Archive - Mar 2010 - Story

The latest from Government Sponsored Zombie #1: Freddie's Home Price Index declined by 0.4% year over year. Even the government, with all its subsidy bells and whistles, can merely drag the horse to the water, so to say. Sure enough, there is "spin out of the box" ready for this as well (read below to find out all about the shiny package this turd came delivered in). In the meantime, after going above 5% just once in the past 5 weeks, last week the Freddie 30 year Fixed Rate popped by 12 bps: the greatest weekly increase so far in 2010.

Today's Breakfast with Dave has an updated perspective on the contraction of the US consumer, after yesterday's income and spending update. And good news for Amazon: Americans are finally rememberizing how to read good. "While people did spend more on luxury items and things to help them improve their mood during these tumultuous times, there was still very much a frugal ‘stay at home’ cocooning theme in the spending report. For example, there was less spending activity on sports events (-0.7%), amusement parks (-0.3%) and movie theaters (-4.2%). Instead, people spent more money on books (+2.1%), cable (+0.9%) and television sets (+0.7%)."

RANsquawk 2nd March US Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

When Goldman Sachs writes extended treatises on the impact of snowfall and makes regression analyses of NESIS snowfall scores with payroll impacts, you know Goldman economists i) take their cure from Larry Summers' public caveats, ii) have an extended sense of humor, and iii) have way too much free time on their hands. We share the following GS essay on the second derivative impact of snowfall on the economy, but here is the punchline: "Our models suggest a small decline in payrolls without incorporating the special impact of the snowstorms, or the boost from temporary Census hiring.  Adding approximately 30,000 Census hires suggests unchanged or slightly positive payrolls; subtracting the snowstorm effects suggests a payroll number in the -50,000 to -100,000 range. Our forecast of a decline of 100,000 payroll jobs assumes an impact at the higher end of this range.  Despite this, we are inclined to think the risk remains on the side of a still bigger impact from the snowstorm itself, for two reasons:  1) the larger effects observed in as-first-reported data suggest that lags in reporting itself could be part of a snowstorm’s effect, 2) both the high-impact January 1996 snowstorm and the February 2010 storm hit slightly earlier in the month than others, and this difference in timing might be important in terms of the impact on new hires added to payrolls in the survey week." Since Larry Summers, who one may venture has a pretty good advance look at the NFP #, has warned snowfall will not be "additive" to the NFP per se, any substantial downside surprise will merely be attributed to the vagaries of mother nature, which has put global warming on hold for the time being.

The lock-step inverse relationship between the dollar and the stock market appeared to take the day off Monday. Pre-opening, the dollar had backed off slightly in the face of new rumors of a Greek rescue package. Stock futures and oil firmed in reaction. Gold refused to get out of bed. As U.S. markets opened, the dollar began to firm on the lack of any details of the rumored package. The dollar rally failed to even dent the rally in stocks and crude. Around noon, the dollar (DXY) rally topped out and the greenback began to weaken. Stocks and crude did not appear to even notice. - Art Cashin

Some traders claimed that other assets did not react to the dollar rally because of its relative level. The DXY rally failed to reach the levels it hit in the hours after the Discount Rate hike. It was a nice theory but failed to explain the afternoon selloff in crude that accompanied further weakness in the dollar.

• Greece in no rush to sell bonds, debt chief says (Bloomberg)
• Greece puts bond sale on hold as it hopes bail out will let it borrow at sub-7% (Guardian)
• Banks raise pay as U.K. efforts to cut bonuses fail (Bloomberg)
• John Crudele: Hey Washington! Economy has us very worried (Post)
• Hedge funds move to euro after Greek CDS trading is the now the "old trade" (Reuters)
• Sovereign CDS trading to be probed by EU (Bloomberg) as shorting euro is now borderline illegal

• Asian stocks climb on US consumption, improving economic outlook, semiconductor sales.
• Australia raises benchmark rate to 4% as recovery withstands debt concerns.
• Brazil stocks gain as commodities, metals surge.
• Colombia eyes up to $800M 2010 debt issues.
• EU sets clock ticking on Greece as Merkel talks near.
• Global semiconductor sales surprisingly rose 0.3% in Jan from the previous month.

RANsquawk 2nd March Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

RANsquawk 2nd March Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

This is one of those poetic justice moments. After Toyota was dragged through hell and back (aka Congress) over a sticky accelerator issue, now it is the turn of the automotive division of the US government, better known as General Motors. The reason: the company "is recalling 1.3 million compact cars in North America to address a power steering problem that has been linked to 14 crashes and one injury, the company said on Tuesday." We can't wait to see GM's brand new consultant Fritz Henderson (paid the miserly stipend of $3,000/hour) sweat tungsten-filled bullets before Congressional grillings because after all in America justice is blind, especially when it comes to such things as past and potential car accidents, even if the unionized labor consortium in question is a protectorate of a feudal, post-capitalist, communist state (Toynbee is hopefully spinning in his grave).

February was not an auspicious start to Obama's record budget deficit-busting plans. The Daily Treasury Statement for the full month of February was just released, and it disclosed that while corporate tax withholdings, net of refunds, actually climbed marginally to $3.4 billion from $(3.4) billion in February 2009, individual tax withholdings plunged to a multi-year low of $30.7 billion. Combined, the two items also posted a multi low of $34 billion, less than the previous recent low from February 2009 when the first leg of the Greater Depression was allegedly at its zenith (see chart below). We can't wait to hear how the "recession is over" brigade will paint this particular data point.

Jim O'Neill must be in hog, er PIIG, er BRIC heaven: it appears his employer, Goldman Sachs, is about to become the proud owner of O'Neill's all time favorite Manchester United. At least that way the reason for an AIG brand still advertised on the front of all ManU players' shirts will finally make sense: call it bailout advertising, in which AIG (indirectly) paid about $160 billion in taxpayer money to Goldman and a few others so its name would grace the uniforms of Goldman's latest acquisition. According to Sky News, a consortium of investors, which includes Goldman Sachs and law firm Freshfields, affectionately called the Red Knights, is preparing to acquire the soccer team from the much hated Glazer family, which in the span of several years has gotten ManU's debt/GDP ratio (or some other BS metric) to be almost as bad as that of the United States. Alternatively, it is oddly ironic that the bank that does God's work will soon be the owner of the Red Devils. The question: will Lloyd soon be sitting in satan's box at Old Trafford?

Following up on the earlier post in which German TV station ProSieben has disclosed proof of the existence of tungsten "gold" bars in circulation within the bank community, we share with you the following highly informative presentation by Adrian Douglas of Market Force Analysis titled "LBMA OTC Market - "Alchemists" Turn Paper Into Gold." For anyone who has even a passing interest into what, as the author characterizes, could possibly be "the next Madoff scandal, except multiplied by 100", we recommend reading this paper.

The earthquake in Chile last night caused a spike in Copper, as the country is one of the top producers of the metal. As more information is released about the conditions in Chile, the market corrected and posted a quite bearish candle on the day (see dail copper chart). If we gapped down below 331 tomorrow we would basically have an island reversal on the recent highs and on the back of a failed retest so far of the support of the former bullish channel now resistance. We think this presents technically a possibly very good shorting opportunity. - Nic Lenoir

How would you hedge against a Black Swan event today? We put our observation cap back on to find that, amid all the hedging going on, one bet stands out. In our search to find clues that determine future directions of financial markets, we find that inflation risk offers the most widespread cause for concern. Inflation, the White Swan, is a fundamental macroeconomic risk factor for a broad range of investments and therefore an obvious cause of anxiety. The prevailing wisdom is that, to protect against this risk, one should hold onto positions in emerging stock markets and commodities. We also find the use of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) on the bond side very popular. In essence, these tactics are widely considered to be sure bets to safeguard against the inflation that will surely follow the large increase in the money base.
However, we constantly argue that poor immunization and assets mismatch will lead to a dynamic rebalancing act. We feel we are closer now to this event. - Yves Lamoureux