Archive - Dec 2015

Silent fright night...Come and join us!

Here’s an early Christmas present. It’s nothing new. And we didn’t spend a lot of money on it. But it’s the thought that counts. Here goes... When you go to buy a stock, you might ask yourself: Is this stock likely to go up? But that’s the wrong question. You don’t know whether it will go up or not. No point pretending. The right question: Has this stock gone down enough?

Over the past 20 years, there's been an 87% correlation between S&P performance in 4Q and Holiday Sales. As of right now, the S&P in Dec is now on track to be up - a few days ago it wasn't. Furthermore, the S&P is now up +5.5% above its Sep average. If it holds there, the 20-year regression line below suggests that Holiday Sales will be up +5.4%.

The Fed will never succeed in its attempt to manage inflation and unemployment by varying interest rates. This is because it and its economists do not accept the relationship between, on one side, the money it creates and the bank credit its commercial banks issue out of thin air, and on the other the disruption unsound money causes in the economy. This has been going on since the Fed was created, which makes the question as to whether the Fed was right to raise interest rates recently irrelevant.

On Monday, Zimbabwe announced that this small, economically devastated country would officially make the Chinese Yuan its legal tender as it seeks to increase trade with Beijing. In exchange for becoming not only a military but also financial colony of China, $40 million of its debts to Beijing would be canceled.  China was delighted it cost it only a $40 million debt write off to acquire its first official African colony.

This won't end well... On Tuesday, Gov. Issei Nishikawa approved the restart of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the plant in Fukui on the Sea of Japan, defying an injunction by the prefecture’s District Court that had been sought by residents living within about 60 miles of the nuclear facility.

The fight against ISIS makes for some strange bedfellows. “The Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours. We've already said earlier that we and the Taliban have channels for exchanging information."

"Great" earnings (ex-FX of course) and an "appealing to a broader retail audience" stock split? Recipe for awesomeness, right? Wrong! Nike is now down almost 10% from its post-earnings peak...

If the money creation/distribution system isn't transformed, "reform" is nothing more than ineffectual policy tweaks that offer do-gooders the illusion of progress. The only real solution in my view is to create and distribute money at the base of the pyramid rather than to those in the top of the pyramid.

After a year of proclamations from mainstream media (and Wall St. economists) that low oil prices mean low gas prices at the pump which means "bonanza" for US consumers, it appears none of that happened. Confidence is fading fast despite what some suggest is $550 average savings this year as 'gains' flooded into soaring rent and healthcare costs. But, more recently, as stock markets celebrate a soaring oil price (off decade lows), wholesale gasoline prices have soared 10% in a little over 48 hours...

Having recently opined that "2015 was one of the most difficult markets in 50 years," the venerable Art Cashin has once again unleashed annual holiday poem.

There has been a "continued shunning of fixed income" with over $25 Bn of outflows from bond funds in three weeks, of which $6.4 Bn took place in the past week, resulting in outflows in 6 of past 7 weeks.However, the biggest outflow risk is not to Junk but to investment grade, that main funding source for trillions in corporate stock buybacks: it was the IG space that took another beating with largest outflows ($3.5bn) in 17 weeks!

Unleash 'The Andy Hall Algo'... it seems the quarter-, year-end mark-ups may just be required to maintain 'some' hedge funds and hold off liquidation for another quarter...

Another index bites the dust of the deflationary spiral...

It's Chrismas time. Only the scroogiest of scrooges would be laying people off this time of year and in fact this week's 267k print in initial jobless claims is back near cycle lows. The last time there were initial jobless claim in a holiday week was 1972, which raises the question - so what happens next?