Archive - Aug 26, 2010 - Story

Arguably the one most definitive market top ticking activity of the past month, in addition of course to Tim Geithner's absolutely disastrous "Welcome to the Recovery Pamphlet" issued literally hours before the wave of economic downgrades of US GDP by Wall Street began in earnest, was Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder's even more laughable administrative job cover letter titled "How We Ended The Great Recession" (yes, gentlemen, we remember). Which is why we read with great fascination that not even a month after the paper was released, Alan Blinder told Bloomberg that "Things seem to be losing momentum. The lending part of the financial system doesn’t seem to be curing itself." Actually, Alan, if that is your justification for why the momentum is being lost, you are an idiot - the lending part, or the supply side, is perfectly cured: it is the demand aspect which proud Ph.D.-bearing economists such as yourself always ignore - yes, people, the medium and small businesses, and virtually everyone else, who makes the economy tick (not Wall Street), don't need the bank's steenking money - not at 20%, not at 0.002%, if they don't know whether they will have a job tomorrow, or if upon waking up their stocks and 401(k) won't be worth 50% what they were the night before. And not to be left alone, Mark Zandi, the other member of the permaclown duo, told Bloomberg TV that he now puts the chance of a double-dip recession at 1 in 3. "If you’d ask me 4-8 weeks ago, I would have said 1 in 4, 12 weeks ago, 1 in 5. So it is rising uncomfortably high." How about 15.8 weeks ago: was the chance 1 in 69? What is it with these economists who need to scientificate every bullshit concept of their worthless occupation? Why quantify the merely abstract? Do economists have such a great mathematician penis envy, that they have to cloak their infinite lack of understanding in irrelevant numbers? The fact that this man a month ago said things are all good, and never realized that America had never emerged from the recession, is all you need to know just how much credibility any and every person working for Moody's has. But we knew that already. And just because a Moody's economist sees the only hope left before the country as even more QE, it merely shows that when QE finally does strike (which it will) it will be the end game for America, and its currency. At least we now know that in the meantime Zandi has blown any chance he may have had getting a job with the administration.

I usually don’t do follow-up pieces to any of my posts. But my recent longish piece, describing how hyperinflation might happen in the United States, clearly struck a nerve. There were two issues that many readers had a hard time wrapping their minds around, with regards to a hyperinflationary event: The first was, Where does all the money come from, for hyperinflation to happen? The second question was, Why will commodities rise, while equities, real estate and other assets fall? In other words, if there is an old fashioned run on a currency—in this case, the dollar, the world’s reserve currency—why would people get out of the dollar into commodities only, rather than into equities and real estate and other assets? In this post, I’m going to address both of these issues — Gonzalo Lira

In addition to the traditional (and much discredited) argument of quadrillions of cash on the sidelines (which conveniently ignores the quintillions of debt also on the sidelines), the other last remaining point that bullish pundit like to point out is that the PE on the S&P is oh so very low compared to historical level. Putting aside the fact that the last 30 years of economic data have been perverted by a cost of credit which has declined from 15% all the way to zero, and with no additional place to go, and as such any historical comparisons are now moot as the Fed is pretty much out of options (aside from monetizing of course, and outright debasing the dollar), the primary reason why investors continue to put little credit in the "miraculous" corporate profits explosion, and thus give companies subpar P/E, is that the entire profit recovery has been predicated not on GDP growth (which explains the constant skittishness about macro events), but on declining labor costs, and as the following JPM report points out, "the latest profit recovery (the three red dots) is reliant on declining labor costs like none before it." What investors really want to know is how much more wage deflation can America take before it all collapses into a huge stinking deflationary mess? And by sowing the seeds of deflation at the heart of the corporate economy, who in their right mind would expect a wage-driven inflation (a monetary-event catalyzed hyperinflation, in which the Fed just goes berserk and decides to print $1 quadrillion tomorrow, is a different topic altogether).

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 26/08/10

We have long claimed that the HFT ploy to stuff quotes in an attempt to game other algorithms in pushing the bid or ask side higher or lower would eventually end in tears either for individual stocks, or for the general market, as was the case on May 6. Well, today we just experienced another mini flash crash, after some algo went apeshit and decided to hit every bid on the way down, all the way to 0.0001 (gotta love that sub penny quoting just above zero). Below we show how this algorithm pushed the stock price of Core Molding from its normal price of $4.12 all the way down to $0.0001 in the span of one second, after an HFT program went ballistic, and would have kept on hitting the subpenny $0.0001 bid in perpetuity. It must have been swell to be a CMT holder: one second your stock is worth $4.12, the next, it is worth $0.0001 (and no, not $0.0000, how else will the computers game the NBBO in subpenny increments).

These are not the hyperbolic ramblings of various fringe blogs who have been claiming this for over a year, these are the non-hyperbolic ruminations of Steven Englander, until recently head FX strategist at Barclays, and recently at Citi:"A second round of QE will likely put sharp downward pressure on the USD, to some degree versus the euro and other G10 currencies, with potential for a broader USD sell-off. Foreign investors are likely to view the renewed direct intervention as indicating that the Fed’s balance sheet expansion and implicit monetization of fiscal expenditures are first line approaches to dealing with disappointing recovery prospects, rather than the exceptional measures they were meant to be initially. This could have severe implications for foreign perceptions of the quality of the US assets that they are accumulating in private and official portfolios, and may lead them to draw the conclusion that USD weakness is less a by-product than a desired outcome of these measures...It is difficult to gauge the set of policies that US policymakers will pursue to reduce the risk that the US
slumps into a significant slowdown. In the current environment of extremely disappointing growth and
apparent lack of response to traditional monetary stimulus, policies that are less than orthodox are likely to
be considered seriously. Most of these unorthodox polices are likely to weigh on the USD." Guess what that means for gold...

The earlier post citing Rosenberg's claim that there were no new homes sales in July in the $750,000+ bucket has generated quite a controversy. It appears some are stuck up on the Census Bureau definition's of footnote Z (Table 2 of the linked excel sheet) which is the designator for home sales for June and July, defined loosely as "Less than 500 units or less than 0.5 percent." Since this is an open ended range, and could indicate 0 just as easily as 500, we leave it up to our readers' imagination to draw their conclusion which end of the range is correct. However, what is without question, is that as of July, the combined proportion of new homes sold in the over $400,000 range, is the lowest it has been in a year. For the first time since July 2009, the houses costing $399,999 or under as a percentage of total has crossed 90%. And like the claim that the quality of the New York Times journalists is the best in the world, there is just no debating that (unless of course one wishes to brand all the data emanating from within the bowels of the government's data machine as questionable at best).

Today's 7 Year auction closed at a record low 1.99% High Yield, and a Bid To Cover that was tied for second highest ever, at 2.99. The reason for this strong showing: Indirect Bidders, which took down 56.7%, a jump of 33% from July, and broadly as expected now that everyone, including foreign investors are frontrunning the Fed ever further right, in anticipation of lower yields in the 7-30 Year part of the curve. Of course, the very unfortunate side effect of this (for the banks), is that this will merely accelerate the flattening of the curve, which already is at more than 30% flatter than the record steepness seen earlier this year, when as we warned, every single fund was in the steepener trade, and the unwind would leave many of them in the dust.

Albert Edwards, whose opinion, of all macro economists, is among the most respected by Zero Hedge staff, has just thrown down the gauntlet: "Equity investors are in for a rude shock. The global economy is sliding back into recession and they are still not even aware that these events will trigger another leg down in valuations, the third major bear market since the equity valuation bubble burst. The structural bear market has not reached the end. We will return to the valuation nadir last seen in 1982 with the S&P bottoming around 450" - Albert Edwards

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 26/08/10

You can’t open a newspaper or watch a business news network without seeing or hearing that consumers and businesses have been de-leveraging. The storyline as portrayed by the mainstream media is that consumers and corporations have seen the light and are paying off debts and living within their means. Austerity has broken out across the land. One has to wonder whether the mainstream media and the clueless pundits on CNBC actually believe the crap they are peddling or whether this is a concerted effort to convince the masses that they have done enough and should start spending. Consumer spending as a percentage of GDP is still above 70%. This is well above the 64% level that was consistent between 1950 and 1980. Consumer spending was entirely propped up by an ever increasing level of debt. The American economy will never recover until consumer spending drops back to the 64% range that indicates a balanced economic system. For the mathematically challenged on CNBC and in the White House, this means that consumers need to reduce their spending by an additional $850 billion PER YEAR. Great news for the 1.5 million retailers in America.

It is becoming increasingly apparently that Wall Street forgot to take its collective Lithium this month. After putting the kibosh on the "growth in 2010" thesis, Jim Hatzius started off a wave of downgrades like no other, (incidentally, just as we predicted on August 6: "Look for all other sell-side "strategists" to lower their economic outlook in kind, and the 2011 S&P consensus to decline accordingly." - so far so good), setting off the herd of groupthinking Wall Street lemming economists into a direction they loathe, yet which even permasomethings like Joe LaVorgna are forced to acknowledge is inevitable. And as of yesterday, it is stating to appear that JPM is now solidly in second place after Goldman in its economic outlook: first the strategist said that the "disastrous" durable goods number would result in sub 1% Q3 GDP growth, which is even worse than Goldman's forecast, while today he was just quoted by Bloomberg as saying that private payrolls likely fell for the first time in eight months.

The last thing Spain needs: A court has found Spanish tax agency has to repay €5.1 billion to taxpayers after finding that VAT collected in 2006-2008 period was "illegal", in a decision that cannot be appealed. Euro not happy. More from Goldman inside.

The Fed completed its last POMO monetization for the week, buying back $1.415 billion in bonds dated 2021 through 2040. Oddly enough, the submitted/accepted ratio was a mere 5.98, after hitting north of 10 for the last three POMO actions since the resumption of QE. Stocks now rolling over as the Fed's liquidity appears to have been digested. More importantly, Morgan Stanley continues to shine in its Fed frontrunning recommendations: the firm predicted 89% of the issues monetized by notional, correctly identifying $1.265 trillion worth of the $1.415 Tr in notional bought back. All who followed Igor Cashyn's advice to Buy the 8.0% of 11/15/2021 and sell the On The Run 10 Year (and seeing how at $1.135 Tr monetized, this was the issue most clearly "in play", quite a few did) should find the Morgan Stanley analyst and buy him a shot of vodka.

Phil Falcone, who rode the leverage wave into prosperity has fallen on hard times: according to a recent HSBC report, his fund was down 10.7% YTD, which has forced many people to reevaluate whether his "strategy" was anything more than gobbling up second liens and hoping for a cheap flip or for profitable debt-for-equity conversions. Now that the economy has moved back into a depression, his recent results may be far more indicative of his endogenous alpha generation "ability" than riding the levered beta wave of 2005-2007. Yet that did not stop him from pocketing $825 million in 2009, making him the 10th best paid manager according to Absolute Return + Alpha. What is even more troublesome for LPs is his latest megabet on SkyTerra Communications, now known as LightSquared. As Matt Goldstein at Reuters reports, "roughly $3 billion or 40 percent of Harbinger’s assets are tied-up in
LightSquared, say people familiar with the funds. Formerly known as
SkyTerra Communications, the telecom company is the hedge fund’s single
largest and most concentrated bet." While such a concentrated bet is appropriate for a distressed, event-driven fund, many are grumbling that should this latest venture prove as "successful" as his other recent ones, then Harbinger may soon become a footnote in the rich tapestry of blown up hedge funds. "We are being paid to be more skeptical these days and we are quite
frankly concerned by what he seems to be doing,” said a representative
for an institutional investor, as Goldstein reports. Yet having amassed a multi-billion personal empire that also includes Bob Guccione's former house on 5th Avenue, we somehow think that Phil will be good no matter how Harbinger's LPs end up doing.