Archive - Jan 2015

And these are the 'smartest people in the room that the world is entrusting to save the status quo. In one brief interview, ECB's Coeure explained how lower oil prices are great for the EU economy (but that low oil prices hurt deflation and thus QE should be used to stoke inflation - and thus higher oil prices?) and then said discussions of a Greek exit from the euro are "meaningless," that "no one is preparing for the exit," and that "restructuring ECB Greek bond holdings is illegal." One wonders what he will do when Greece just decides to stop paying...

What You're Not Hearing ...

All is clearly not well below the surface. Europe's largest bank (by market value) has admitted in a regulatory filing that it needs to raise capital. As WSJ reports, Banco Santander SA said it would raise up to €7.5 billion ($8.88 billion) in a capital hike, a bid to address long-running concerns among investors and analysts that its financial cushion was weaker than peers. European banking stocks are up over 2% today as Italian banks surge limit up (BMPS +13%) on speculation that they will be purchased by Santander (who 'pumpers' believe are raising this capital to go on a spending spree) and 'old' Draghi headlines.

Stocks are up nearly 2% today alone, with the S&P back to green for 2015. Among the reasons for today's rally: lower overhead courtesy of KO and CAT, which announced that between the two of them, they would fire some 2,000 workers, which is great news for stocks if not for actual employees as there will be even more dry powder for another record quarter of stock buybacks.

Schools in Chicago, Boston and other large cities closed on Thursday as sub-zero temperatures and bitter winds gripped central and eastern United States for a third day and, as Reuters reports, meteorologists warned there was little relief in sight. A stunning 83.8% of America was freezing this morning (and 12.9% below zero) as an Arctic air blast from Canada hit the U.S. Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, with many parts around minus 10 Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), the National Weather Service said.

For those hoping that the recent brief dip in Brent crude below $50 - most notably Venezuela's intrepid socialist leader Nicolas Maduro whose numbered days get shorter with every day Brent closes red, and countless bondholders of junk- debt capitalized shale companies - would mean that Saudi Arabia's vendetta against OPEC would finally be put on hiatus, we have bad news: the vendetta just wen nuclear because as Reuters reports, there is "no chance of OPEC output cut."

"... investors are so certain about inflation that there is no insurance value in breakeven contracts. If the liquidity premium hasn’t changed, then current breakevens are consistent with 1.8% expected PCE inflation. In other words, either the market believes that even five years from now, the Fed will not achieve its target or the liquidity premia has jumped to 30bp."

All of this makes no sense at all until you consider that ALL Central Banking actions have been focused on one thing: making sure the global bond bubble DOESN’T IMPLODE.

With QE terminated and expectations of a near-term rate hike looming, the Fed “put” is now much further out-of-the-money. More importantly, the discounting function for future cash flows is moving away from zero. In addition, as the Fed’s policy pivot is tightening the spigot of easy money, share buyback programs that have enhanced the illusion of the power of the equity market will wane. Going forward, prices will have to be supported by fundamental values rather than easy money and speculation. The upside vs. downside distribution now looks skewed to the ‘left-tail’. The Junk bond market started declining last June. The bottom line is that we expect a large equity price adjustment (down) to occur imminently.

Frau and Herr Nein...

The price of crude has collapsed by 50% in a few months (and 40% since the end of QE3), which can only mean one thing: the Wall Street penguin brigade is out in full force with its spate of energy sector downgrades, none of which is more bombastic than that of Citigroup's Robert Morris who in 118 pages just crucified the entire energy space, lowering his target price for every single company in his coverage universe, and declaring that "Goldilocks has left the building."

See - "everything is awesome" again!!

Presented with no comment...

Chicago Fed's Charlie Evans called the drop in rates at the longer-end of the Treasury yield curve "extraordinary," falling just short of screaming "sell, sell, sell bonds" and threw wrench in the Fed's policy path by noting "raising rates at the wrong time would be catastrophic." So it is noteworthy that damage control appears to have been engaged this morning by no lesser Fed mouthpiece than Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath. Reminding the public of Bill Dudley's fears, when he argued the Fed had the wrong reaction to lower long rates in the 2000s, a mistake that might have contributed to the housing boom that ended disastrously; when instead the Fed should push rates higher sooner or more aggressively than planned.