Archive - Jan 2013

Update: those (few) worried if America's overactive Attorney General, best known for soon to be confiscating guns and perhaps shipping them off to Mexico, and doing nothing else in the past 4 years, will stick around for Obama's second term.

And no, before the questions pile in, she was not fired, as poetic as that would be (nor was she replaced by a 65 year old, part-time worker as is the case with the vast majority of the US labor force). She quit, saying "decided to begin a new future, and return to the people and places I love" and that as the product of "a large Mexican-American family I never imagined that I would...serve in a president’s Cabinet." From WaPo: "Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a letter to colleagues Wednesday she was stepping down from her post." Of course, using the BLS' own policies and "logic", this means the unemployment rate just ticked even lower. We look forward to Hilda's book due out in 6-12 months bashing, who else, Tim Geithner.

VIX rose majestically (by a mere 0.25 vols and still below 14%) for the first time in seven days (but the term structure steepened a little more) and while stocks did not like that, they still managed to pull off the lows, close green, and remain in a 1% range for the last week. Treasury yields continue to slide lower (even with a weak auction today) as it would appear the end of the bond bull market was called a little premature (and as we noted, merely reflected short-term rate-locks for corporate issuance). While HLF grabbed headlines, it is AAPL that seems to be swept under the rug as it ends the day crashtastically at its lows (where its margins will be after the iPoor is released). The USD leaked ever so gently higher on the day - ending practically unchanged on the week (with JPY 0.5% stronger on the week). Commodities chopped around non-directionally (though Silver is the week's winner so far). Financials, and Energy had a tough day (and homebuilders were sold hard after Europe's close). HYG seemed today's lever of rampaciousness and remains rich to intrinsics (as cash HY bonds just can't catch a bid at record-high prices). Once again the S&P reversed its (up)trend at around the European close but late-day VWAP reversion held us bid on the day.

Well they aren’t really your “new” slumlord in the sense you have been debt slaves to the financials system for decades.  What I really mean is that it is now becoming overt and literal.  Literal because financiers are now the main players in the real estate market and are buying all the homes ordinary citizens were kicked out of over the past few years.  Yep, we bailed out the financial system so that financiers with access to cheap credit can buy up all of America’s real estate so that they can then rent it back to you later.

While Ackman and Loeb battle it out over HLF, the other potentially firework-prone battle has died an ignominious death. The WSJ reports that AIG has generously decided not to bit the Treasury hand that fed it just a few short years ago:

• *AIG WON'T JOIN GREENBERG SUIT CHALLENGING U.S. BAILOUT  :AIG US
• *AIG WON'T PURSUE CLAIMS ITSELF                          :AIG US
• *AIG SEES FILING FORMAL STATEMENT WITH COURTS IN COMING WEEKS
• *BENMOSCHE SAYS HE PERSONALLY TOLD GREENBERG ABOUT AIG VOTE

It seems that common-sense prevailed for once - or did Benmosche and team get a friendly tap on the shoulder from outgoing Treasury head Geithner that stirring up a few million pages of Treasury documentation would not be good for anyone?

Update: this is just getting better and better: flashing headlines that the SEC has opened an inquiry into Herbalife. Dow Jones adds that inquiry may not result in action. Stock slides on the news, however following speculation that the SEC may (or rather should) be investigating the various massive puts in HLF stock before the Ackman presentation in mid-December, it bounces. Total chaos, and all very exciting.

One guy (whose positive P&L in 2012 was primarily thanks to the gap lower in HLF in the last two weeks of 2012, since filled entirely and then some), says $0. Another guy, whose nearly $10 billion hedge fund was up 30% in 2012, says over $60. Whom do you trust? As far as we are concerned, the second Tilson goes long, we dump everything.

On January 8, 2013 there were two separate events where an exchange stopped disseminating quotes, which caused the last quote sent from that exchange to lock (bid price equals ask price) or cross (bid price is greater than ask price) the NBBO (National Best Bid/Offer) when market prices moved higher or lower on other exchanges. Crossed quotes cause many problems for wholesalers (who internally match orders), order-routers, traders, financial web-sites, business news channels, and any of the 2.5 million subscribers that use the consolidated quote to analyze stock prices. From IWM to HLF, the crosses (and thus integrity of the consolidated feed) were everywhere.

...so take your ranting back to zero hedge, where you might find some other chicken little types

After record-breaking compression and six consecutive drops in VIX (along with a morning full of further compression) spot VIX is bleeding higher now. Having caught 'down' to stocks' ebullience yesterday, it appears the hedgers are either covered or rolled further out but there is another reason perhaps (aside from the absolute cheapness of protection). Quantitatively, the implied volatility of the S&P 500 is now below its recent realized volatility (this difference is really a better indication of how fearful or fearless investors are) - and on each of the previous three occasions that has occurred in the last year, VIX has risen notably relative to realized in the next few days.

Moments ago, MSNBC showed a clip in which "gun tzar" VP Joe Biden made it clear that "the President is going to act" on the issue of gun control, and that "executive orders and executive action can be taken." Of course "can" does not mean "will" as the fallout from an executive order bypassing Congress would be rather dramatic, especially on a topic so near and dear to at least half of America, and the response, to put it mildly, would make the Piers Morgan vs Alex Jones screaming match seems like a tranquil discussion between two dignified stoics. If "can" however, does become "will", America may have far bigger issues over the next two months than the debt ceiling, kicking the sequester down another several months, or even the quadrillion yen tuna.

The last time the US held a 10 year auction was earlier than its usual time on December 12, just before the Fed announced QE4EVA. The result from that particular auction were a total jumble, where Primary Dealers took down a tiny 33.1%, and where Directs were stuffed with a near record 42.7%. That and a big, 1.7 bps tail. In this light today's 10 Year was a little more casual, with the Treasury just issuing another $21 billion in 10 year bonds, this time not premonetized unlike tomorrow's 30 year auction, although the internals were just as ugly. The When Issued was 1.855%, with the final High Yield of 1.863% tailing (84% allotted at high). The Bid to Cover was 2.83, the smallest for a reopening auction since December 2009, and well below the average for 2012 of 3.03. Indirects took down just 28.5%, the second lowest in years, and better only compared to December's 24.2%, while Directs ended up holding only 14.8% of the final allocation, a big drop from December's 42.7%, which increasingly appears to have been a year end window dressing by various credit funds to show "safe securities" on their books. Overall, an ugly 10 Year auction following another ugly 10 Year auction, even if the past week has seen the yield on the paper drop substantially from 1.97% a week ago to 1.86% today. Was that it for the great "bonds to stocks" rotation?

CNBC's Rick Santelli nails it once again by cutting through the idiocy and spin that is almost the entire mainstream media's view of the 'fiscal cliff' resolution. His point, among many he makes in this brief but compelling clip, is that the massive amounts of arm-twisting of the House Republicans not to add any Amendments was not about the 'economic turmoil' it might cause (as so many press wanted to report) but that "it would have riled up the stock market." The shouting Chicagoan explicitly states: "the Country, and Congress in particular, ...should never again use the stock market as their main barometer when addressing what's wrong with the country". Santelli drives his point home with examples from previous equity market downturns as he makes the critical point that it took 20 years to catch Madoff's ponzi scheme and he wonders how long we will remain dumbstruck by the Fed's printing presses, FASB, et al. into believing everything is good because stocks are going up. "Take a look at yourself in the mirror," he admonishes, but watch this 3-minute clip first for enlightenment!

Back in December 2011, we previewed the rotation in the FOMC's voting block with "When Doves Laugh: 4 Weeks Until The Quiet Coup In The Fed Gives QE3 A Green Light", a post whose summary was that as a bevy of new voting doves came in, it made QE3, then very much a taboo topic - because, you see, "the economy was improving on its own" - virtually inevitable (despite some angry comments from even our own readers). Naturally, as 2012 played out, we got not only QE3 but QE4EVA. So now what? Well, with the new year comes the now traditional new roster of voting regional Fed president members. And while the supremacy of the Bernanke core supermajority group of 8 permanent voters (especially with the three new hires) will never be in jeopardy, 4 new regional presidents join the core group of Bernanke doves. The new voting FOMC members: Evans, Rosengren, Bullard and George. They replace Pianalto, Lockhart, Williams and consummate critic and sole voice of reason and opposition at the Fed in 2011, Lacker. So how does the layout of the 2013 FOMC nest of hawks and doves look like? SocGen summarizes.

We’ve now have just a little over 30 days until US breaches its debt ceiling. We would have already done so, except Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner borrowed some $200 billion from emergency funds to buy a few weeks’ time (announcing that he’d be leaving his post before the actual ceiling was breached).

While not to the level of US sophistry, European equities enjoyed the day driven by further compression in Europe's VIX. The big winners were Spanish and Italian stocks (now up 2% on the week) as Europe's VIX drops to one-month lows. However, the correlated risk-on awesomeness did not flop over into anything but the high-beta nominal prices of equities. EURUSD slid all day (with a slight bump into the close); Italian and Spanish sovereigns bled wider all day (with a slight give back in the latter part); and corporate and financial credit stayed wide as stocks soared. With EUR weakness (remember the Fed/ECB framework), we wonder if European equity strength is merely rotation from US to Europe? Or is it merely front-running the sell-the-news event at the ECB tomorrow?

There was a time when the Fed would repurchase freshly issued bonds a month, a week, or even a day after they were auctioned off by the Treasury (to avoid that whole perjury-inducing "no monetization" stigma). That's no longer the case. Moments ago the Fed concluded its most recent POMO as part of the now unsterilized QE4EVA, focusing on 2036-2042 maturities, i.e., the long-end. A quick look at the issues bought shows that the one CUSIP most put back by dealers to the Fed was the 912810QY7 30 Year. Curiously this is precisely the same CUSIP that, despite the debt ceiling being breached and all, will be auctioned off... tomorrow. Granted, it is a reopening (29 year, 10 month issue), but in a world in which nothing financial makes sense, and idiots come up with debt ceiling avoidance "schemes" that could have rolled right off a Lewis Black rant, we prefer to think of its as pre-monetization, much the same as pre-crime. That said, our hopes that Spielberg will consider putting the script of Monetization Report into a movie, with Paul Giamatti reprising the role of the man who prints the world, will likely not come true.