Archive - Jan 23, 2010 - Story

Fast forward to 7 min 50. At this point what more can be said: Stewart is simply jealous because Cramer draws far more laughs every time the former Goldman Private Wealth Management expert (the kind of wealth where you become a millionaire, if you started of a trillionaire) shows up on TV.

Nearly a year ago, Zero Hedge first brought broad public attention to the nebulous aspects of the dark and dirty underworld of the market, exposing the "second-tier" of privileged market participants, consisting of quant traders, high frequency trading, flash trading, sponsored access, co-location, latency arbitrage, Morgan Stanley's discussed-below PDT operation, and many other topics (check our Glossary for much more). In April, Zero Hedge wrote an open letter to the quant community, pleading for more transparency absent which the eventual result would be "larger, systematic problems at the largest, most sophisticated quant managers." Since April, the impact of market neutral quants has progressively declined, as factors, one after another, have failed, and market neutral indexes are probing multiyear lows (HSKAX). The question of who has stepped in to replace the whales' liquidity provisioning is still unanswered, although the explosion of small, inexperienced 3 man quant shops consisting of a math Ph.D. and two programmers, may be part of the answer. The integration of Goldman within the structure of the NYSE and other exchanges, may be another: at last check, Goldman is still a key component of the NYSE's SLP program, regarding which there is still barely any information, despite promises by NYSE representatives to the contrary (and with Goldman's prop operation potentially terminally crippled, the question of how extensively intertwined prop trading is with liquidity provisioning, will be a major topic going forward). Today, the WSJ's Scott Patterson takes advantage of the recent furor over quants and in extensive article promotes his new book "The Quants" in which "he suggests how this new breed of mathematicians and computer scientists took over much of the financial system—and the damage they inflicted in the 2007 meltdown." We are glad that, after nearly a year of writing about it, the topic of the market systemic threat presented by a small subcommunity of quantitative traders is finally emerging on the mainstream scene.

It appears that the debate over the reappointment of Bernanke will likely come down to an impending U.S. Senate Cloture vote, barring a further uptick in political pressure on President Obama, who increduously seems to have missed the message of the vast majority of Americans who are opposed to Bernanke's renomination. I'm no Senate parliamentarian but it is important for us to understand some of the subtleties of this matter, some of which I'm sure I haven't thought about but am confident that the ensuing comments from Zero Hedge readers will fill in the blanks and lay out other options.

We conclude the Damien Cleusix series on Tactical Asset Allocation by presenting Damien's thoughts on Commodities. "Global growth (China tightening could take the upper hand given investors obsession with the story…) will be the referee with regard to the timing as continued robust growth could mask some of those dynamics for some time but ultimately we will have a correction to be remembered...Observers have focused too much on what happened to financial markets to explain the rapid slowdown we witnessed in 2008-early 2009... our contention is that even without it, we
would probably have a "commodity price too high" induced mild recession..."

A talking point that has gripped the media in light of the sudden weakness ahead of the Ben Bernanke reconfirmation process, is the question of who should succeed the Fed Chairman, should he fail to obtain the requisite number of votes to continue. Many have said "Ben is bad, but anyone that would come after him would likely be even worse." While this is true for any of the potential successors (Donald Kohn, ex-Morgan Stanley banker Kevin Warsh, community-banker Elizabeth Duke, Daniel Tarullo, or ex-Goldmanite Bill Dudley, and speaking of the New York Fed, where Jeff Immelt is a Class B director: did Jamie Dimon, whose membership expired on December 31, 2009, get the Goldman renewal vote?), this is not an exclusive case. Which is why Zero Hedge proposes the candidacy of Stanford economist, and "Taylor Rule" creator, John Taylor for the post of Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Would the nearly two days of "scheduled maintenance" for Goldman 360 include installing some anti-Shanghai IE bugs perchance? Wouldn't it be ironic if the Chinese could sell just-purchased Treauries using a hacked, third party REDI account.

InTrade's latest market on Bernanke reconfirmation is 77.5x79, better bid, with some serious bid interest below 72. There is a size seller at 85. Yesterday, the market closed at 93, and was at 95 since the contract inception. The question is if Harry Reid's last minute endorsement will push the odds higher yet again. However, things are not so certain: Democrats have a busy agenda for next week - they have to make a vote on America's bankruptcy first (the whole $1.9 trillion debt ceiling extension), and then there is the whole state of the union address... And the real question - when will Proshares and BlackRock start selling a qunituple leveraged ETF that will decay 99% by the time it hits Cede & Co.

While many pundits will obsess over the markets' gyration in this past week, and make it into a major headline in the quest for eyeballs, the truth is that the S&P turning negative for the year was merely a sideshow (the next real market crash will be much more memorable). No - the real story was the advent of Paul Volcker to his rightful place on the, well, right of President Obama, coupled with the now imminent departure of Geithner and Summers, and the massive question mark that now hangs over Goldman Sachs. Who could have believed that the implications of one Senatorial election could be so profound, yet that is precisely the stuff black swans are made of. The new regime is here, and like it or not, it brings with it a new framework of variables. Yet shifting from the past and looking at the future, the question now becomes what should investors focus on? Just who is this Paul Volcker who will now be the President's seemingly primary economic advisor, and more importantly, what will his policies be like? Luckily, an extensive blueprint already exists, and Zero Hedge readers should be quite familiar with it by now.