Archive - Jul 12, 2012

Three short articles on investor sentiment, and why this rally was doomed from the start.

The venerable Bank of America recently sent letters to 60,000 struggling homeowners with the caveat-ridden generous offer of slicing an average $150,000 off their loans; the response was... silence. It seems the total and utter 'borrower fatigue', as Bloomberg puts it, that leaves homeowners relying on the very same banks that committed loan servicing abuses to avert foreclosures. Yet another program, that BofA specifically accounts for almost half of the fines of, ends up helping far fewer people than intended. Simply put, borrowers have lost faith in the process.

The good news: the deficit in June was $59.7 billion, just on top of expectations of $60.0 billion. The bad news: the June deficit was $59.7 billion, following $125 billion in May (and yes, right after that shocking and one-time, tax return driven $59 billion surplus in April), and $16.7 billion higher compared to last June. Total debt in June increased by $85.7 billion so more or less in line. The cumulative deficit in Fiscal 2012 is now $904 billion through June, compared to $970 billion last year over the same period. Will this ever change? Not as long as profligate spending-encouraging record low yield is there. Tune in next month when we find that the July deficit was about $140 billion in line with historical data.

In reality, it is little surprise that behaviorally we see risk markets recover from precipitous declines - we are an optimistic bunch of knife-catchers after all. Credit Suisse's Global Risk Appetite index uses a number of factors to track the herd's shift from euphoria to dysphoria, and uses those panic levels to BTFD. The typical response function is around a 230 day upswing in animal spirits before reality sets in from now-euphoric levels. It seems that from the April 2011 'panic' levels in their index, we are about a month away from it being as good as it is going to get and the BTFD'ers will perhaps notice from the chart below that as time has gone on (from the '82 recovery to the current recovery) that the response function has had diminishing potential - as we are very near to Peak Recovery.

There remains some confusion about the timing of actions around the PFG Best disaster. From withdrawn salary cuts to liquidation-only orders to forced liquidations from Friday to Monday, CNBC's Rick Santelli provides a succinct and shocking insight into what real money accounts and brokers have dealt with and continue to try to comprehend. The sad truth about where the money went is summed up by his guest that "we're just hearing rumors; it could be, on a percentage basis worse, than MF Global."

Anyone expecting fireworks in today's 30 Year bond auction, and hoping a repeat of yesterday's WTF 10 Year bond auction which saw the High Yield 6 bps inside the When Issued, will be disappointed. Yes, the auction priced at a record low yield of 2.58% (that said, only 40.64% was allotted at the high with a 2.436% low yield), and yes, this was again well through the When Issued 2.594%, but that's about as far as it goes: the Bid to Cover was 2.70, in line with the TTM average 2.64, Primary Dealers were stuck with 43.1% of the auction, below the average take down of just over half, while the key Directs took down 20.1% of the issue, which again was high, but nowhere near yesterday's soaring Direct activity, which led many to speculate that there could either be a collateral squeeze, or a rapid reallocation from the ECB's ZIRP cash into US paper (coupled with even more EURUSD repatriation as BAC has also figured out now, only one year after ZH). Bottom line a snooze, and next we look forward to two weeks from today, when the next trio of 2, 5, 7 year auctions is on deck, which just may send total US debt to $16 trillion.

Those hoping that the recent short squeeze which took the market to just why of its 2012 highs will repeat itself may be disappointed, because according to the NYSE, Short Interest as of June 29 plunged to 14.2 billion shares, from well over 14.7 billion two weeks prior, a drop of over half a billion shares, or the most since January, when the combination of LTRO 1, Twist and renewed hope that the economy was "improving" forced 783K shares to cover into the big October-March ramp. The current short interest level of 14.2 billion shares is the third highest of 2012, and was last seen back in November 2011 when the market needed a global coordinated intervention and the ECB's LTRO announcement to prevent i from taking out 2012 lows.

It seems every week there are new acronyms or catchy-phrases for Europe's Rescue and Fiscal Progress decisions. Goldman Sachs provides a quick primer on everything from ELA to EFSM and from Two-Pack (not Tupac) to the Four Presidents' Report.

Just as we noted here, the analyst estimates for the potential impact of Libor (litigation and regulatory) liabilities have begun. Morgan Stanley sees up to a 17% hit to 2012 EPS (from $420 to $847 million per bank) in a worst case from just regulatory costs, and a further 6.8% potential hit to 2013 EPS if the top-down $400 million average per banks losses from litigation are taken on one year (considerably more if the bottom-up numbers of more than $1 billion are included). They see LIBOR risk in three parts: regulatory fines (we est median 7-12% hit to ‘12 EPS; litigation risk (7% EPS hit over 2 yrs); and less certainty on forward earnings. There are a plethora of assumptions - as one would expect - but the ranges of potential regulatory fine and litigation risk are very large though the MS analysts make the greater point that the LIBOR 'fixing' broadens investor support for more transparency in fixed income trading in addition to fixed income clearing leaving the threat of thinner margins as another investor concern.

Portugal is a country that I’ve always enjoyed, full of warm, welcoming people, excellent wine, and great weather. I came to Porto, the country’s second largest city of some 1.5 million, to get a sense of what’s been happening since the eurocalypse...

European equity indices are plunged today - extending the losses from the US yesterday - with Spain and Italy underperforming. Spain's IBEX is now -1.4% from pre-EU Summit levels though the rest are all green still (with Italy's MIB lowest of the rest at +1.5%). However, it seems that broad European stocks are finally catching-down to the dismal weakness in European credit (both financials and corporates) since the EU Summit. Europe's sovereign bond spreads all leaked wider on the day (be careful with yields since the benchmark 'safe havens' are so bid right now thanks to the flood of deposits into the front-end of German, Swiss, Dutch, and Austrian repo-able instruments). Spain and Italy remain wider than pre-EU-Summit levels (marginally) - though today saw the CDS-cash basis (as we noted in the pre-European open was likely) compress on these as Spain's 5Y CDS tests 575bps again. EURUSD broke 1.22 - new two-year lows - and is closing the Europe session below that level but the EUR crosses are all heading towards record lows (interestingly watching EURJPY as chatter is a rotation from JPY to EUR as a funding currency). German 2Y joined Swiss 2Y in the NIRP world as we note that the Swiss curve us now negative out to 5Y once again.

Can’t keep count of EGB all-time lows anymore: let’s simplify by saying that the whole non-Peripherals EGB universe up to 5 YRS has traded new all-time lows today. Under pressure… 

While GM can still fool some of the people, most of the time with near record channel stuffing, even as more and more are waking up and suing the company for just this, it seems the same type of strategy of load up dealers with unsellable electric cars has failed miserably in Europe. From WSJ: "General Motors Co. said Karl-Friedrich Stracke has stepped down as president of its loss-making European division, though the restructuring program initiated under his leadership will continue. GM said Mr. Stracke will take another, unnamed position at the U.S. auto maker and that Opel supervisory board chairman Steve Girsky will serve in his place on an interim basis. "Karl Stracke worked tirelessly, under great pressure, to stabilize this business and we look forward to building on his success," GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson said in a statement." The 'success' that as pointed out, has led to a loss-making divions. With successful leaders like these who needs failures?

In broad brush, financialization enabled the explosive rise of politically dominant cartels (crony capitalism) that reap profits from graft, legalized fraud, embezzlement, collusion, price-fixing, misrepresentation of risk, shadow systems of governance, and the use of phantom assets as collateral.  This systemic allocation of resources and the national income to serve their interests also serves the interests of the protected fiefdoms of the State that enable and protect the parasitic sectors of the economy. The productive, efficient private sectors of the economy are, in effect, subsidizing the most inefficient, unproductive parts of the economy.  Productivity has been siphoned off to financialized corporate profits, politically powerful cartels, and bloated State fiefdoms.  The current attempts to “restart growth” via the same old financialization tricks of more debt, more leverage, and more speculative excess backstopped by a captured Central State are failing.

Neofeudal financialization and unproductive State/private vested interests have bled the middle class dry.

Katrina is still the best argument for self-reliance. Oh, no! Here comes FEMA.