Archive - May 6, 2014

So much for the recovery... As WaPo reports, the American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. A rather damning new Brookings Institution report shows that US businesses are being destroyed faster than they're being created. As the authors of the report ominously explain: If the decline persists, "it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future," as new business creation has been cut in half since 1978.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” - Albert Einstein

It seems "market conditions" are right for the big one...

ALIBABA FILES IPO INITIAL REGISTRATION $1B;  ALIBABA HOLDER YAHOO BENEFICIALLY OWNS 22.6%
2013 EBITDA: $2.7 billion, 2013 Free Cash Flow: $3.2 billion; Pro Forma cash $7.9 billion

Here are some of the key details, formerly non-public, from its IPO filing...

While we recently roasted IBM for engaging in an unsustainable debt-funded buyback program, in which IBM has used every dollar of debt issued since 2012 to buyback its stock, moments ago another company showed why management teams would much rather buyback their stock than invest in CapEx in a market that only reward instant gratification in the form of shareholder friendly activity and furiously punishes any attempts to grow for the future.

The streak is over! US equities suffered their biggest Tuesday loss in over 6 months today. Despite the same valiant attempt to ramp stocks after a weak open (using JPY and VIX) as yesterday, Turbo Tuesday turned out to be tepid tumbling Tuesday as high-beta hopes were dashed amid little to no macro or event risk news. Yesterday's dead cat bounce in yields appears to have been just that and stocks tracked them lower all day (and disconnected from USDJPY mid-afternoon as it was unable to break 101.50). The Russell was the worst performer (along with NASDAQ) as the broad index closed below its 200-day-moving-average for the first time in 18 months (after 7 false alarms in the last 2 weeks). Away from stocks, credit spreads widened, bond yields dropped, the USD sold off 0.5% to 19-month lows, commodities were generally flat (gold +0.65% on the week), and VIX closed +0.5 vols near 14. Welcome to "Torpedo Tuesday"

Is Detroit destined to become a Chinese city?  Chinese homebuyers and Chinese businesses are starting to flood into the Motor City, and the governor of Michigan is greatly encouraging this.  In fact, he has formally asked the Obama administration for 50,000 special federal immigration visas to encourage even more immigration from China and elsewhere.  So will Detroit be the first major city in the United States to be dominated by China?  It could happen.  Once upon a time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city in the history of the world and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country.  But now it is a rotting, decaying, bankrupt hellhole that is in desperate need of a savior, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appears to be fully convinced that China can be that savior.

Russia has made its first official comment following the latest escalations in Ukraine - and they are not peaceful-sounding - "We are dealing with the real genocide of both Russian and Ukrainian people,” said Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, adding that Russia was shocked by the massacre in Odessa and mourns the victims together with their families. His words went further as he warned the perpetrators "will get what they deserve from their people." 

With the world (or mostly the Japanese) front-running Draghi's ever-increasing threat of QE in Europe, Spanish and Italian government bond yields have reached levels commensurate with insanity compared to their risk (event and macro). Lower rates are great news right? They encourage growth... as the cost of borrowing drops across the nation's capital assets and the phoenix rises from the flames. Well - as the following 2 charts show - no! The lower rates are not 'trickling down' to real loans and loan creation continues to contract. So, aside from direct lending to SMEs, what exactly will Draghi's direct monetization of peripheral European bonds do aside from provide the leveraged speculators with their willing buyer to take profits (just as it did the last time he decided the time was right to buy bonds).

You might not realize it, but yesterday was a very important date. Yes, of course, it was Cinco de Mayo. But possibly more important, it’s also the deadline for banks around the world to sign up for information-sharing agreements with the IRS.

But "they" said it was all ok yesterday? That is was all "priced in"... and it's a Tuesday!!!! US equity markets - most notably the Russell 2000 and Nasdaq - are back at yesterday's lows. We did see the ubiquitous JPY ramp, stock pump around POMO but it would appear we have reached Peak Tuesday Effect as every self-fulfilling prophecy inevitably comes to an end (though there is will a couple of hours left to save "investors")... Treasury yields are notably lower (unch on the week) with gold and silver modestly higher (up small on the week). Credit markets warning signal from yesterday seems to have bee spot on ...oh and TWTR's lock-up was "NOT" priced in... 1114 is the most important number of the day (the 200DMA for the Russell 2000)

Elon Musk's "dream" of a (taxpayer-paid for) hyperbolic Hypertube connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco may have fizzled, but an even more improbable place may be getting its very own high speed monorail quite soon. Africa.

It seems Goldman Sachs is willing to do pretty much anything when it comes to maintaining SAC Capital (now Point72) Steve Cohen's liquidity. On the heels of last year's "stand by your man" moment in the midst of the insider-trading scandal, Goldman has kindly offered to provide Cohen another lifeline of liquidity - this time backed by his $1 billion art collection. As Bloomberg reports, Cohen pledged “certain items of fine art” under a security agreement which didn’t specify how much money was borrowed. As one art "investor" noted, this is not unusual, "hedge fund guys who manage their money wisely... look to put their art collections to work... If you can get liquidity out of your collection and pay only 250 basis points...it just makes sense." Sense, indeed!

There may have been some concern about demand coming into today's 3 Year auction, however that promptly dissipated moments ago when the latest issuance of $29 billion in 3 Year paper priced at a yield of 0.928%, 0.3 bps though the 0.931% when issued, and a Bid to Cover of 3.401, the highest since February. Still, following recent concerns about the short-end of the Treasury market (recall the "dots"), this was the highest primary yield on 3 Year paper since May 2011, which has been creeping higher in recent months, surpassing the latest Taper Tantrum highs of September 2013. Dealers took down 47.4% of the auction, below the 49.4% TTM average, leaving 28.1% to Indirects and 24.5% to Directs, well above the TTM average of 16.6%.

Presented with little comment aside to remind those momentum junkies about to pile in to this surely-fundamental-driven rally (and best-performing stock market in the world in 2014) that a "blank check" Dubai IPO was recently oversubscribed by 36x.

Because we’ve reached a point in time at which $1 trillion no longer sounds like a lot of money, we thought we’d go through the exercise of assessing just what the Fed could have done with this money besides give it to Wall Street.