Archive - Apr 2015

Yesterday afternoon Viacom revealed that as part of its "Strategic Realignment to Create Efficiencies and Drive Long-Term Growth" it would do something which the market loathes: it would stop its buybacks. Specifically it said that "Viacom will temporarily pause share purchases under its current $20 billion stock repurchase program in order to stay within its target leverage ratio." What Viacom meant was that just like IBM, its net debt ratio had likewise soared in the past several years, and had reached a level where the Baa2/BBB-rated company was on the verge of being cut to junk status. So is Viacom a harbinger for the broader market, a market which as we reported previously only, had a tremendous month of February only because of a record $100 billion in announced stock buybacks? The answer: a resounding yes.

Former employees of federal agencies can often find good (and lucrative) jobs as lobbyists, capitalizing on the connections that they forged while in public service. As OpenSecrets exposes, the numbers of revolving-door-enthusiasts is reminiscent of the Ebola epidemic as this deadly-to-democracy disease spreads from department to department ripping away 'hope and change' wherever it appears. "Revolvers" include those as powerful - and well connected - as secretaries of state and as far from Washington as Peace Corps volunteers... but The Department of Commerce tops the list...

There is virtually nothing in the substance of the deal for the War Party to attack. To defeat the deal, the War Party will have to defend its three-decade long campaign of exaggerations, distortions and bellicose animosity toward the Iranian state. But that is impossible because the axis-of-evil narrative was never remotely true. What the framework deal actually does, therefore, is to open the door to an eventual US withdrawal from its bloody, failed history of intervention in the middle east. So doing, it would pave the way for a drastic shrinkage of an obsolete war machine that has had no purpose since 1991 except to spill American blood and treasure in a region of the world  where it has no business meddling. No wonder the War Party is going hysterical.

The market in 2015 through the first quarter appears fickle. We hear on a daily basis how the market doesn’t know which way it is going. Up one day, down the next. Based on this anecdotal evidence of the popular opinion, the market appears unusually volatile. There are many ways to measure volatility, including standard deviation of returns and distribution of returns. For this IQS Brief, we measure the “runs” in the market. Instead of focusing on the magnitude of the returns, we pay attention to the trends in the market. We simply count the number of days the market goes up consecutively, and the number of days the market goes down consecutively. This metric, which we call “runs,” easily allows a pictorial representation of the market movements.

In search of "conflict of interest..."

Thomas Jefferson is credited with the following sage advice, “The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.” And so it seems sometimes the answer is right in front of us all along and we just fail to see it.

Who could have seen that coming? For 2 days, oil has surged on every headline (good or bad) as algo-mania created the 2nd best performance in 4 years.. and then API reports an absolutely massive 12.2 million (almost 4 times larger than the 3.4mm estimate). If this corresponds to the DOE inventory data tomorrow - this is the biggest inventory build since 1985... Crude prices are... not up...

For a second time within a couple of weeks, Greek Defense Minister and leader of coalition government junior partner Independent Greeks, Panos Kammenos warned that if the European Union keeps undermining the coalition government and the country exit or is forced to exit the Euro “waves of migrants: will stream from Turkey to Europe and among them there would be ISIS “radicals.” Speaking to THE TIMES, Kammenos said: “The gross meddling into [Greek] domestic affairs isn’t just unheard for European standards, it’s unethical and it’s dangerous. If Greece goes, then a lot more than financial stability and the euro is at stake.” “If Greece is expelled or forced out of the eurozone, waves of immigrants without papers, including radical elements, will stream from Turkey and head towards the heart of the West."

Too soon?

There was only bad news in the just released Fed consumer credit report for the month of February. First, the "good credit", the one that consumer should load up on when they feel comfortable about the future, i.e., credit card, or revolving debt, continued its recent plunge, and in February crashed by $3.7 billion, following January's $1 billion plunge. This was the worst month for revolving credit since December 2010 and explains perfectly why the consumer has literally gone into hibernation - it has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with the unwillingness to "charge" purchases, which in turn is a clear glimpse into how the US consumer sees their financial and economic future.

Despite being an otherwise staid, traditional news service, the professional banking division of the Financial Times recently released an utterly scathing assessment of the British economy. It was entitled, “The UK economy is a ticking time bomb,” and the editor didn’t pull any punches in completely shattering the conventional fantasy that ‘all is well’, and that advanced economies can simply print and in debt their way to prosperity.

A constant stream of hyprocrisy from Fed officials (will print moar money if stuff happens), The EIA (storage is getting fuller and fuller, but production will be lower than expected), and Saudi Oil Minister Naimi's idiocy (increased production, demanding non-OPEC cooperation, but optimistic on prices recovering in the short-term) has sent crude asymmetrically rocketing higher... which is now apparently a good thing for US equities.

NO INITIAL INDICATIONS OF TERRORISM IN WASHINGTON, D.C., POWER OUTAGES - U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

*STATE DEPT SAYS PEPCO EXPECTS TO RESTORE POWER IN 1-2 HOURS

The utility firm Pepco is currently investigating a Washington-wide black-out that has plunged The White House, State Department, The US Capitol, D.C. Metro, and even Oprah's TV Stage into darkness...Ironically, the outage occurred minutes after Rand Paul commented that "the time has come to take away the power from Washington D.C..."  Has anyone seen Kim Jong-Un today?