Archive - Jan 16, 2015

Canary... meet coalmine. While the divergence between US financial stock prices and their credit risk has been significant since Fed's Bullard saved the world in mid October. In fact the divergence really began when oil prices peaked and began to accelerate lower but really picked up this week after the Swiss National Bank news. Between energy-sector-based structured notes, massive short Treasury positions, and the potential for contagion from Swissy's massive moves, it would appear - judging by the major decompression in US bank credit risk this week to its worst since Feb 2014 - that counterparty risk is on the rise again.

In an apparent replay for 2012's Knight Trading algo-implosion $400 million cash-infusion bailout, Jefferies (owned by NY-based I-bank Leucadia) is riding its white horse to the rescue of FXCM and its $200-million-plus client losses:

• *LUK IN $300M DEAL TO LET FXCM CONTINUE NORMAL OPS: CNBC
• *LEUCADIA GIVE FXCM $300M IN FINANCING CNBC

Leucadia will get $250m in senior notes as part of the deal, CNBC says. So - in summary - a central bank blew up an FX broker and a mid-market junk-bond underwriter bailed them out... must be good for a green close for the week in stocks!

Reuters just reported that none other than the HFT's bestest buddy exchange, BATS, which earlier this week was slapped with the biggest monetary penalty ever for continuing the practice of Hide Not Slide (at least until UBS' dark pool was slapped with an even bigger fine for conducting subpennying without informing most of its clients), is about to buy the FX trading platform of KCG, formerly Knight Capital which too blew up after one of its algos went haywire and blew up the firm in milliseconds.

• BATS GLOBAL MARKETS IN TALKS TO BUY FX TRADING PLATFORM HOTSPOT FROM KCG HOLDINGS KCG.N FOR NEARLY $400 MLN - SOURCES KCG.N - RTRS

Which, of course, is great news for all those who have stepped back from the rigged circus and merely enjoy "markets" for the comedic farce they have become

The transformation into a nanny-state, snitching culture has severe negative long-term repercussions for U.S. society, as well as the economy, if the trend isn’t reversed. We have written about this dangerous change many times in the past; but the ridiculous circumstances now faced by these Maryland parents for simply allowing their children a rite of passage that kids from time immemorial have enjoyed, is beyond incredulity. This is not what freedom looks like.

As the charts below show, while copper has plunged in recent weeks, aluminum has been surprisingly stable, even though like copper aluminum is one of the key metals behind Commodity Financing Deals. That is about to change, because according to a source at Metal Bulletin the aluminum trickle (at first, then flood) out of warehouses and into the market, is about to be unleashed.

Ultra-expensive automobiles accounted for a massive slice of the global luxury goods market last year. Across the world, the super rich spent almost $438 billion on fancy cars in 2014. Personal luxury items like perfume, jewellery and clothing were the second largest market, accounting for $278 billion. The value of the world’s luxury goods market has increased steadily in recent times, little surprise given the increasing number of billionaires across the globe. All in all, people splurged over $1 trillion on upmarket items throughout the year.

Fool us once? Here we go again...

*BULLARD: FED COULD RESUME UNCONVENTIONAL POLICY IF NEEDED
*BULLARD SAYS LESSON OF QE IS IT WORKS `FAIRLY WELL'

For now the market is not reacting...

The NY Post tweeted that "Federal Reserve head Yellen announces bail-in in emergency meeting, rumored negative rate to be set at 4pm EST today," and US equity markets briefly started to rise... followed by a tweet that "The Fed would peg the Dollar to the Swiss Franc" and "Chinese anti-ship missile fired at USS George Washington." Both seemed odd and shortly after, The NY Post had deleted the tweets and explained that it had been hacked...

US oil rig count tumbled almost 6% YoY - its biggest annual drop in 15 months. However, the 13% collapse in the last 8 weeks is accelerating faster than the 2001 and 2008 crisis and has dropped rig count to its lowest since October 2010. At the same time production is surging - in fact at its highest pace on record... the game of chicken continues.

All morning, mainstream media has been down-playing the insolvency of various retail-focused FX brokers using words like "contained" and even suggesting retail 'moms-and-pops' should not be allowed to trade FX. Now, we get more news from a non-retail institution:

*CITIGROUP SAID TO LOSE MORE THAN $150 MLN ON CURRENCY MOVES

So should Citi be banned from FX trading too? It appears so - Citi's head of European FX sales, Alex Jackson, is 'said to leave' the company.

DRAGHI PRESENTED QE PLAN TO SCHAEUBLE, MERKEL, SPIEGEL SAYS

Once again the clear preference for holding Swiss Francs over Euros was evident today as EURCHF re-collapsed from over 1.02 to under 0.9750 now. Overnight news from Greece suggesting bank runs are under way was then added to as Bloomberg reports, Greece is set to run out of cash by mid-year if it can’t break the deadlock over its rescue program, according to two international officials. Now, in the final "FU" to Greece, following Wolfgang Schaeuble's earlier comments that Greece does not have a debt problem, Der Spiegel reports after the European close that ECB QE will not include Greek bonds due to their low rating... but will see national central banks buying own-country debt.

This should be good - from the guys who put a kill-switch on the web and want to ban all encryption...

"The first lesson is never trust a central banker when he or she makes a commitment or gives guidance..."

First the good news... European Stocks (ex Greece and Switzerland) exploded higher this week with 'great' nations like Portugal (up over 7%) and Italy (up over 5.5%) and Germany's ADX over 10,000 to record highs. EU bond spreads compressed notably (Spain/Italy down 20bps or so on the week) and EURUSD crashed below 1.15... all on hopes that the SNB decision means Moar-Massive ECB QE comes next week (not priced in). But the bad news... Swiss stocks collapsed-er again today for the worst week since Lehman. Swiss bond yields are negative to 12 year maturity and EURCHF is back below par at 0.9820...

In the dojo...