Archive - Dec 2015

The lack of fear in risky assets is another way of saying that risk premia have been low, or as we also like to put it, that complacency has been high. Not fully appreciative of this inherent risk, it seems many investors have refrained from rebalancing their portfolios, and bought the dips instead. We believe the Fed’s efforts to engineer an exit from its ultra-low monetary policy should get risk premia to rise once again, that if fear should come back to the market, volatility should rise, creating headwinds to ‘risky’ assets, including equities. That said, this isn’t an overnight process, as the ‘buy the dip’ mentality has taken years to be established. Conversely, it may take months, if not years, for investors to shift focus to capital preservation, i.e. to sell into rallies instead.

WTI Crude is pressing back near the lows hit before August's month-end meltup manipulation...

Look out below, for even with bloated federal spending, the real economy has hit stall speed.

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.” - Buddha

US equity makrets appeared to decoupled from their long-run driver USDJPY around the time ADP data was released. Since then stocks have tracked crude oil, which thanks to its OPEC-comment-driven stop run, and DOE data is now tumbling...

"Finding customers" remained the dominant concern for euro area SMEs in the survey period, with 25% of euro area SMEs mentioning this as their main problem. "Access to finance” was considered the least important concern (unchanged at 11%)."

Confirming last night's API report, DOE reports that total crude inventories rose for the 10th week in a row (up by 1.177mm barrels) This is a huge surprise relative to the 800k draw that analysts expected as total product demand dropped 1.6% relative to last year. Which all makes panicked cash-flow sense as production rose by 37k bpd.

With the EUR plunging and everyone primed for dramatic action by Draghi, especially following today's disappointing inflation data where November CPI rose just 0.1%, below the 0.2% expected, the former Goldmanite may still disappoint. According to Market News, "the high bar set by expectations, coupled with notable opposition against aggressive action on the Governing Council as economic data developed largely as expected, creates a risk that the ECB will under-deliver Thursday."

And so it begins...

After the worst monthly performance since 2013 and the weakest close since February 2010, it appears "managed money" has piled in to the momentum trade. According to CFTC, hedge funds have never been more short gold (slashing long bets and increasing short beta by around 11 million ounces net in the last week). But gold is not alone as 15 of the 24 commodities tracked by CFTC showed sentiment swinging more bearish last week (with Brent and WTI also at their most-bearish positioning on record). And this is happening as November US Mint gold coin sales rose 86% YoY.

“We will listen, and then decide,” he said on Tuesday upon his arrival in Vienna, trying to tamp down speculation that the outcome is preordained. When asked if OPEC’s strategy of pursuing market share was working, al-Naimi was coy. “What strategy?” he said. “Who said we’re keeping market share?” Despite al-Naimi’s assurances that the Saudi delegation won’t dictate policy to OPEC, his voice is the only one that counts.

The prevailing view in the gold community is that banks are speculators who bet on a falling price. 

Overnight, Credit Suisse became the latest bank to join Goldman, JPM and increasingly more banks in predicting that 2016 will be a year in which investors will want to rotate out of equities. Specifically, the second largest Swiss bank said that it is "we reduce our equity weightings to our most cautious strategic stance since 2008 and take our mid-2016 S&P 500 target down to 2,150, the same as our end-2016 target." Here are the five reasons why CS just looked at the mounting wall of worry... and began to worry.

Update: Emergency: UNC issues 'All Clear'

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suspended classes Wednesday morning (and students asked to shelter in place) after an unconfirmed report of an armed person on campus.

The world’s three largest economies, the US, China and Japan are already in recession. These countries represent nearly a third (29%) of global GDP. A stock market crash is coming.