Archive - Aug 2014

When it comes to worthless majors, it is no secret that "liberal arts" are at the top of the heap. This is the conclusion of not just the real world: a recent survey of 68,000 workers by salary information firm PayScale confirmed as much when asking the humanities majors themselves, and where employees with degrees in fields like English, general studies, and graphic design were among the most likely to report feeling "underemployed" at their current jobs.

There is reason to be concerned "about whether the proposed resources would be adequate," warns a Harvard professor as the World Health Organization 'battle strategy' draft calls for more than $430 million to bring the worst Ebola outbreak on record under control. This morning we hear of yet another health worker infected - and being flown home to Hamburg for treatment from Sengal and the WHO has shut a lab in Sierra Leone after health workers became infected. A glimpse at the following 3 charts should have the entire world throwing money at at them...

Another night, another sell-side bank suggests European QE must be getting closer and, along with more un-de-escalation in Russia-Ukraine, the bid for German bonds continues to surge as Europe's greater depression appears increasingly priced into bonds. Yields on all German bonds out to 3 years are now negative and 10Y Bunds have collapsed to 90.5bps - record lows. This in turn - as we explained here - is dragging Treasury yields lower (10Y 2.36%) but leaves the spread to Bunds at record highs.

Fraudmistress...

Wonder why last night's Russian-Ukraine talks were a complete flop (as the WSJ explains here)? The following photo of Belarus president Lukashenko promising to Poroshenko that Putin doesn't really bite, should help explain.

Ah, the perils of European power politics. A day after France revealed its new government, the person who so eagerly stepped in after DSK's infamous and choreographed fall from grace and the IMF presidency (not to mention his derailed French presidential ambitions, greenlighting Hollande as what would become the worst French president ever), Christine Lagarde is about to be DSKed herself after "someone" clearly has set their sights on the former French finance minister. Several hours ago the news hit that a French court has put Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, under a formal probe for negligence in a corruption investigation dating back to her days as finance minister.

• Islamic State executes soldiers, takes hostages at Syria base (Reuters)
• Buffett Burger King Funds Flip Obama’s Inversion Calculus (BBG)
• Equities Reach Record $66 Trillion as S&P 500 Hits 2,000 (BBG)
• Central Banks Playing Own Version of Plaza-opoly With FX (BBG)
• Russia court closes McDonald's branch for 90 days (Reuters)
• Finland Says NATO an Option After Russia ‘Violates’ Border Laws (BBG)
• Netanyahu Hit With Domestic Criticism Over Gaza Truce (BBG)
• Biggest Danish Fund Readies for Rate Shock as Exit Narrows (BBG)
• Nonprofit Hospitals' Profits Fall (WSJ)

If the big hope propelling both ES and S&P cash over 2,000 was the Ukraine-Russian talks, leading to some de-escalation and a thawing of Russian-German conditions, then it was clearly a dud. As the WSJ reports, "face-to-face talks between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents failed to produce a breakthrough for ending the conflict over eastern Ukraine, as Kiev released videos of captured Russian soldiers and rebels pushed toward a government-held city. The one-on-one session, which Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko described as "tough and complex," ended early Wednesday after a day of talks on the crisis in the Belarusian capital of Minsk. Mr. Poroshenko said afterward that he would prepare a "road map" toward a possible cease-fire with the pro-Russia separatists." In other words, absolutely no progress. There was however escalation, when overnight the September Bund future rose as much as 36 ticks to 151.18, after Poland PM Tusk said “regular” Russian troops are operating in eastern Ukraine. And so we are back to square one, with concerns over Russia pushing European bonds to new record highs, in turn leading to more US Treasury buying, while a brand new rumor of more easing from the ECB, this time by Deutsche Bank, has propped up European equities, which like US futures are trading water around the critical 2000 level.

The latest IMF data also shows that in July, the National Bank of Kazakhstan added 45,000 ounces to its official gold reserves, taking its total holding to 5.1 million ounces. As well as Kazakhstan, other countries in the region have also actively been increasing official gold reserves this year including Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Currency wars are set to intensify in the coming months.

When President Obama bragged earlier that "The United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world..." adding that "no other nation can do what we do," we should have guessed some more war-mongering was coming... and sure enough. As AP reports, it appears Syrian airstrikes are on their way, but there's a mind-blowing twist in US foreign policy: "In an effort to avoid unintentionally strengthening the Syrian government, the White House could seek to balance strikes against the Islamic State with attacks on Assad regime targets." In the words of the Guinness commercial, Brilliant.

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

"Rather than trying to spur private-sector spending through asset purchases or interest-rate changes, central banks, such as the Fed, should hand consumers cash directly.... Central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have taken aggressive action, consistently lowering interest rates such that today they hover near zero. They have also pumped trillions of dollars’ worth of new money into the financial system. Yet such policies have only fed a damaging cycle of booms and busts, warping incentives and distorting asset prices, and now economic growth is stagnating while inequality gets worse. It’s well past time, then, for U.S. policymakers -- as well as their counterparts in other developed countries -- to consider a version of Friedman’s helicopter drops. In the short term, such cash transfers could jump-start the economy...  The transfers wouldn’t cause damaging inflation, and few doubt that they would work. The only real question is why no government has tried them"...

As with  every other asset-class in the world now, fundamentals have taken a very distant back-seat to both liquidity (flow) and positioning (technicals) as traders are increasingly (in one way or another) on the same side of the same trade. Mainstream media will proclaim US energy "independence", US sanctions 'winning' over Putin, or US airstrikes 'calming' down Middle East uncertainty; but the real reason oil is plunging is... the biggest mass liquidation of speculative longs in recorded 30 year history over the last few weeks...

For 39 minutes today, as we noted earlier, the US stock "market" broke. As Nanex details, a total of 1,384 symbols were affected as 100s of stocks trade with crossed NBBOs, practically eliminating any chance for retail traders to transact. Options market were frantic, volatility swung around like a Ukrainian border-patrol agent, and yet the US equity indices limped ever higher. For those who fear 'the big one', for those who understand market liquidity, for those who got a glimpse of what happens when large crowds meet small doors in the high-yield credit market, today's "broken" market was a cold hard lesson that few 'moms and pops' would have noticed... but from the perspective of 'ability to trade' - today's market was worse than the Nasdaq Blackout and the Flash Crash... Hedge accordingly.

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