Archive - Apr 2013

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Time after time, it appears, in Europe 'beggars can be choosers'. That is, it seems, until Cyprus, when the Merkel hammer was brought down and a new 'template' to avoid German taxpayers implictly taking on the burden of southern European largesse. The initial pro-Euro indifference to the bailouts has turned increasingly to resentment in Germany - and, as we noted here, the rise of anti-Euro parties in the very heart of the political project. The following Bloomberg Briefs chart explains the tension and why the German 'five-wise-men' are pushing for a broad-based 'wealth tax' across Europe's periphery. Simply put, the Germans bearing the burden are 'poorer' than the peripheral nations as the chart of median wealth so clearly indicates. Combine this with the fact that Germany has the lowest rate of home ownership in Europe and it is little wonder that 'Alternative-for-Germany' party is already at a 3% polling? However, as discussed below, this is misleading since wealth is very unequally distributed in Germany, creating a perception among less wealthy Germans that these transfers are unfair.

Investors take note, the global economy appears to be contracting again. China’s recent GDP miss is the just the latest in a series of economic surprises to the downside. And stocks are always the last asset class to realize this.

While a week ago, when gold was $1600/ounce the self-funded component (read gold sale) of the Cypriot bailout amounted to just over 10 tons of gold, as of today's price and EURUSD rate, Cyprus would now have to sell 12 tons of gold to cover the gap, if it were to hit the sell button today (assuming a price of $1385/ounce and a 1.315 EURUSD exchange rate). As far as we know, Cyprus hasn't sold one ounce yet. But what if gold keeps tumbling as it has in the past three days? Well, the problem as most know, is that as of March based on IMF data, Cyprus only has 13.9 metric tons of "excess" (as the EC defined it) gold. This means one can extrapolate below what price Cyrpus is out of luck and the proposed European Commission bailout fails as one of the key self-funded elements simply will not have enough cash to fill the €400 MM hold.  That price for gold, once again assuming a 1.315 EURUSD, is roughly $1175/ounce. So if the coordinated selling (straight to Goldman's traders) were to continue, and gold did plunge to the threshold price, or even drop into triple digit territory, and Cyprus simply did not have enough gold to sell, what then?

While We’re Waiting to Learn Who the Boston Terrorists Were … Let’s Review How Stupid Our Anti-Terrorism Policies Have Been

As gold recovered overnight and JPY weakness sparked hope for risk-assets once again, European stocks opened down and rallied for much of the European day. However, just as with yesterday, once the US opened, European stocks decided enough was enough and rolled over quite significantly (led by the banks). Safety was well bid in general in Europe with 2Y Swiss rates dropping further to 3-month lows at -10bps at their lowest! It appears the appeal of European sovereign debt has worn off for a moment among the BoJ as Spanish and Italian bond spreads leaked back wider on the day. EUR strength (and JPY weakness) provided the impetus for US equities to levitate but it appears more like EUR repatriation given Europe's risk-aversion today.

The most recent gold bear raid has vastly enriched the bullion bankers, once again, at the expense of everyone trying to protect their wealth from global central bank money printing. The central plank of Bernanke's magic recovery plan has been to get everybody back borrowing, spending, and "investing" in stocks, bonds, and other financial assets.  But not equally so - he has been instrumental in distorting the landscape towards risk assets and away from safe harbors. That's why a 2- year loan to the US government will only net you 0.22%, a rate that is far below even the official rate of inflation. After the two years is up, you are up $44k (interest) but out $260k (inflation) for net loss of $216,000. That wealth, or purchasing power, did not just vanish: it was taken by the process of inflation and transferred to someone else. This explains, almost completely, why the gap between the rich and everyone else is widening so rapidly, and why financiers now populate the top of every Forbes 400 list.  There is no mystery, just a process of wealth transfer of magnificent and historic proportions; one that has been repeated dozens of times throughout history.

The President is due to address the nation at 1130ET - the big question is, will it be Boston (given the events of this morning already) or will it be the Budget... or is it Immigration?

UPDATE: In an unrelated event, Laguardia Airport has been evacated due to a suspicious package

And so the flashbacks to the aftermath of 9/11 begin, as apparently the only catalyst necessary to have a plane grounded and returned to the gate is to speak Arabic. So in hopes of diffusing what is already a very tense, if ridiculous situation, here is how in a world where Murphy's Law dominates and all it takes to be judged a potential terrorist is to have a deep tan and speak a language the average American is not familiar with (i.e., most of them), airplane seating truly works.

While expectations for global GDP growth are now expected to be +3.3% for 2013 against +3.2% for 2012, the IMF has just slashed the previously rosy 3.6% expectation as the global economy stalls. The US and Europe had significant cuts to their 2013 GDP growth expectations (though of course, this dip recovers hockey-stick-like in 2014). It will perhaps be surprising to learn that Japan had its growth expectation raised the most of all the major advanced and emerging nations. World Trade volume growth has also been cut notably - driven by a fall in the previously supposed driver of growth - emerging markets. The IMF's less sanguine forecasts, however, are caveated with hope-driven perspective such as expectations that Debt-to-GDP will drop for all nations from 2013 to 2018 and while energy remains a major downside risk to global growth, we were stunned to read that they cite S&P 500 option prices as an indicator of upside potential. It seems, even at the IMF, that the market is all that matters (oh and the Japanese printing press).

Long experience in the markets will inform you that this kind of massive sell-off in gold is indicative of someone or perhaps a numbers of someones with serious problems. It may be ETF's, it may be some hedge fund or it may be central banks who have pledged their gold as collateral with the ECB but somebody is in trouble. The world is a fragile place these days. World-wide Quantitative Easing has buoyed all of the markets. The backdrop though is economies that cannot support current prices. Europe and Japan are both in tatters, China is slowing down and America is in what I would call a "sputter." Yesterday was a stark reminder of what can happen when the discrepancy between the results of the flood of newly minted cash comes into conflict with underlying fundamentals. The markets can turn on a dime and the move can be severe and painful.

Yesterday, Goldman was stopped out of its inflationary Long Brent reco for a 15.5% loss (for the clients of course, not for the Goldman counterparty traders who made 15.5%). Today, it was time for Goldman to get stopped out on its Commodity Carry Basket, after the firm's 6.0% stop loss was triggered: "Spillover from gold and renewed European and EM macroeconomic concerns also created sharp sell-offs in crude oil and base metals, that were mostly front-end driven, crushing spreads (the carry), as longer-dated prices remained remarkably stable. This stopped us out of our CCB (Commodity Carry Basket) recommendation with the potential loss reaching our 6.0% stop." With gold now trading below the revised stop out target, we will watch to see if Goldman lower its target once more to buy even more paper gold that its clients are furiously selling.

While yesterday's cliff-dive in gold was impressive by any standards, the escalating drop over the past 5 days has been just as dramatic. Based on 20 years of rolling 5-day moves, the ~15% plunge is equivalent to around 7 standard deviations (in context Yao Ming is a mere 6 standard deviations taller than the average human making gold's move the equivalent of meeting a man taller than 7'7")

On the surface, today's Housing Data was good. Yes, there was a miss in the housing permits number, which declined from a downward revised 939K to 902K, on expectations of a strong 942K print, but let's ignore that: after all bad news is good news (although as the chart below shows even this number was highly skewed due to seasonal adjustments and the NSA number hasn't really budged in the past year). But look at the housing starts: what a whopper: at 1036K, this was the highest print since June 2008 - great news, right? Not really, because the one key indicator here, single-family units, actually posted a sizable drop from 650K in February to 619K in March. The offset: construction starts of multi-family, aka rental units, which in March was a whopping 392K, a 83K seasonally adjusted surge from February, which brings the total multifamily starts to the highest since January 2006 at 423K. Of course, in January 2006, single-family units hit a record 1823K, or about three times as much as the March 2013 number. Thank you Fed and QE for making yet another capital allocation mockery as America is increasingly shifting into a nation of renters. At this pace expect multi-family starts to surpass single unit starts in 4-6 months for the first time ever.

Thanks, it seems, to the global economic slowdown driving energy prices lower, the Consumer Price Index just printed at -0.2% MoM, notably below expectations (its biggest miss in 7 months) and well down from last month's +0.7%. The main driver of this deflationary spike is the drop in gasoline prices -4.4% MoM. Year-over-year CPI (ex Food and Energy) lagged expectations also (1.9% vs 2.0% exp.) meeting the Fed's oh-so-well engineered mandates. However, the 1.9% rise is the slowest pace of inflation in 20 months. On the bright side, the price of used cars is rising at its fastest pace in months thanks to the 97-month term loans and government credit creation.