Archive - Mar 10, 2014

Puerto Rico muni owners who never saw the Barron’s story or the rating firms’ downgrades are better off than those who kept up with the financial news.

It would appear, judging by the tumble in JPY crosses (i.e. JPY strength) that the carry-traders of the world are disappointed in the BoJ's lack of exuberance.

• *BOJ RETAINS PLAN FOR 60T-70T YEN ANNUAL RISE IN MONETARY BASE (no change)

But it is the commentary that is truly baffling in its contempt for the truth:

• *BOJ: EXPORTS HAVE LEVELED OFF MORE OR LESS (umm, record trade deficit?)
• *BOJ: PICKUP IN CAPEX HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY EVIDENT (Tankan Capex growth fallen for 2 quarters)
• *BOJ SAYS JAPAN'S ECONOMY IS RECOVERING MODERATELY (GDP growth worst since Abenomics began)

Black is white; water is not wet; and Abenomics will work any day now...

A curious story, and one which should be taken with a mine of salt, has surfaced out of the pro-Russian newspaper Iskra, which reports - so far on an entirely unsubstantiated basis - that last Friday, in a mysterious operation under the cover of night, Ukraine's gold reserves were promptly loaded onboard an unmarked plane, which subsequently took the gold to the US.

Think JPM's 0 trading day losses in 2013 was impressive? Prepare to have your mind blown. The chart below shows the chart of daily net trading income by High Frequency Trading titan Virtu, taken from its just filed IPO prospectus. The punchline: in 4 years of trading Virtu has had one, one, day in which it lost money. Let that sink in: one trading loss day and 1237 days of profits. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Holy Grail of the New Normal broken, manipulated markets.

Seth Klarman's comments on "The Truman Show" market and "born bulls" appeared to upset the status quo today on CNBC leaving none other than Joe Kernan and then later, Jim Cramer questioning Klarman's credentials with a passive-aggressive "when did Klarman turn negative? We should look into that..." question. We found it intriguing and wondered how much the investing public weights the differing views of these veritable titans of stock market wisdom. The answer - a market-based answer - lie in the purest measure of all... the cost of acquiring their knowledge...

Rather than attempt to reduce a very complex system to a cartoonish "explanation" of events, we would be better served by seeking out the geopolitical linchpins that have proven key in every era and theater of operations. These include Energy, Transport routes, Military control of transport and geographical chokepoints, and The support or resistance of resident populaces

While progress on the search-and-recovery efforts of the missing Malaysian Airlines jet continues to disappoint, the stolen-passport plot thickens considerably. While earlier we discovered that it was a mysterious "Mr. Ali" that purchased the tickets for the two passengers traveling on stolen passports (with cash), The Telegraph reports that BBC Persia confirms they were Iranian nationals. According to another Iranian friend (who had hosted them while in Kuala Lumpur) the two were "looking for a place to settle" in Europe (intending to complete their journey in Frankfurt and Denmark).

The world is a strange place. The banks have no money. Or rather, they have no money that they want to lend anyone out there in the real world. So, in their place, it’s the governments that have decided since the financial crash to become the lenders to the economies. 

If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores?  If we truly are in an "economic recovery", then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country?  Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact.  Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing.  In fact, some retail experts estimate that the Internet has accounted for only about 20 percent of the decline that we are seeing.  Most of the rest of it can be accounted for by the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer.  Median household income has declined for five years in a row, but all of our bills just keep going up.  That means that the amount of disposable income that average Americans have continues to shrink, and that is really bad news for retailers.

Over the weekend we reported that even Goldman has now highlighted what has been clear to most, but certainly not the Fed, for quite some time: stocks are in such an epic bubble, with many of the key valuation metrics notably EV/sales, off the charts and at all time highs, that even Goldman's own clients are asking "When does the party end?" Goldman Sachs was kind enough to point out that while buying into undervalued stocks at this record high market junction may be a safe bet, the alternative, going long the most overvalued stocks usually ends in tears. So just what are these most overvalued stocks? To answer this question David Kostin screens for those Russell 1000 companies with the highest EV/Sales ratios, and finds 40 companies, with a ratio between 10x and 875x (median of 15x compared to the overall Russell's 2x), that fit the bill. The answer - the list of the America's most overvalued companies - is shown in the table below.

While the mystery builds over the still officially unexplained disappearance of Malaysian flight MH370, or just who the two passengers with "stolen" passports may have been although we expect a revelation on this issue shortly, the FT has added yet another twist to what is sure to be a conspiracy thriller for weeks to come: the paper reports that the Thai travel agent who booked the tickets for the men in question said that she had been asked to arrange the travel by an Iranian contact. Adding to the confusion is the revelation that originally the mysterious Iranian, known only as Mr. Ali, tried to reserve seats for the two men on separate flights not to China, but to Europe, one on a Qatar Airways flight, and the other on Etihad. And the punchline: a "friend" of Mr. Ali's paid for the tickets in cash.

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the US is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There’s another side to the story of the relentless US shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of shale because it’s all that’s left. There are some good things happening behind the fairy tale numbers, though—it’s just a matter of deciphering them from a sober perspective.

This timey different!

While central bankers and politicians alike celebrate the great recorvery in the UK, the nation is increasingly divided between the haves and have-nots (or Londoners and non-Londoners). In no way is that more clearly evident that a dreadful new trend that, as The Sunday Post reports, desperate Brits are turning to Facebook to advertise their organs for sale at up to $50,000 despite the medical and legal risks involved.

To believe that the housing bubble caused the 2008 crash was is to ignore its origin in Federal Reserve policies that forced investors to reach for yield. Tragically, the Federal Reserve has done the same thing again – starving investors of safe returns, and promoting a reach for yield into increasingly elevated and speculative assets. Thinking about the crisis only from the perspective of housing, investors and policy-makers have allowed the same process to play out more broadly in the equity market. On a quantitative basis, the overvaluation of the equity market is greater percentage-wise, and greater dollar-wise, than the overvaluation of housing in 2006-2007. Impatient, crowd-following investors are all too willing to wastefully scatter seeds onto this parched desert, thinking that this is their only chance to sow. To wait patiently in the expectation of fertile soil and rain is not an act of pessimism, but an act of optimism and informed experience.