Archive - Aug 2015

In the midst of turmoil among asset classes, investors tend to make irrational decisions, such as panicking and liquidating at inopportune times. Nobel Prize-winning Psychologist Daniel Kahneman helps explain ill-conceived reactions to the market with his concept of loss aversion. That’s the fear and feelings of loss surpass the joy one may receive from a similarly sized potential gain.  In order to frame this discussion of volatility, we dug up old surveys of institutional and individual investors that recorded their responses to the 1987 market crash

One of the greatest con jobs in history was convincing ordinary people that Central Bankers care about the “economy” or Main Street.

Hint: think Treasurys, oil, and renminbi...

Two years ago, when we first profiled Japan's mysterious "Mister Watanabe" daytrader - aka CIS - we thought it may just all be a hoax. But, as his claims this week that he made $34 million trading the panic on Monday - "I do my best work when other people are panicking," Bloomberg reports, CIS - who claims JPY20bn AUM, has become a cult figure among Japan’s tight-knit community of day traders. Notorious for lines like "Not even Goldman Sachs can beat me in a trade," CIS drops some knowledge this week on how he has become so successful... "Buy stocks that are being bought, and sell stocks that are being sold." Just don't tell Cramer.

It goes until the “big one” shows up “out of nowhere” because everyone studiously ignores these events as if they can’t possibly be what they so obviously are: continued warnings. It is impossible to say what the final turn will be, as you can’t predict the level of “necessary” liquidations going too far because liquidity supply is totally hidden and derivative. The fact that one central bank after another continues to fall victim to the same connecting degeneration is cause for still deeper pause and reassessment, but that isn’t any fun for the bull bubble and the “easy money” mindset. In any case, when the yen functions as the last resort bid of safety, you can pretty well assess just how messed up everything got – and start to make some determination about just how close to the precipice.

While all eyes are on the front-end of the VIX term structure, today's volatility term structure in the out-dates is now higher than they were at the close on Monday at "peak crisis." VXX - the VIX ETF - is still surging, as the massive short position continues to get squeezed amid the ongoing backwardation in VIX...

Earlier today, following the disappointing July personal spending data and yesterday's record surge in inventories as part of the spike in Q2 GDP, we predicted that the Atlanta Fed would cut its already painfully low Q3 GDP forecast of 1.4%. Moments ago, it did just that, when the Atlanta Fed GDPNow "nowcast" was revised lower to just a 1.2% annualized growth rate, more than two-thirds below the BEA's first revision of Q2 GDP.

The private economy and its millions of savers exist for the convenience of the apparatchiks who run the central bank. In their palpable fear and unrelieved arrogance, would they now throw millions of already ruined retirees and savers completely under the bus? Yes they would.

For the 3rd day in a row, crude oil prices are spiking as the short squeeze morphs into a war premium. Heberler reports that Saudi ground troops have entered Northern Yemen and seized control of two areas in the Saada province. WTI is now above $45...

While the markets had a brief, if historic, limit-down hiccup earlier this week, even if Black Monday is now long forgotten and stocks are mostly in the green for the week following another epic round of central bank intervention, yesterday the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials announced something far more troubling: Pennsylvania schools are starting the year "minus $1 billion" in funds.

A week ago we noticed something extreme in the price relationship between gold and oil. At the time we asked "is gold rich or oil cheap?" It appears we have our answer... perfectly tagging the January highs in the gold/oil ratio, the screaming rally in oil has pushed the ratio back into a less extreme region...

It appears the economy is doing just well enough and the reflexive bounce in stocks showing that everything is awesome is all that Fed's vice chair Stan Fischer appeared to need to note that "we are heading [a September rate hike]direction." This has been judged as "not dovish enough" and sparked some turmoil...

Core personal consumption growth in July was just 1.2% - the weakest since March 2011. Whatever The Fed is doing to grow the middle class (yes, yes, we know: that's not in the mandate - only the "wealth effect" is) is not workingm and as the following chart suggests hasn't worked for the past 35 years.

After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was kicked out of Bolivia, the country was able to drastically reduce the amount of coca (cocaine) produced within its borders. According to data released by the United Nations, cocaine production in the country declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease.

On Thursday, Ukraine struck a restructuring agreement on some $18 billion in Eurobonds with a group of creditors headed by Franklin Templeton. That's the good news. The bad news is that Ukraine also owes $3 billion to Vladimir Putin, and Vladimir Putin wants it back. All of it.