Archive - Aug 15, 2012

From HFT to LIBOR manipulation and European bond legal-covenants, and now Auto-manufacturer channel-stuffing; all conspiracy 'theories' proved conspiracy 'facts' - as Gabby Douglas might say "Nailed It!" We have been vociferously pointing out the incredible levels of channel-stuffing occurring at GM in the US, then China, and most recently into Europe (must read here) and now the WSJ confirms the latter; as sales of BMW and Mercedes, helped by heavy discounts and contingencies to dealers, are being questioned.  Kenn Sparks, a BMW spokesman, said its July sales total includes vehicles that were purchased by its dealers for use as what are known as "demos"— cars used on lots for test drives. He declined to say how many reported sales were demos, saying BMW doesn't release the figure. "These vehicles may stay on the lot because they are used as demo models," he said. BMW's incentives appeared to help propel the car maker to a 1,900-vehicle lead over Mercedes-Benz (as stunningly ridiculously surprisingly 7-Series sales tripled MoM, and 3-Series doubled).

Dedicated to Charles Hugh Smith, Cog Dis, Banzai and All of the Other ZH Writers Fighting to Make the World a Tad Wiser ...

Traditional legal principles are seemingly pretty clear and straightforward on how a good faith acquisition of stolen goods is to be treated: the buyer, even though he is not criminally liable, can not acquire title to stolen property. The failed futures brokerage Sentinel Management Group lost the money of its clients in when it went into bankruptcy in 2007. According to the SEC, the firm misappropriated the funds belonging to its clients. Since then, creditors of the company have been fighting over who has title to certain assets. On the one side are the customers of Sentinel, whose funds and accounts were supposed to have been segregated from the company's assets. On the other side there is New York Mellon Bank, which lent Sentinel $312 million that were secured with collateral mainly consisting of said – allegedly 'segregated' – customer funds. The result: 'Banks that received what were essentially misappropriated goods as collateral do not have to return them to their original owners as long as they are deemed to have acted in good faith'. Legal questions aside, one thing is already certain: customers of futures brokerages can no longer have faith that their assets are in any way segregated or protected. This is yet another chink in the 'confidence armor' that has propped up the financial system to date.

As far as I can see the ECB has one of two “Bail Mary” options. They are: 1) Massive money printing and buying of sovereign debt, 2) The issuance of Euro-bonds along with across the board banking backstops.

With the Fed lowering interest rates and flattening the curve in an effort to squeeze any- and every-one into risk-assets and mal-investment; the sad truth of this action is that it forces a drastic unintended consequence on the growing population of people that actually care about the future. Critically, as Citi points out, lower yields require much higher rates of saving (both corporates and households) and while 10% of salary allocated to 'retirement savings' will meet its goals with a 4% return hurdle, at current low yields, the average-joe in the street will need to 'save' 25% of his income - cutting heavily into his current consumptive and discretionary iPad needs.

No commentary necessary.

Paint is drying, so what is the best way to break the monotony? Why with renewed Iran war speculation of course. Sure enough, here comes Saudi Arabia to the rescue. From Reuters: "Saudi Arabia has ordered its citizens to leave Lebanon “immediately”, the state news agency reported in an SMS alert on Wednesday. “The Saudi Arabian embassy in Lebanon calls all Saudi citizens to leave Lebanon immediately,” the alert said, without elaborating." Making an imminent Iran attack far less likely, however, is an article in Bloomberg titled "Israel Plans Iran Strike; Citizens Say Government Serious." Of course anyone expecting Israel to launch a strike with every paper in the world blasting the above title as a headline may as well buy some Las Vegas 10,000 square foot haciendas because housing has "bottomed." For now however Brent is leaning on the side of caution, and is back to all time highs in EUR terms.

Muppets only complain when the prop jobs and skimming fail to deliver fat gains to their accounts. But being a muppet is being a mark: it's the muppets who are being milked and skimmed. Being a participant in a hopelessly compromised, rigged market makes us marks because we're ultimately providing liquidity and capital for the players to skim. When the officially sanctioned intervention finally fails and the market leaks 40% of its current value, the muppets will finally understand the "outsized returns" were just a con used to entice them into playing digital 3-card monte. The game is rigged, but the greed of the player overrides his skepticism and caution. The same can be said for pension funds and all the other institutional players. Desperate for yield, they've foolishly ponied up hundreds of billions of dollars to play 3-card monte with crooked dealers and a crooked house.

Think the US has it bad with its "soaring" gas price, which is now back to $3.75 per gallon? Think again. Here, courtesy of Bloomberg, is a list of the countries whose gasoline cost puts what Americans pay at the pump to shame. In order of descending gas prices, below are the 20 places in the world where one does not want to "fill 'er up."

Ayn Ryan: Erection 2012 update...

Two weeks ago, PIMCO's Bill Gross stirred up a few ivory-tower academics, permabull sell-side commission-makers, and bloggers pressured by Series [X] investors to generate maximum page views when he called for the death of the cult of equities. His main point was the apparent paradox that the total return on equities can outpace GDP growth over long periods. While there has been much gnashing of teeth over this comment, Morgan Stanley has very succinctly clarified and confirmed that this is not so much a paradox as a Catch-22. The key point is that, in aggregate, investors do not typically reinvest their dividends (or coupons); and akin to Keynes' paradox of thrift, if investors actually tried this en masse then the historical returns reported in total return indices would be unachievable. So here’s the Catch-22: over the long run theoretical total returns can exceed GDP so long as investors don’t actually try to capture those returns. But if ever investors try to achieve such GDP-plus total returns, it will be impossible for returns to stay above GDP growth. Hence, equities for the short- and long-term, are essentially a Ponzi scheme - as long as everyone buys-and-holds - but if 'someone' decides (or is forced) to take-profits, equity ROE will rapidly game-theoretically collapse to GDP growth.

Nigel Farage, looking tanned and refreshed, is back and as he tells FOX Business in this brief clip "nothing has changed" from his views of Europe as the Titanic and its unelected officials dragging it down to the depths of the ocean. Citing Mario Monti specifically with his concerns over allowing politicians to 'decide' anything he notes the leader's demeanor is "We must not let democracy interfere with our great Grand Project." With European GDP negative, and group-hugs all around as Europeans are herded towards a European social state, Farage analogizes that "we are living in Noddyland" where economic reality and day-to-day life are as distant as they could be as he warns that they are becoming part of something that is increasingly resembling Communism. He dismisses the growing belief that "the state and government creates jobs" noting that "it doesn't, it destroys them!" With two wrongs (Spain ad Italy) not making a right; Farage is clear that breaking up the EU is necessary now and it is critical to recognize that "you don't get something for nothing" as Europe is increasingly de-industrialized.

The National Association of Home Builders just released it latest monthly housing market index, which rose from 35 to 37. As headlines proudly blast, this is the highest level of confidence since February 2007. The NAHB chairman was positively giddy: "From the builder’s perspective, current sales conditions, sales prospects for the next six months and traffic of prospective buyers are all better than they have been in more than five years,” said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. “While there is still much room for improvement, we have come a long way from the depths of the recession and the outlook appears to be brightening." Sadly, as the chart below proves, it doesn't take much to get the NAHB confident these days. We present the fudge free data on housing completions: not starts, not permits, completions, which is what you get on the other side of the homebuilding process once all i and t's have been dotted and crossed, because one can fudge both the start and permit metric more than Bank of Spain's X-13-ARIMA seasonal "models" can make MS' IPO track record successful. We leave it up to readers to decide just what homebuilders are so very confident about. Residual record hopium sloshing in the system notwithstanding.

Each and every day we hear, stocks are cheap - P/Es are low, money-on-the-sidelines, sentiment is contrarian-wise weak, 'it's an election year', and many other anecdotal BTFD-driving broker-based sound-bites. The truth will perhaps set you free. On both a valuation (trailing P/E and market-cap/GDP) basis and cyclical (long-term sideways trends, percentage holdings of stocks, historical election/decennial patterns, coincident-to-lagging indicators, and financials leading) basis, the fact is - the only drivers of bullish reasoning here is recent momentum, an implicit 'rationality/Bernanke put', and an implicit bias towards self-sustaining behavior by an entirely-dependent marketplace of professional commission-takers.

When one thinks US Treasurys, and demand thereof, two entities pop into mind: the Federal Reserve, which over the past 3 years has been the biggest institutional buyer of US paper, and China, which is the largest foreign holder of US TSYs. Yet over the past year something curious happened: when it comes to setting marginal demand for US Treasurys, it was neither the Fed, whose sterilized Operation Twist has kept its holdings of US Tsys relatively flat, nor China, which has actually been a major seller of US paper, that has been the dominant source of marginal demand for Uncle Sam's never to be repaid obligations. Japan.