Archive - Jul 3, 2014

Tomorrow, Americans will celebrate their independence from an over-taxing tyrant by eating and drinking to excess - and rightly so. However, what many will find as they pile into their friendly local grocer (Costco), is that the price of the July 4th smorgasbord has never (ever) been higher (as perhaps, just perhaps, another tyrannical entity - the Fed - has taxed them in a much more pernicious manner). Ground beef burgers have never been more expensive (+16.5% from last year)... and nor has white bread, American cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, ice cream, and chips...

The last six months have not run according to anyone’s plan.  Who would have thought that equity market structure would yield a best-selling book, after all?  As ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, on the fundamental side of things, interest rates across the developed world are lower, not higher – counter to the consensus view just 180 days ago. Mutual fund investors first bought U.S. equities earlier in the year, then in the last 6 weeks have begun to liquidate in earnest. Exchange Traded Fund investors are buying more fixed income products than those dedicated to U.S. stocks. Large cap stocks are trouncing small caps in terms of performance. And as for volatility – well, Elvis has clearly left the building on that one. So which of these surprises has staying power into the back half of 2014?

For all the theoretical explanations about China's profound commodity rehypothecation problems, the one thing that was missing was an empirical case study framing just how substantial the problem is. After all, it is one thing to say banks expect "X millions in losses", but totally different to see the rehypothecation dominoes falling in practice. Today, courtesy of Bloomberg we got just such an example.

Meet Decheng Mining.

"As the cost of food continues to rise, the cost of not paying attention to what you are eating rises exponentially. Companies will continue to try to mask inflation by shrinking package sizes, and when that is no longer possible, increasingly inserting empty fillers (or worse) into their products."

Stocks ignored yesterday';s spike lower in VIX but didn't today. VIX closed at 10.3 - its lowest close since Feb 2007. Stocks initially dropped on the 'good news is bad news' payrolls report but thanks to ECB jawboning the EUR down (USD up), USDJPY went on a stop-run and blew back through 102 providing just the ignition to get stocks going. Bonds sold off on the jobs print but rallied back all day to close only 2bps higher in yield. The USD rose over 0.4% - its best day in 2 months. Gold, silver, and copper rose after the jobs data. Stocks rallied ~0.4% from the payrolls print and closed with a 'standard' melt-up buying panic into the long-weekend.

It seems the bond market 'read' the report and the stock market skimmed the headlines...

Remember when stable, self-sustaining recoveries were led by Utility stocks outperforming every other asset class and sector (and returning 3x Financials)? Neither do we. But as the following chart showing the performance of all the sectors, styles and strategies in the first half of 2014, it just doesn't matter.

The saga of the French Mistral amphibious assault warship which was ordered by Russia years ago, and whose delivery - at least according to Putin - was the reason behind the US record $9 billion DOJ fine of French BNP (which the Russian president called "blackmail" by the US designed to intimidate France and prevent it from completing the transaction) just took a turn for the bizarre. In a note written in the Atlantic Council's website, Democrat representative for New York's 16th district, Eliot Engel, has proposed that instead of letting France conclude its deal with Russia, now that even the BNP "blackmail" has failed to dent Hollande's intention to see the delivery to its end, that NATO (read the US) should step up and "collectively purchase or lease the warships as a common naval asset."

Opinions about the U.S. economy boil down to two views: 1) the recovery is now self-sustaining, meaning that the Federal Reserve can taper and end its unprecedented interventions without hurting growth, or 2) the current uptick in auto sales, new jobs, housing sales, etc. is as good as it gets, and the weak recovery unravels from here. The reality is that nothing has been done to address the structural rot at the heart of the U.S. economy. You keep shoving in the same inputs, and you guarantee the same output: another crash of credit bubbles and all the malinvestments enabled by monetary heroin.

Is good news about to become the ultimate bad news. JPMorgan's Michael Feroli notes that (for the first time in recent memory) is pulling forward their projected date for Fed tightening and the inevitable end of the free-money cycle. Based on a belief in the committee's limited appetite to wait in inflation and today's report, JPMorgan notes a Q2 tightening seems plausible. Of course, this will be repeated mantra like as evidence of escape velocity and the status quo is back but, as we noted here, while policy economists claim that interest rates can be “normalized” at no cost; a more likely scenario is that policy “normalization” leads us directly into the next bust.

Markit's Services PMI soared to record highs in June at 61.0 (though notably dropped back from its 61.2 flash print which suggest slight softening in the latter half of the month) but oustanding business fell and once again margins are under pressure as prices charged dropped but prices paid rose. Perhaps most worrisome - business optimism tumbled. Then ISM Services hit and disappointed dropping from 56.3 to 56.0 and missing expectations by the most since January as business activity dropped to its lowest since March. Sentiment for inventory builds (the key for GDP) is at Dec 2013 lows. Under the surface, these reports suggest anything but the Q2 rebound so often crowed about.

Policy ws left on hold, as the ECB monitors the effect of its earlier initiatives and prepares for the TLTROs and ABS purchases.  However, important changes are taking place how it will conduct monetary policy starting next year. 

As we reported previously, and as hardly anyone else will discuss, in June the composition of added jobs was rather abysmal: according to the Household survey, while over half a million full-time jobs were lost, this was offset by less paying, benefits-free part-time jobs rising by 799K, the most since 1993. So what does that mean for the job quality as reported by the Establishment Survey. Let's dive in.

Not so happy 4th of July for residents and visitors of the Outer Banks. As Bloomberg reports, Arthur strengthened off the coast of North Carolina to become the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, packing maximum winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Officials have issued a mandatory evacuation order and a county-wide state of emergency has been declared.