Archive - Oct 2014

The move lower in September was technically driven as there was no negative headline data, obvious reasons for price falls or indeed evidence of physical gold selling. Most of the selling was on the COMEX and gold remained firm in Asian trading throughout the month. Bullion buyers should buy the dip 

But...but...but... it's an AAPL-derivative play, what could go wrong? The supplier of Apple's oh-so-magnificent Sapphire Glass, GT Advanced Technologies, just filed for bankruptcy...

*GT ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES & UNITS FILE  CHAPTER 11, LISTS DEBT OF MORE THAN $1 BLN

Do not worry though, the CEO seems very pleased, noting "GT has a strong and fundamentally sound underlying business." Perhaps the reason for his optimism is the massive insider-selling that has occurred in the last few months... For once the shorts (45.7% of float) were right.

If anyone's bucket list includes hearing, and seeing, the unholy trinity of Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner whose actions have pretty much doomed America, today is your lucky day, because as part of the lawsuit brought on by former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg, the three legendary statists will field questions from prominent, and very flamboyant, lawyer David Boies. As has been reported previously, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg is challenging the terms of the 2008 bailout for the company he built into a global financial-services powerhouse before being pushed out in 2005. He is not challenging the bailout which prevented AIG from liquidating as a result of selling billions of default protection on worthless companies, and which avoided the all out, and much needed, purge of trillions in bad debt and just as worthless equity.

"Right now we have the executive branch making a claim that it has the right to kill anyone, anywhere on Earth, at any time, for secret reasons based on secret evidence, in a secret process undertaken by unidentified officials. That frightens me."

With ever louder chatter that the west will force Russia to exit the global currency messaging and interchange service that is SWIFT - essentially locking it out of transacting in "developed" currencies - and with correspondingly louder retorts by Russia that it is prepared and would welcome such a move as it would merely force it to abandon the petrodollar and allign even closer with China, there was one entity whose take on the matter had been largely ignnored. SWIFT itself. Surprisingly, in a press release issued this morning,the member-owned cooperative, reveals that not only has it received "calls to disconnect institutions and entire countries from its network – most recently Israel and Russia", but that it regrets "the pressure" as the "surrounding media speculation, both of which risk undermining the systemic character of the services that SWIFT provides its customers around the world."

Its deja vu all over again from a week ago... stocks (up) and bonds (yields down) and USDJPY (lower) have drastically diverged this morning (just as they did last Friday over the weekend into Monday)... will it be different this time?

Back in May we revealed that the "Mystery, And Completely Indiscriminate, Buyer Of Stocks", obviously a key player in a time when the Fed's own indirect monetization of stocks was fading, was none other than corporations themselves, gorging on cheap debt and using the proceeds to buy back their own stock.  And while we explained that the vast majority of companies are using up as much leverage as they can to fund said buybacks, with both total and net corporate debt levels having risen to new all time highs refuting misperceptions that corporate debt is actually declining, something even more disturbing was revealed today, when Bloomberg reported that companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, are "poised to spend $914 billion on share buybacks and dividends this year, or about 95 percent of earnings!"

After collapsing on the heels of a poll a week ago suggesting Dilma Rousseff was leading in Brazil's Presidential election (and thus bad for business, more of the same lack of reform), the weekend's vote - while confirming Rousseff's lead - did not give her a majority and pro-business candidate Aecio Neves had a strong showing. Brazil's stock market IBOVESPA index exploded 8% higher on hope that this may mean 'change' as Brazilians clearly signaled disenchantment with current policies... even as Rousseff is still the strong favorite.

The US Dollar has risen for 12 straight weeks - gaining over 8% against major worlde currencies since June - and while talking heads proclaim the cleanest-dirty-shirt belief in "king dollar," as Reuters notes, it could pose a triple threat to US companies' earnings: driving up the costs of doing business overseas, suppressing the value of non-US sales and, perhaps most worryingly, signaling weak international demand. While the historical relationship between the dollar and the S&P 500 has been inconsistent (though some sectors are highly correlated), Barclays fears translation effects could reduce revenues and cause estimates for Q3 to be missed (even as they are marked down dramatically). Crucially, Barclays warns dollar strength is important because it is a symptom of decelerating international economic growth and they reiterate their unchanged 1975 year-end target for the S&P.

There’s really no point in trying to convert anyone to our viewpoint. Somebody will have to hold stocks over the completion of the present cycle, and encouraging one investor to reduce risk simply means that someone else will have to bear it instead... In any event, be careful in believing that a market advance “proves” concerns about valuations wrong. What further advances actually do is simply extend the scope of the potential losses that are likely to follow.  That lesson has been repeated across history.

• Ebola Patient Fights for Life as Contacts are Monitored (BBG)
• GPIF Unlikely To Announce New Portfolio Until November: Delay Could Rattle Investors Hoping Fund Will Invest More in Stocks (WSJ)
• High risk Ebola could reach France and UK by end-October, scientists calculate (Reuters)
• Neves to Face Rousseff in Brazil in Surprise Comeback (BBG)
• Hong Kong democracy protests fade, face test of stamina (Reuters); A Hong Kong Protest Run on Fumes and Instant Noodles (WSJ)
• Putin Clans Said Gridlocked Over Arrest as Sanctions Bite (BBG)
• Surging dollar may be triple whammy for U.S. earnings (Reuters)
• Lloyds Said to Cut Thousands of Jobs as CEO Cuts Costs (BBG)

Speak no Hazard, See no Hazard and Moron Hazard...

While the WSJ already broke the news yesterday that Hewlett Packard would split in two companies, and as such today's "shocking" announcement will hardly have the impact of the just as "surprising" split of PayPal which came on the last day of September, what is probably most notable - in addition to the news that HPQ will fire another 5,000 workers, bringing the total to 55,000 - is that just as in the case of PayPal, so for Hewlett-Packard, the financial advisor, i.e., the company which pitched the spin off to executives, was none other than Goldman. One wonders where else Goldman is advising on "spin offs" to take advantage of the bubbly stock market valuations. As a reminder, HPQ is only doing this deal and accessing the public markets now because several years ago it tried to do exactly the same thing in a private transaction with a strategic or financial buyer, and found no bids. Luckily, now we have central bank froth and pervasive risk euphoria to help management bail out at the highest possible stock price.

While the biggest micro news of the weekend is certainly the report that Hewlett-Packard has finally thrown in the towel on organic growth (all those thousands laid off over the past ten years can finally breathe easily - they were not fired in vain), and has proceeded to do what so many said was its only real option: splitting into two separate companies, a personal-computer and printer business, and corporate hardware and services operations (which will certainly lead to even more stock buybacks only not at one but two companies) which in turn has sent its stock and futures higher, perhaps the most notable development in the macro world is Japan's realization finally that the weaker Yen is crushing domestic businesses, which has resulted in the USDJPY sliding to lows last seen at Friday's jobs report print, and also generally leading to across the board wekness for the dollar, whose relentless surge in the past 3 months is strongly reminiscent of the euphoria following the Plaza Accord, only in the other direction (and making some wonder if the Plaza Hotel caterer are about to see a rerun of September 22, 1985 in the coming weeks).