Archive - Apr 2013

Shanghai just can't catch a break - first it was floating dead pigs, then ducks, then black swans, then mass chicken exterminations, and now fish. From the Telegraph: " Just weeks after over 16,000 putrefying pigs were pulled from Shanghai's Huangpu river, more than 250kg of dead carp had to be retrieved from a river in the city's Songjiang district. Mystery still surrounds the cause of death, but numerous explanations have surfaced in the Chinese media since residents first complained about the foul-smelling fish last Monday. Theories reportedly include climate change, electrocution, an explosion or even a drug overdose. The Shanghai Daily quoted a local government official who "speculated" the fish could have been "drugged." So, in China things are so good, even the fish are ODing on sleeping pills? Hardly, but the fact that this is even floated "out there" just shows how miserably The Onion has missed its IPO window.

It is hard to make sense of the markets these days. For instance, gold showed no support while the geopolitical situation in Asia deteriorated, Japan embarked in the mother of all monetization programs, and a member nation of what is supposed to be a monetary union was imposed controls on the movement of capital. Or take the case of the Euro, which jumped from $1.2750 to $1.2950 on the day of one of the most confusing and embarrassing press conferences the president of its central bank ever gave. However, in a faraway land, where there is no shadow banking, leverage or even capital markets, economic fundamentals still hold, which can help us, inhabitants of the developed world, visualize a dynamics lost in the shelves of our collective memory. The land we are referring to is Argentina, but not Argentina of 2001. Today, we want to write about Argentina of 2013, and no, we will not discuss their legal battles with Mr. Singer.

Q. What is your view on gold?

Soros: That’s a complicated question. It has disappointed the public, because it is meant to be the ultimate safe haven. But when the euro was close to collapsing in the last year, actually gold went down, because if people needed to sell something, they could sell gold. Therefore they sold gold. So gold went down together with everything else. Gold was destroyed as a safe haven, proved to be unsafe. Because of the disappointment, most people are reducing their holdings of gold. But the central banks will continue to buy them, so I don’t expect gold to go down. If you have the prospect of a crisis, you will have occasional flurries or jumps. So gold is very volatile on a day-to-day basis, no trend on a longer-term basis.

We live in a world that is dislocated, on a different axis, where the economy is doing one thing and the markets are doing something else that is not connected. As political nonsense becomes the world's normal banter; the official language in the Press is little more than printed or spoken noise - all caused by the Fed's outpouring of money into the system. Rational reactions become irrational when confined to an irrational world. The world will return to its senses once again either driven by some "event" or by the Fed beginning some sort of withdrawal. In the meantime the markets are beginning to back-up some as moved by becoming accustomed to the continuing flood of money. It is rather like a fine Bordeaux. One meal, two meals, a week's worth of meals and the experience is marvelous but if you drink it every night for dinner the magic begins to dissipate. It is no longer special; it is something expected, it is just the normal fare.

Slew of headlines out of the UK reporting that after suffering a stroke, the Iron Lady and former Prime Minister of the UK, Margaret Thatcher, has died. Rest in Peace.

The week ahead is light on major market moving data releases. From a policy perspective and in light of the recent moves in treasuries, FOMC minutes are likely to be followed by markets. Retail sales in the US are likely to print below consensus both on the headline and on the core metrics. That said, this needs to be seen against the backdrop of first quarter retail consumer spending data surprising to the upside. Producer prices are also likely to come in on the soft side of market expectations. Finally, do not expect large surprises from the U of Michigan consumer confidence.

• Finally the MSM catches up to reality: Workers Stuck in Disability Stunt Economic Recovery (WSJ)
• China opens Aussie dollar direct trading (FT)
• National Bank and Eurobank Fall as Merger Halted (BBG)
• Why Making Europe German Won’t Fix the Crisis - The Bulgarian case study (BBG)
• Nikkei hits new highs as yen slides (FT)
• Housing Prices Are on a Tear, Thanks to the Fed (WSJ)
• Why is Moody's exempt from justice, or the "Big Question in U.S. vs. S&P" (WSJ)
• Central banks move into riskier assets (FT)
• N. Korea May Conduct Joint Missile-Nuclear Tests, South Says (BBG)
• North Korea Pulls Workers From Factories It Runs With South (NYT)
• Illinois pension fix faces political, legal hurdles (Reuters)
• IPO Bankers Become Frogs in Hot Water Amid China Market Halt (BBG)
• Portugal Seeks New Cuts to Stay on Course (WSJ)

With every modestly positive datapoint being desperately clung to, now that even Goldman's Hatzius has once more thrown in the economic towel after proclaiming an economic renaissance in late 2012 just like he did in late 2010 only to issue a mea culpa a few months later (and just as we predicted - post coming up shortly), the key prerogative is to ignore the elephant in the room. That, of course, is that the JPY 1 quadrillion bond market had to be halted for the second day in a row as the Japanese capital markets are fast becoming a very big and sad joke. The resulting flight to safety from Japanese investors, who sense that their own bond market is on the verge of breaking down completely, has managed to send French and Belgian bonds to record lows, the Spanish 2 Year to sub 2%, the German 6 month bill negative in the primary market, the US 10/30 year constantly bid and so on. The immediate result is that the bond-equity disconnect continues to diverge until one day we may get negative 10 Year rates coupled with an all time high stock market. Gotta love the fake New Normal market, in which the Japanese penny stock market was up another 2.8% to well over 13,000 even as the Shanghai Composite plumbs ever redder territory for 2013 on fears the birdflu contagion will hurt the already struggling economy even more.

A big picture look at the drivers of the global capital markets.

Following Friday's epic collapse, snap-back, and circuit-breaker halt in JGB Futures, it appears that investors cannot get enough of Japanese bonds today. From the JPY144.02 close, JGB Futures traded up at the open, oscillated and then gapped higher (on heavy volume) to JPY145.25 before the TSE halted trading once again (on a volatility-based circuit-breaker limit) due to 'rapid price fluctuations. The quadrillion JPY cash JGB market appears very illiquid as we scan the benchmark issues with the 30Y yield higher by 4bps, the 20Y lower by 14bps, and the 10Y lower by 3bps as it appears the futures are the weapon of choice. Since the halt ended, JGB Futures have slipped back notably. It seems pretty evident when and where the BoJ monetization took place but desk chatter was that it was poorly run.

How do you know when the people "just say no" to chicken over rampant bird flu concerns? When even McDonalds is forced to slash chicken-related prices, in this case the 20 piece McNuggets, from CNY 36 to CNY 20. Pretty soon not even giving away the McMystery meat will clear out the shelves of all chicken-related fast food first in Shanghai and soon elsewhere in China. Finally, we dread to imagine the horrors that will befall Yum (read China KFC sales), now that after so much pain, the fast-food chain had finally reported a modest bounce in Chinese sales. So much for that.

Do we need 50 states? With the corporatocracy increasingly looking to cut costs, wouldn't it make more sense to right-size the number of 'regional' centers of democracy? With an increasingly Federally dominated US, perhaps 50 disparate decision-makers is too many. It turns out, that based on some wonderfully complex math (spatially embedded multi-scale interaction networks) and data from wheresgeorge.com, the United States Of America is more 'optimal' from a monetary and mobility-sense if it were managed around these 8 regions. Theoretical physicist Dirk Brockmann says the borders of the United States are out of date, and as Fast Company notes, "no longer correlate with our behavior." By combining network theory with the travels of our dollar bills, the 'real' effective boundaries in a new USA are far simpler, reflecting where money 'stays' as opposed to more arbitrary state boundaries.

Confused by the day to day happenings in the land of the rising sun, and liquidity tsunami? Don't be, instead read the following series of papers by former SocGen strategist Dylan Grice who predicted everything that is currently happening nearly three years ago. The titles of the enclsed five pieces are self-explanatory especially in light of recent events: "A global fiasco is brewing in Japan", "More on Japan’s brewing fiasco, and some musings on recent pushback", "Fooled by anecdotes: Japan’s coming inflation, JGB toxicity and what to do", "Nikkei 63,000,000? A cheap way to buy Japanese inflation risk" and finally "Buy Japan, and prepare to buy with both hands." Oh, and spoiler alert, Grice doesn't see a Hollywood ending to what is about to happen in Japan.

It seems, despite the constant "it's all fixed" banter, that Portugal's Constitutional Court decision that the Troika-imposed austerity is unconstitutional (as we discussed in detail here and here) has a few of the 'elites' nervous. And so, late on a Sunday night European time, they launch a press release that is about as passively aggressive as they come, "any departure from the programme's objectives, or their re-negotiation, would in fact neutralize the efforts already made and achieved by the Portuguese citizens, namely the growing investor confidence in Portugal, and prolong the difficulties from the adjustment... it is a precondition for a decision on the lengthening of the maturities of the financial assistance to Portugal." In other words, get your constitutional court in line or the OMT 'promise' get's it! Perhaps that explains why, unlike Spain and Italy who rallied in the last few days, Portugal's bond spreads are at the widest of 2013 (70bps off the tights of the year).