Archive - Dec 2013

"Lamborghini Newport Beach in California is proud to announce that we are fully capable of accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles.  

We are excited to be opening the door to this new currency.

We just sold our very first vehicle with Bitcoin as legal tender! "

As the President loses his Millennial voting base, despite "fixing" Obamacare, his populist push for a raise to the minimum wage (who wouldn't want more money than 'market rates' for doing the same shit) and class-warfare-inspiring inequality speech may be his party's last best hope. However, in the meantime, if US citizens can tear themselves away from X-Factor for 30 seconds, the following clear concise chart shows how easy it is to create 140,000 jobs... Our question... why not raise the minimum wage to $100?

On September 26, mere hours after a foundering JCP swore up and down to CNBC it would not, repeat not, sell shares to raise much needed liquidity, the same company proceed to go ahead... and sell 84 million shares of stock via Goldman Sachs (which two days earlier suggesting JCP may be a bankruptcy candidate in a credit research report). Back then we summarizes JCP's actions as follows: "Guess what. They lied. Is this criminal? Surely the SEC will get involved immediately." Obviously, the last statement was delivered with an unlimited dose of sarcasm. Which is why we were absolutely floored to read in the company's just released 10-Q that the SEC did, in fact, do just that. 

The last few years have seen over $10 trillion in global central bank liquidity 'drugs' pumped into the system of the world's economy. Some may remember the '80s commercial, "this is your brain on drugs;" we suspect, after looking this chart below, they will want to "just say no" to the Fed...

"There are going to be consequences to central bank balance sheet expansion all over the world," Kyle Bass tells Steven Drobny in his new book, The New House of Money, adding "It’s a beggar-thy-neighbor policy, but everyone is beggaring thy neighbor." The Texan remains concerned at QE's effects on wealth inequality and worries that "at some point this is going to ignite and set cost pressures off." While Gold-in-JPY is his recommended trade for non-clients, his hugely convex trades on Japan's eventual collapse remain as he explains the endgame for his thesis, "won't buy back until JPY is at 350," and fears "the logical conclusion is war."

After struggling for many months, Nelson Mandela has passed away at age 95. Leaders from South Africa's Zuma, New Zealand's Key, UK's Cameron, and now President Obama seemed to be ready with prepared statements and Obama is due to address the nation at 1720ET to mourn the "inspirational leader, remarkable man."

David Woo's earlier discussion of the 'maximum' fair value for Bitcoin, we thought his colleague Ian Gordon's view on the advantages and disadvantages of the virtual currency were worth noting. Woo believes Bitcoin can become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers. As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin has clear potential for growth, in his view, but its high volatility, a result of speculative activities, is hindering its general acceptance as a means of payments for on-line commerce...

It is amazing what a few short months of intense regulatory scrutiny, a few multi-billion fines, and the occasional janitorial arrest can do to fraudulent bank business lines. First, recall that as we showed a week ago, and as we have been saying for the past five years, banks were recently "found" to manipulate, in a criminal sense, pretty much everything. Then recall that yesterday the European Union lobbed the biggest monetary fine in history against bank cartel behavior, with the guiltiest party, at least based on monetary amounts, being Deutsche Bank. So now that outsized profits as a result of illegal "trading" become virtually impossible to procure, what is a self-respectable criminal enterprise to do? Why shut down all formerly infringing lines of business of course. Which is what Deutsche Bank just did, which announced a few hours ago that it has pulled the plug on its global commodities trading business, cutting 200 jobs in the process (200 jobs that will certainly be able to find a job in a jurisdiction where criminal trading behavior is still not as intensely scrutinized).

"Good news" once again proved the undoing of the equity market (which some bright spark on TV said "has priced in the taper") and bonds and bullion also fell. Despite the ubiquitous late-day ramp to VWAP (thanks to to JPY selling and VIX stomping), equities closed red for the 5th day in a row for the first time since mid-September. Perhaps most notably, new 52-week lows reached its highest in almost 4 months. Volume was above average yet again as Treasuries saw yields hammered higher with the belly underperforming +4.5bps as 7Y broke above 2.20% to near-3-month highs. The USD sold off - driven more by EUR strength as Draghi disappointed in his jawboning - which proved to stumble all the carry trades as USDJPY moved back below 102. Gold and Silver were volatile but ended the day lower. VIX closed back over 15% for the first time in over 2 months and its reaching extreme inverted levels for 2013 into tomorrow's all-important NFP print.

In every organization, including the Chinese Communist Party, there are forces of movement and forces of order.  The forces of movement have moved into ascendancy in China and this was signaled by establishment of the special economic zone in Shanghai and the program emerging from recent Third Plenary Session.  However, the uncertainty over implementation kept domestic and foreign investors cautious.

Travesty- n: “a false, absurd, or distorted representation of something.”

By standards of previous generations, the middle class has been stripmined of income, assets and purchasing power. So what does it take to be middle class nowadays? A recent paper used Census data to discuss what sort of income it takes to qualify as middle class but income is not the only the metric - indeed, it can be argued that 12 other factors are more telling measures of middle class membership than income.

Following Kyle Bass' earlier comments on Herbalife's ability to tap the capital markets for a major buyback: HERBALIFE WILL BE ABLE TO BORROW AS MUCH AS $2B, BASS SAYS;  An HLF spokesperson has noted that Carl Icahn will not be selling (following the stock's close above a key level that enables him to sell). This has sent the stock to $77.39 - an all-time high. HERBALIFE SAYS ICAHN HAS NO PRESENT INTENTION TO SELL SHARES. We can only imagine how Ackman feels as day after day of theta is sucked out of his puts...

Confirming the stocks-are-just-high-beta-FX meme, Japanese stocks in the Nikkei 225 have collapsed 800 points in the last 2 days as JPY began to strengthen against the USD (on better data bringing taper talk and potential capital outflows as hot money chases something else). Relative to the initial 4 months of Abenomics which saw a 'beta' of 2.3 NKY points per USDJPY pip; the last week's "beta" of 5 Nikkei points per 1 pip in USDJPY, the leverage is starting to get out of hand (with a correlation of 0.965).