Archive - Jan 2013

The run to 1500 for the S&P 500 is over, and these three tech companies are either complete no growth dogs, or over-priced retailers! 

Forget the Housing, Bond or Derivatives Bubbles ... Fraud Is the Biggest Bubble of All Time

In today’s climate of cell phone contacts, Facebook and LinkedIn, business cards may be becoming a thing of the past. Then again, they can still say a lot about you. Whether boilerplate or highly designed, staid or comical, FlavorWire has gathered twenty business cards of fascinating and famous people from Abraham Lincoln to Lady Gaga, Einstein to Lady Gaga, and from Houdini's triangular card to Marc Zuckerberg's "I'm CEO, Bitch!"

From a valuation perspective, Chinese equities do not, at first glance, look to be a likely candidate for trouble. The PE ratios are either 12 or 15 times on MSCI China, depending on whether you include financials or not, and do not scream 'bubble'. And yet, China has been a source of worry for GMO over the past three years and continues to be one. China scares them because it looks like a bubble economy. Understanding these kinds of bubbles is important because they represent a situation in which standard valuation methodologies may fail. Just as financial stocks gave a false signal of cheapness before the GFC because the credit bubble pushed their earnings well above sustainable levels and masked the risks they were taking, so some valuation models may fail in the face of the credit, real estate, and general fixed asset investment boom in China, since it has gone on long enough to warp the models' estimation of what "normal" is. Of course, every credit bubble involves a widening divergence between perception and reality. China's case is not fundamentally different. In GMO's extensive discussion below, they have documented rapid credit growth against the background of a nationwide property bubble, the worst of Asian crony lending practices, and the appearance of a voracious and unstable shadow banking system. "Bad" credit booms generally end in banking crises and are followed by periods of lackluster economic growth. China appears to be heading in this direction.

The ex-back of the envelope TARP calculation "chump" become wood-chopper, turned equity portfolio manager has gone full circle and decided his time is better spent serving the public good once again. As the WSJ reports, Neel Kashkari is considering running for office in California. The napkin-laden chrome-dome has seen his funds suffer from spotty performance since their launch - all underperforming the benchmarks. We can't help but think the timing of his announcement odd given his love affair with Apple and tonight's collapse but that would be harsh judgment on the always self-denigrating 39 year-old. Of course, we will hear the impressive nature of him leaving a well-paid job to run for office as his patriotism runs wild; we are less 'believer'. Still, managing to have your name turned into a noun and a verb is no easy task...

After digesting the opinions of the shills, shysters and scam artists, I am ready to predict that I have no clue what will happen during 2013. The fog of uncertainty is engulfing the nation, making consumers hesitant to spend and businesses reluctant to hire or invest. Virtually all of the mainstream media, Wall Street banks and paid shill economists are in agreement that 2013 will see improvement in employment, housing, retail spending and, of course the only thing that matters to the ruling class, the stock market. Even among the alternative media, there seems to be a consensus that we will continue to muddle through and the day of reckoning is still a few years off. Those who are predicting improvements are either ignorant of history or are being paid to predict improvement, despite the overwhelming evidence of a worsening economic climate. The mainstream media pundits, fulfilling their assigned task of purveying feel good propaganda, use the 10% stock market gain in 2012 as proof of economic recovery. The facts prove otherwise... Every day more people are realizing the con-job being perpetuated by the owners of this country. Will the tipping point be reached in 2013? I don’t know. But the era of decisiveness and confrontation has arrived. The existing social order will be swept away. Are you prepared?

Is Britain “drifting toward the exit”? 

Earlier today, we reported that "Assistant Attorney General Admits On TV That In The US Justice Does Not Apply To The Banks" when we commented on last night's PBS special "The Untouchables." Explicitly, we said that it was "Lenny Breuer who made it very clear that when it comes to the concept of justice the banks are and always have been "more equal" than others. He does so in such shocking clarity and enthusiasm that it is a miracle that this person is still employed by the US Department of Justice." As of minutes ago that is no longer the case as his employment contract has been torn up. The WaPo reports, that Lanny A. Breuer is leaving the Justice Department "after leading the agency’s efforts to clamp down on public corruption and financial fraud at the nation’s largest banks, according to several people familiar with the matter....It is not clear when Breuer intends to leave, nor what he plans to do once he departs, but it is certain that the prosecutor’s days in office are winding down, according to people who were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter."

I'll let the numbers and facts speak for themselves as the #FanBois grope for something to retort... It's "knowledge how", not "knowledge that"!!!

AAPL's after-hours loss in market cap is greater than the market cap of one BlackRock, Starbucks, Target, Costco, or Nike. Down almost 9% from yesterday's close, AAPL is trading down to January 2012 levels (off 35% from its highs) and is now notably less capitalized than the entire European banking system. Of course, this has had serious consequences for the major indices that are trading after-hours (and futures). Futures traded down to the day-session lows before closing but QQQ are now trading at 6-day lows in after-hours...and as S&P futures reopen they are gapping down a little more.

It looks like what may be good for the environment is actually bad news for the government.  

The most anticipated earnings release of the quarter has come and it has been a dud, at least judging by the market's expectations and its response. Because while EPS beats just barely (a far cry from the epic EPS beats of Steve Jobs days) coming at $13.81 on expectations of a $13.53 print, revenue outright missed, coming at $54.5 billion on expectations of a $54.9 billion Q1 2013 result. Furthermore, fears about profit margins were proven correct, with total gross profit coming in at $21.1 billion, which alas was 38.6% of revenue, well below the vaunted 40% threshold (as a reference margin was 44.7% a year ago, and 40.0% a quarter ago). And finally, the breakdown by components in the iPhone 5 release quarter was just, well, meh.

One look at the headline numbers, and of course the short interest of Netflix, and one can see why the stock is being squeezed by nearly 30% after hours:

• Q4 Revenue: $945 MM, Exp. $934 MM
• Q4 EPS of $0.13, Exp. $(0.13)
• Q4 domestic contribution margin 18.5%, up from 16.4% in Q3 and 10.9$ in Q4 2011
• Total domestic subscribers 27.15 MM, paying subs: 25.47 MM
  • Forecasts 28.5MM-29.2MM domestic subscribers in Q1
• Sees Q1 Revenues of $1.004 billion to $1.031 billion
• Domestic DVD subs dropped from 8.61 to 8.22 while generating $254MM in revenue and $128MM in profit

In fact, all is either just a little bit better or much better if one looks at the projection set... until one looks at the actual Cash generated by the Business. Behold the Free Cash Flow as reported by the company... no, not AMZN, although it may well be its small cousin.

In the old days, it was Fed via POMO to stocks; but given the new normal, now we have levered POMO to rescue us via vol compression and yet again - today saw risk-assets sliding all night (though admittedly only around 0.5% off highs) only to be rescued by a vol-compressing equity push that started the moment POMO finished. HY credit was tinkered with in the last hour to keep things afloat and of course AAPL soared into its earnings report. The debt-ceiling vote did little to maintain risk-on as CAD weakness (BoC holding off from rate hikes) pulled the USD higher, and hurt risk-on commodities - as Oil plunged on the day. Treasury yields continued to fall - entirely ignoring stocks once again - even though stocks caught down to risk early and ended at new five-year highs on the Dow (thanks almost entirely to IBM). So low volume in stocks (AAPL decent volume), low average trade size in S&P futures, and a disconnected equity market from bonds and FX once again... eyes down for an Apple full-house...

With minutes to go, this is what the world (according to the Google machine) is thinking ahead of Apple's earnings... and what the market expects...