Archive - Sep 19, 2012

While we are bombarded with talking heads telling us that there is money-on-the-sidelines and everyone is so bearish with the market climbing a wall of worry, the reality - as we see across multiple asset classes - is that investors are overweight risk assets (e.g. credit investors overweight IG and HY and mutual fund cash at record lows), near-extreme levels of bullishness (AAII and Put-Call Ratios), near extreme levels of non-bearishness (AAII), and yet credit investors believe markets are overvalued (though still buying) even as IG and HY bonds are seeing near-record highs in advance-decline.

In a strange centrally-planned 'see-it's-only-transitory' trick, crude oil prices have suffered a significant post-coital hangover each time the Fed has engaged its QE-warp drive. As the following chart shows, the current swing lower is ahead of pace compared to the previous two 'schemes' which stopped dropping after 10 days (QE2) and 20 days (QE1). It's almost as if someone wanted to prove that extreme monetary policy does indeed have no inflationary impact on the price of energy - or perhaps its just an over-crowded and obvious pre-QE trade coming undone in a hurry (like stocks?)

It seems that the recent foray of Mayor Bloomberg into determining what one may and may not consume based on calorie count, was just the appetizer, so to say. As some may recall, back in March we wrote that based on OECD predictions, up to 75% of the US nation will be overweight or obese. Now, none other than Uncle Sam has gotten wind that his population will soon be primarily made up of fat people. So he has a solution, which is in the vein of all other solutions where Uncle Sam is concerned: regulate, regulate, regulate.

With their recently announced additional bond purchase programs, both the Fed and the ECB have added a new chapter to their respective handbooks. While at first glance they are both simply the end-game of money-printing-monkeys, Morgan Stanley sees some similarities but more differences that are critical to understand when judging the awesomeness (or not) of these actions. The ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), in contrast to the previous SMP program, will be ex ante unlimited in size but conditional upon government action. Likewise, the Fed’s additional purchases of agency MBS are ex ante unlimited in size (the monthly pace will be US$40 billion but the program is open-ended) and conditional (though not upon government action but labor market performance). Another parallel is that there was only one dissenting member each in the two policy committees (Jeffrey M. Lacker and Jens Weidmann). However, this is where the similarities end. Looking at the details, the two programs actually differ in five important respects.

Fukushima ... The Gift that Keeps On Giving

After last week's presentation, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach (having rotated his spec play from Long Nattie, Short AAPL - which was a winner - to Long SHCOMP, Short SPX) committed the cardinal sin in a great interview this morning with CNBC's Gary Kaminsky. The apocryphal 'new' bond guru noted that he is against big government, doesn't like risk assets at these levels, believes QE will end in higher rates (adding that he would not be surprised to see 10Y yields 100bps higher by the end of the year), but most abhorrently: "the obsession with Apple is a truly remarkable social phenomenon - the stock is over-believed and over-bought. There is NO exit for the Fed, QE3 will be ineffective, and it is more likely that the Fed buys all the Treasury bonds that exist." Two must-see clips covering why buy-and-hold is completely dead thanks to government intervention to his preference for secured credit funds (where have we heard that before?) to the huge risks in buying financial stocks and the vulnerability of risk-assets - as the world realizes the circular financing reality of Europe.

Retail has long been a source of both low-skill entry-level jobs and well-paid careers. Yes, people love to browse and stroll down the mall or shopping district, and this social/novelty function will continue. But can retailers make money off of people browsing? If retail contracts, what does this do to skyhigh commercial property valuations? The same can be asked of cubicle-farm office parks. As telecommuting and contract labor expand, the need for energy-wasting office parks and long commutes will also decline. Technology cannot be stopped, and neither can the drive to cut costs by cutting what can be cut, labor. We can legislate certain aspects of how technology is used, and fiddle with tax incentives and trade restrictions, but we cannot make people drive somewhere to go shopping or stop the 3-D printing/fabrication revolution. What all this calls into question is the entire financialization (debt-based)-consumerist model of "growth" and employment. Decades ago, young men were employed to pump gasoline at gas stations; these jobs all went away as self-service fueling became the norm. At least one state (Oregon, I believe) mandates that all gasoline is pumped by an employee of the station. This rule has created hundreds of jobs that are not necessary in terms of market-demand but that are certainly welcome.

The record US, and global, drought has come and gone but its aftereffects are only now going to be felt, at least according to a new Rabobank report, which asserts that food prices are about to soar by 15% or more following mass slaughter of farm animals which will cripple supply once the current inventory of meat is exhausted. From Sky News: "The worst drought in the US for almost a century, combined with droughts in South America and Russia, have hit the production of crops used in animal feed - such as corn and soybeans - especially hard, the report said. As a result farmers have begun slaughtering more pigs and cattle, temporarily increasing the meat supply - but causing a steep rise in the price of meat in the long-term as production slows. "Farmers producing meat are simply not making enough money at the moment because of the high cost of feed," Nick Higgins, commodity analyst at Rabobank, told Sky News. "As a result they will reduce their stock - both by slaughtering more animals and by not replacing them." Somewhat ironically. food prices are now being kept at depressed prices as the "slaughtered" stock clears the market. However once that is gone look for various food-related prices to soar: a process which will likely take place in early 2013, just in time to add to the shock from the Fiscal Cliff, which even assuming a compromise, will detract from the spending capacity of US (and by implication global) consumers.

Hmmm, if that is all what JPY 10trn can buy…

Where’s the thrill?

With tomorrow's CDS roll (when indices change composition and on-the-run maturities are extended) and Friday's major equity option expiration and S&P index reweightings, it would appear, as UBS' Art Cashin notes, that the action of the last few days (and even last week) will be largely driven by the creation of complex strategies to "milk out every ounce of profit that might be available in such huge [technical] shifts." Combine this technical factor with the Autumnal Equinox, of W.D.Gann infamy, and the stage is set for fireworks as we approach Friday.

Since the very beginning of my public writings, I have leaned heavily towards the path of inflation, by which I mean money printing or its electronic equivalent, because even a cursory review of history will show that leaders have always chosen a little money printing today and the possibility of inflation tomorrow over the immediate pain of having to live within their means or with the consequences of their poor decisions. That was just a fancy way of saying 'humans will be humans,' and while our technology has advanced tremendously over the past few decades, our DNA blueprints are virtually identical to those found in people living 50,000 years ago.  History can tell us much. Our current predicament has its roots way back in the early 1980s, when something changed in our collective psyches that allowed us to abandon thrift and savings in favor of spending and borrowing.

So, the Fed has failed to improve the economy… but it has unleashed inflation. This is called STAGFLATION folks. And the fact the Fed thinks the answer to it is printing more money tells us point blank: things are going to be getting a lot worse in the coming months.

It's almost as if someone is actively trying to force the Muslim world to launch an all out war against the "developed" west. A week ago, it was a film mocking Mohammad which led to the death of the US ambassador in Libya. Today, it is a French magazine which has ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad by portraying him naked in cartoons, which, as Reuters logically adds, "threatens to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a film depiction of him as a womanizing buffoon." It is as if the anti-Iran strategy of antagonizing the country to its breaking point, merely so the first attack comes from them in response to endless provocations, and a defensive retaliation can be spun to the "free world", has now been adopted against the entire Muslim world now, and all the insolvent Western countries are praying they get attacked just so the media spin will coalesce the sheep around the "developed" democracies in an all out "retaliatory" assault, which among other things, liberates tens of millions of barrel of oil equivalents, even as it spreads democracy and unlimited credit cards.

Oil is dropping rapidly once again - while the rest of its commodity peers remain tied to the USD movements this week. The reason? More market speculation that the House of Saud is doing everything in its power to send crude to lows just ahead of the presidential election, even as Infinite QE takes the Dow to 36,000. Just as we wrote yesterday.

A month ago we warned that loan delinquencies in Spain were bad and getting worse at a concerning rate. The most recent data update, which revised that 'bad' print to absolutely dismal, has broken records for just how ugly things are for Rajoy and his fellow countrymen. Spanish bank loan delinquencies rose to an all-time (50-year) record 9.86% with the last four months seeing simply unprecedented acceleration in the rate of bad loans. Numerically, this means that an absolutely whopping €172 billion of the €1.7 trillion in Spanish financial assets is now money bad, and will no longer  generate cash flows. This amounts to about 17% of total Spanish GDP. In GDP-equivalent terms, this would be equivalent to $2.5 trillion in US bank loans being "bad." Which, when one cuts all the prevarication and lies, is probably what the true status of the US financial system is. Add to this the now relentless deposit flight which is depleting Spanish bank coffers and one can see why the European credit death spiral is very aptly named.