Archive - Dec 3, 2013

Walmart today announced that Cyber Monday 2013 was the biggest online sales day in its history. The five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday is the highest five-day stretch in online sales for the retailer to date, and Walmart.com processed more than one billion page views during that period. Somehow WMT managed to process all this traffic without having to spend $1 billion in taxpayer funds to "fix" it website or having to retain Google and Oracle to comb through its 500 million lines of flawed code. So what were WMT's online shoppers spending most of their money on?

Faith in the current system is as high as it has ever been, and folks don't want to hear otherwise. If you're one of those people who thinks it prudent to have intelligent discussion on some of these risks -- that maybe the future may turn out to be less than 100% awesome in every dimension -- you're probably finding yourself standing alone at cocktail parties these days. A helpful question to ask yourself is: if I could talk to my 2009 self, what would s/he advise me to do? Don't put yourself in a position to relearn that lesson so soon after the last bubble. Exercise the wisdom to look like an idiot today.

Bitcoin is on fire. Mainstream media coverage is everywhere. No doubt, digital currency is a growing trend in Latin America… particularly in neighboring Argentina where the government has been nationalizing everything that isn’t nailed down. As a result, Bitcoins in Argentina frequently trade for more than 30% higher than in neighboring countries… presenting a rather interesting arbitrage opportunity. With all the mainstream attention, though, Bitcoin has been building its share of detractors. Most of these pieces roll out the same tired points– that nobody knows anything about the mysterious programmer who put it together… that it’s too volatile… etc. But, for the US investor, there is one big issue that remains entirely unclear...

With November in the books, a month in which the S&P rose 2.85%, and a centrally-planned 27% year to date, it is time to check how the most prominent US hedge funds are doing heading into the home stretch. As usual - it is not pretty. And yes, while hedge funds don't benchmark to the S&P, after 5 years of underperformance, their LPs sure start asking themselves why do they pay 2 and 20 at a time when one can buy the SPY for free and thanks to CIO Bernanke, outperform 98% of all hedge funds?

The broad-based measure of Treasury bond volatility - MOVE - has broken higher, and, as BofAML's MacNeil Curry notes, confirms a base and change in trend (to higher or more volatility). With the month of December traditionally a strong month for the MOVE Index and Treasury volatility in general, Curry warns there are two ways the volatility can move higher - either higher rates or lower equities.

Since Friday's holiday-shortened session, US equities have tried and failed to sustain the exuberance of the month, quarter, year. Volume is heavy but postive breadth is becoming narrower with fewer and fewer names leading the rise and the break in EURJPY is weighing heavily on the overall markets as stocks catch down to recent indications from bonds, the USD, precious metals, VIX, and credit that the Fed taper may be coming sooner than many hoped. And it's a double-POMO Day... get to work Mr. Henry.

Amid proclamations of hundreds of thousands accessing the "fixed" website (though no details on who is signing up), admissions that work continues to be needed, delays, and broken promises; President Obama has deemed it fit to utilize his lectern to market the Affordable Care Act once again.

*U.S. SAYS OBAMACARE WEBSITE ERROR RATES ARE 'AT LOW LEVELS'; but
*BOEHNER SAYS OBAMACARE IS 'FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED'

From "easy" women to keg-standing kids, there is something for everyone in this special one-time offer... grab your popcorn...

Much has been said about how the median household income in the US has gone nowhere since the great financial crisis (and in real terms has been declining for the past decade). We won't add much to this topic suffice to say that please don't take your declining income grievances to Washington D.C. for the simple reason that, as the chart below shows, what's bad for America is good for its (heavily lobbied) politicians.

The past several weeks have seen the emergence of several innovative and user friendly websites related to Bitcoin specifically, and crypto-currencies generally. The site is CoinMap.org and it serves as a sort of Google Maps for Bitcoin. The site attempts to plot the various brick and mortar retail locations across the globe that accept BTC.

Unfortunately for Bill Ackman, another leg of the "short Herbalife to the grave" thesis just broke when a Belgian Appeal Court hearing overturned its previous findings:

• *HERBALIFE 'WELCOMES' JUDGEMENT BY BELGIAN APPEAL COURT 
• *HLF CITES CLAIMS THAT HLF WAS OPERATING A PYRAMID SCHEME
• *HERBALIFE SAYS COURT STATES ITS SALES MODEL IN FULL COMPLIANCE

The stock is up 5% on the news, breaking to a new record high above $75.

As we explained over two months ago, and as the Fed is no doubt contemplating currently, the primary topic on the agenda of central bankers everywhere and certainly in the Marriner Eccles building, is how to boost inflation expectations as much as possible, preferably without doing a thing and merely jawboning "forward expectations" (or more explicitly through the much discussed nominal GDP targeting) in order to slowly but surely or very rapidly and even more surely, get to the core problem facing the developed world: an untenable mountain of debt, and specifically, inflating it away. Of course, higher rates without a concurrent pick up in economic activity means a stock market tumble, both in developed and emerging countries, as the Taper experiment over the summer showed so vividly, which in turn would crush what many agree is the Fed's only achievement over the past 5 years - creating and nurturing the "wealth effect" resulting from record high asset prices, which provides lubrication for financial conditions and permits the proper functioning of capital markets. Perhaps this is the main concern voiced by JPM's chief US economist Michael Feroli who today has issued an interesting piece titled simply enough: "Raising inflation expectations: a bad idea." Is this the first shot across the bow of a Fed which may announce its first taper as soon as two weeks from today, in order to gradually start pushing inflation expectations higher?

Now that the eminently trustworthy financial pundits are claiming the current stock market rally is good to go until 2016, it's appropriate to see where the market will be in 2016 if current trends hold.

Led by Italy and France (with Portugal and Greece relatively outperforming), European stocks extended yesterday's losses with the worst day in broad equities in over 10 weeks. EUR's weakness from yesterday was entirely dismissed as EURUSD surged back from the open in Europe this morning back up to 1.3600. EURJPY's swings are the big driver of equity weakness around the world but sovereign bonds remains relatively flat. Europe's VIX topped 17% for the first time in 3 weeks with its biggest jump in 2 months.

Confused why the various US manufacturing indices have been on a tear in the past few months? Perhaps the fact that GM dealer lots are so full of cars they just couldn't wait for even more deliveries has something to do with it. Which is also why in addition to reporting sales numbers for November that were largely in line with expectations, amounting to 212,060 (even if total Chevy Volts sold YTD of 20.7K were -0.6% less than in the same period in 2012), or 13.7% more than last year (estimated called for 13.% increase), of which a whopping 51,705 was in the form of "channel stuffed" units to be parked on dealer lots. In fact, as the chart below shows, in the past three months, GM channel stuffing has exploded and soared by 150K units (the most ever for a 3 month period) from 628.6K to 779.5K. This represents the second highest amount of channel stuffing and is lower only compared to the 788.2K units "stuffed" exactly one year ago.

Keynesian Fried Chicken...