Archive - May 2014

If, in the New Normal, newsflow and facts mattered, facts such as the German Zew Investor Expectations index crashing from 43.2 to 33.1, smashing expectations of a 40.0 print to the downside and down to the lowest since January 2013 nearly half the 7 year half reported as recently as December confirming Germany can no longer be Europe's growth dynamo courtesy of a still nosebleed high EURUSD, or facts such as overnight Chinese data missed in every category with industrial output up 8.7% y/y in April vs an estimated 8.9%, retail sales up 11.9% below the estimated 12.2% rise and ; Jan.-April fixed-asset investment growing 17.3% vs est. 17.7%, then futures may just posted a downtick. However, since it is a Tuesday, with a ~$1 billion POMO, one can ignore the fundamentals and proceed straight to buying anything and everything with indiscriminate abandon. The only question is whether the NY Fed orders Citadel to slam the VIX under 11 to start off the morning S&P rampage which should push the broad market index above Goldman's 1900 price target for the end of the 2014.

Bailing out banks is not hard when a nation has a sovereign currency and the banks’ debts are denominated in that currency.

More Reasons QE Is a Dud

Glenn Greenwald is not one known for pulling punches, and in this excellent interview with GQ Magazine titled, The Man Who Knows Too Much, he is in particularly rare form. "Hillary is banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion... But she’s going to be the first female president, and women in America are going to be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist. It’s going to be this completely symbolic messaging that’s going to overshadow the fact that she’ll do nothing but continue everything in pursuit of her own power. They’ll probably have a gay person after Hillary who’s just going to do the same thing... Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy... what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn’t get affected by election choices and that isn’t in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own."

In several eastern Ukrainian towns over the past week, the military opened fire on its own citizens. Dozens may have been killed in the violence. Although the US government generally condemns a country’s use of military force against its own population, especially if they are unarmed protesters, this time the US administration blamed the victims. After as many as 20 unarmed protesters were killed on the May 9th holiday in Ukraine, the State Department spokesman said “we condemn the outbreak of violence caused by pro-Russia separatists.” The real question is why the US government is involved in Ukraine in the first place. We are broke. We cannot even afford to fix our own economy. Yet we want to run Ukraine? Does it really matter who Ukrainians elect to represent them? Is it really a national security matter worth risking a nuclear war with Russia whether Ukraine votes for more regional autonomy and a weaker central government? Isn’t that how the United States was originally conceived? Has the arrogance of the US administration, thinking they should run the world, driven us to the brink of another major war in Europe?

China’s placement of the giant state-owned oil rig HD-981 in Block 143 inside Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on May 2 was unexpected, provocative and illegal. China’s deployment of the rig was provocative because the oil rig was accompanied by as many as 80 ships, including seven People’s Liberation Army Navy warships. When China first announced the deployment of its oil rig, it stated that its operations would terminate on August 15. This provides plenty of time for both sides to orchestrate and manage the confrontation and provide a face saving means for ending the confrontation.

With 560,000 visitors a year, Dracula's Castle may not be the ideal seclusion spot for the uber-wealthy European real estate magnate, but, as the realtor notes "n the right hands it has the potential to generate far more revenue than we could ever imagine," - we suspect followed by an echoing 'mwuahahahahaha'. Construction on Bran Castle (for it's not actually Vlad The Impaler's residence of old but he was imprisoned there briefly) began in 1377 and as HuffPo notes, the 57-room manor on 22 acres has been on the market several times in recent years, with investors at one point hoping to get $135 million. As the firm running the castle noted, “If someone comes in with a reasonable offer, we will seriously entertain the idea." We suspect people will be dying to buy this and with rates so low, it won't bleed you dry either...

There is no shortage of theories or writings related to the rise of the Third Reich and the subsequent Holocaust. Students of history as well as Second Amendment enthusiasts will find this a fascinating book and will find parallels between gun prohibition in pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany, and attempts to prohibit types of gun ownership and implement other forms of gun prohibition in the United States today. Less government regulation and a tradition of rejecting tyranny could have led to a different outcome in Germany. Instead, systematic creation and manipulation of firearms registration and regulations, coupled with the decimation of individual citizen’s rights, enabled Hitler’s dictatorship and the slaughter of millions of innocent Jews and citizens of Nazi-occupied countries, as well as tens of thousands of Germans. It remains for all of us to wonder what might have been had people refused to register their firearms. Indeed, we should all take note and never forget.

Cruising through earnings, it is now time to revisit certain indicators that speak to the underlying health of the economy and that of the US equity and Treasury bond market.

The "Shiller P/E" is much in the news of late, and, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas suggests, with good reason. It shows that U.S. equity valuations are pushing towards crash-worthy levels. This measure of long term earnings power to current price is currently at 25.3x, or close to 2 standard deviations away from its long run median of 15.9x. As Colas concludes, the writing is on the wall and we must all read it. Future returns are likely going to be lower. Competition for investor capital will get even tougher. That’s what the Shiller P/E says, and it is worth listening.

Is there anything fundamental to explain why the equity indices of the "Fragile Five" countries, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, India and Turkey, have regained their recent highs? According to GaveKal the answer is a resounding no: "As investors, we like equity rallies to be propelled by fundamental factors, like earnings re-ratings or growth surprises. But there is little behind this rally to suggest any sustainable economic healing." So what is pushing this particular subset of risk higher? Why the global liquidity tsunami of course.

Does this look in any way normal to anyone?

Last week it was Russia, so now it is America's turn. As the U.S. Strategic Command reported earlier, the US will conduct Exercise Global Lightning 14 from May 12-16 in coordination with other combatant commands, services, and appropriate U.S. government agencies "to deter and detect strategic attacks against the U.S. and its allies." Among the units taking part in this drill are bomber wings that will fly approximately 10 B-52 Stratofortresses and up to six B-2 Spirit bombers "to demonstrate flexibility and responsiveness in the training scenarios throughout the continental U.S."

A bill passed in a House energy committee aims to amend the rules for cross-border energy projects, suggesting the political fight over Keystone XL is over.

What can one say... Europe's stock markets are booming, bond yields (and spreads) are tumbling... and earnings growth expectations are - collapsing...