Archive - Nov 2009 - Story

Let’s say there are 100,000 barrels of oil in the world and 10 are sold each day and they are shipped from various places in various amounts but generally there are, at any given time, 30 days of oil at sea (300 barrels). If I am taking straight delivery, I would contract with the producers to deliver me 1 barrel of oil per day for a year or 5 years or whatever for $50 a barrel. My interest is to have a steady supply and the producers interest is to have a steady demand. He wants to charge as much as possible, I want to pay as little as possible.

The updated Goldman Sachs 13F is out. With 10,244 security holdings, amounting to $180 billion in gross exposure, split among 7 institutional investment managers (Goldman Sachs & Co; Goldman Sachs Asset Management; Goldman Sachs International; Goldman Sachs AG; Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing; The Ayco Company; Goldman Sachs Trust Company), it presents an interesting picture of Goldman's core equity positions. The bulk of the security holdings are held at GS & Co. ($94.5 billion of market value), followed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management ($80 billion of market value). Furthermore, Goldman breaks down holdings based on value of Calls and Puts, in addition to underlying stock.

Wherever his spirit rests, Benjamin Franklin must be livid. When the hardearned savings of ordinary people are looted to enrich greedy bankers, and when they are told that this process is necessary to make America prosperous again, no wonder so many citizens have displayed so much anger at “Tea Parties.” - Coxe Report

The one must read report this weekend.

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An impressively comprehensive presentation by Bill Dudley before the Center for Economic Policy Studies Symposium earlier, discusses, and ties in, all the key concepts Zero Hedge has been discussing over the past several months, among these the tri-party repo system, bank runs (what and why), collateral, moral hazard, maturity mismatch, unsecured markets, Primary Dealer Credit Facility, Commercial Paper Funding Facility, and liquidity. In fact, at some points in the speech we get the feeling Mr. Dudley is indirectly refuting some of Zero Hedge's recent allegations vis-a-vis the Fed's actions and regulatory oversight. The presentation is largely devoid of bias except for some of the proposals on how to avoid future systemic meltdowns, which of course are moral hazard prevention lite and philosophy heavy. Not a lite piece of reading, yet recommended for all who want a grasp of the big picture from the Fed's perspective.

The latest Paulson & Co. 13F is out: the man who inspires a million hedge fund clone portfolios has made some interesting changes to his holdings. The most notable is the documented addition of 300 million shares of Citigroup, a new position for the firm. Offsetting this is the sale of 8.2 million shares of Bank of America (which at 160 million shares is still the firm's second largest holding). Paulson has also divested his entire 2MM share Goldman Sachs stake.

As expected, yesterday was a CDS bloodbath straight out of Kandinsky Composition VIII. Today's action, which we will post later, will be a page out of Picasso's blue period. The market, even the formerly rational CDS one, is now a leveraged gyrator, which moves only based on how much daily pounding Bernanke feels like administering to the middle class by round-housing each and every green-tinted portrait of Washington, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant and Franklin (and a few more, less memorable ones) that the bald Chairman encounters.

Tactical asset allocation should give some exposure to unexpected shifts in interest rates.The problem owes itself to a duration mismatch in asset classes held today.

Equity duration is similar to bond duration. It measures the sensitivity of equities to interest rates. The research on this subject is fascinating. Each year Standard & Poor publishes a report with the duration for the S&P 500. They estimate the duration of the S&P 500 index to be 34 years at the middle of 2009. The index is very high in view of the history of the data.

If anyone still cares about the equity market, here is a pretty good summary of what the computers did this week, courtesy of the holidaypartyless folks at Manhattan's southernmost skyscraper (something tells us the elves, contrary to disclosed information, will be there, and we will be whereever the elves are).

After today's action, thousands of technicians will be pulling out their slide rules in order to mull over the "double top" or "head and shoulders" pattern on the NY Composite. With millions of traders worldwide all looking at the same moving averages, the same patterns, the same 5-min. charts, all in real time, the fate of the stock market and the fate of mankind will now be determined by a few squiggly lines. Which way will it go?

Billionaire investor John Paulson, who recently announced that he is willing to invest $200 million to purchase up to 45% of the post-reorg new common stock in bankrupt telephone directory maker Idearc. Even though Paulson previously owned a substantial portion of prepetition debt which converts into roughly 13% of pro forma equity per the Plan of Reorg, his holdings would be capped at 45% (so essentially a net flow of $142 million for the 32% which would be acquired). Yet was was supposed to be a simple hunt in the back pocket for loose change for a transaction that leaves a few people puzzled as to what value the billionaire contrarian sees in a business model that is rapidly eaten away by Google at both the national, and more and more, the regional and city levels, just got a little more complicated. Yesterday Bennett Management Corp decided to outbid Paulson , by notifying the debtor that it was "willing to pay a significantly higher price" of $220 million for the same equity stake, and that also the estate would end up getting a much greater actual cash inflow as BMC would own only 1% of post-reorg equity.

Just when you thought the US auto industry is doomed, the Mullaly brain trust comes up with this idea of unsurpassed brilliance. Even Steve Rattner can't help but applaud in uncharaceteristic profanity-free silence.

"This month I will attempt to answer the entrance examination for the Chinese civil service. That is to say, I will attempt to tell you everything that I know. In doing so, I will argue that this year's rally in inflationary assets, from emerging stock markets to industrial commodities to the fall in the US dollar, could be a FAKE. Let me explain why." - Hugh Hendry

Needless to say, a must read.

It is very important to put the situation in the US and Europe in perspective. Other than creating a huge bubble in emerging markets, the numbers don't add up at all: emerging markets and China cannot be the motor of the world economy yet, and while we need them to pick up consumption and save less as we start saving, sending our wealth into their stock market which cannot absorb liquidity of this magnitude is pure madness. It will go up fast and down faster leaving more damage than it brought good. This is partly why China has been protective of its domestic equity markets and worried about foreign investments after learning from mistakes of the 1997 Asian crisis. Same holds for overly confident economic prospects: unwinding a credit mess of this magnitude, and rebalancing our economy towards more domestic production and less imports will take a long time and there is no easy miracle.

A fantastic history of the reasons for, and the creation of, the Federal Reserve, courtesy of Murray Rothbard and our friends at Mises Institute, with the article originally appearing in Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 3–51. It is also reprinted in A History of Money and Banking in the United States and as a monograph. This is a must read for anyone who is curious why the Federal Reserve (with or without Goldman) is the sole organization responsible for not only perpetuating the interests of a select few of financial oligarchs, but in essence shaping monetary, fiscal, financial and political policy in the entire developed world. If after reading this, one is not convinced that the Fed screams a need for at least some supervision or accountability, one is likely a borderline-corrupt Senator who is on the payroll of Citi, Bank of America and/or Goldman Sachs (or, what may be worse, infinitely naive).