Archive - Oct 2014

What do an old German bank note, a current $100 bill, and an apple all have in common? The answer, according to ConvergEx's Nick Colas, is that these simple objects can tell us much about the current investment scene, ranging from Europe’s economic challenges to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s attempts to reduce unemployment. Colas takes an “object-ive” approach to analyzing the current investment landscape by describing 10 common items and how they shape our perceptions of reality. The other objects on our list: a hazmat suit, a house in Orlando, a barrel of oil, a Rolex watch, a butterfly, a heating radiator in Berlin, and a smartphone.

One would think that Janet Lee Dupree, 72, a self-professed HIV-infected alcoholic, would be slowly putting aside material worries as she prepares to set the intangibles in her life in order for one last time. One would be wrong.As she admits, "I am an alcoholic and I have HIV," she tells the BBC. "That's under control." What is the cause of most if not all consternation in the final days of Dupree's life? "I was sick and I didn't worry about paying back the debt." As a result, Dupree defaulted on her loan, and since she turned 65 she has had money withheld from her Social Security benefits. "Just recently I received a notification that they are going to garnish my wages because I am still working," says Dupree, who works 30 hours a week as a substance abuse counsellor. The debt in question: Dupree owes $16,000 in student loans she acquired in 1971 and 1972.

"I will never live long enough to pay off my loan."

Stop us when the flashbacks to September 11, and its Patriot Act aftermath, become too close for comfort.

If even George Soros is getting concerned and writing Op-Eds, then Putin must be truly winning.

High-yield bond issuance has surged in recent days as 'wide' spreads have encouraged investors to take the dip once again (despite firms' record leverage and increasing desperation to roll the wall of maturing debt). However, it's not all guns blazing, as one manager noted, "while the market reopens, it reopens with issuers having to be a little more investor friendly." Despite Carl Icahn's warning that "the high-yield bond market is in a major bubble that's gonna burst," Bullard's "QE4" comments sparked Goldman to add US junk bonds and Aberdeen says selling EU and buying US corporate debt "is the trade that kind of screams at you right now." The dash-for-trash down-in-quality is back as CCC-demand surges and, as one trader notes the market's schizophrenia: "one day the market feels like it is shut down and you can’t sell anything and you wake up this morning and you can price any part of the curve."

Top Bioweapons Expert Is Convinced of It

The last few days have seen stocks explode higher, led by Dow Transports (up 10.3%) following Bullard's QE4 jawboning. The Dow Industrials is back in the green for 2014. While the catalyst may have been Bullard (and/or Williams and Gartman), the "tool" is the "most shorted" stocks - which have seen their best run (biggest squeeze) in 3 years...

The current trade-off is not the contemporaneous one between more versus less policy stimulus today, but is an intertemporal trade-off between more stimulus today at the expense of more challenging and disruptive policy exit (and disruptive markets) in the future. The FOMC's dialog needs to change immediately.

With its latest "coverage" of the European economy, the Economist may have finally jumped the parrot.

"Don't fight the Fed," unless of course the Fed says "sell." Since Janet Yellen's July 15th "Biotechs.. valuations are stretched" warning, investors have fought tooth-and-nail with the Fed to prove her wrong... Biotechs are now up 11.5% from that day at all-time record highs. And as a reminder bonds are in a bubble...

Remember Europe's "austerity", or rather,as we dubbed it, fauxterity? Of course, how could you forget: after all everything that is wrong with Europe is blamed not on government corruption and the complete lack of reform, enabled so gloriously by Goldman's custodian of Europe's money printer who would do "whatever it takes" to mask Europe's sad reality that without reform the continent is doomed, but on the intolerable, insufferbale imposition of hated, loathed austerity on Europe's insolvent nations. After all, how on earth are they all supposed to get out of their debt-induced depressions if they have to, gasp, cut their debt! So yeah, we get the propaganda. What we don't get is whether everyone in Europe is completely incapable of reading simple numbers, is atrocious at math, or simply doesn't understand the definition of austerity.

But the world has been printing such great PMIs? And the US is the new engine of global growth? So how did US Manufacturing PMI just print 56.2, 3 month lows, and its biggest miss since August 2013? Following China and Europe's lead, US is latest PMI print with collapsing New Orders (57.1, down from 59.8, lowest since January), Output, and New Export Orders. This is the biggest 2-month drop in US PMI since May 2013.

Stocks, Crude, or Bonds?

"For the third quarter of 2014, revenue from the Cable Networks segment increased 0.7% to $2.3 billion compared to $2.2 billion in the third quarter of 2013, reflecting a 5.1% increase in distribution revenue, partially offset by a 4.6% decline in advertising revenue, primarily due to a decline in ratings."