Archive - May 2015

No one stays on top forever, and to be sure, when Bill Gross' long reign at the top of the fixed income universe finally came to a sudden and rather unceremonious end last October, the race to lay claim to the inevitable outflows from PIMCO's Total Return Fund was on. Now, a winner has emerged — and it's not Jeff Gundlach.

We can officially confirm that the gold redemptions from the world's (allegedly) largest gold vault have continued, and another 10 tons of gold was put on a ship (or plane) in March in an unknown direction. Since Germany and the Netherlands started repatriating a portion of their gold held in Manhattan, some 217 tons of gold has been redeemed starting in February 2014 and just under 200 tons in the past 12 months.

On the heels of Monday's news that the IMF may demand a write-off of Greek debt by European creditors before the organization will disburse its portion of a €7.2 billion aid tranche to Athens, it now appears the situation has deteriorated further with unnamed Greek officials reporting "serious disagreements" between the IMF and the EU which may make a compromise "impossible" by the critical May 12 deadline.

Despite a good start, since early March when The ECB began its bond-buying bonanza, things have not been going the way Mario Draghi had hoped. While inflation data inflected modestly higher (cough oil cough), European bond yields (and peripheral bond spreads) have widened notably. Whether this is "sell the news" trading, Gross-Gundlach-driven unwinds, or Greek "serious disappointment" contagion (Greek 10Y bond yields are up over 200bps from the announcement in January of ECB QE) is unclear... but what is clear is that if ECB bond-buying is not pressuring yields lower then how can they hope to contain real Grexit contagion?

This morning's collapse in the trade balance combined with weak export orders in the survey data suggests the decoupling meme is blowing up. However, it seems investors are losing faith in The Fed as there is broad-based selling in stocks, bonds, and the dollar (with commodities bid). Stocks are now in the red post-FOMC.

That escalated quickly...

The hope-strewn bounce in Services PMI over the last 3 months (despite collapsing macro data) has ended. Markit Services PMI dropped in April to 57.4, weakening notably from preliminary expectations of 57.8. Markit remains convinced that their survey implies 3% GDP growth and all is well in the world. ISM Services however smashed expectations, printing 57.8 vs 56.2, its highest since November - despite a plunge in new export orders into contraction.

Einhorn just found his next target: U.S. onshore E&Ps or the oil fracking companies.

Hope springs eternal. The S&P Energy sector is surging once again this morning as crude prices top $60 with stocks now back at Nov 2014 levels (up 12% in the last month). What most do not realize as they blindly follow the momentum, excited that 'something is working' is that the valuations - based on analysts' forward earnings projections - have only been marginally higher than this once... right at the peak in 1999. The S&P Energy sector trades at a 28x Fwd P/E!

After the Saudis allegedly halted their air campaign against Yemen's Houthi rebels on April 21 (allegedly because it promptly resumed the very next day to almost no public announcement), the Yemen civil war and the "skirmishes" by Houthi rebels along the border with the world's biggest oil exporter were quickly forgotten. Until this morning, when the Saudi press and social media has been overrun with reports that the Saudi city of Najran was shelled by Houthi mortars, an attack which Saudi advisor to the armed forces Ahmed Asiri said "will not pass without a response".

There is little advantage to be gained by being aggressively allocated during the summer months. However, in reality, there are few individuals that can maintain a strict discipline of only investing during seasonally strong periods consistently. Also, time frames of when you start and when you need your capital for retirement make HUGE differences in actual performance. However, a willful disregard of "risk" will inherently lead to the destruction of the two most precious and finite assets that all investors possess – capital and time.

As we first reported on Monday, ISIS has indeed claimed responsibility for the attack on a security guard in Garland, Texas on Sunday evening. In a statement, the group warns of further attacks that it promises will be "worse and more bitter" and may be "just around the corner." 

Remember that in a beggar thy neighbor world, where currency warfare has once again broken out between the US, Europe and Japan, for every winner there is a loser. In this case, the loser is the one country that has decided that a strong currency is a great thing for its economy (if only for the time being): that would be the US. Why is this relevant? Because as the chart below shows, US trade excluding Petroleum, just crashed to $43.7 billion, the worst print in the history of the series, suggesting that portrayals of the US as a resurgent export powerhouse are completely erroneous, and that instead the US is as big a net importer of goods and services (and soon to be oil) as ever.

After shrinking notably in Feb, March's US Trade deficit exploded. Against expectations of a $41.7bn deficit, the US generated a $51.4bn deficit - the worst since Oct 2008 and the biggest miss on record. Exports rose just $1.6bn while imports soared $17.1bn with the goods deficit with China soaring from $27.3bn to $37.8bn in March. Ironically, just as the "harsh winter" was found to lead to a GDP boost due to a surge in utility spending, so the West Coast port strike which was blamed for the GDP drop, was actually benefiting the US economy as it lead to a plunge in imports. In March, however, the pipeline was cleared, and US imports from China soared by over $10 billion to $38 billion.  End result: prepare for upcoming Q1 GDP downgrades into negative territory.