Archive - Dec 2009 - Story

Having managed to survive 2009 (or so we hope- there are still a few hours left to go) we thought we might invite you to join us (virtually) for Studio Zero's annual end-of-year blow-out this evening.  (Actually, Studio Zero was called something else before Zero Hedge came around, but that's not important right now).  We generally get started around 9 eastern and pound out the tunes until well after 5 eastern but who knows?

Listen here: http://72.13.86.66:8000/listen.pls thanks to the mind-blowing generosity of EGI Hosting.

Update: We're live!

It was only fitting that a year marked by irrational and erratic trading, saw a substantial volume selloff in the last 15 minutes of trading after there was absolutely no volume done all day. What sparked it? Only a few momentum chasing quants know, even as the bid seemed dangerously close to getting unglued. Suddenly all the big-cap liquidity provisioning seemed just a tad tenuous. Another way of looking at it: a cheap appetizer of things to come. Is the January 4 rush for the exits entre next?

One of the great paradoxes of life is that the smarter one is, the better one realizes just how little one knows. The same thing is true with forecasts: one can hypothesize and conjecture, but if one is unlucky, one is screwed: no matter how thought out, error-proof or logical the narrative - it is the unpredictable events that ultimately shape events, not the "priced in" obvious factors. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies in a perverse fashion not only to the wave-particle duality in the quantum realm, but to the very underpinning of economics: by predicting the future we implicitly change it. The futility of forecasts is well known to all those, who with the exception of a several few, whose very existence is an economy of scale "strange attractor" (think Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs), have tried to repeat a winning performance, be it based on fundamentals, technicals, or kangaroo entrails. It is also sufficiently useless to the point where we will spare you a Zero Hedge set of observations of what to expect: if you have been reading this blog, you know what we believe is relevant as we enter 2010. How it will all pan out, however, is a totally different story. It is therefore not too ironic, and somewhat fitting, that Goldman Sachs' chief economists do not leave 2009 with a dogmatic set of forecasts, which, just like every other year would have the success rate of a coin toss, but with 10 key questions addressed exactly one year into the future. Here are Goldman's 10 Questions for December 31, 2010.

As you may or may not know, Zero Hedge is in the process of developing a number of premium offerings for 2010. One of these is "Cf., The Journal of Irreverent Attacks on Conventional Wisdom, Entrenched Dogma and Sacred Cows." For your reading pleasure, and to act as a preview of premium things to come, we attach Volume I, Issue I entitled "The Dionysian Rites of Henry Kissinger's CIA and the Iranian Revolution of 2010."

With every deep-thinking pundit looking out at 2010 and predicting this and that, the irony is that virtually all investment decisions will be derivatives of one simple outcome: do we have inflation or deflation. Numerous opinions have been set forth recently, each of which presenting more convincing and detailed theses on why [stag/hyper] [deflation/inflation] will be the dominant theme in the year to come, accompanied by pretty charts and convoluted diagrams. And while one can write books on all the political, economic and financial aspects that will determine either outcome, we have decided to avoid that, and instead would like to remind readers of a little noticed paper by Brait Capital Management, published in August of 2009, which conceptualizes all the key themes in the inflation vs deflation debate.

A week ago Zero Hedge discussed the spread between the Freddie 1 Year ARM and the 30 Year fixed, concluding that the recent record spread is indicative that the Fed will do all it can to become the new subprime lender of any resort, even if it means creating exponentially more roll risk, as it seeks to lend money regardless of the probability of ultimate payback. Today Bloomberg points out that the Freddie 30 Year has just hit a 4 month high of 5.14%, a level last seen at the end of August. What is notable is that in less than two weeks the 30 Year Freddie Fixed has jumped by 20 bps. At this rate we will overtake the 2009 high of 5.59% within a month. However, our original observation is that even as the 30 Year Fixed has finally started to move in line with the 10 Year Treasury, which just can't find a floor in the past week, the 30 Year Fixed - 1 Year ARM spread has simply exploded: when we looked at its last it was 60 bps, a week later, it is now at 81 bps. The Fed is now literally throwing money away in the form of Adjustable Rate Mortgages.

Are Federal Reserve and U.S. Government Rigging Stock Market? We Have No Evidence They Are, but They Could Be. We Do Not Know Source of Money That Pushed Market Cap Up $6+ Trillion since Mid-March. - TrimTabs

The fabulous news of the day undoubtedly will be the latest release from the Dept of Labor: Initial Claims for the week ended December 26 came in at 432,000, a 22,000 decline from the prior week, and below consensus. The number was sufficient to prompt Bloomberg's Courtney Schlisserman to come up with the following observation, "Fewer Americans than anticipated filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, pointing to an improvement in the labor market that will help sustain economic growth next year." Perhaps Courtney and Steve Liesman should sit down in a corner and finally figure out what this whole EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) business is - trust us, it is not that difficult. And for the week ended Dec. 12 it surged by 191,669 to almost 4.5 million, another all time record. Three weeks ago we were shocked when this number hit the all time high of 4.2 million: in a mere 21 days it has added a whopping 8% to the total. Unfortunately, at this point we have gotten a little desensitized to new EUC records. We ask Ms. Schlisserman what happens to the "sustainable economic growth" when there are 0 Initial Claims (hurray!!) and a million EUC claims weekly (uhh)? Again, a simple question. Luckily for Bloomberg, the DOL and the BLS there is no consensus number for EUC, as the downside surprises there would have been staggering, if anyone actually cared to report those on the front pages of the even impartial mainstream media.

• China Central Bank Zhou says 2010 is crucial for 'defeating' crisis (Bloomberg) in the meantime his subordinated are learning the intricacies of Treasury collateralized $19.95/pop reverse repos, in advance of withdrawing trillions in excess liquidity
• Lawmakers want probe into aid for Fannie and Freddie - we'll spare you the Dan Brown suspense - the answer is the Federal Reserve in the 85 Broad lobby with a money printer
• FDIC moves to seize slice of bank stock rallies (WSJ) - paging the worthless Mary Schapiro - when will the insider trading in New York Community Bancorp finally be investigated?
• Speaking of worthless, regulatory-captured windbags, Wall Street waits as SEC fails to bring Madoff-inspired reforms (Bloomberg)
• The end of Uncle Ben's unlimited piggybank means no more gains for those who benefited from taxpayer generosity to deadbeat homeowners (Bloomberg)
• Do we need a new reserve currency? (Emirates Business)
• So much for Wall Street sobering up (Fortune)

Our friends at GATA have had enough of the Fed's, and other Central Banks' alleged (and with so much circumstantial evidence presented both at Zero Hedge and elsewhere, that in this case "alleged" is just a term only a lawyer could love) manipulation of gold prices, and have taken Bernanke's monetization, manipulation and money making unlimited liability company to task ("M4 ULLC"). We are overjoyed that yet another entity has followed in the footsteps of our dear late friend Mark Pittman in taking on the one organization that represents all that is irreconcilably broken with the current economic and financial system. We wish GATA much success, and hope that ever more wronged counterparties will seek remedies from the Fed's consistent and blatant wealth transfer from America's Middle Class to the uber-wealthy, Wall Street-originating oligarchy.

From WaPo

The federal government said Wednesday it will take majority control of
the troubled auto lender GMAC, providing another $3.8 billion in aid to
the company, which has been unable to raise from private investors the
money it needs to staunch its losses.

GMAC, which already has
taken $12.5 billion in direct federal aid along with other forms of
government support, is the largest lender to General Motors and
Chrysler dealerships and to their auto-buying customers.

Prepare for "no cash until 2099" offers at a GM dealer near you. Free rear spoiler stickers of Marx, Engels and Lenin included with every purchase of a CTS-V.

Some recapitulating thoughts on High Frequency Trading, in the year in which HFT probably became the primary market dynamic, courtesy of Themis Trading's Joe Saluzzi. "A NYSE study done recently indicates that spreads shrunk and liquidity was increased in large cap names, but in the small to mid-cap names it is just the opposite: liquidity has shrunk and volatility has increased because now you have predatory action." Yet with everyone trading just a few key stock purely on momentum trends, and everything else rising or falling on the beta wave, nobody will care until, again, it is too late.

It is only fitting that one of the most schizophrenic years in recent capital markets history should close with a $5 million CMB auction pricing at 0.000%. And so the circle of chasing risky and risk-free assets with equal passion is now complete. Even as high yield bonds have returned over 50% YTD, investors can't get enough of parking cash in yield free US government-backed pieces of paper. Many have claimed this phenomenon is indicative merely of capital allocation ahead of January 1. Well, that is in a few hours. And with the next 4-week Bill/CMB auction likely to take place within a week, we will promptly see if this is indeed the case. If we end up with another 0.000% soon, then the structural problems at the near-end of the curve will end up being much worse than most have expected.That, and negative 1 month rates coming a-plenty.

Q: "What can we do to avoid hyperinflation? What if we just shut down the Fed or something like that?:

A: "We can't. The actions have already been taken to put us in it. It's beyond control. The government does put out financial statements usually in December using generally accepted accounting principles, where unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security are included in the same way as corporations account for their employee pension liabilities. And in 2008, for example, the one-year deficit was $5.1 trillion dollars. And that's instead of the $450 billion, plus or minus, that was officially reported." - John Williams

You don't really expect to see huge spikes in large ($1 billion plus AUM) bond funds absent some significant fixed income news (or perhaps, internal scandal). So what's going on with the PIMCO High Income Fund (NYSE:PHK) today?

Update: Volatility study added.

Update #2: It appears a Zero Hedge post back in March may solve the mystery of the tactical nuking of PHK. We are beginning to suspect a bit of naughtiness in the form of insider trading.