Archive - Apr 3, 2014

Having changed her Facebook profile picture to a "V...for Vendetta" face mask, the widow of former Zurich Insurance CFO Pierre Wauthier said she and her family cannot accept Zurich’s claim that his death wasn’t brought on by undue stress. As Bloomberg reports, Switzerland’s biggest insurer said in November that no “undue pressure” was put on Wauthier, who said in a suicide note that then-Chairman Josef Ackermann had created an unbearable working environment. But, his wife is demanding to know why her husband's former boss resigned if he had not accepted blame for the death, and why details of tensions at work were not made public. Her anger is clear, as she blasted "I am not worth talking to... or is it that I would raise unbecoming questions????"

Days after the US escalated, announcing it will be sending a Navy warship back into The Black Sea, and on the heels of NATO ordering its military planners to draft measures to beef up defenses amongst its Eastern European members, Russia is demanding answers for this escalation. As Reuters reports, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any increase in NATO's permanent presence in eastern Europe would violate a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation: "We have addressed questions to the north Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on." De-Escalation-Off.

Having successfully negotiated the exposure of a potential "false flag" attack on Syria, corruption probes, financial system chaos, court rulings of the ban's unconstitutionality, and a "successful" election, Turkey's Erdogan has decided to lift the ban on Twitter...

after shocking the world with its unilateral decision to halt Russian money transfers without a direct order from the administration, Reuters reports that JPM has folded and will process said payment from Russia's embassy in Kazakhstan to insurance agency Sogaz, easing tension after Moscow accused the U.S. bank of illegally blocking the transaction under the pretext of sanctions.

The last year or two has seen a deluge of Fed speakers pay lip-service to watching/monitoring/keeping-an-eye-on potential bubbles... but as yet having found none... That is all except one - Jeremy Stein - who explicitly called out high yield bonds as in a 'frothy' bubble last year... it appears he has grown weary of smashing his head against that wall...

• *FED SAYS STEIN SUBMITTED RESIGNATION LETTER TO OBAMA
• *YELLEN SAYS STEIN WAS 'AN INTELLECTUAL LEADER' ON FED BOARD

Stein plans to return to teaching at Harvard but in his resignation letter noted that more work is needed on the job market and that the financial market needs strengthening.

The risk that creditors, savers and bondholders, rather than taxpayers will bear the brunt of rescuing a bank in trouble form part of the first credit ratings given to 18 of Europe's biggest banks yesterday by new ratings agency, Scope.

We are adding one full percentage of growth back to our estimate of current quarter real GDP which is now 4.2%.

— Joseph A. LaVorgna (@Lavorgnanomics) April 3, 2014

Thanks to more jawboning promises of QE from Draghi this morning, peripheral bond yields in Europe have collapsed once again. Any minute now, Spain will be a lower-yielding bond than the US... and at this pace, you will have to pay Spain to lend it money within a few months... we are sure someone has figured out how entirely useless asset-purchases would be at these levels.. but for now, fight the fed in the US (they remind us that tapering is not tightening remember) but don't fight the promise of the ECB...

Markit's Services PMI missed expectations (55.3 vs 55.5 flash) and dropped from last month - as it seems an easing of the 'weather disruption' did nothing for pent-up services demand. Services employment growth slowed (suggesting a weak NFP) as did new business (very significantly) but optimism rose (so that's good). On the heels of that the ISM Services print missed expectations for the 4th month of the last 5 (53.1 vs 53.6) but rose modestly MoM.

"High-frequency traders are gaming the system, reaping billions in the process and undermining investor confidence in the fairness of the markets. It’s a growing cancer and needs to be addressed.  If confidence erodes further, the fuel of our free-enterprise system, capital formation, is at risk. We can’t allow that to happen. For sure, we still believe investing in equities is a primary path to long-term wealth creation, and we believe in the long-term structural integrity of the markets to deliver that over time for individual investors, which is all the more reason to be vigilant in removing anything that creates unfair advantage or undermines investor confidence... High-frequency trading isn’t providing more efficient, liquid markets; it is a technological arms race designed to pick the pockets of legitimate market participants. That flies in the face of our markets’ founding principles.

From Goldman's David Kostin, who first looks back: "S&P 500 began 2014 with a pullback of 6%, repeating its 2013 trend, but then rallied 8% to reach a new high of 1885. The market has not had a drawdown of 10% since the summer of 2012, rallying nearly 50% during that time. Gold and bonds have outperformed stocks YTD" and then forward: "S&P 500 rises 2% in 1Q to hit new high; we expect 3% appreciation during next 12 months" In other words, by the end of this week the Market should hit Goldman's 12 month forward price target.

Despite Draghi's explanation that a QE program in Europe (due to the greater extent of bank lending vs capital market financing) would not be "as efficient" as the Fed's program, his comment that:

*DRAGHI SAYS COUNCIL WILL REFLECT HARD ON DESIGN OF QE

Has provided just enough "hope" juice to drive the EUR lower and ramp bond and stock prices across Europe (for now). We will have to see what the half-life of this jawboning is. Of course, the EUR selling is USD buying and that is pumping USDJPY higher - and therefore a pre-open pump in US equities.

So much for those already abysmally low Q1 GDP forecasts. Moments ago, the Census Bureau released trade data for February which crushed expectations of an improvement from $39.1 billion (revised to $39.3 billion) to $38.5 billion, and instead rose 7.7% to $42.3 billion, the highest monthly trade deficit since September. This was driven by a 0.4% increase in imports to to $231.7 billion offset by a drop in exports of 1.1%  to $192.5 billion. The goods deficit increased $2.2 billion from January to $61.7 billion in February; the services surplus decreased $0.8 billion from January to $19.4 billion in February. Most notably however, is that as a result of this "unexpected" surge in the deficit, the Q1 GDP forecast cuts, anywhere between 0.2% and 0.4% are set to begin.

Despite hope that this time is different, and after a few weeks of improvement that was extrapolated as back-to-the-status-quo for us all, initial jobless claims rose by their most week-over-week in 10 weeks, missed expectations, and hover just below the average of the last year. Not exactly the positive trend that so many would like to use to build their "so buy stocks" thesis. This follows ADP's miss and the ISM reports' internal jobs indices misses. Of course, a 'bad' claims data is great news for more un-tapering.. the bulls, let down by Draghi, now need Friday's payroll data to be truly dismal.

As we noted previously, there was a low expectation that Mario Draghi would unleash a much-hoped-for QE but we suspect the devil of the dovish details will come in the press conference when the bespectacled banker will prove that open-mouth operations and the promise of "whatever it takes" at some point in the future are just as powerful (for now) as any actual monetary policy. Rates lower for much much longer... studying negative rates... contemplating asset purchases... preparing to fire OMT... Euro is too strong comments... expect a wild ride... EURUSD is at 1.3760 as he starts.