Archive - Dec 5, 2014

It appears the growth-is-back-just-look-at-the-jobs-number meme is not flowing through to the oil complex. WTI just broke below $66.00 (having earlier broken below and bounced back above) and is now down almost 1% on the week having retraced most of Monday's kneejerk dead-cat-bounce. This will be the lowest weekly close since July 2009 and down 9 of the last 10 weeks.

One of the great myths about investing that we’re told by the mainstream investment education is that we should “buy and hold” for the long term. Let's look at the numbers...

Over two years later, it is good to see our old friend is still right there and that SkyNet still reigns supreme, because as the following chart of CTRP, courtesy of Nanex, shows "new normal" algo-controlled stocks appears to have just two default modes: a relentless ramp higher (courtesy of a VWAP buyback programs or just momentum ignition), or a far more "nuanced" sinewave oscillation up and down in what only a Princeon economist could call "price discovery."

Things for Ukraine are going from bad to worse. As the central bank reported overnight, the country's foreign-currency (and gold reserves) dropped by over 21% in one month, to under $10 billion in November for the first time in nearly a decade due to large payments for debt and gas, from $12.6 billion to $9.966 billion.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has come full circle in Denton, Texas after a controversial ban on the practice entered into effect on Tuesday. Denton is one of several cities located on top of the massive Barnett shale formation, regarded as the birthplace of modern fracking. The ban, while incomplete, gives strength to what is a growing anti-fracking movement in the United States.

With today's shenanigans in USDJPY focusing everyone's attention on the nation's collapsing currency, Citi's FX Technicals group suggests it could perhaps be time to fade the trend and fight the consensus in the near-term.

In the great fiscal scheme of things, October 22, 1981 seems like only yesterday. That’s the day the US public debt crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time. It had taken the nation 74,984 days to get there (205 years). What prompts this reflection is that just a few days ago the national debt breached the $18 trillion mark; and the last trillion was added in hardly 365 days.

A story has been echoing around the financial news for a few weeks: the Chinese economy is now larger than the economy in the US. Not so fast...

December 5th 1996: After rising 210% off the 1987 crash lows, Alan Greenspan speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, asks: "But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?" The next day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumps by 1% to close at 6,381.94; over the next three years, the market nearly doubles...then crashes...then doubles... then crashes... and then triples in the last five years... "rational exuberance"

The world economy is slowing down and the authorities are fretting.

By now everyone has heard of the NY Fed's most famous employee (who did not work at Goldman Sachs previously): Kevin Henry, who according to his latest LinkedIn profile was recently promoted to Senior Associate at the Capital Markets desk at the NY Fed (and if they haven't, a refresh can be found here, here and here). Which is fine: Kevin deserves all the recognition and accolades that are due to anyone who manages to centrally-plan the world's biggest bond market. Because after all that's what the Fed does: it intervenes in the bond market. Nothing strange about that. And yet we have one question: why does Kevin seem to exhibit an absolute fascination when it comes to equity ETFs?

Consider: European stocks just closed at their highest since Jan 2008; Spanish bond yields hit a record low 1.803% and Spanish youth unemployment hovers near a record high 53.8%; Italian bond yields hit a record low 1.72% and Italian youth unemployment is at a record 43.3%. So once again we ask, why exactly does Europe need sovereign QE? WTF is it that lower rates will do?

As long as corporations continue borrowing money to buy back their own stocks and the yen keeps dropping, the SPX will continue lofting higher.

The reaction to today's blockbuster noise-ridden jobs data is muted in stocks but bonds are sending some complicated and uncomfortable signals. 2Y yields are 6-7bps higher and 30Y yield are now unchanged (havingbeen 4-5bps higher) as the market prices in short-term Fed action and the implicit medium-term economic weakness expected. This 6-7bps flattening of the 2s30s curve has crushed the spread to 234bps - below levels seen as Lehman failed and near Summer 2012's cycle lows. But we are sure 2015 will be the year that rates rise... right?