Archive - Dec 14, 2015

We are living in a time that can only be considered monetary chaos. The media and the policy pundits may focus on the day-to-day zigs and zags of central bank monetary and interest rate policy, but what really needs to be asked is whether or not we should continue to leave monetary and banking policy in the discretionary hands of central banks and the monetary central planners who manage them.

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker may have forgotten to disclose a few things. Like millions in hedge fund investments. And millions in real estate investments. And millions in "other" investments. He's "extremely disappointed" in someone, although it wasn't immediately clear if it was himself.

Everybody can see Janet Yellen standing naked in that corner - more like a box canyon - and it’s not a pretty sight. But the mundane truth probably is that events have finally caught up with the structural distortions of a financial world running on illusion. To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and economic winter is finally upon us. All the world ‘round, people borrowed too much to buy stuff and now they’re all borrowed out and stuffed up. Welcome to the successor to the global economy: the yard sale economy, with all the previously-bought stuff going back into circulation on its way to the dump.

With 75% of NYSE stocks now below the 200MA, and afterr reviewing dozens of charts this weekend, one message permeates the landscape: Markets need new highs or else. Why? Because every structural chart points to a repeat of previous major tops.

The $100 trillion global bond bubble has begun bursting.

For the first time since August 2008, high-yield bond 'VIX' is greater than US equity 'VIX'. The 1-month implied vol of HYG has surged over 21 - its highest since October 2011. The last time credit's volatility surged above stocks like this, VIX quickly accelerated well beyond 40, pricing in the increased business risk. Furthemore, just as we saw in July/August, the cost of protecting equity markets is beginning to accelerate up to the surging cost of protecting credit markets. Both credit levels and risk suggest VIX is going notably higher.

Presented with little comment, aside to ask: "where are the liquidity-providers?"

Dow Transports have been weak all year. Down 18.3% year-to-date, Trannies are set to close lower for a 4th straight quarter for the first time since 1994. Today's plunge broke below the August crash lows and pushed the index into bear market territory...

"With the recent strength in the USD we are seeing a huge global dollar nominal GDP recession - the worst since the 1960s."

"We want to, and we will, noticeably reduce the number of refugees," Angela Merkel said in a keynote speech during the CDU party congress in Karlsruhe, Germany. Although the Iron Chancellor kept an upbeat tone with regard to migrants, it now seems as though even she realizes that the current situation - wherein over a million asylum seekers have inundated the country over the last twelve months alone - simply isn't tenable in the long run.

First it was just junk, then investment grade bonds started getting whacked, then liquidity in the 10Y Treasury imploded, and now CLOs are getting hit: “The price declines are alarming and worrying," according to Rishad Ahluwalia, JPMorgan’s head of global CLO research.

While high-yield bond ETFs have been under massive pressure, some have argued that this carnage has yet to really hit the underlying cash bond market (since the flows are more exchanges between two parties as opposed to redeeming ETFs for actual bonds). It would appear that pattern is changing as today the bloodbath in ETFs is spilling directly into the corporate bond markets themselves with every sector in investment grade and high yield deep in the red.

Despite the rear-view-mirror-gazing optimists proclamations that default rates have been low (which matters not one jot when pricing the future expectations of default into corporate bond cashflows), Fitch just released its forecast for 2016 defaults and notes that more than $5.5 billion of December defaults has increased the trailing 12-month default rate to 3.3% from 3% at the end of November, marking the 13th consecutive month that defaulted volume exceeded $1.5 billion, closing in on the 14-month run seen in 2008-2009.