Archive - Feb 18, 2014

Jump you Flokers!

Since 1998, the markets have been in serial bubbles and busts, each one bigger than the last. A long-term chart of the S&P 500 shows us just how obvious this is (and yet the Fed argues it cannot see bubbles in advance?).

The banker suicide wave that started in late January has now become an epidemic, and it seems to be focusing on one bank: JP Morgan. After the first suicide that took place in JPM's London headquarters, ending the life of 39 year old Gabriel Magee, a vice president in the investment bank’s technology department, next it was 37 year old Ryan Crane, an executive director in the firm's program trading division, who died under still unknown circumstances. Moments ago a third JPMorgan banker committed suicide, this time at the JPMorgan Charter House Asia headquarters in central Hong Kong, where a 33 year old man who was said to have been an FX trader for JPM, just jumped to his death.

Silver and gold were slammed early in the European day but have now recovered those modest losses to extend their winning streak. Gold is holding above $1,320 but Silver is outperforming +1.4% today and is now up 13 days in a row... this is the longest winning streak since at least 1968. Both gold and silver have broken through their 200-day moving averages (and the often-watched 150-day).

Surprise! For the 3rd time in the last 20 years, homebuilder sentiment got way ahead of reality... and as the February NAHB data shows, reality is starting to catch up to them. The NAHB sentiment index crashed by its most on record in Feb, missed expectations by its most on record, and fell back below the crucial 50-level, as it starts to play cyclical catch-down to home sales and mortgage apps. Think it's the weather? nope...It's across every region (with The West dropping the most on record - hot dry weather?)

Despite the ongoing efforts of the rest of the world to ignore what is rapidly escalating into a potential pivot point in global geopolitics, Ukraine has gone from bad to worse in the last few hours with 3 dead and hundreds injured:

• *UKRAINE RIOT POLICE AMASS ON PERIMETER OF INDEPENDENCE SQUARE
• *KIEV SUBWAY SYSTEM SHUT DOWN, INTERFAX SAYS
• *UKRAINE OPPOSITION: ALL WOMEN SHOULD LEAVE INDEPENDENCE SQUARE
• *UKRAINE RIOT POLICE DISMANTLING BARRICADES APPROACHING MAIDAN

The riot police have been told to 'impose order by all means envisaged' and it appears they are rapidly moving towards that goal.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen testified before Congress for the first time since replacing Ben Bernanke at the beginning of the month. Her testimony confirmed what many of us suspected, that interventionist Keynesian policies at the Federal Reserve are well-entrenched and far from over. Isn't it amazing that the same people who failed to see the real estate bubble developing, the same people who were so confident about economic recovery that they were talking about “green shoots” five years ago, the same people who have presided over the continued destruction of the dollar's purchasing power never suffer any repercussions for the failures they have caused?

Winter storms and cold weather dominated much of January and somehow Empire State managed its greatest beat in a year; however, we are sure the weather will be blamed for the biggest miss in 3 months for the data in Feb (printing 4.48 vs expectations of 8.5). New Orders tumbled from 10.98 to -0.21; inventories plunged, and expectations for the average work week and future Capex spend expectations collapsed to their lowest since July 09.The drop from January's exuberance is the largest in 18 months.

Nearly two months ago, when we commented on the recent string of unprecedented failures by the ECB to sterilize its legacy bond buying operation, the SMP, we commented that "judging by the feverish pace of purchases of every peripheral bond available, is this merely just another indication how little the ECB cares about sterilization, and is just a hint at an upcoming full-blown and unsterilized bond monetization about to be launched by Mario Draghi?" Sure enough at the subsequent February 6 ECB meeting Mario Draghi hinted as much when he said that among the things the ECB was looking at was precisely the "de"sterilizing of the SMP program. However, one stumbling block was getting the Bundebsbank's tacit approval to proceed with this plan which would make the ECB's bond monetization mirror that of the Fed where bonds are purchased on an unsterilized basis. And, as expected, overnight the Bundesbank threw in the towel on sterilization, meaning that the SMP will no longer be sterilized with an announcement divulging just this likely as soon as the next ECB meeting.

• Carl Icahn wins again: Actavis to Buy Forest Labs for $25 Billion (WSJ)
• ECB governing council member attacks German court ruling on OMT (FT)
• China Tackles $1 Trillion Data Gap as Xi Changes Metrics (BBG)
• FX Traders Facing Extinction as Computers Replace Humans (BBG)
• BOJ Boost to Loan Programs Signals Room for More Easing (BBG) - actually no it doesn't as it was "factored in"
• Four killed in Thai clashes; PM to face charges over rice scheme (Reuters)
• Goodbye unsterilized SMP: Bundesbank Backs Measure to Boost Funds in Banking System  (WSJ)
• Iranian Hacking to Test NSA Nominee Michael Rogers (WSJ)
• Ukraine Clashes Leave Dozens Wounded as Putin Resumes Bailout (BBG)

The key event overnight was the monetary policy announcement by the BOJ in which its kept it QE unchanged while the Board decided by unanimous vote to double the scale of two funding facilities, namely the Stimulating Bank Lending Facility and Growth-Supporting Funding Facility and to extend the application period for these facilities by a year. Both facilities are designed to stimulate the provision of funding to Japanese banks, allowing them to borrow from the BoJ at a fixed rate of 0.1%pa, for a period 4 years now, instead of 1-3 years previous. Some are arguing that by expanding its funding programmes but not changing its asset purchase targets, the BoJ has signalled its intention to ease policy whilst preserving firepower for extra stimulus in coming months when a sales-tax hike is due to kick-in. The result was a surge in both the Nikkei and USDJPY. The problem, and confirmation that once again the market is now a bunch of cluless automatons unable to analyze even one sentence below the headline level, is that as Goldman explained overnight, the "surprise" announcement was already fully factored in.