Archive - Aug 27, 2013

Right now, ship traffic around Syria, and especially around the port city of Latakia and Tartus (where the Russian naval base is located), is normal as can be seen on the real-time map of naval traffic in the Mediterranean courtesy of Marine Traffic. If and when (supposedly Thursday if NBC is to be believed) the US finally launches the Tomahawks, expect a prompt evacuation of the triangle between Lebanon, Turkey and Cyprus. Or maybe in advance, especially if some of the more "strategic" tankers get advance notice things are going down. Keep an eye on real-time Mediterranean traffic courtesy of the map below.

Between a renewed demand for the relative geopolitical 'safety' of US Treasuries and the dismal US macro data starting to renew 'hopes' that the Taper will be delayed, the scarcity of high-quality collateral and plunging liquidity (thanks to the Fed's ongoing envelopment of the US bond market) has once again driven the 'belly' of the US Treasury market to trade 'special'. As Stone & McCarthy notes, repo has been tightening up overall, and the 2-year, 5-Year, 7-year, and 10-year are all also trading with negative handles this morning, with the 7-year getting more special ahead of this week's auction. This 'specialness' will once again raise concerns about the Fed having 'broken' the market (and as we noted here) may be further ammo to scare Bernanke straight (encouraging some degree of Taper in the Treasury buying even if the consensus believes economically we can't withstand it).

The global economy could be in the early stages of another crisis. Once again, the US Federal Reserve is in the eye of the storm. As the Fed attempts to exit from so-called quantitative easing (QE) – its unprecedented policy of massive purchases of long-term assets – many high-flying emerging economies suddenly find themselves in a vise. The Fed insists that it is blameless – the same absurd position that it took in the aftermath of the Great Crisis of 2008-2009. As in the mid-2000’s, there is plenty of blame to go around this time as well. The Fed is hardly alone in embracing unconventional monetary easing. Moreover, the collapsing 'developing economies' all have one thing in common: large current-account deficits. A large current-account deficit is a classic symptom of a pre-crisis economy living beyond its means – in effect, investing more than it is saving. The only way to sustain economic growth in the face of such an imbalance is to borrow surplus savings from abroad. That is where QE came into play...

Dispassionate view that Italy poses the biggest risk for the euro area and it will not wait for the German elections.

With a US attack on Syria now seemingly inevitable, it is useful to get familiar (and in some cases follow in real time using their "social networking" sites) the US Naval forces amassing around Syria, ready to deliver either a lethal payload of Tomahawk cruise missiles (carried by the four destroyers listed below), a deployment of marines (located in the USS Kearsarge big-deck amphibious warfare ship), or one or more squadrons of airplanes sitting on the deck of the Truman and Nimitz aircraft carriers.

It seems not everyone is so confident that this market drop is dip to be bought. With most of the Treasury complex trading 'special' and the S&P 500 back below its 50DMA, investors are grabbing protection where they can. Credit indices are notably wider but it is VIX at 16.56% that is in great demand as it hits nine-week highs.

With the Case-Shiller 20-City index up double-digits for the 4th straight month, Bob Shiller has some choice words for the CNBC interviewers about the 'housing recovery'. "Housing is a market with momentum," he notes, "and right now, the momentum is up;" but he adds that while house prices are 'recovering', he remains much less sanguine about this recent move. But it is once he has explained the potential concerns that may weigh on the housing market that Shiller comes into his own as he explains "none of this is real, the housing market has gotten very speculative."
Must see clip as Shiller scoffs at the current sentiment, the resurgence of 'flipping', and that the housing market is "driven by irrational exuberance."

The Richmond Fed survey surged to 14, its biggest beat since April 2010 and its highest level since January 2011. All makes perfect sense right? Just a 3.5 sigma beat of analyst expectations at 0. All sub-indices improved to multi-month highs and expectations for six months ahead also surged (even as prices paid and received collapsed). Consumer Confidence, amid surging interest rates and near-record gas prices for this time of year (and a pending war), rose (beating expectations) after falling last month. All of the gains in confidence came from 'hope' as the expectations sub-index rose from 86.0 to 88.7 as the present situation fell from 73.7 to 70.7 - the biggest drop since January. Remember, beware of the big 'con'.

President Bashar al-Assad stressed that "Syria is a sovereign country that will fight terrorism and will freely build relationships with countries in a way that best serves the interests of the Syrian people." As Syrian TV reports, in an interview with the Russian newspaper of Izvestia, President al-Assad stressed that "the majority of those we are fighting are Takfiris, who adopt the al-Qaeda doctrine, in addition to a small number of outlaws." On the alleged use of chemical weapons, President al-Assad said that the statements by the US administration, the West and other countries were made with disdain and blatant disrespect of their own public opinion, adding that "there isn’t a body in the world, let alone a superpower, that makes an accusation and then goes about collecting evidence to prove its point." Al-Assad stressed that these accusations are completely politicised and come on the back of the advances made by the Syrian Army against the terrorists.

While Case Shiller is about as backward looking an indicator as they come (June housing data when it is almost September is pretty much completely useless), today's release showed yet another miss relative to expectations, with the 20 City Composite posting a monthly increase of 0.89%, missing expectations of 1% (for the second month in a row), was the third consecutive month of a slowing growth, and the lowest sequential growth since November 2012.

With AAPL plunging below the critical $500 level and equity markets slumping this morning, it seems appropriate to reflect once again on the cause of last week's NASDARK debacle. As Nanex so obviously points out in these charts, digging into market data before the Nasdaq blackout at 12:20 EDT on August 22, 2013, we came across several significant periods of extremely high quote volumes. By plotting the number of messages for each of the 6 multicast lines used by the Tape C SIP (Securities Information Processor), we discovered the quote blasts map directly to individual multicast lines. The 'line' carrying AAPL's ticker saw the largest and most egregious quote volumes (spamming perhaps) that eventualy ovehwlemed NASDARK's creeking infrastructure.

A flurry of Reuters headlines climaxing with:

WESTERN POWERS TELL SYRIAN OPPOSITION TO EXPECT STRIKE WITHIN DAYS - SOURCES WHO ATTENDED MEETING BETWEEN ENVOYS, SYRIAN COALITION
MILLER SAYS CHANCE OF U.S. STRIKE ON SYRIA ‘VIRTUALLY 100%’

has sent investors scrambling for cover and added war premia to risk assets. Gold is now up over 20% from its 6/28 lows to $1,418.90; WTI jumped to over $108.50 - its highest since early March - collapsing the Brent-WTI spread back to $4. S&P futures are at their overnight lows -12pts (as all-important AAPL loses the $500 level and Icahn's dreams); 10Y yields have slid to 2.76%; and the JPY is surging back to 97.50 as carry-unwinds escalate.

While the world is gripped in yet another great distraction over the great "will he, won't he" start World War III debate, things that are unsustainable remain unsustainable. Such as Japan's debt, and specifically the amount of cash interest that the nation with the 230% debt/GDP (and rising interest rates) will have to pay to service its gargantuan balance sheet. According to a document seen by Reuters, Japan expects to spend a record $257 billion to service its debt during the next fiscal year. The amount to be allocated for debt-servicing for the year that will begin on April 1 is nearly as large as the gross domestic product of Singapore, which the World Bank put at $275 billion at the end of 2012. More disturbing, this is a 14% increase in the debt interest cost in just one year. And yes, it is unsustainable absent an epic inflationary episode to "inflate away the debt", something that Abenomics has so far failed in achieving despite some hopeful early glimmers in crushing the Yen.

• Opposition figure: major decisions on Syria expected within hours (Al Arabiya)
• Syria challenges U.S. to "produce the evidence" that Assad regime launched chemical attack (CBS)
• British PM says world must act on Syria, weighs response (Reuters)
• U.S. Treasury to Hit Debt Limit in Mid-October (WSJ)
• U.S. could look beyond U.N. Security Council in any Syria strike (Reuters)
• Nasdaq, NYSE at odds on outage cause as SEC seeks facts (Reuters)
• Ackman’s J.C. Penney Sale Ends Failed Saga to Agitate for Change (BBG)
• Zandi, LaVorgna, Blinder, Rattner all is one con puff piece (BBG)
• Best Buy Founder Schulze Plans Stock Sale to Diversify Assets (BBG) - "diversify assets" = dump overpriced junk
• Zero Worship: Credit-Card Firms Compete With No-Interest Transfers (WSJ)
• Len Blavatnik wins $50m in JPMorgan lawsuit (FT)
• Danone Finds Yogurt’s All Greek as Oikos Chases Chobani (BBG)