Archive - Mar 28, 2010 - Story

This is what capitulation looks like:

The chart is an indication of the net speculative contracts on the CFTC as disclosed by the weekly COT report. In particular, this tracks the S&P Large contracts (x 250). Last week saw the single biggest weekly short cover in the history of this data set, indicating one of several things: 1) some large fund(s) capitulated and covered a major short position, 2) the ongoing forced short buy-ins by the State Streets of the world have finally yielded results, 3) someone is positioning for a massive move higher in the market by going net short to neutral. The net weekly change in contracts of 66,043 is a record, and involves a staggering amount of capital: the money involved is 1,150x250x66,000 or roughly $19 billion. A weekly move of this magnitude was only ever seen once before, on March 24, 2009, when the government had to cement the bottom of the market following the 666 low. As the Large uses Open Outcry, it explains why we were getting numerous emails from pit traders indicating that Goldman was buying up billions worth of S&P Large.

One of the most amusing side effects of the recent non-stop, free-liquidity, forced-covering rally, is a deja vu flash back to a decade ago: a surge in day traders. The New York Times presents a romantic look at this rare breed of traders which emerges every time the market is in melt-up mode, be it in the dot.com days, during the credit bubble, or now. And, just like so many times before, as soon as the market peaks, and subsequently crashes, these various "traders" evaporate, and the assorted business models associated with catering to the day trading clientele, be it heatmapping services by every discount broker, or assorted Twitter services, go the way of the dodo. Until the next bubble re-emerges. As for the fabled secrets behind day trading technique, the NYT is laconic: nothing more than Newton's First Law of Motion. Alas, this is recipe for unmitigated disaster, when one considers that day traders are at the bottom of the information and transaction latency pyramid. And when one factors in transaction costs (sorry day traders, soft dollars work for hedge funds when the trading is with other people's money; in your case money talks and BS walks). Of course, in the meantime, this strategy, just like any other concoction to suit the times, could very well be profitable. Until it isn't. Then again, profitability instills a false sense of security. and the conviction that one will pull the plug on winning trades ahead of everyone else. Good luck.

Something funny happened on the road to a Greek bailout: nothing. Well, a few exceptions: Germany and the ECB are now enemies, nobody knows what the hell the Maastricht rules really are, the ratings agencies are discredited beyond repair as even the ECB says its own internal bureaucrats can do a better job at modelling the Greek AAA rating... Yet Greek debt is still yielding 6%+. If anyone will recall, the primary concern that various administration George Pap[...]'s had, was that Greek debt was "unfairly" yielding double where German debt is. So yeah, lots of talk, more non-bailout bailouts, and in meantime, Greek default risk is pretty much where it was two months ago. Which is why speculation that emerged toward the end of last week that Greece will promptly issue new debt, is now being squashed by G-Pap (fin min or FM, not to be confused with the prime min or PM). In the end, it is all irrelevant: as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says, the end is close for Greece.

SkyNews reports that one person was killed after a bomb exploded outside a public building. This time the target was not a US-based bank, but an "institute used for training public officials." One person has died.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer country. On March 18, with very little pomp and circumstance, president Obama passed the most recent stimulus act, the $17.5 billion Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (H.R. 2487), brilliantly goalseeked by the administration's millionaire cronies to abbreviate as HIRE. As it was merely the latest in an endless stream of acts destined to expand the government payroll to infinity, nobody cared about it, or actually read it. Because if anyone had read it, the act would have been known as the Capital Controls Act, as one of the lesser, but infinitely more important provisions on page 27, known as Offset Provisions - Subtitle A—Foreign Account Tax Compliance, institutes just that. In brief, the Provision requires that foreign banks not only withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows (likely remitting the collection promptly back to the US Treasury) but also disclose the full details of non-exempt account-holders to the US and the IRS. And should this provision be deemed illegal by a given foreign nation's domestic laws (think Switzerland), well the foreign financial institution is required to close the account. It's the law. If you thought you could move your capital to the non-sequestration safety of non-US financial institutions, sorry you lose - the law now says so. Capital Controls are now here and are now fully enforced by the law.

When we put up a link to last week's CFTC hearing webcast little did we know that it would end up being the veritable (physical) gold mine (no pun intended) of information about what really transpires in the commodities market. First, we obtained direct evidence from Andrew Maguire (who may or may not have been the target of an attempt at "bodily harm" as reported yesterday) of extensive manipulation in the silver market. Today, Adrian Douglas, director of GATA, adds to the mountain of evidence that the commodities market, and the CFTC, stand behind what is potentially the biggest market manipulation scheme in the history of capital markets (we are assuming for the time being that all allegations of the Fed manipulating the broader equity and credit markets are completely baseless). Using the testimony of a clueless Jeffrey Christian, formerly a staffer at the Commodities Research Group in the Goldman Sachs Investment Research Department and now head and founder of the CPM Group, Douglas confirms that the "LBMA trades over 100 times the amount of gold it actually has to back the trades."

Christian, who describes himself as "one of the world’s foremost authorities on the markets for precious metals" yet, in the words of Gary Gensler, said "that the bullion banks had large shorts to hedge themselves selling elsewhere- how do you short something to cover a sale, I didn’t quite follow that?" and proves that current and former Goldman bankers are some of the most arrogant people alive, assuming that everyone else is an idiot and will buy whatever explanation is presented just because the CV says Goldman Sachs. Yet Christian confirms that the gold market is basically a ponzi: "in the “physical market” as the market uses that term, there is much more metal than that…there is a hundred times what there is." And there you have it: as Douglas eloquently summarizes: "the giant Ponzi trading of gold ledger entries can be sustained only if there is never a liquidity crisis in the REAL physical market. If someone asks for gold and there isn’t any the default would trigger the biggest “bank run” and default in history. This is, of course, why the Central Banks lease their gold or sell it outright to the bullion banks when they are squeezed by high demand for REAL physical gold that can not be met from their own stocks" and concludes "Almost every day we hear of a new financial fraud that has been exposed. The gold and silver market fraud is likely to be bigger than all of them. Investors in their droves, who have purchased gold in good faith in “unallocated accounts”, are going to demand delivery of their metal. They will then discover that there is only one ounce for every one hundred ounces claimed. They will find out they are “unsecured creditors”.

We are seeing some interesting developments in the markets so I want to jump right into it and save all the social and political commentary for the end. I would first like to focus on the US dollar since it is the hot topic of conversation in the media, and its price movement is subject to a lot of misinterpretation. The general line of thinking espouses a new bull market for the greenback given the fact that the US economy is on the mend. As you know by now I don’t believe the economy has bottomed and I certainly don’t buy into the idea of a new bull market for the greenback. Yes, we are experiencing a reaction and it’s one of the largest to date since the dollar topped in 2001, but that doesn’t mean it’s a new bull market. Whenever you want to see the big picture in a market, it helps to get away from the here and now, and the best way to do that is with historical weekly or monthly charts.

Why not?

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