Archive - Nov 24, 2015

According to Goldman, "tech accounted for 50% of the overall S&P 500 expansion during the past five years (Apple is responsible for 20% of rise). Tech sector now has margins (18%) that are twice the overall market." That tremendous tech, but mostly AAPL-driven, margin growth has now ended.  So can this torrid surge in tech margins continue? Goldman's answer is a resounding no.

It’s quite interesting indeed when both progressives and conservatives seem to be nostalgic for those good ol’ days in the 1950s, for different reasons, of course. Conservatives want to go back to the nuclear Leave It to Beaver family and what not while liberals like to talk about those 90-percent tax rates that we owe our prosperity to. Or something like that. However, what a tax rate is and what is actually paid are two very different things.

Wondering where the world's economies are in the leverage cycle? Well, wonder no more. SocGen is out with its updated "leverage clock" which shows you where the bank thinks everyone falls in terms of ticking debt time bombs. As you'll see, SocGen's assessment is quite generous...

Following last week's modest inventory build, API reports another much larger-than-expected build in total crude inventories (+2.6mm barrels). This is the 9th weekly build in a row for total crude inventory but more worrisome is the 3rd weekly surge in Cushing inventories (+1.9mm build) as we warned previously, land storage fears are starting to rise.

With the fundamental and economic backdrop becoming much more hostile toward investors in the intermediate term, understanding the value of cash as a "hedge" against loss becomes much more important. As John Hussman recently noted: "The overall economic and financial landscape, then, is one where obscene valuations imply zero or negative S&P 500 total returns for more than a decade — an outcome that is largely baked-in-the-cake regardless of shorter term economic or speculative factors. Presently, market internals remain unfavorable as well. Coming off of recent overvalued, overbought, overbullish extremes, this has historically opened a clear vulnerability of the market to air-pockets, free-falls and crashes."

November has been a banner month for black swans. From Leftist political coups in Portugal to terror attacks in Paris to downed Russian fighter jets in Syria, the market is gradually learning to expect the unexpected. In its latest Quarterly Economic Outlook, SocGen outlines five political and economic black swans that could land in 2016.

When buy the dip doesn't work. "Most distressed situations have not worked out in 2015," exclaims one distressed hedge fund manager facing significant losses on the year, "It wasn’t just energy. It was anything with loads of leveraged debt on it." As Bloomberg reports, distressed hedge funds dropped 5% in 2015 through October, putting them on pace for their worst year since 2008, when they lost 25%... and November isn’t looking like it will be much better.

The financial news continues to confound and confuse investors. The Fed is telling one story. The world economy is telling another.

"Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works and if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us."

The decline in broad true money supply growth below the lower end of its 2 year long range is a major crack in the echo bubble edifice. Very likely it is the most important one yet.

Focus on policies promoting economic growth, lower taxes, and spending tax receipts more efficiently and not on one`s sexual orientation in the bedroom.

Although details are still sparse, Roubaix is very close to the border with Belgium which certainly leads one to wonder if there's a connection with the ongoing search for two unidentified terror suspects as well as the eighth Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam:

In July it was 5, then in October the number rose to 8, and moments ago we learned that during the meetings on October 15 and 22, a total of nine regional Feds had asked to increase the Fed's discount rate from 0.75% to 1.00%, with Boston joining the St. Louis, Atlanta, San Francisco Fed, Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia, Kansas City and Richmond Fed. Two banks, the Chicago and NY Fed wanted to keep rates at 0.75%, while the domain of Fed's uber dove Kocherlakota, the Minneapolis Fed where former Goldmanite Neel Kashkari will soon operate, asked for a Discount Rate cut to 0.50%.