Archive - 2013

Rather than attempt to predict the unpredictable – that is, specific events and price levels – let’s look instead for key dynamics that will play out over the next two to three years. Though the specific timelines of crises are inherently unpredictable, it is still useful to understand the eventual consequences of influential trends. In other words: policies that appear to have been successful for the past four years may continue to appear successful for a year or two longer. But that very success comes at a steep, and as yet unpaid, price in suppressed systemic risk, cost, and consequence.

In what may be very disturbing news for the AAPL-borg collective and the broader Hotel AAPLfornia, WSJ is reporting that Apple is working on a lower-end iPhone, a move which it dubs "a big shift in strategy as its supremacy in smartphones has slipped." To call this a big shift is a major understatement: no longer will Apple have the premium, ultra-luxury, aspirational product cache, which for a broad selection of its customers was the primary reason to keep buying iteration after iteration of the company's releases and lining up in droves around the block on release day. Especially since anyone seeking a "cheaper" iPhone could just buy a previous generation iteration of a gadget whose new product launch cadence is now jumping to twice a year, soon thereafter three times, and so on. Yet saddest for all those who have watched the progress of this iconic company over the past decade from the sidelines regardless of sentiment, the consumer products "Ferrari" that Steve Jobs built, just announced it is launching its own Yugo.

Presented with little comment aside to ask the seemingly obvious question - who would you rather piggyback on - Ackman or Tilson? We hate to say it, but - we told you so...

A desperate, misbegotten, taxpayer-funded deal

Despite the vol-compressing efforts, the S&P 500 closed down for the second day in a row as the last 30 minutes or so saw a totally normal +/-5point roller-coaster around VWAP in its very 'human' way. The afternoon's dips and rips as VIX melted down further (now recoupled with SPX) had the feel of hedged longs unwinding both legs and for sure VWAP was the focus as Treasury yields fell and the USD rose on the day. Despite USD strength, precious metals rose into the green for the week. Risk assets in general saw correlations rise as the day progressed but the very narrow 10 point or so range that ES has traded in since the initial gap-open on Jan 2nd seems vulnerable here - and perhaps explains the urgency to compress the front-end vol to keep us up. Interestingly S&P 500 futures closed today at almost exactly the VWAP for the year (around 1452) so far. HY credit dumped into the close but overall it was a normal day of two halves - selling into the European close and buying after...

Today at 4:15pm Eastern, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach will present his 2013 outlook "Year of the Snake" touching on the economy, markets and "his outlook for what he believes may be the best investment strategies and sector allocations for 2013."

Just a few days ago we noted the massive surge in physical gold coin sales from the US Mint, with silver surprisingly lagging. Today, we see an even more dramatic surge in the sales of physical Silver Coins in the first week of January, which in a few short days hit 3.94 million oz, already surpassing the entire December total of 1.64 million ounces. It seems that the paper-to-physical currency rotation is gathering pace even as, or thanks to the trillion dollar platinum coin mercifully ending its 15 minutes of page-clicking, ad revenue infamy. In the secondary market, inventories (via APMEX) of Silver coins remain negligible, if any: American Eagles are available as follows: 2013s may be available 1/18, maybe not; 2012 - 0; 2011 - 0; 2010 - 0; 2009 - 0; 2008 - 0; 2007 - 0; 2006 - 0; 2005 - 0; 2004 - 0; 2003 - 0; 2002 - 0. They do have some 2000, 2001 and 2007, all about $5-6 over spot! It seems ever more people are getting nervous about the impact of currency wars on their "money"... or perhaps just want to make Silver shirts to attract the females?

SSDM: just like in October, and September, and August, and so on, November consumer credit saw a decent pick up of $16 billion, well above the expectation of $12.75 billion, above the $14.1 billion in October, and the third highest monthly print of 2012. And if this was driven even remotely by actual short-term consumption demand, it would likely be a good sign, as it would imply consumers have more faith in being able to repay their credit cards. Sadly, of the entire $16 billion jump, only $817 million, or 5%, was based on a jump in revolving credit. The real "growth" came as usual courtesy of Uncle Sam handouts, solely in the form of auto and student loans, which accounted for a whopping $15.2 billion of the increase in consumer debt, the second largest jump in the year, second only to the $18 billion in January. And as everyone knows, student loans are already on fast track to forgiveness (full forgiveness in 10 years if one works for the government), as will be the case for those NINJAs who buy GM cars using government loans. For all of 2012, a whopping $130 billion of the $137 billion total has been in the form of government handouts. In other words, nearly 1% of 2012 GDP has been funded by Uncle Sam in the form of (dischargeable) loans which everyone else will be responsible for, until nobody at all is responsible.

While we have explained again and again why a falling spot VIX is not the panacea of risk indicators (simultaneous and curve shifts), it is however, the easiest lever for algos to drive equities at the margin on a thin day. Sure enough, as we head towards the 3pmET ramp time, VIX sellers are back en masse and while they managed to get S&P 500 futures up to VWAP, it would appear hedgers are more comfortable unwinding real positions (vol down, vol curve flatter, and stocks down). 60 minutes of fun left to see who wins...

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between the balance sheets of the world's major central banks and risk assets in general are relatively closely correlated (that is not to say dependent to avoid the causation/correlation 'out'). A great example is the tight coupling between the EURUSD exchange rate and the ECB and Fed balance sheets over the past few years - and just what the EURUSD (market) is implying about forward central bank action. As Mark Faber has noted in the past though, the flood of liquidity from central bankers has the unintended consequence that they 'don't know' where that money will sloosh next. 2012 saw European stocks dramatically outperform US stocks, despite the 'unresolved issues', and the chart below of lagged performance of US over European stocks relative to the Fed and ECB balance sheets, suggests that this 'catch-up' of Europe has considerably more legs going forward even as the Fed's balance sheet is set to expand by $1trillion this year. A strange chart indeed...

The world’s largest reinsurance firm, Munich Re, has stated that Natural Disasters alone have cost the world $160 billion in 2012. The US accounted for 67% of those total losses, with Hurricane Sandy proving to be single most expensive disaster of the year, costing around $50 billion in total. Munich Re actually noted that, “had it not been for this exceptional storm, losses would have been very low in 2012.” Hurricane Sandy is the largest hurricane ever on record, and the second most expensive after Hurricane Katrina. The second most costly natural disaster was the summer-long drought which blighted the Corn Belt across the US Midwest, causing severe crop damage to the sum of $20 billion....  As high as the global losses were in 2012 they were still less than 2011 when the cost hit as high as $400 billion due to major earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and severe floods in Thailand.

In two pictures...

In a somewhat surprising bid to avoid having even more Argentina assets impounded by the increasingly more belligerent hedge fund hordes, president Kirchner opted to squeeze the government's already dwindling coffers further and instead of using her official aircraft, she decided to pay British air charter Chapman Freeborn $880,000 for an airplane rental to take her to Cuba, the UAE, Indonesia and Vietnam. This happens even as Argentina is once again caught in a messy brawl with the UK over the Falklands. And while the nearly $1 million abuse of taxpayer funds will hardly pass unnoticed, we have no doubt that Argentina should be able to finance itself in the international markets efficiently should it choose to: just slap a high yield on the debt and pitch it to Elliott, already in possession of an Argentina boat, who may (or may not) gladly buy it. Stranger things have happened.

The CIA Is Taking Over the Dirty Work in Fighting America’s Wars

A month after December's 3 Year bond auction drew a record Direct bidder takedown, the Treasury has just auctioned off another batch of $32 billion in TSYs, which was almost a carbon copy of last month, with weak Indirect interest (28.4% Indirects), a stable Bid To Cover of 0.3623, increasing from last month's 0.3356%, a high yield of 3.85% (5.51% awarded at the high), just inside of the 0.386% When Issued, and another record Direct Bidder take down, rising to 26.4%, and just shy of surpassing the Indirects, as happened in December. The curious shift away from Indirects to Directs continues, even as Primary Dealers as usual pocket around half of the auction, to be used a near cash-equivalent collateral in various repo markets (and afterwards perhaps using the cash repo proceeds to sell IG9 indices?) Keep an eye on the Bid to Cover in future auctions as we may have hit a ceiling in this old-fashioned metric which has lately been moving sideways, and outright downward in some other TSY bond year.