Archive - May 9, 2012

Update: Here we go - SPAIN TO NATIONALIZE BANKIA LATER TODAY - ABC

The reality is Greece is largely noise. Greece will eventually leave the Eurozone, but not this month. The hardliners inside Greece will realize they need some time to organize. The markets will have spooked the hardliners outside of Greece that they should play nice for a little bit, because forcing Greece out now won’t do them any good whatsoever. With Greece largely a sideshow at this stage, the attention is really focused on Spain and Italy. The fact that Greece might lead the way out of the Euro is having a big impact on these countries. That realization combined with the already obvious problems at the sovereign and bank level caused markets to sell off. The Spanish 10 year bond is back above 6%, dropping 20 bps today, which is a significant move. As we wrote about last Friday, there are no natural buyers, so this move occurred in an illiquid market. There is more room to run, but moves in Spanish and Italian bonds are already starting to have a less direct impact on stocks than they did earlier in the morning.

Three things are occurring in European liquidity markets that should send shivers down the spines of the most ardent bulls or believers in the status quo muddle-through scenario. First, 3-month LIBOR is waking from the dead having risen today after weeks of flat-lining in its irrelevant manner. Second, Deutsche Bank was the main driver of today's uptick in 3-month LIBOR (joining UBS as the only other bank in the LIBOR family post LTRO2 that has raised its willing offer rate for short-term liquidity). And third, most importantly, 3-month EUR-USD basis swaps (that expensive but anonymous market-based investment vehicle to find USD funding) have exploded with their biggest deterioration in five months pushing the premium that banks are willing to pay to receive USD over EUR to its highest in almost 4 months. So while Draghi suggests that we wait to see the effects of LTRO filter through to the rest of the real economy, once again he is clearly incorrect as banks are now desperately seeking liquidity (USD-based in this case) with short-term swaps only having been worse in the middle of the crisis last Fall and UBS and Deutsche Bank willing (or forced) to pay up for short-term money.

Gold hit a 4 month low today despite deepening worries that the political upheaval in Greece may sink the country into chaos and endanger the euro zone's efforts to end the debt crisis – possibly leading to contagion and or a monetary crisis. Some decent demand from South East Asia has been reported at the $1,600/oz level and there are also reports from Reuters of a “semi-official buyer of gold” emerging “on dip below $1,600/oz”.  Gold’s weakness yesterday may have been again due to dollar strength and oil weakness - oil is now below $97 a barrel (NYMEX). It may also have been due to wholesale liquidation which created a new bout of "risk off" which has seen global equities and commodities all come under pressure. However, gold’s weakness yesterday was also contributed to by more unusual trading activity. As trading in New York got underway, there was an unusually large bout of selling with some 6,000 gold futures contracts sold in minutes and this led to gold's initial $10 fall to the $1,615/oz level. Momentum driven algorithm trading may have then led to follow through selling and the initial sell off may have emboldened tech traders to sell more leading to the falls below $1,600/oz. 

The following note from Caris & Co. on HLF (which launched Herbalife in September at a Buy and a $75/share PT) has got to be the worst sell side note in history. The catalyst, according to the firm: what David Einhorn may or may not say. Now that is true value added. Next up: Goldman goes long IBM because it flipped heads.

Because the market sure could do with some humor on this blood red morning, we bring you FX strategist extraordinaire Thomas Stolper, who sadly does not give us the latest fade trade, but decides instead to come clean with pearls as: "On our EUR/$ forecast, last revised in January, we have been both right and wrong." Surely the "right" part is what he is worried about: after all if Goldman prop (whatever it is called these days) can't take the other side of the clients' trades, nobody gets paid. Yet Tommy still gets paid the big bucks: Why? For insights like these: "Cyclical forces and continued fiscal stress account for the lack of a EUR/$ rally...and we see little chance that they resolve themselves near term for EUR/$ higher." So cutting right to the good stuff: "Our structural, long term thought framework has not changed; we think global macro and flow fundamentals still argue for a weak USD and this theme will likely overwhelm other currency market developments on a one to two year horizon." We get it: the EURUSD can't go higher, but the USD is going lower. Mmmk.

THIS is the fate that awaits the European banking system. Every single EU bank has leveraged itself based on financial models that consider sovereign bonds to be “risk free.” Moreover, EVERY EU bank is leverage to the hilt based on its OWN in-­?house assessment of the riskiness of its loan portfolio.

So what did happen in Spain today?  What is causing Spanish bonds to go down so much? The first answer is relatively easy.  Nothing much new happened in Spain today, just variations of the same theme that has been out there for weeks if not months.  What we have is a struggling country with many banks that would view struggling as a compliment. So why are bonds down so much?  Bonds are down because someone had some bonds to sell and that started the cascade.

Just for a moment imagine you are a market maker in the Spanish bond market.  You aren’t even an aggressive market maker, so you just make markets on the 5 year and 10 year bond.... You look up at the street screens and they just went offered.  Cr*p, no street bid. Now what to do? 

European equities continue the trend of the week as they move lower throughout the morning session, as no news is bad news from Greece. In the early hours of the session, reports from German press revealed that the Troika have cancelled their May mission to the country, on the grounds that the current political instability could derail the rescue effort. The continued risk-aversion in Europe is evident in the strong demand for both German and British securities, as both countries sell strongly in their respective auctions. As such, the German Bund contract has hit on all time highs several times in the session today and the Spanish yield on their 10-yr government bond remains elevated above the 6.00% mark. Overnight source comments speculated that the Spanish government are pressing their national banks to set aside between EUR 20-40bln in funds for bad loan provisions and capital buffers. The reports have weighed down on the IBEX 35 throughout the morning, which is currently severely underperforming its European counterparts.

• Borrowers Face Big Delays in Refinancing Mortgages (WSJ)
• Greek left attacks ‘barbarous’ austerity (FT)
• Would-be suicide bomber was U.S. informant (Reuters)
• Cameron says Euro needs single government: report (Reuters)
• Demonstrators targeting BofA annual meeting (Reuters)
• Moody’s Bank Downgrades Risk Choking European Recovery (Bloomberg)
• Lehman E-Mails Show Wall Street Arrogance Led to the Fall (Bloomberg)
• What Hollande must tell Germany (Martin Wolf) (FT)
• Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies (BusinessWeek)

All you need to read and some more.

Yesterday it was Fitch setting the groundwork. Today the natural escalation has arrived, with a Handelsblatt report that German coalition lawmakers saying they are open to a Greek farewell. To wit: "Politicians of the CDU-FDP coalition will no longer look on the goings on passively. Given the uncertain political situation in Greece are advocating for a withdrawal of the crisis-Mediterranean Heads of State from the euro zone. "We should offer Greece, leaving the euro zone controlled, without withdrawing from the European Union." For now this is merely posturing, as Greek is doing all it can to make it clear it does not need Germany. Of course, Germany has no other choice but to reply the way it has. The only problem is that the Nash equilibrium is now of mutual defection, which is the worst possible outcome for Europe, and even worse for US taxpayers, whose cash via the FRBNY's FX swaps will be used to rescue Europe when the dominoes finally tumble. But at this point, this it is pretty much a given.

One word: Spain, and more specifically, 6.00%+. That's where Spanish 10 Year bond yields are again, with Spanish CDS soaring to a fresh all time wide of 512 bps (+13.5 bps), and the Spanish-Bund spread blowing out to the widest since November. And to think it was only two days ago that the schizo market interpreted Spain's bank sector nationalization as good news. It may be for the bank sector (for a few days at least), but it sure isn't for the sovereign which would end up onboarding on the risk. Naturally, 48 hours later the market has figured out this fine nuance and is dumping everything Spain related once again. That this is surprising is an overstatement: we have seen all of this before, only last time it was Greece. Hopefully the same playbook works for Spain, and works better. The result - redness everywhere, especially in the aftermath of an implosion, and halt, in Italy's oldest and one of its biggest banks (guess which PIIG is next on the nationalization bandwagon), after Italian prosecutors on Wednesday ordered searches at the headquarters of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and its top shareholder in a probe over alleged market manipulation linked to Monte Paschi's 2007 purchase of smaller peer Antonveneta. From Reuters: "Prosecutors in Siena, where Monte dei Paschi is based, said in a statement the offices of several Italian and foreign financial institutions based in Italy were also being searched by financial police as well as private homes, without elaborating. They said the searches were part of an investigation into possible market manipulation and obstructing the work of regulators with regard to raising the funds to buy Antonveneta." But probably the worst news comes from Bank of America which summarizes the Greek situation as follows: "If another election takes place, as seems very likely, Syriza could win. Their populist rhetoric is gaining momentum in Greece. Moreover, left voters from the Communist Party of Greece and Democratic Left are likely to vote for Syriza given its chance to win." Which naturally, is Europe's biggest nightmare. Sorry to say, but Europe appears very much unfixed and is about to break even more.