest since July 2011, when Gross was convinced America was going to hell. This one is somewhat confusing although we attribute the duration crunch to the ongoing surge in MBS holdings, and to a repositioning toward short-dated TSY paper.

By mainstream media accounts, the presidential election in France and parliamentary elections in Greece on May 6 were overwhelming verdicts against “austerity” measures being implemented in Europe. There is only one problem. It is a lie. First off, austerity was never really tried. Not really. In France for example, according to Eurostat, annual expenditures have actually increased from €1.095 trillion to €1.118 trillion in 2011. In fact spending has increased every single year for the past decade. The debt there increased too from €1.932 trillion €1.987 trillion last year, just as it did every year before. Real “austere”. The French spent more, and they borrowed more. The deficit in France did decrease by about €34 billion in 2011, but that was largely because of a €56.6 billion surge in tax revenues. Again, there were no spending cuts. Zero. Yet incoming socialist president François Hollande claimed after his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy that he would bring an end to this mythical austerity: “We will bring back Europe on a track for jobs, growth and the future… We’re no longer doomed to austerity.” This is just a willful, purposeful distortion. What the heck is he talking about? Certainly not France.

Rod Serling is not doing the narration for the e-Zone unravel. And he will never turn the control of your television set back to you. It’s just going to start getting weird and keep getting weirder. Europe is the Twilight Zone.

We are unsure what is more notable in this week's most recent fund flow update: that in the week ended May 2, investors pulled out another whopping $6.6 billion out of domestic equity mutual funds, the 11th consecutive, and a total of $42 billion in 2012 (compared to $10 billion over the same period in 2011), or that as the chart below shows, the two identical S&P overlay arrows (identical in their length and angle) demonstrate just how comparable the effect of QE2 and Operation Twist, or QE3, have been. the two arrows also demonstrate without a doubt, that, as Goldman admitted last month, the "flow" effect at the long-end of the curve (thank you Chubby Checker) is what it was all about, which means that sterilized QE is bunk, and all that matters is of the Fed to be actively monetizing something, anything, in order for stocks to go higher. Regardless, the only question left now is not whether the same drift back lower by 200 S&P point that stocks experienced after the end of QE2 will happen, but when and how rapidly it will take place, just in time for QE4 (NOT Operation Twist-er) to be announced in June. And finally, for those wondering how it is possible that every month US investors can pull cash out of mutual funds without them running out of cash, we say: observe the distinct pattern in Chart 2, which shows that as of March mutual funds held a record low 3.3% in liquid assets on their books.

For the first time since last July, right before the market's grand plan collapse, the Dow has fallen for 6 days-in-a-row. We could of course have just copy/pasted yesterday's end-of-day as today was a case of deja deja vu all over again as we sold off hard overnight (basically top-ticking right before the US day-session close), made new overnight lows, then managed a miraculous rally into and across the European close only to stall once again as the dip-buying algos enabled bigger blocks to dump into momentum retail players. The European close hour saw your standard 4-sigma swing (low to high) in ES (S&P 500 e-mini futures) but gave half of it back it its typical VWAP reversion as for three days in a row we have dipped and tested the S&P's 50DMA and rallied on lower volume (though ended the day with the 3rd highest volume of the year). The USD rallied further with the EUR ending around 1.2950 (though off its lows of the day) but once again commodities (which sold off pretty hard overnight) managed to crawl their way back higher (closing rather interestingly at the same levels at which they opened the European day-session). VIX ended above 20% (its highest close in a month) and its flattest term structure in five months. Treasuries ended the day marginally changed (-1bps 10Y, +1bps 3Y) but ended well off their low yields of the day. High yield credit was a major underperformer - ending below yesterday's lows (as was IG credit) - bearishly diverging from equities again.

The only thing funnier than a nationalization statement spun as positive, or favorable for taxpayers, is one that has been Google translated, in this case from Spanish, courtesy of Bank of Spain, which has just formally bailed out Bankia, leaving the best for last: "In any case, BFA-Bankia is a solvent entity that continues to function quite normally and customers and depositors should have no concern." Move along. Nothing to see here. Nobody should be concerned.

From the moment we all got to peek behind the over-leveraged financial system reality thank to Lehman's collapse, the-powers-that-be have made every attempt to stop this whole thing unraveling. Eric Sprott humbly suggests, when the CNBC anchor in the following clip questions recent gold price action as evidence of something wrong in his thesis, that just as Jim Grant opines, "All markets are manipulated" and that Central Banks (who are desperately trying to revive the dying system in every extreme monetary scheme possible) simply do not want to see the price of gold rising. He then notes that Silver is likely to be the investment of the next decade (although offers no strong thesis other than levered gold). Shrugging off the obfuscation from Omaha, "People who sell paper gold and paper silver can rule the markets in the short-term but physical participants will win the day in the long-run". Detailing some fundamental drivers for gold's advance, as the investment of the last decade and so for those three gentlemen (Buffett, Gates, & Munger) who missed it, I don't know that I should respect their opinion at this point in time.

Ask yourself the following. For the technologies which allowed for the increased rate of extraction of coal in the 19th century, or,  which now allow for the increased rate of extraction of natural gas from shale in the 21st century: did those technologies create the resources or merely extract them as they already existed? The answer seems rather obvious, doesn’t it? I mean, I want to be sympathetic to the view that technology creates resources, in the sense that technology makes previous unrecognized or unrecoverable resources available. But a threshold I cannot cross, however, is that idea that there are always a new resources waiting to be discovered, if we can only create a technology to obtain them.

Which brings us back to mining for minerals. On asteroids.