Archive - Mar 25, 2014

The Nasdaq Biotech index is down 4% from earlier opening highs and is once again testing the 100-day-moving-average that provided some impetus for a modest bounce yesterday. This is a 10-week low level (-14% from Feb highs) and has retraced over 60% of the gains since the Fed announced the taper in December. Volume has been very heavy.

For some inane reason, about a year ago, there was a brief - and painfully boring - academic tussle between one group of clueless economists and another group of clueless economists, debating whether Too Big To Fail banks enjoy an implicit or explicit taxpayer subsidy, courtesy of their systematic importance (because apparently the fact that these banks only exist because they are too big in the first place must have been lost on both sets of clueless economists). Naturally, it goes without saying that the Fed, which as even Fisher now admits, has over the past five years, worked solely for the benefit of its banker owners and a few good billionaires, has done everything in its power to subsidize banks as much as possible, which is why this debate was so ridiculous it merited precisely zero electronic ink from anyone who is not a clueless economist. Today, the debate, for what it's worth, is finally over, when yet another set of clueless economists, those of the NY Fed itself, say clearly and on the record, that TBTF banks indeed do get a subsidy. To wit: " in fact, the very largest (top-five) nonbank firms also enjoy a funding advantage, but for very large banks it’s significantly larger, suggesting there’s a TBTF funding advantage that’s unique to mega-banks."

Curious what the real, and not pre-spun for public consumption, sentiment on the ground is in a China (where the housing bubble has already popped and the severe contraction in credit is forcing the ultra wealthy to luxury real estate in places like Hong Kong) from the perspective of the common man? The photo below, which shows hundreds of people rushing today to withdraw money from branches of two small Chinese banks after rumors spread about solvency at one of them, are sufficiently informative about just how jittery ordinary Chinese have become in recent days, and reflect the growing anxiety among investors as regulators signal greater tolerance for credit defaults.

The structural incompetence of centralized, wrong-unit-size agencies and central banks is global: the centralized strategies of China, Japan, the European Union and yes, Russia, too, will all fail for the same reasons: organizations with a few limited controls are intrinsically incapable of managing complex systems.

Last week we reported that while the West was busy alienating Russia in every diplomatic way possible, without of course exposing its crushing overreliance on Russian energy exports to keep European industries alive, Russia was just as busy cementing its ties with China, in this case courtesy of Europe's most important company, Gazprom, which is preparing to announce the completion of a "holy grail" natural gas supply deal to Beijing. We also noted the following: "And as if pushing Russia into the warm embrace of the world's most populous nation was not enough, there is also the second most populated country in the world, India." Today we learn just how prescient this particular comment also was, when Reuters reported that Rosneft, the world's top listed oil producer by output, may join forces with Indian state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp to supply oil to India over the long term, the Russian state-controlled company said on Tuesday.

Oh the dashed hopes... Just as we warned earlier... the dreams that yesterday was the dip to get back in and ride the waves of central bank largesse to another double in your favorite social media or Biotech stock are fading fast. Today is an almost perecect replay of yesterday's market action so far... pre-open Gold dump, JPY pump to sustain stocks at highs, spark retail bounce buyers back in and pros sell into strength as the "high growth" momentum stocks and Biotechs all reverse earlier gains in a hurry as all major stock indices are once again red post-Yellen.

The last time Obama announced he would "wind down" the NSA the NSA... got bigger!? Which is why we don't have any hopes whatsoever that this latest appearance by the teleprompted populist in chief, in which he is expected to announce a proposal to end NSA bulk data collection (yeah right), will lead to any deescalation of the centrally-planned, totalitarian state which has all 20th century dictators spinning in their CIA-facilitated graves. We do expect him to issue more warnings, and explain the "costs" to Putin once again, just in case he missed them the last time, before he annexed Crimea...

A surprise (to some) drop in China's PMI was just enough bad news to prompt the good-news-seeking BTFD'ers into expectations of additional stimulus from China. Despite 'PBOC advisors' (implictly the mouthpiece of official policy strawmen) stating openly not to expect stimulus and confirming that China will see a "crisis" in local-government financing "but not as expolosive as the 2008 crisis", and that "China must face the moral hazrd issue", investors are buying CNY, copper, Chinese stocks, and practically everything else on the back of hopes for moar money. However, as Bloomberg's Tom Orlik explains, with the government facing conflicting pressures an abrupt about-face in policy is unlikely.

It was only a matter of time before, as we said last month, January's reported surge in New Home Sales soared by 10% to 468K (well above the 400K then expected) would be revised lower. This just happened, when moments ago the Census Bureau lowered the January number from 468K to 455K. But what's worse is that last month's seasonally abnormal print was obviously an aberration due to the law of small numbers (explained here in detail), February's print was even worse, printing at 440K, below the 445K expected, and the lowest monthly print since September. Then again looking at the chart below shows why 20K houses up or down is absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, as New Home Sales is the one category that resolutely refuses to bounce from the Depression lows.

The 'recovery' has reached a new cyclical high in consumer confidence. Despite the economic growth sapping, recovery dampening, Fed tapering, consumers have not been more exuberant since January 2008. Of course, the jump to new highs is all about the future - the Present Situation index dropped while the "Expectations" index jumped 7 points to 83.5 - its highest in 6 months.

February 2013 saw Russian visitors spend 16% more than in 2012 as "investor" visas flowed, property soared, and hot money slooshed into the UK recovery. However, as AFP reports, Russian spending in British shops fell by 17 percent last month compared to February 2013 as the "unstable situation in Russia has shown its effect on tourism spend this year," already. Shoppers from the Middle East (up 31%) and China (up 23%) continue to represent the highest proportion of international sales in Britain, but it is clear, as The Economist points out, Russian wealth has permeated the upper reaches of society in Britain more completely than in any other Western country, with the health of "Londongrad" now at stake if sanctions are extended.

Another month, another sequential drop in the Case Shiller NSA index - the one the index creators themselves say should be used, not the Seasonally Adjusted data used by most commentators eager to find the best data. At a sequential decline of -0.08% in January, this was the third drop in a row - the longest consecutive period of sequential declines since March 2012  - and post a year over year increase of 13.24%, down from 13.38% in December, and the lowest since September 2013. Clearly, the pricing gains across the country are slowing.

This morning's pre-open is dominated by deja vu all over again. Just as we saw yesterday, right on cue at 830ET, gold (and silver) are unceremoniously dumped and USDJPY is pumped so as to ensure stocks look shiny for the US open (and Biotech can be dumped to the next greater fool). Oil is not moving, 30Y bonds are weaker, and the USD is flat... all makes perfect sense if you don't think about it.

Most of the market tends to focus on profits on a pro-forma basis. We have never been big fans of this. These are the earnings numbers companies like to publish that steer attention away from the ?bad stuff?. James Montier used to be highly scathing, describing them as “undefined, unregulated and untrue”. But because of their ready availability most in the market tend to quote pro-forma earnings numbers from the likes of Bloomberg and I/B/E/S and many base their equity valuations on this dodgy earnings metric. Yet even on this artificially inflated measure, trailing EPS grew only a paltry 5½% yoy in 2013, and 3% on a non-financial basis Andrew Lapthorne published an update on the US profits situation in the wake of the Q4 reporting season. He writes "?At first look, growth in US net income last year looks remarkably good. With nearly all S&P 500 names having reported year-end figures, net income grew 14% last year, or 12.8% on an ex-financial basis. This is fairly impressive growth given  the lacklustre economic backdrop. So should we be celebrating? Well we?re not so sure, as the source of this growth is not a robust improvement in operating cash flow, but is to be found in the large goodwill write-downs of 2012?." Andrew then shows that the vast majority of this 14% growth in profits was driven by company-specific write-downs made back in 2012 ? with Hewlett Packard, AT&T and Verizon Communications leading the way.

The Central Bank of Iraq said it bought 36 tons of gold this month to help stabilise the Iraqi dinar against foreign currencies, according to a statement from the bank that was emailed this morning. It is very large in tonnage terms and Iraq’s purchases this month alone surpasses the entire demand of many large industrial nations in all of 2013. It surpasses the entire demand of large countries such as France, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Italy, Japan, the UK, Brazil and Mexico. Indeed, it is just below the entire gold demand of voracious Hong Kong for all of 2013 according to GFMS data (see chart).  Iraq had 27 tonnes of gold reserves at the end of 2013 according to the IMF data and thus Iraq has more than doubled their reserves with their allocations to gold this month. Gold remains less than 5% of their overall foreign exchange reserves showing that there is the possibility of further diversification into gold in the coming months. The governor of the Iraqi Central Bank, Abdel Basset Turki, told a news conference that, "the bank bought 36 tonnes of gold to boost reserves and this move is to strengthen the financial capacity of the country and increase the elements of security and insurance reserves of the Central Bank of Iraq." He added that "the central bank seeks through the purchase of large quantities of gold to stabilize the Iraqi dinar against foreign currencies.” Iraq quadrupled its gold holdings to 31.07 tonnes over the course of three months between August and October 2012, data from the International Monetary Fund shows.