Archive - Jul 2013

Spain's slow-motion implosion into an insolvent singularity has been one of the most amusing sideshows for over a year. The chief reason for this is the sheer schizophrenic and absurdist polarity between the sad reality, visible to everyone, and the unprecedented propaganda by the government desperate to paint a rosy picture. While on one hand the economic data shows very clearly the painfully obvious sad ending for this chapter of European integration, it continues to be punctuated almost daily by such amusing confidence games as Spain's Economy Minister de Guindos telling anyone who cares to listen that the labor market is improving "beyond the seasonal pick up" and that Q2 GDP would be close to zero (because 0% GDP is the new killing it). That's the good news.  The bad news is that as Reuters reports, and contrary to fairy tales of unicorns and soaring 0% GDP, Spain's government is so insolvent, it was just forced to "borrow" from its social security reserve to fund pension payments.

Day after day 'positive' anecdotal data points are latched on to by a self-confirming media (and plethora of talking heads and asset-gatherers) unable to see anything but their 'it's all good in the long-term' thesis. The truth is, as Bloomberg's Rich Yamarone notes, there’s no way to assess last week’s economic data as anything other than poor. Chinese GDP continued to deteriorate, U.S. core retail sales and the index of leading economic indicators for June were flat, industrial production was at the same level as in March, and housing, the lone oasis of prosperity, slowed as new starts plunged nearly 10 percent from the previous month. Toss in the city of Detroit filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history and the tone of America’s economic outlook took a decisive turn for the worse. Of course, this is all good for stocks is our new (ab)normal reality of single-factor Fed-liquidity-driven mass hypnosis.

There is more to this Ponzi than meets the eye...

As the Duchess of Cambridge goes into labor (finally after the press has been camping out in London in front of St Mary’s Hospital for more than two weeks now) the question that springs to mind is how much will the royal baby bring in to the country in terms of spin-offs.

Healthcare insurance illustrates how incremental increases can lead to systemic collapse.

The Innovator’s Dilemma strikes again, this time with the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy protection.  As a business term, ConvergEx's Nick Colas reminds us that the “Dilemma” describes how successful companies fall from grace because they ignore new competition with disruptive technologies at the low end of their markets.  In a world that increasingly revolves around intellectual capital (a.k.a. people), government at all levels needs to think about how they do not fall prey to the same error.  As for Detroit, any lasting solution likely needs far more government intervention than is currently possible. And so to where Detroit goes from here, we’ll borrow from another business paradigm that parses all solutions to troubled operations into three buckets: "Fix, Close or Sell." In summary, Detroit’s failures are certainly of its own making. The way forward will need leadership that is unavailable locally.

Those trading microcap uranium supplier USEC Inc (USU) were treated to a rare spectacle moments ago: one or a series of absolutely berserk algos took the stock up from $8 to nearly $16 in a wondrous example of momentum ignition, where one algo was telegraphing it knew something in a bid to get other algos to ramp the thinly traded stock , and succeeded. This move followed Friday's comparable surge by 70% on even more "no news." A circuit breaker halt followed and then the usual $1 bid/ask spreads as algo after algo was positioning to frontrun other algos, but by then all hell had broken loose. Volume as of moments ago: over 2 million on a stock that has ADV of under 100k. Management reiterated what it said on Friday, namely that it had no comment: "In view of the unusual market activity in the company’s stock, the New York Stock Exchange has contacted the company in accordance with its usual practice. The company stated that its policy is not to comment on unusual market activity" ensuring that the newsfree lunacy would continue.

"It's hard to make the case that [US stocks are up 17% on a 2.5% earnings rise] based on fundamentals alone - it's money in motion," is how Barclays' CIO Hans Olsen describes the unreality occurring in US asset markets currently. He noted in last week's interview with CNBC that Bernanke's experimentation has created asset-inflation "that would make the stock market bubble of 2000 look like a day at the beach. It's really quite remarkable." Critically, as many have noted, he notes "let the market start to price things based on fundamentals again rather than money printing. The sooner we get back to a market pricing, the more sustainable it becomes." What is ironic is that Olsen is overweight stocks in spite of all this - but like everyone else in the status quo - is hoping Bernanke keeps the house of cards from collapsing. Olsen appears to be among the very few career bankers willing to tell the truth - the fear being, of course (as we showed here) that it would mean their "skills" are completely meaningless.

"Today’s markets have a vulnerability that has not existed through most of history. Today’s valuations only make sense in light of low expected cash rates. Remove that expectation, and pretty much every asset across the board is vulnerable to a fall in price, as the rising real discount rate plays no favorites. There is no asset class you can hold that would be expected to do well if the real discount rate rises from here. Under normal circumstances, a rising real discount rate would probably come on the back of rising inflation or stronger than expected growth, which are diversifiable risks in a portfolio. But May’s shock to the real discount rate came not because inflation was unexpectedly high or because growth will be so strong as to lift earnings expectations for equities and other owners of real assets, but because the Fed signaled that there was likely to be an end to financial repression in the next few years. And because financial repression has pushed up the prices of assets across the board and around the world, there is unlikely to be a safe harbor from the fallout, other than cash itself." - GMO

Without doubt, Iceland was the canary in the coalmine for the sovereign debt crisis that is unfolding across the world right now. Today, Iceland is held up as the model of recovery. 'Famous' economists like Paul Krugman praise the government for rapidly rebuilding the economy without having to resort to austerity. This morning’s headline from The Telegraph newspaper sums it up: “Iceland has taken its medicine and is off the critical list”. It turns out, most of these claims are dead wrong. Despite being so widely reported by the mainstream financial media, Iceland is not a story of model economic recovery. It’s a story of how to fool people. And for now, it’s working.

With gold now up an impressive 13.1% from its post-Bernanke lows 3 weeks ago (notably more than the +8.8% in US equities), it appears the physical demand is quietly catching up to the paper supply. As we noted here, shorts covered around 11% of their positions in the last week and we suspect today's surge is yet more covering as the massively over-crowded paper-short gold position starts to unwind. Of course, this surge is disappointing to many (including China we suspect) as the 'transitory' end of the price beatdown means we can buy less physical (and take immediate possession) now than at the June lows of $1180. With gold testing its 50DMA for the first time since February, we suspect the momo crowd will be quick to jump ship should we push on through.

Back in June 2011 we first reported how "Goldman, JP Morgan Have Now Become A Commodity Cartel As They Slowly Recreate De Beers' Diamond Monopoly" in an article that explained, with great detail, how Goldman et al engage in artificial commodity traffic bottlenecking (thanks to owning all the key choke points in the commodity logistics chain) in order to generate higher end prices, rental income and numerous additional top and bottom-line externalities and have become the defacto commodity warehouse monopolists. Specifically, we compared this activity to similar cartelling practices used by other vertically integrated commodity cartels such as De Beers: "the obvious purpose of "warehousing" is nothing short of artificially bottlenecking primary supply." Over the weekend, with a 25 month delay, the NYT "discovered" just this, reporting that the abovementioned practice was nothing but "pure gold" to the banks. It sure is, and will continue to be. And while we are happy that the mainstream media finally woke up to this practice which had been known to our readers for over two years, the question is why now? The answer is simple - tomorrow, July 23, the Senate Committee on Banking will hold a hearing titled "Should Banks Control Power Plants, Warehouses, And Oil Refiners."

While Egypt may have left the front pages of the mainstream media, the boiling pot of tension is bubbling up nce again this morning. Ahram Online reports that violent clashes have occurred between pro- and anti-morsi groups near Tahrir Square, and the military has intervened with tanks. These clashes come on the heels of the Muslim Brotherhood calling on Egyptians to lay seige to the US embassy (for what he said was American support for Morsi' ouster) "US Diplomats should leave Egypt... [we] hope they won't be harmed." and the family of the deposed leader claiming the military 'kidnapped' him.

These are truly horrible forecasts coming after the brutal downward revision for the first quarter (from 2.4% to 1.8%). And when you consider that growth is slowing like this while the Fed is running QE 3 and QE 4, then it becomes quite clear that the Fed is fast running out of out of evidence that QE accomplishes much of anything.

The chart below lays out what lies in store (no pun intended) second half earnings as indicated by companies themselves.  What it shows is that optimism in corporate earnings (ignoring the persistent optimism in the economy which always without fail, leaves everyone disappointed despite the fifth ongoing year of QE) is once again misplaced and that EPS are set to disappoint, especially if the stock buyback wave - certainly not facilitated by the rise in interest rates - is finally over.