Archive - Jan 2013

Starting tomorrow and every Friday for the next few years, the ECB will report the number of banks and the amount of funds they will repay of the 3-year repo operations conducted in late 2011 and early 2012. For those who do not have the luxury of following these developments closely, I have put together a 10 point cheat sheet.

If there was any debate whether the Fed's policies have helped the economy or just the market (and specifically the Bernanke-targeted Russell 2000), the following two charts will end any and all debate. As the following chart from the St Louis Fed shows, as of the just completed quarter, US GDP "growth" since the "recovery" is now the worst in US history, having just dipped below the heretofore lowest on record.

The present is a time when things are in great confusion. We are creating money from nothing and yet enjoying the fruits of their labors. The economies in Europe and in Japan and America are worsening and yet yields for their sovereign debt are barely off all-time lows. The stock markets of the world, following the 2008/2009 financial crisis, are back at new highs. All of this has taken place because the world’s central banks, acting in concert, have pumped enough small pieces of paper into the fire to keep it burning long into the night and so all of the markets on the planet have been stoked with fuel. When the fundamentals of the markets are out of line with their performance then history teaches us that at some point rational behavior will cause a correction. It was just five years ago when the world learned a rather harsh lesson. It was a lesson that cost Americans 36% of their wealth.

While it is unclear how many states' data the BLS had to estimate today, the weekly initial claims print was impressive, sliding even lower than last week, when it came at 335K, and refuting expectations of a rise to 355K, instead reversing and printing the lowest weekly number since January 2008: 330K. What is impressive is that the NSA number dropped by a whopping 120K in the past week, making one wonder how much of the ongoing moves are simply a seasonal adjustments mismatch (a question even Goldman asked last night). Perhaps just as curious is that a whopping 365,641 people dropped off Extended Claims in the first week of January, unclear if this had anything to do with the Fiscal Cliff can kicking: certainly a third of a million Americans suddenly stopped receiving weekly jobless claims benefits from Uncle Sam. The biggest news from this is that with so many people dropping out of the labor force, the January unemployment rate will truly plunge, which is precisely the red flag observed by traders, and is the reason why the market is not taking this news in stride. Remember - all it takes for the end of endless QE is a stable improvement in the labor pool. Could this be it? Of course not, but doubts are starting to emerge.

Just because AAPL longs needed some more salt rubbed in their wounds, here comes Apple's cartooniest analyst  who heretofore had the highest price target on AAPL some 140% higher than where it is now, and working at a firm named for a town in Kansas, cutting his fruitish $1,111 price target down to $888.

• TOPEKA CAPITAL CUTS PRICE TARGET TO $888 FROM $1111; RATING BUY

So was $666 taken? And does Topeka Capital think having your number key stuck when determining a price target imputes credibility to one's worthless research?

“Everyone should keep gold in their portfolios” as the precious metal will be able to offer value to investors even in a worst-case scenario, said Marc Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report. "In the worst case scenario, in the systemic failure that I expect, it would still have some value,” Faber, who is also the founder and managing director of Marc Faber Ltd., said today at an event hosted by Evli Bank Oyj in Helsinki. Faber said his outlook was so bleak that he is “hyper bearish”. He joked that “sometimes I’m so concerned about the world I want to jump out of the window.”.. In response to a question from Yale University’s Robert Shiller querying the recommendation to hold gold, Faber said: “I’m prepared to make a bet, you keep your U.S. dollars and I’ll keep my gold, we’ll see which one goes to zero first.” Shiller, who is the co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values, responded "I'm inclined to think gold prices after this crisis might return to a lower level. Given the low yields of the alternatives [ie, bonds], the valuation of the stock market doesn't look so bad." Faber, whose advice has protected millions of investors in recent years, warned of a global systemic crisis possibly due to massive size of the global derivatives market which is now worth over an incredible $700 trillion. He warned “when the system goes down,” and only plastic credit cards are left, “maybe then people will realize and go back to some gold-based system.”

• When the cash runs out: Nokia to Omit Dividend for First Time in 143 Years (BBG)
• Passing Debt Bill, GOP Pledges End to Deficits (WSJ)
• Japan logs record trade gap in 2012 as exports struggle (Reuters)
• so naturally... Yen at 100 Per Dollar Endorsed by Japan Government’s Nishimura (BBG)
• Japan rejects currency war fears (FT)
• In Amenas attack brings global jihad home to Algeria (Reuters)
• Investors grow cagey as Italy election nears (Reuters)
• Mafia Victim’s Son Holds Key to Bersani Winning Key Region (BBG)
• Bernanke Seen Pressing On With Stimulus Amid Debate on QE (BBG)
• U.S. to lift ban on women in front-line combat jobs (Reuters)
• Red flags revealed in filings of firm linked to Caterpillar fraud (Reuters)
• Apple Sales Gain Slowest Since ’09 as Competition Climbs (BBG)
• Spanish Jobless Rate Hits Record After Rajoy’s First Year (BBG)
• North Korea Threatens Nuclear Test to Derail U.S. Policies (BBG)

While the main topic of conversation overnight was the Apple implosion after earnings (which was mercifully spared inbound calls from repo desk margin clerks who had all gone home by the time the stock hit $460), there was some macro data to muddle up the picture, which, like everything else in this baffle with BS new normal came in "good/bad cop" pairs. In early trading, all eyes were focused on Japan, whose trade and especially exports imploded when the country posted a record trade gap of 6.93 trillion yen ($78.27 billion) in 2012 and the seventh consecutive monthly drop in exports which showed that improved sentiment has yet to translate into hard economic data. Finance ministry data on Thursday showed that exports fell 5.8 percent in the year to December, more than economists' consensus forecast of a 4.2 percent drop. Trade with China was hit particularly hard following the ongoing island fiasco, which means that all the ongoing Yen destruction has largely been for nothing as organic growth markets simply shut off Japan. This ugly news was marginally offset by a tiny beat in the HSBC China manufacturing PMI which came slighly above consensus at 51.9 vs exp. 51.7, the highest print in 24 months, but as with everything else coming out of China one really shouldn't believe this or any other number in a country that will not allow even one corporate default to prevent the credit-driven illusion from popping.

Visualizing "Resilient Dynamism"

As you probably know, in 2010 the US government passed one of the most arrogant, destructive, poorly conceived pieces of legislation in history, now known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). FATCA heaps all sorts of reporting requirements on US taxpayers with foreign financial accounts - in a mind numbing 544 pages... Here’s the bright side of all this nonsense: now that the rules are finally settled, it’s now going to be much, much easier for US taxpayers to open foreign bank accounts. Over the past three years, the opacity of FATCA was too risky for banks. Today, while the final rules are cumbersome, they’re at least settled. So the banks know how to operate. I’m hearing from a number of overseas banker contacts, from Singapore to Panama to Malta, that they’re once again opening their doors to US customers.

Some time ago when we looked at the the performance of the world's largest and best returning hedge fund, Ray Dalio's Bridgewater, it had some $138 billion in assets. This number subsequently rose by $4 billion to $142 billion a week ago, however one thing remained the same: on a dollar for dollar basis, it is still the best performing and largest hedge fund of the past 20 years, and one which also has a remarkably low standard deviation of returns to boast. This is known to most people. What is less known, however, is that the two funds that comprise the entity known as "Bridgewater" serve two distinct purposes: while the Pure Alpha fund is, as its name implies, a chaser of alpha, or the 'tactical', active return component of an investment, the All Weather fund has a simple "beta isolate and capture" premise, and seeks to generate a modestly better return than the market using a mixture of equity and bonds investments and leverage. Ironically, as we foretold back in 2009, in the age of ZIRP, virtually every "actively managed" hedge fund would soon become not more than a massively levered beta chaser however charging an "alpha" fund's 2 and 20 fee structure. At least Ray Dalio is honest about where the return comes from without hiding behind meaningless concepts and lugubrious econospeak drollery. Courtesy of "The All Weather Story: How Bridgewater created the All Weather investment strategy, the foundation of the "risk parity" movement" everyone else can learn that answer too.

The reliable data which policymakers and the public need if effective solutions are to be found is not available. As Tullett Prebon's Tim Morgan notes, economic data has been subjected to incremental distortion; Data distortion can be divided into two categories. Economic data has been undermined by decades of methodological change which have distorted the statistics to the point where no really accurate data is available for the critical metrics of inflation, growth, output, unemployment or debt. Fiscal data, meanwhile, obscures the true scale of government obligations. While he does not believe that the debauching of US official data is the result of any grand conspiracy to mislead the American people; he does see it as an incremental process which has taken place over more than four decades. From 'owner equivalent rent" to 'hedonics', few series have been distorted more than published numbers for inflation, and few if any economic measures are of comparable importance; and the ramifications of understated inflation are huge.

On January 22, 2012, candidate François Hollande called banks the “enemy.” Now you’d think he is being tutored by Jamie Dimon.

We all have inner maps that assign awareness, priority and importance to geographic features. For those who work inside the Beltway, Washington D.C. dominates their mental map of the world. Residents of Manhattan famously regard it as the center of the financial, art, fashion, etc. world. In the hipster techie mental map, Washington D.C. doesn't exist, and New York has a small tech innovation footprint. In this world view, politics, finance and fashion are not what changes the world for the better; only tech does that.