Archive - May 2015

Just like the Tesla electric car was spun as a niche product which will be adopted by everyone in the US (and the world) but increasingly appears that not only will this fad fade away only to be replaced by the next such attention-grabbing gimmick created by someone else, so the PowerWall is a product that while clearly appealing to some 40,000 early adopters "it’s yet not clear that it will expand much beyond that." According to Catalytic Engineering, the PowerWall "economics don’t make sense for most customers in North America" and that "by itself, the Tesla PowerWall residential unit won’t disrupt the energy industry, as it’s looking like a niche product."

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wasn't satisfied with how quickly his company was transitioning to an "unconventional" boss-less corporate culture, so he sent a memo to his 1,500 employees reminding them that Zappos will pay unsatisfied workers to quit. The result: some folks quit...

Capital controls are in place...

On the heels of last week's equity rout, China cuts interest rates for the third time since November. The move comes on the heels of last month's RRR cut and follows trade data that missed expectations (again) and a PPI print that betrayed persistent deflation risks. Perhaps more importantly, Chinese stocks fell last week amid still more rumors that tighter margin requirements are on the way. 

Merkel's a butch of a chick... 

So on Monday? He refused to nail down a day. But Germany is ready.

"When a Chinese honor guard joins a military parade in Russia’s capital this weekend, watched by China’s President Xi Jinping, it will mark more than just a symbolic recognition of the two countries' contributions to the Allied victory in 1945... They've basically come to a consensus that despite their differences over some national interests, they really face the same common enemy..."

The words "explosion", "New York", "black smoke", and "nuclear" strike fear into the heart of most people but according to Entergy - who runs Indian Point, "the nuclear facility has been safely shutdown following a transformer failure." Reports of a loud blast at the nuclear facility just 38 miles north of New York, with dense black smoke rising from Unit 3 are no concern and represent "no danger to public health and safety." The plant, which dates back to 1962 (although the currently used reactors were installed later in the 70s) had just been brought back online on Friday, after being shut down for a steam leak repair.

Peel back the layers of the TPP and you’ll find what some believe to be a “corporate Trojan horse.” Disguised as “free trade,” the TPP’s provisions and tactics undermine Constitutional safeguards and national sovereignty. But there’s also a silver lining. The TPP exposes who, in the marbled halls of political power, is working for whom. It forces politicians to put their cards on the table, and by their hands you will know them. Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse. It’s a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.

"The sharp rise in bond volatility over the past week or so is reminiscent of the VaR shocks of October 2014 in US rates and April 2013 in Japanese rates," JP Morgan says, before explaining how volatility induced selling (i.e. a VaR shock) is behind the rout in German Bunds. Predictably, QE has helped create the conditions which make such episodes possible.

"If banknotes are outlawed you will be forced to hold money that is a liability of a commercial bank (deposits) and refused access to money that is the liability of the central bank (bank notes)... In such a world, zero-yielding gold would be a high-yielding instrument. If the authorities ever sought to restrict access to banknotes, then gold would suddenly find itself enfranchised as money for the first time in many decades. So, given the scale of these competing forces, it is just too early to say what might happen to the gold price, but the allure of gold will grow the more it becomes clear that central bank fiat has failed and the age of government fiat is dawning."

"... in the last decades, the basic principles of international cooperation have come to be increasingly ignored. These are the principles that have been hard won by mankind as a result of the ordeal of the war. We saw attempts to establish a unipolar world. We see the strong-arm block thinking gaining momentum. All that undermines sustainable global development. The creation of a system of equal security for all states should become our common task. Such system should be an adequate match to modern threats, and it should rest on a regional and global non-block basis. Only then will we be able to ensure peace and tranquillity on the planet."

"It's all relative," as Einstein likely said once, and the following 18 charts from Investir.ch's Loic Schmid highlight a few clear divergences - Overweight cash as "the end is near" for US equities, buy dips on weakness in EU debt and gold, position for increasing vol...

Why would financial firms pay so much for blogger Ben Bernanke’s thoughts? Aside from the marketing benefits we noted, there is one good reason. In essence, you’d want to know what Bernanke would think if he were wrong or ill-informed about some important economic issue. That is something money managers understand in a way that academics and policymakers do not, for being wrong – and knowing what to do next – is a critical skill for the professional. Getting the most information from Bernanke, either in a one-on-one or just reading his work online, boils down to just two questions: “What doesn’t he know” and “What is he sure of that is actually wrong?”

How many more shoes need to drop?