Archive - Feb 2013

Who says Barron's covers are only good for timing contrarian market inflection points to the millisecond? In this specific case, we learn that all hope and change roads (soon to be de-potholed following another trillion in road renewal stimulus, aka ARRA 2.0, spent shortly and paying a minimum wage of $9.00 to the depotholers) lead to, where else, Greece.

Keep your eyes on the prize.  The important part of the G20 statement had nothing to do with currency wars.  

It would appear that the hopes and commissions of each and every talking head wealth manager and/or central banker has been dashed on the rocks of 'fiscal cliff' tax-hike front-running and a citizenry who remain far more cognizant of the unreality of the real world than the reality being preached by the market. There were some fund flows this week into equity funds (the lowest in six weeks) but, as Reuters notes, it was all into international funds as domestic funds saw outflows and domestic bond funds once again saw inflows. As Goldman Sachs' funds flow and positioning monitor shows - Rotation, Over.

While the G-20 and the G-7 haggle among each other, all (with perhaps the exception of France) desperate to make it seem that Japan's recent currency manipulation is not really manipulation, and that the plunge in the Yen was an indirect, "unexpected" consequence of BOJ monetary policy (when in reality as Richard Koo explained it is merely a ploy to avoid the spotlight falling on each and every other G-7/20 member, all of which are engaged in the same type of currency wars which eventually will all morph into trade wars), Europe's energy powerhouse Norway quietly entered into the war. From Bloomberg: "Norges Bank is ready to cut interest rates further to counter krone gains that interfere with the inflation target, Governor Oeystein Olsen said. “If it gets too strong over time, leading to inflation that’s too low, we will act,” Olsen said yesterday in an interview at his office in Oslo.

Jobs! President Obama has set a record. In his speech to Congress on Tuesday, he uttered the word "jobs" more than in any of his previous four State of the Union addresses. His 45 mentions were more than double the references to any of the other policy ambitions encapsulated in his speech by such words as health, education, immigration, guns, deficit, debt, energy, climate, economy, Afghanistan, wage, spend or tax (the runner-up). If only the president's record on unemployment were as good. After four years America remains in a jobs depression as great as the Great Depression.

Paul Krugman is all for currency wars, but not trade wars: "...First of all, what people think they know about past currency wars isn’t actually true... And in reality the stuff that’s now being called “currency wars” is almost surely a net plus for the world economy..." There is a serious intellectual error here, typical of much of the recent discussion of this issue. A currency war is by definition a low-level form of a trade war because currencies are internationally traded commodities. The intent (and there is much circumstantial evidence to suggest that Japan at least is acting with mercantilist intent, but that is another story for another day) is not relevant — currency depreciation is currency depreciation and still has the same effects on creditors and trade partners, whatever the claimed intent. The risks of disorder and disruption are still very real today.

Look around the investing world and biases are pervasive, from clustering estimates around company guidance (anchoring) to avoiding a stock that has already outperformed (mental accounts). And these biases make a difference. To provide an example, buying Stoxx 600 companies on low P/E multiples (and selling high) would have generated ~25% annual alpha over the last decade using 12-month forward actual reported earnings, but would have lost ~3% per annum using consensus estimates. Interestingly, you would lose less money applying historical earnings (-2% alpha p.a.) than by using consensus estimates! Simply put, biases make consensus estimates worthless.

James Howard Kunstler is concerned. But beyond our decaying fundamentals, he's distressed by society's unwillingness to be honest with itself about the issue's it's facing. Instead, we are embracing a narrative based in "magical thinking" (e.g., prosperity through the printing press, energy independence through domestic shale) that assures us everything is fine. "It’s characteristic of the time that we’re living in that there simply is no sense of consequence. And that’s exactly what you get when you have a Federal Reserve that’s out of control and a public that is filled with technological narcissistic visions of Santa Claus delivering rescue remedies on demand. And so there’s no general sense that when you do things, bad things can happen."

This recent release of the manufacturing and industrial production data added further support to our view that the much touted economic recovery has yet to manifest itself.  The latest data showed that manufacturing in January fell back but after strong gains in December and November.  However, it is important to remember that the gains at the end of 2012 were driven by the effects of Hurricane Sandy and the "Fiscal Cliff."  That ramp up in November and December is likely to leave a void in demand in the coming months - so January's weakness is likely a return to a more normalized trend. What is clear, however, is that the economic data is not markedly improving.  While monthly data points will remain volatile it is the trend of the data that is most telling about macroeconomic future.  Currently, that outlook remains one of a "struggle through" environment at best. The belief, currently, is that the economy in the U.S. can decouple from the rest of the globe and act as an island of economic prosperity.  With 40% of corporate profits tied to international exposure it is unlikely that the U.S. can remain decoupled from the rest of the global community for long. 

if Europe were a single house, it would be rotten to its core with termites and mold. It should have been condemned years ago, but the one thing that has kept it “on the market” was the fact that its owners were all very powerful, connected individual. We are now finding out that the owners not only knew that the home should have been condemned but were in fact getting rich via insider deals while those who lived in the house were in grave danger. 

This week we were told that, by the magic of a non-deficit-increasing wave of our President's hand, the minimum wage should be increased to $9 (a 24% rise from the current $7.25 federal minimum wage) and anchored to inflation going forward. The rabbit-holes of whether this is a good or bad thing run deep and in very different directions. However, in three short minutes, Milton Friedman provides some critically clarifying truthiness on the unholy coalitions between 'do-gooders', 'special interests', 'trade unions', and the vicious circle that this non-market-based decision will create. "Do-Gooders believe passing a law saying nobody shall get less than [a minimum wage] is helping poor people (who need the money). You're doing nothing of the kind. What you're doing is to ensure that people whose skills do not justify that wage will be unemployed." It is no accident that youth unemployment is almost double the overall unemployment rate. We never learn... and as Friedman concludes, "it is the exact people who the do-gooders are trying to help that are hurt the most - the poorest!"

Scattering political debris and money laundering allegations far and wide

GS is long for Golden Showers and short for Goldman Sachs...