Archive - Dec 10, 2013

There has been quite a bit of discussion lately over the rapid reduction in the government's budget deficit as it relates to economic growth going forward. There are 3 issues that will likely impede further progress on the deficit reduction in the months ahead; 1) lower rates of tax revenue, 2) weaker economic growth and 3) greater levels of spending. The good news for stock market bulls is that deepening budget deficits increase the amount of bonds that the Treasury will need to issue to cover the shortfall in spending.  This will give the Federal Reserve more room to continue their current monetary interventions which have inflated asset prices sharply over the last year. Creating financial instability to gain economic stability has been an elusive dream of the Federal Reserve since the turn of the century; yet someday it is hoped that they may just be able to "catch their own tail."

"... The entire socio-economic model is now built on this and, whether right or wrong, it demands a very different sort of banking that the "pay 3% on deposits and lend them at 5%" kind of industry of the 70s and 80s. Volcker risks over-egging the pudding and, to mix my metaphors, killing the goose that lays the golden "growth" egg. Liquidity, the holy grail of markets, is possibly about to be sacrificed on the altar of ignorance and fear."

Following yesterday's epic, grotesquely illegal smashing the close in the VIX, we decided to have some fun 10 minutes before the close, and, in jest, summoned the VIX Smash Hulk. To our complete lack of surprise, he appeared.

At 4:15 pm Eastern, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach will be discussing the economy, the markets and his outlook for the future. Readers can register for the webcast at the following link, while for those stuck with phones can dial-in at (877) 407-6050 or (201) 689-8022 international.

Between new lows, new highs, advancers, decliners, lagging volumes, and stalling momentum, technicals have signaled another Hindenburg Omen (following Friday's) as the cluster builds once again. While it may not have lived up to its ominous name in the last year of liquidity, it highlights market anxiety and internals are growing more concerned... still believe the taper is priced in? Strength in Treasuries and gold (and silver) suggest safe-havens are being sought after. VIX is on the rise once again (and its most inverted in over 2 months); and even JPY carry traders (which dragged stock lower tick fgor tick with EURJPY once again) reduced exposure.

"We think that something structurally has changed since the GFC, a change that seems destined to continue to hold back growth in the near-term and more worryingly has lowered the longer-term trend rate of growth. In the absence of structural reforms, a lack of appetite for debt restructuring and no ability to pursue more aggressive fiscal policy, the temptation will be strong globally to continue to throw liquidity at the problem which is likely to continue to have more impact on asset prices than the actual economy. Bubbles could easily form which could ultimately be the catalyst for the imbalances that will likely lead to the next recession or crisis... Our base case is that the world needs low yields and high liquidity given the huge amount of outstanding debt that we’re still left with post the leverage bubble and the GFC. There’s still too much leverage for us to believe that accidents won’t happen with the removal of too much stimulus. If we’re correct, we may see a reaction somewhere to tapering and this in turn may force the Fed into a much slower tapering path than it wants."

For practitioners of Schadenfreude, seeing high-profile investors losing their shirts is always amusing. But for the true connoisseur, the finest expression of the art comes when a high-profile investor identifies a bubble, perhaps even makes money out of it, exits in time – and then gets sucked back in only to lose everything in the resultant bust. An early example is the case of Sir Isaac Newton and the South Sea Company... but there are much more recent examples that may prove just as disastrous...

Much has been said about Bitcoin: an alternative currency; a "honeypot" scheme by the central banks and Feds to capture excess cash, punish the rebellious and track abusers of money laundering laws; a revolution against fiat. Perhaps one other word may be used as well: "distraction"?

Of course, we are sure this will be dismissed by any and all stock pushers as perfectly normal and possible... but an hour of trading in SBUX in a 1c range seems a little too much for even the biggest efficient market believer...

The bombs are going to drop – increased forward guidance on rates and decreased direct bond purchases – but these policies in and of themselves are just tactical. What’s really at stake is the strategic meaning of these policies, the belief system that takes hold (or doesn’t) around the power of the Fed to create market outcomes.  Over the next three or four months we’re going to see quite a battle for the hearts and minds of investors, with both “sides” employing the Narrative of Don’t Fight the Fed. On the one hand you will have the Fed, with their Jericho Trumpet of Hilsenrath et al shrieking at you a new interpretation of the Narrative: ZIRP is the source of the Fed’s power, not QE, so tapering is no big deal. On the other hand you also have the Fed, but the Fed of the past several years and the way it has trained the market to believe that the portfolio rebalancing effect … i.e., the behavioral impact of QE that Bernanke has directly credited with driving up the stock market … is what really matters. And if that’s your reality, then tapering is a big deal, indeed. I’ll be monitoring all this closely at Epsilon Theory in the weeks ahead.

All five regulatory agencies put to a vote and approved the Volcker rule on Tuesday, supposedly, as The WSJ reports, ushering in a new era of tough oversight that drills to the core of Wall Street's profitable markets and trading businesses. As President Obama just ordered via Bloomberg:

• *OBAMA SAYS VOLCKER RULE WILL MAKE FINANCIAL SYSTEM SAFER

Of course, now the various regulators line up at the trough demanding more funding to cover all the details of all the pages of all the new laws that all of the banks will now have to address on all of their trades...

There, everything is fixed, now go shopping...

The % of NYSE stocks above their 200-day moving averages has a strong bearish divergence similar to previous plunge-preceding divergences. As BofAML notes, this points to diminishing momentum for market breadth and preceded pullbacks in the range of 15%-20% in 2010 and 2011; increasing the risk for a US equity market pullback in 2014.

They will try the head-fake taper. They must. It will be backstopped by and saturated in statistical lying, and everyone will have trouble parsing the probable effect because the chronic dishonesty loose in this land will have deformed and impaired all metrics of true value. At the heart of whatever remains of this economy is fire, and the officers of the Federal Reserve are playing with it. Pretty soon, we’ll get the un-taper, the final surrender to the crack-up boom that awaits before the western world has to go medieval.

While much has been said about the benefits of Bernanke's wealth effect to the asset-owning "10%", just as much has been said about the ever deteriorating plight of the remaining debt-owning 90%, who are forced to resort to labor to provide for their families, and more specifically how their living condition has deteriorated over not only the past five years, since the start of the Fed's great experiment, but over the past several decades as well. However, in the case of America's "servant" class, Al Jazeera finds that their plight is now worse than it has been at any time over the past century, going back all the way to 1910!