Archive - Feb 2014

Miserable? Feeling like you want to turn the corners of the smiley down so it reflects your current mood? Believe you would get the lead role in the Les Misérables?

Equities have the worst day of the year and really no exchange around the globe was left out. Now every one on our screen is down YTD. For US markets, today was the worst day since last June. Overall, while today was active, it was still an orderly session. We did have some interest to buy topside options... Serious pain in risk assets lent a bid to US treasuries as yields continue to retreat from their New Years’ day highs.

Curious why Michael Dell was so eager to take the company he founded private? So he could do stuff like this without attracting too much attention. According to the Channel Register, the recently LBOed company is "starting the expected huge layoff program this week, claiming numbers will be north of 15,000." Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows in an environment of falling PC sales, a commoditisation of the server market and a perceived need to better serve enterprises with their ever-increasing mobile and cloud-focused IT requirements - things that do not bode well for Dell's EBITDA - and the result is perhaps the largest axing round in the company's history. But at least the shareholders cashed out while they could.

While the Fed remains convinced (and they would know) that there is no bubble in asset markets - in the face of record issuance of covenant-lite loans, record high stock prices in the face of declining fundamentals, and record low spreads in credit markets as leverage rises - as we noted yesterday, investors "are stretching to find reasons not to cut" their allocations. The bursting of the bubble was dismissed by many late last year as "bubble" talk reached highs - providing psychological non-confirmation that a market drop is unlikely when bubble talk is so high. It seems, in the last few weeks that has shifted as bubble chatter has dropped rather notably. Does that free up investor psychology to sell? Being "greedy when others are fearful" has an equal and opposite trading meme - cover when no one is worried.

Reality will reassert itself in 2014, with lemmings, flippers, and hedgies getting slaughtered as the housing market comes back to earth with a thud. The continued tapering by the Fed will remove the marginal dollars used by Wall Street to fund this housing Ponzi. The Wall Street lemmings all follow the same MBA created financial models. They will all attempt to exit the market simultaneously when their models all say sell. If the economy improves, interest rates will rise and kill the housing market. If the economy tanks, the stock market will plunge, creating fear and killing the housing market. Once it becomes clear that prices have begun to fall, the flippers will panic and start dumping, exacerbating the price declines. This scenario never grows old.

The Nasdaq plunged by the most in over 8 months today and broke all the way back to unchanged from the December taper decision of the Fed. All major US equity indices are now negative from the time the Fed decided to slow its flow of free money. The Dow closed below its 200DMA for the first time since December 2012. The S&P 500 closed the furthest below its 100DMA since QE3 started. USDJPY was in charge and everything was higher or lower beta off of that as it broke 102 early then 101 later in the day (with the Nikkei -700 points from the day's highs). Treasuries rallied around 5bps to fresh 7-month low yields for 30Y. Gold and Silver surged, adding 1% on the day as the USD lost 0.25% on the day (led by the 1% strength in the JPY). VIX smashed to 14 month highs over 21%. Credit deteriorated but stocks are catching down.

Confirming the floating rumor from last week that yet another Wall Streeter from a bailed out company is going to set US economic policy, moments ago the Treasury announced that indeed the Citigroup economist Nathan Sheets - the bank's global head of international economics - will start working next week as a counsellor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.  This is the same Sheets, who ten days ago wrote that "our empirical work presents evidence that over the next few years, 10-year U.S. Treasury yields are likely to move toward 5 percent (slightly above our projections for nominal GDP growth) and to stabilize near that level. Our work suggests that Japanese rates may be on a sharply rising trajectory as well, if policymakers there get traction in taming the deflationary demons that have plagued the economy." We already know why the Treasury likes him so much.

My point with this is that when the capital markets “break” due to a loss in credibility, the shift tends to be both swift and violent. 

The Video Has Gotten Almost As Much Media Coverage As Peyton Manning Explaining Why The Football Hit His Helmet On The Very First Play (Leading To A Safety ... And The Fastest Score In Superbowl History)

It's just getting worse for global interconnected, correlated markets where every expression of risk is the USDJPY, and of course for the Nikkei and for Japan's PM Abe, who is now on strict Imodium watch.  Should the USDJPY tumble to double digit range, we are officially in "global central banker intervention is imminent" territory. And yes, for those asking, there is nothing quite as efficient as the "fair value" of stocks being determined by currency stop losses at even, round numbers.

While the bulk of retailers are blaming plunging kitchen sink sales on unprecedented and completely unexpected cold winter weather, and shocking snow - that defunct relic in a global cooling warming world - one company apparently did not get the "scapegoat the weather" memo: Mercedes. "Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) today reported the highest January retail volumes in its history with sales of 24,413 units across the Mercedes-Benz, Sprinter and smart model lines, a 1.5% increase from the 24,059 vehicles sold the same month last year."

A month ago, none other than Conan O'Brien exposed the un-independent PR-sponsored propaganda-fest that is the local news mainstream media in America. Well, it's happened again... this time proclaiming "Don't worry... be Happy." As Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger reminds, we all know the mainstream media is a joke but sometimes its inherent idiocy can be best highlighted with a little humor...

With today's plunge, Latin American currencies have collapsed by over 5% in th elast 2 weeks - the fastest drop in almost two years. Year-over-year this is a 15.75% drop, the largest such drop since Lehman. This drop breaks the 2009 lows and presses the currencies to their weakest since 2003... Bond markets are being crushed as short-dated Argentine BONARs have collapsed to 14 month lows...

It really doesn't get funnier than this, and explains the 7 figure comp for the Bank of America authors who can certainly get matching compensation in the comedy circuit. From BofA's Naeem Wahid:

We recommend closing the short EUR/SEK trade that we initiated last week. While Swedish economic data have improved, as we expected, the global outlook has deteriorated – caused by a larger than expected weather effect in the US (the US ISM has fallen to 51.3, from December’s 56.5). As such we close out the trade at  8.8300 (entered at 8.8100) and look to reinitiate once risk appetite turns positive again.

In other words, the outlook for the global economy - that would be the economy of the entire world - has just taken a hit due to cold weather and snowfall during the US winter....    .....    .....

US equities are pressing fresh lows of the day as USDJPY tests 101. The Nasdaq just broke 4,000 - its worst drop in 8 months; The Dow trading back under its 200DMA; and now every major index is in negative territory from the December Taper. Most notably though, Treasury yields are tumbling as weak data and safe-haven flows have pressed 30-year yields to their lowest sicen July 5th 2013. VIX is trading 20.7% - its highest in 4 months.