Archive - 2015

The new year is not even a week old and already the volatility fireworks are off, as well as the continued commodity derisking. But while for now US stocks continue to be an island oasis in a turbulent global sea where GDP forecasts decline every single day, the same can not be said about either the Euro, which after crashing overnight to a 9 year low, and rebounding briefly, has continued to decline and is now once again flirting with a key support level, this time 1.19, last reached during the May 2010 first Greek bailout. The catalyst, as usual, Greece which may or may not be leaving the Eurozone shortly, as well as ongoing bets on ECB QE following this morning's regional German inflation data which declined once more and now hints at outright deflation in Europe's strongest nation.

"Russia has presented a startling proposal to overcome the tensions with the EU: The EU should renounce the free trade agreement with the United States TTIP and enter into a partnership with the newly established Eurasian Economic Union instead. A free trade zone with the neighbors would make more sense than a deal with the US."

2014 may go down as the year when gold and silver conspiracy “theories” became conspiracy “facts” as banks globally were found to have conspired to rig the prices of gold, silver, currency and many other markets.

Social media is awash with striking images of #EmptyShelvesInVenezuela (#AnaquelesVaciosEnVenezuela) as the evaporation of basic human staples such as toilet paper has now been hyperinflated to total chaos at warehouses and supermarkets. As President Maduro decries the loss of $100 oil "stability", vowing to return oil prices to their rightful places (and heads to China for help), lines reach for miles for milk and soap... and the people defy governmental bans on photographing empty market shelves... "We couldn't find shampoo, so we washed our hair with soap. Now there's not even soap."

USDJPY tumbles to a 119 handle briefly before Japan opened to its normal JPY-selling spike temporarily lifted the pair 'off the lows'. This drop dragged stock futures lower with Nikkei 225 tumbling over 350 points from its Friday trading highs. Oil prices continue to slide (WTI now with a $51 handle) and EURUSD is bouncing back from its precipitous decline earlier in the evening. S&P futures were down almost 10pts but have recovered about half their losses.

We thought yesterday's absurd story of former hedge fund manager James Crombie, founder of Paron Capital Management, who was arrested after found squatting in a million dollar Maryland house, would be as strange as it gets for hedge fund stories this weekend. We were wrong: moments ago the WSJ reported that Thomas Gilbert, founder of the $200 million Wainscott hedge fund, whose success Gilbert said previously had come from investing in biotech funds, was found dead with a single bullet to the head in his Manhattan apartment this afternoon, allegedly shot by none other than his 30-year-old son.

Having closed the Friday session less than 1 pip above the hugely important 1.2000 level below which there lay many stops, following this weekend's news onslaught which seemed like a deja vu of the newsflow from the fall of 2011, where the main catalyst was the Reuters report that Germany is preparing to let Greece go once and for all (with the subsequent attempts at retraction barely noticed), or maybe just because someone wanted to price in a little more of the more than fully priced in by now ECB QE - which very well may not happen - the moment the EURUSD opened for trading it took out not only the critical 1.2000 stops, but within milliseconds the Euro found itself bidless and crashed to a low of 1.1864, promptly taking out the lows set in May 2010 when the first Greek bailout took place, and tumbled to a level not seen since March of 2006!

Squeeeze...

If technology requires a complex society to build and maintain it, and our dreams and hopes are pinned on even more complex and useful technology in the future, but net energy from new oil plays is shrinking, then it might not be wise to pin all our hopes on technology. Perhaps there should be some other plans in the works too.

While the Affordable Care Act fines those who don't have health insurance, it also provides subsidies for people making up to four times the federal poverty line ($46,680)... but, as The Washington Examiner reports, the subsidies are based on past tax returns, so many people may be receiving too much. In fact, as H&R Block calculates, as many as 3.4 million people who received Obamacare subsidies may owe money to the federal government.

'... assuming equity prices rise by 10% this year, for their bond allocation to stay at 37% (same as of Q3 2014), US pension funds and insurance companies would have to buy $550bn of bonds in 2015."

David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch and currently of Gluskin Sheff, who famously flip-flopped from being a self-described permabear to uber-bull last summer for the one reason that has yet to manifest itself in any way, shape or form, namely declaring that wage inflation as imminent (it wasn't, but perhaps Mr. Rosenberg was merely forecasting the trajectory of his own wages) and generally an end to deflation, has a rhetorical question for his paying clients, as asked in his letter to investors from January 2. To wit: "THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR ANALYSIS?" We too follow up with an identical question not only for Mr. Rosenberg's clients, but for our own readers.

What happens to your market when competitors are selling 61 million units of your product at 1% margin and growing revenues by 135% and shipments by over 220%? Margin compression, baby!