Archive - 2012

Following last week's Easter egg by JPMorgan, the misses by financials continue, with Citi crapping the bed following a big miss in both top and bottom line after reporting $17.2 billion and $0.38 EPS on expectations of $18.5 billion and $0.52 per share. The biggest hit to the top line was the DVA adjustment courtesy of tightening CDS spreads, which while adding to top and bottom line in Q3, took out $1.9 billion in Q4 - of course like everything else it was also priced in. And while we are confident the full earnings presentation will be a labyrinth of loss covering, the first thing to realize is that absent a $1.5 billion in loan loss reserve releases, the bank would have reported negative net income, which was $1.364 billion pretax. Yet there is no way to explain the absolute bloodbath in the Securities and Banking group, which saw revenues implode by 53% from $6.7 billion to $3.2 billion Y/Y, and down 10% Q/Q. Notably, Lending revenues down 84% from $1 billion to $164 million. RIP Carry Trade.

All you need to read.

Recently, public interest in gold and silver and gold/silver mining stocks has been at multi-year lows. And that is a super bullish contrarian indicator.

So, who're you gonna believe, your NYC broker or your lyin' eyes???? Another Reggie Middleton "I told 'ya so" exclusive...

It's all over but the crying at least as far as Greece is concerned. First, it was S&P's Kraemer telling Bloomberg yesterday the country is finished, now today for dramatic impact, we get Fitch's repeating the doom and gloom, stating that the country will likely default before its March 20 payment. From Bloomberg: "Greece is insolvent and will default on its debts, Fitch Ratings Managing Director Edward Parker said. The euro area’s most indebted country is unlikely to be able to honor a March 20 bond payment of 14.5 billion euros ($18 billion), Parker said in an interview in Stockholm today. Efforts to arrange a private sector deal on how to handle Greece’s obligations would constitute a default at Fitch, he said.  “The so called private sector involvement, for us, would count as a default, it clearly is a default in our book,” Parker said. “So it won’t be a surprise when the Greek default actually happens and we expect it one way or the other to be relatively soon." Europe’s debt crisis is likely to be “long and drawn out,” Parker said." And here we go again, with official attempts to make what appeared apocalyptic as recently as a month ago, seem trite, boring and perfectly anticipated. In other words, the fact that this like every other piece of bad news that should be priced in, is priced in, is priced in. And so on, at least according to the kleptocrats, until we finally learn that nothing is priced in but endless market stupidity.

A failure of the NYC public school system featuring my daughter. For those that don't see the link between herd mentaility education and investing, my 5 year old son predicted the housing crash, Goldman's analysts and Bernanke didn't. 'Nuff said!

Gold coin purchases gained 13% last year and will increase 2.7% in the first half. Purchases of gold bars increased by 36% to nearly 2,000 (1,194) metric tonnes, concentrated in China, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. East Asia demand for gold bars rose 53% to 456 metric tonnes. India rose 9% to 297 metric tonnes and western markets demand for gold bars rose 41% to 335 metric tonnes. Central banks increased net purchases by a massive fivefold to 430 tons last year, and may buy another 90 tons in the first half, GFMS said. Combined official holdings stand at 30,788.9 tons, data from the London-based World Gold Council show. “Attitudes among central banks haven’t really changed,” Thomson Reuters GFMS annual survey said. “There’s still that desire to come into the gold market to diversify some of the assets away from foreign exchange and to boost gold holdings.” The Thomson Reuters GFMS annual gold survey also predicts that gold will struggle in the first half of the year, increasing in the later half towards $2,000. It also says the gold bull market is losing steam and predicts an end to the run as economies recover next year and interest rates begin to rise.

The good news out of Europe is that despite the long-overdue downgrade 4 countries plus the EFSF issued debt successfully, namely the EFSF as well as Spain, Belgium, Greece And Hungary. The bad news is that all of the debt issued was Bills, which at least for now is not an issue when it comes to market access as the market believes that LTRO cash will cover anything with a sub-3 year maturity courtesy of the LTRO, even if in reality nobody is using the LTRO for debt roll purposes and all auctions are net cash withdrawing from the system. In brief: the EFSF sold €1.5 billion in 6 month bills at a 0.2664% yield and 3.10 BTC; Spain issued €4.9 billion out of a €5 targeted in 12 and 18 month bills, which priced better than the last such auction from December 13, at mixed Bids to Cover; Belgium raised €1.76 billion in 3 month bills at a higher yield or 0.429% compared to 0.264% before and in line BTC as well as €1.2 billion in 12 month Bills at a 1.162% yield compared to 2.167% and a lower BTC; Greece bill yields fell at a 3 month bill auction to 4.64% vs 4.68% before, selling €1.625 bn with €1.25b in competitive auction, meeting maximum competitive auction target of EU1.25b and so on. The picture is simple: when it comes to funding itself, Europe is great at ultra-short term debt, and not so good at anything longer. Regardless, Europe will spin this as a great success considering the S&P downgrade over the weekend. We'll wait to see how bond auctions longer than 5 years will fare, if of course any non-Bill auctions are conducted in Europe in the future. Some other good news came from the German Jan. ZEW confidence index which came at 28.4 vs est. 24.0. The result is that the expected EURUSD short covering has kicked in, and the pair is flirting with 1.28, as we get recoupling between asset classes. Bottom line: ultra short term debt and a rise in confidence is sufficient to push futures up by about 11 ES points. In the meantime, as the chart below shows, we get another record high parking of cash by European banks with the ECB at €502 billion, as the European superstorm - the failure of Greek restructuring talks - is about to hit, and banks have to prepare for the unknowable. Also, today we will likely see S&P begin downgrading hundreds of European banks and insurance companies. But that to is surely largely priced in.

• Greece Running Out of Time as Debt Talks Stumble (Bloomberg)
• China Economic Growth Slows, May Prompt Wen to Ease Policies (Bloomberg)
• Spain Clears Short Term Debt Test, Bigger Hurdle Looms (Reuters)
• U.S. Market Shrinks for First Time Since 2009 (Bloomberg)
• IMF, EU May Need to Give E. Europe More Help (Bloomberg)
• Securities Regulator to Relax Rules on Listing (China Daily)
• Monti Seeks German Help on Borrowing (FT)
• Draghi Questions Role of Ratings Companies After Downgrades (Bloomberg)

When we learned of the MF Global client theft scandal, in the aftermath of its sudden bankruptcy filing, the one thing we predicted would happen (in addition to Jon Corzine never going to prison) was that many more brokers, banks and broadly financial intermediaries would be discovered having dipped in client accounts, or otherwise "commingled" capital in direct violation of the first rule of banking. Sure enough, a little over two months since, the second notable company to have been alleged to have abused client capital for own purposes has emerged. And it comes to us courtesy of sleep Canada whose "banks are all fine." As the Winnipeg Free Press reports, "One of Canada's investment regulators has accused Barret Capital Management, a firm specialized in futures and options on metals and other exchange-traded commodities, of using client money for its own purposes. The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada warned Monday that Barret clients are at risk due to the firm's "ongoing misappropriation of their money to fund losing trades and ongoing misinformation about the value and holdings in their accounts." IIROC has set a hearing for Tuesday morning to suspend Barret's membership in the organization and stop Barret from dealing with the public. In requesting the expedited hearing, the regulator alleged Barret made "significant misrepresentations to clients including through manipulating account values, misrepresenting account values and holdings by way of false account statements or otherwise providing false information to clients and by manipulating on and off book payments to clients." Where the story gets even more interesting is when one takes a look at just what it is that the company engages in, and how it fits into the scenario analysis conducted in the MF Global aftermath.

That after last year's abysmal performance on Wall Street, best summarized by the following quarterly JPMorgan Investment Banking revenue and earnings chart, bonuses season would be painful should not surprise anyone. But hardly anyone expected it to be quite this bad. The WSJ reports that Morgan Stanley, likely first of many, will cap cash bonuses at $125,000 and "will defer the portion of any bonus past $125,000 until December 2012 and December 2013" with bigger 'sacrifices' to be suffered by the executive committee which, being held accountable for the collapse in its stock price, will defer their entire bonuses for 2011. Morgan Stanley is likely just the beginning: "As banks report fourth-quarter results this month and make bonus decisions for 2011, total compensation is likely to be the lowest since 2008." This means that once Goldmanites get their numbers later this week, we will likely see a mass exodus for hedge funds which remain the only oasis of cash payouts on Wall Street. Alas, unlike the Bank Holding Companies, a series of bad decisions will result in hedge fund closure, as the TBTF culture will never penetrate the stratified air of Greenwich, CT. And with bonuses capped at about $80K after taxes, or barely enough to cover the running tab at the local Genlteman's venue, the biggest loser will be the state and city of New York, both of which are about to see their tax revenues plummet. And since banker pay is responsible for a substantial portion of Federal tax revenue, look for Federal tax withholding data in the first few months of 2012 to get very ugly, making America even more responsible on debt issuance, and likely implying the yet to be re-expanded by $1.2 trillion debt ceiling will be breached just before the Obama election making it into the biggest talking point of the election cycle.

Eurozone special: the only developed economy where credit markets still have a say.

I continue to believe that the large difference between the valuation of WFC and C is actually about right and is a function of the high-risk business model at C.  Say what you want about the piles of cash, Dick Bove, C has a gross yield on lending assets that is more than 350bp above the industry average, a function of a subprime internal default target for the average customer.  This is a deliberate business model choice and one that, frankly, makes it hard for me to justify buying C. 

"King would say 'Please finish what I started.' "