Archive - May 2014

There has been a lot on bond buying in Europe and that enthusiasm has transferred over to the US in anticipation of Draghi's massive bond buying stimulus program similar to that of the U.S. Fed.

“I don’t know what to say. I’ve been investing since January and I’ve never seen anything like it.” – Unnamed Hong Kong housewife during the Asian financial crisis of 1997/8.

What follows is a continued personal perspective on some of the challenges facing today’s investor...

One of the many civil liberties related themes we have focused on over the past several years has to do with how emerging technologies can pose a threat, first to our basic 4th Amendment rights, and then ultimately to freedom itself. Two of the most high profile technologies in this regard, and which have extremely high potential for abuse, are license plate readers and drones.

Students consume almost 400 billion junk food calories at school per year, equal to almost 2 billion candy bars and while the epidemic of childhood obesity is not 'news' per se - for one big employer in America, it is a major problem. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, the number one reason people can’t join the military is that they’re overweight or obese, and "still too fat to fight." The problem is large for active service members also with over 51% overweight (though better than the civilian population) as the DoD alone spends an estimated $1 billion per year for medical care associated with "weight-related health problems."

While the current bull market remains "bulletproof" at the moment to geopolitical events, technical deterioration, overbought conditions and extremely complacent conditions; it is worth remembering what was being said during the third phase of the previous two bull markets...

If there is one thing that the militarized warzone with the weapons ban (and which makes east Ukraine look like a kindergarten) namely Chicago, did not need in order to fall further into social chaos and disarray, it is a new tidal wave of unemployment: people freshly without jobs who for lack of better options would likely join the daily survival of the fittest routine on the streets of the windy city. And a tidal wave of unemployment is precisely what Chicago is likely to get if, as a group of Chicago aldermen have proposed, the minimum wage in the nation's third-largest city is nearly doubled to $15 an hour. Why $15? Because according to recently striking McDonalds line cooks, it's only fair, and is the minimum pay that fast-food workers have sought during national protests.

Presented with little comment aside to note that bond shorts have not covered (in fact they added last week) and the last time we got this disconnected (with negative breadth in stocks and super low volatility) - things went south very quickly...

"Traditionally we’ve been a financially conservative company," explains one fracking company, warning that "we’ve become more leveraged than we historically have been and we’ve become uncomfortable with that." This is the growing message from a shale boom that, as Bloomberg reports, is facing a shakeout as drillers struggle to keep pace with the relentless spending needed to get oil and gas out of the ground. As everyone chases the dream, well counts have soared and production per well has tumbled. "The list of companies that are financially stressed is considerable," warns one analyst as shale debt has almost doubled over the last four years while revenue has gained just 5.6% "not everyone is going to survive. We’ve seen it before."

Hurricane season is nearly upon us, and every time a hurricane strikes, television and radio commentators and would-be economists are quick to proclaim the growth-boosting consequences of the vicissitudes of nature. Of course, if this were true, why wait for the next calamity? Let’s create one by bulldozing New York City and marvel at the growth-boosting activity engendered. Destroying homes, buildings, and capital equipment will undoubtedly help parts of the construction industry and possibly regional economies, but it is a mistake to conclude it will boost overall growth.

As we noted yesterday, President Obama is saying he is contemplating arming and training Syrian rebels (just the 'moderates' which will be identified by their smiles). However, as the following PBS Frontline documentary exposes, the Syrian rebels themselves say they are already armed and trained by US in the use of sophisticated weapons and fighting techniques, including, one rebel said, "how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush." The interviews are the latest evidence that after more than three years of warfare, the United States has stepped up the provision of lethal aid to the rebels, as PBS notes "it appears the Obama administration is allowing select groups of rebels to receive US-made anti-tank missiles." So who is lying? Obama (again) or the Syrian rebels (who show US-made supplies in the following clips).

Wednesday is not Tuesday (except for Trannies). Some early weakness in stocks was bid mindlessly back to its highs even as 10Y bond yields kept tumbling to 11-month lows and oil and copper rolled over. VIX ended the day higher (again) ignoring the exuberance in the light volume equity market. 10Y yields dropped to 2.43% - its best day in 5 months (breaking last October's key support). The yield curve flattened dramatically with 2s30s at its tightest in a year. The USD was bid (led by GBP weakness) buy JPY's volatility is what ran the stock show today. Gold and silver fell further as did WTI crude (back under $103). The S&P 500 is now around 60 points rich to 10Y bond yields (and the world is still short bonds); credit spreads are well off their tights and VIX isn't falling; breadth is weakening and so is volume... but apart from that... BTFATH. A late-day selling frenzy took the shine off the CNBC headlines with stocks closing red.

The IMF has lied (about 'not' proposing a 71% income tax) and has been shown as a serial over-optimistic forecaster (world growth disappointments and hockey sticks) but the simply incredible hope that Christine Lagarde's PhDs created in their growth expectations for Ukraine make their Greece "Oops" moment look like nothing. As CFR rebukes, we see the IMF’s growth forecasts for Ukraine and Greece not as forecasts at all, but rather as assumptions necessary to justify the IMF’s interventions. Credibility -> 0.

Yesterday we brought you Euro Freaks. Today we bring you Illuminastis!

Bizarro market got you paralyzed with inaction (and unwilling to generate trading commissions for Goldman) as you try to make sense of an insane world in which first rising (but not too much) bond yields were desperately spun as positive for the economy and thus stocks because it means inflation is finally on the way, only for the same spinners to turn around and now allege that plunging bond yields are great for the Equity Risk Premium so you must, you guessed it, buy stocks? Fear not: you are not alone: according to the following note from FBN, what JPM, Citi and Goldman are lamenting, this era of a new permanently high equity plateau, and a permanently low vol and yield ravine, is driving pretty much everyone insane.

Western strategists and talking heads, we are sure, will know better and continue to pitch China as the renewed engine of growth in the world and that everything will be fine... but when the country's largest property developer says, the "golden era" for China’s property market has passed, adding that "The period in which everybody makes money out of property is gone," perhaps it is time to listen? Of course, we are sure there will be an orderly exit (just as there was in CNY last night which crumbled to 19-month lows) but as China Vanke Co's Yu Liang warns, "the phase where 'whoever buys makes money' is gone." Property sepculators are frustrated that the government won't bail them out "are they tryng to kill us?" as one analyst notes "this downturn is more serious than 2008."