Archive - Nov 2013

"The reality is we're doing less with less," is the dismal reality facing Fresno police chief and appears to sum up the situation facing many of America's cash-strapped cities (as we previously discussed here). Fresno's problem, as the mayor put it, "we have no money in the current account all." The situation was so dire that covering an unexpected expense—a new air-conditioning unit or firetruck, for example, would mean slicing into the payroll or borrowing from another depleted city fund. "We can get through the day to day. [But] if there's a derailed train, a natural disaster, where's the money going to come from?" Like many other cities, Fresno saw its sales- and property-tax revenue plummet as the economy tanked. In response, the city slashed services and staff. Fresno now can pay its bills, but it can't do much more than that.

Over 2 years ago when we first discussed the fact that "muddle through" had failed, BCG noted that "there were only painful ways out of this mess." The most painful truth, they suggested, was that "the only way to resolve the massive debt load is through a global coordinated debt restructuring... which will have to be funded by the world's financial asset holders: the middle-and upper-class' who will have a ~30% one-time tax on all their assets to look forward to as the great mean reversion finally arrives and the world is set back on a viable path." However, given the delay (and worst progression), Ken Rogoff warns that temporary wealth taxes may well be a part of the answer for countries in fiscal trouble today, and the idea should be taken seriously; but they are no substitute for fundamental long-term reform to make tax systems simpler, fairer, and more efficient.

Having been the first to warn the world about the perils of high frequency trading nearly 5 years ago, when momentum ignition, layering and quote stuffing were still incomprehensible buzzwords to all but a select few algo traders from Citadel, GETCO and DE Shaw, and warning about such top-down systemic lock ups like flash-crash over a year in advance; as well as the bottom-up impacts of 20 year old math PhDs being in charge of market topology, our crusade from the micro has since shifted to the macro and the primary nemesis of all that is free and fair, the Federal Reserve. In the intervening years, traders such as Haim Bodek opened the HFT kimono even more publicly a few years ago. The following is a must-watch documentary for every investor and trader to comprehend just what it is (and who it is) that drives stock prices day in and day out.

With the economy now more than 4 years into an expansion, which is long by historical standards, the question for you to answer by looking at the charts below is: "Are we closer to an economic recession or a continued expansion?" How you answer that question should have a significant impact on your investment outlook as financial markets tend to lose roughly 30% on average during recessionary periods. However, with margin debt at record levels, earnings deteriorating and junk bond yields near all-time lows, this is hardly a normal market environment within which we are currently invested. Therefore, we present a series of charts which view the overall economy from the same perspective utilizing an annualized rate of change. (Spoiler Alert: the economy is far to weak to stand on its own two feet.)

... but for those who can, and wish to see beyond the propaganda of the Eurozone's unelected leaders, here is Natixis with a candid, honest summary of Europe's sad, "unsustainable" predicament.

VPRO Backlight has just released the documentary we did with them earlier this year.  Wall Street Code is about the blatant and planned fixing of, specifically, the US financial markets. 

Tsunami Wouldn’t Have Taken Out the Reactors If Tepco Had Left the Natural Seawall In Place

The ObamaCare website rollout fiasco, joined by the bait-and-switch “You can keep your current insurance (not)” tempest, obscure the fundamental quandary about so-called health-care in America: that it is a gigantic racket structured to allow countless layers of grift and counter-grift. The end product of all that artifice is that medical care costs twice as much in America as any other civilized country, and that it has to be operated by a cruel and despotic matrix of poorly coordinated bureaucracies that commonly leave people more disabled financially than the diseases that brought them into the system. ObamaCare was designed to work like a giant roll of duct tape that would allow the current cast of characters in charge (Democratic Progressives) to pretend that the system could keep going a few years longer.

Market attention is on the Third Plenary Session meeting of the 18th Central Committee (Third Plenum), where a blueprint for major reforms over the next decade is to be announced during the four-day congress starting on November 9. However, history shows that economic growth tends to be lower after major third plenum meetings. This is because structural reforms, while good in the longer term, tend to slow growth in the near term. While this is 'bad' for the global economy overall, the following nine nations, who are dependent on China to consumer over one-half of all their total exports, are particularly at risk.

Following Jimmy Kimmel's infamous kids roundtable where the solution proferred by one young chap was to "kill all the Chinese people" since they are the ones we owe money to, the Chinese people decided enough was enough and put together this brief tutorial on China, and how many 'peoples' have tried to kill them in the past... meet "The Undying Chinese"

This morning's announcement of the 25% rise in the IPO price of Twitter raised a few eyebrows across Wall and Main Street. Most will argue that investors have all learned many lessons in the 18 months since Facebook IPO'd to a clarion call for retail money large and small from every form of media that exists... The following headlines from the pre-IPO suggest, unfortunately, that we learned absolutely nothing...

Store of value, gold coin buyers more than tripled their purchases from the U.S. Mint in October from the prior month, U.S. Mint data confirmed.

The Dow Transports continue their entirely sensible march to infinity as they have no risen over 11% in the last 19 days with only 4 marginally lower days in that period. The S&P tested lower around the open but that 'dip' was mandatorily bid and lifted the index back towards the highs (with a 330 Ramp off VWAP for good measure). Volumes in futures, options, and stocks were absolutely abysmal (S&P futures lowest non-holiday in a couple years). The USD decided to limp lower (led by EUR strength), gold and oil ended unch (silver and copper -1%), Treasury yields very modestly lower, and VIX was banged back under 13%. Credit remains un-impressed (though rallied modestly in the day).

Moments ago the Treasury released its marketable borrowing estimates for Fiscal Q1 and Q2: it revealed that funding needs for the October-December quarter declined from $230 billion to $204 billion, while the Q1 funding needs set at $356 billion, in line with last year's number. And yet, the Treasury also announced that despite a lower funding need in the current quarter, it would proceed with issuing $32 billion more in net Treasurys, or $266 billion, than previously estimated. Why? To push the quarter end cash balance from $80 billion to $140 billion at December 31, 2013. This is the highest quarter-ending cash balance since 2010. Why is the Treasury scrambling to build up cash ahead of calendar 2014? Simple: as is well-known, the debt ceiling drama comes back with a vengeance in late January and early February, and this one promises to be just as theatrical and protracted as all prior ones.

Hiding Your Head In the Sand Doesn’t Work …