Archive - Oct 15, 2010 - Story

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As observant readers will recall, the one proximal catalyst that brought down the financial system last time around was something as innocuous as a rating agency downgrade of AIG, which precipitated a waterfall of margin calls and liquidity deficiencies, resulting in the near collapse of capitalism. This in itself was not surprising: it is always the least expected events (i.e., Moody's performing its function honestly and ethically) that tend to have the most adverse impact in a precarious scenario. Which is why when Moody's put MetLife's Home Loan Servicer ratings on downgrade watch it resulted in a chorus of fear and incredulity: after all Wall Street had seen this scenario all too recently. One person whose phone line off the hook was Morgan Stanley's Nigel Dally who sent out a letter to clients today trying to calm everyone down that this was not the apocalyptic event many are fearing it could be. True, as Nigel pointed out, MetLife only has $1.5 billion in mortgages serviced for others per SNL (whose data we presented yesterday when discussing exposure at JPM, WFC and BofA), but the fact that this is sufficient for Moody's to look at the company vis-a-vis its foreclosure practices should set red light everywhere. After all, in all the talk of gloom and doom, has anyone actually done any work to find out just what a home loan servicer downgrade means for the system? We didn't think so. And while MetLife is just $1.5 billion, recall that the Big Three share a quarter of a trillion among them. And yes, they are also about to be downgraded. Here is Morgan Stanley's unsuccessful attempt to make uber-nervous investor feel safe. Alas, it can only get worse from here, and what's worst, with consequences that nobody can really anticipate (ref: AIG).

The Federal Reserve is pulling out all the stops in attempting to invigorate the American economy. The stock market is surging. Everything is surging. The optimists are crowing that all is well. Deficits don’t matter. We can borrow our way to prosperity. Cutting taxes will not add $4 trillion to the National Debt if not paid for with spending cuts. All is well. So, the question remains. Was David Walker wrong? Are we actually on a perfectly sturdy solid platform? Or, are we on the Deepwater Horizon as it burns and crumbles into the sea? Let’s examine both storylines and decide which is true.

You didn't think China was just going to do the rockaway and lean back, lean back, lean back. Nope - China Daily says: "A currency war is spreading as the dollar's value against major world currencies has continued to decline in recent days" and calmly confirms what everyone esle knows: "It is the dollar that triggered the currency war. Seemingly a market move, the depreciation of the dollar is actually active." Check to you, Tim Geithner and your currency manipulation report. What is remarkable, is how simply and accurately CD writer Li Xiangyang captures absolutely everything that Bernanke is trying to achieve.

Much noise has been made about David Einhorn's presentation of "more than a hundred" pages on St. Joe at the Value Investor Conference from earlier this week. What few however seem to know, is that this is merely round two in what is at least a three year ongoing vendetta between the Greenlighter and the Florida real estate company. On May 23, 2007 Einhorn gave what is essentially an identical presentation to the Ira Sohn conference held at the Lincoln Center. In other words, to say that this is a new idea for the hedge fund manager is certainly a stretch. Below are the full notes that Einhorn presented back then. Contrast these to today (you can read the full presentation at Market Folly). In essence the only thing that has changed is the price target: in 2007 Einhorn saw a fair value of JOE of $15, when the stock was $53. This time, when the stock was $25, he values it anywhere between $0 and $10. Could he eventually be proven right? Who knows: after all that's why he gets paid the big bucks, and has had some great calls in the past. However, his long matched calls at the 2007 Ira Sohn conference are certainly not among them. At the time, Einhorn was a fan of Helix Energy Solutions (HLX), back when the stock was $40, and now is $10, and Natixis (KN.FP) which was €13 and now is €4, both underperforming his short call materially in the past 3.5 years. A long HLX (or KN.fp)/short JOE pair trade has certainly cost anyone who put it on a pretty penny. So, as always, buyer beware. Just because a star hedge fund manager likes or does not like something, does not make it a slam dunk.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 15/10/10

Buying U.S. stocks because the Fed says it will proactively debase the U.S. dollar is like sitting on the beach in order to get a great view of an incoming tsunami. Any pleasure so derived should be short-lived, when the terror of underlying reality quickly takes hold. Given the current systemic distortions and extreme irrationality in the equity markets, a severe and violent sell-off in stocks would not be a shock, and it could come with minimal, if any, warning. It also might be coincident with a U.S. dollar-selling panic. - John Williams

Well, none really, suffice to say that we have just had approximately the 20th flash crash in the past 2 months (all in rehearsal for when Apple goes bidless). After all this is to be expected when trading in a computerized, roboticized, broken market. But a point to consider: the NYSE decided to cancel all trades below $27.44, so to the unlucky human who bought at $27.43 tough luck. Of course, robotic readers who sold at that price: congratulations, the NYSE and SEC has your robotic back. We are now eagerly awaiting Monday's ongoing flash crashes.

Good news: the man who coined the phrase Digital Dickweed is gone; The Better news: he will be reunited with former CNBC colleague Charlie Gasparino. The Best news: the Fed did not buy Dennis' contract on behalf of taxpayers. Which is odd - the Fed is now in the business of buying EVERYTHING.

A new report by MainFirst Bank provides more ammo to the China bears. In "Why China's Growth Rate May Halve" author Bijal Singh has a very gloomy forecast on the country's growth rate, concluding it may "struggle to grow faster than 6%, given that China is now fully employing the vast bulk of its available urban labour force, and given that the Chinese working age population has stopped growing and is on a declining path." Singh takes Rosenberg's earlier rhetorical question about why collapsing profit margins have not yet impacted prices and believes that increasingly more companies will be forced to rationalize their operations, driving a stake straight through the heart of all those pushing for the tech bubble part 2: "Demand growth of 4%-6% may cause Chinese firms to shift focus from growing capacity to better management of existing capacity. Rather than capex equipment providers, computer service firms may be the winners in China over the next five years." The main driver for the GDP growth is that, due to the GDP being a function of job growth and productivity growth, it is the latter of the two which casts the assumption of GDP growth of 8% in perpetuity in doubt. "Over the last decade, productivity growth in China may have been no different to that experienced in the developed world. But China has been able to throw capital at the economy to grow its workforce at a rapid rate without incurring inflationary pressures." Said inflationary pressures are precisely the reason why the country is so cautious to do anything material about either its exchange rate (and today we yet again got confirmation of just who wears the pants in the Sino-US relationship), as well as its interest rate. All in all, changing demographics and economic conditions will make it increasingly difficult for China to manipulate its way into the required growth curve, which may well be the biggest risk to not only the BRIC growth story, but to that of the developed world as well (because now, unlike before somehow, decoupling is expected to work).

• Head of Turkmengaz Fired and Replaced with Deputy
• CYBERCOM to Go Operational This Month
• Govt Takes over Hungarian Plant after Deadly Toxic Spill
• French Transport and Oil Industry Strikes Risks Radicalization
• Bolivia to Start Lithium Production in October
• ISAF's Torkham AfPak Border Crossing Reopened
• Iran's President Visits Lebanon in Clear Attempt to Boost Hezbollah

The September budget deficit came at ($34.5) Billion, missing expectation of $32 billion, lower from September 2009 which was revised ($46.6) billion (which was revised worse as usual). Total September receipts were $245 billion, on $280 billion of outlays. Both numbers were an increase compared to 2009. Also, last month the US paid $18.2 billion in interest on its debt, of which an increasingly greater portion is now going to none other than the Federal Reserve which will soon be the biggest holder of USTs in the world.

Who cares what Benny and the Inkjets blink in morse code when you have the one and only Bill Gross. As we said last month, the best and only necessary and sufficient tell to decide what the Fed will do on November 3 is to keep track of the Total Return Fund's composition. Today, TRS just released its updated September holdings, and for all those hoping to see that Pimco Billy is betting the farm on QE2 - that's a bingo. Pimco has just increased its MBS holdings to the highest since July 2009, when Gross was already dumping MBS on the tail end of QE1. The biggest tell however, is that just like before QE1 abd QE Lite were announced, Bill has once again gone on margin, reducing his net cash exposure from $5 billion to ($7.6) billion. And keep in mind this is September: we are certain that once the October results come out, a few weeks after QE2 is effective, TRS will have a material margin position of more than $20 billion, and will have pumped up its MBS holdings up to $100 billion. So now that we are certain that Gross just telegraphed that QE2 is imminent, that leaves us with two questions: 1) why MBS and not USTs? Is Gross saying that Bernanke will once again be forced to come out and buy MBS in addition to USTs? or 2) did Gross just get screwed on his doubling down MBS? With fraudclosure forcing such reputable MBS managers as Gundlach to claim that it will have no impact on their business model, we are also certain that the entire Fashion Island campus is sweating bullets currently. If the entire MBS model is indeed unwound as some speculate, this could well be the end of PIMCO (and how poetic that would be). Yet these are considerations for the future. For now - anyone who may have had an ounce of doubt as to Bernanke's FOMC announcement intentions, can now put it away.

Despite every commodity opening limit up virtually every day for the past two weeks on expectations of a free money tsunami about to be unleashed (and a 14th weekly increase in M2 which we will describe shortly), David Rosenberg still adheres to the belief that deflation is not only here to stay but get worse. And, frankly, we don't disagree. It has long been our contention that the sublimation from deflation to hyperinflation will not pass through the inflation phase at all (or it may, but will last for exactly one millisecond as $3 trillion, by then, excess reserves are released and send every price up by a few quadrillion percent). In the meantime, the input cost-price mechanism is still broken, which leads Rosie to believe that the fact that the 30 Year just closed at an increasing inflection point with the rest of the curve going tighter, is to be ignored. Alas, with corporate margins approaching zero (and if you are Amazon, probably already there) companies face one of three choices: become banks, and borrow at ZIRP, and lend money to their customers via private label credit cards (unlikely), shut down, or raise prices. The last one is what will happen, and will finally put an end to the ridiculous consumer disrectionary rally that has perplexed humans (but not robots) for quarters on end. Furthermore, as to Rosie claims: "For all the talk of how higher Chinese wages were going to be transmitted to higher prices of these imported items, it does not seem to be happening" we will shortly post some thoughts which confirm that this is precisely what is happening.

According to Reuters, a senate aide has confirmed that Tim Geithner has pissed his pants and seeing the sudden surge in the dollar following rumors that a bunch of hapless politicians were about to blame America's depression on China and call it a manipulator even as the US prepares to print $1.5 trillion in new paper, has delayed the currency report until after the G20 meeting in November. One wonders just what telephone conversations occurred between Geithner and Wen Jiabao in the past 20 minutes, and what the mutual assured destruction trump card (or 850 billion) used this time was.