Archive - Sep 2010 - Story

• Oil falls below $75 a barrel in Asia ahead of US employment report.
• Russia said it would extend its ban on wheat exports into late 2011.
• Russia to double gas imports from Azerbaijan in a fresh blow to EU-touted pipeline project.
• US Pending sales of existing houses unexpectedly climbed in July from a record low.
• US Retail sales in August top estimates on tax holidays, discounts.
• 3Par determines revised HP proposal, for $33/share, is superior. Dell pulls out of race.

One of the world's bigger financial mysteries: the official breakdown of the Chinese FX reserve balance, received a rare moment of transparency today when the China Securities Journal gave the official tally of the $2.45 trillion stockpile: 65% in dollars, 26% in euros, 5% in pounds and 3% in yen. Which means China holds about $1.6 trillion in dollars, and, courtesy of the (recent record) trade surplus, growing. This distribution is roughly in line with expectations and with the world average FX holdings. Nonetheless, the massive concentration of dollar positions prompted Hu Xiaolian, a vice governor with the
People's Bank of China to warn that depreciation loomed as a risk for
foreign exchange reserves held by developing counties. As Reuters quotes, "Once a reserve currency's value becomes
unstable, there will be quite large depreciation risks for assets," she
wrote in an article that appeared in the latest issue of China Finance, a
Chinese-language magazine published under the central bank. Most certainly this is a tacit warning for US monetary policy, which is, of course a paradox, since ongoing dollar depreciation is CNY-beneficial due to the ongoing (semi) peg. China would love to have its cake, eat it, and to export twice as much of it if possible.

Goldman Sachs recaps expectations for today's key event - payroll day… also the ISM nonmanufacturing index and a couple of Fed speeches.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 03/09/10

Once again, presented without comment.

In George Orwell’s brilliant novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the characters, Syme, in discussing the nature of Newspeak, says “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” Newspeak was a systematic attempt by the dictators of Oceania, a totalitarian society eerily similar to North Korea, to control thought by eliminating words that gave rise to ideas they disapproved. What Syme and Orwell are talking about is that the destruction of words is the destruction of ideas. There is a parallel to this in contemporary economic thought. Mainstream economists, Keynesians, Neo-Keynesians, and Neoclassicists, would have you believe that what common sense would call “good” is now “bad.” Conversely, “bad” is the new “good.” I don’t mean to suggest that the US is heading toward becoming a North Korea. My point is that that the experts seem to abandon common sense and yet most people instinctively understand that good is good.

Spreads compressed for the second day in a row modestly outperforming stocks as the big volume day from yesterday saw very little activity today as the path of least resistance appears higher for now. Intraday ranges today in credit were very narrow as what two-way flow there was seemed more concentrated in HY than IG for a change...Our super-short-term trading pivot is still long credit (from 111.5bps and 593bps for IG and HY respectively), stops never hit today and we would inch our stop to 110bps in IG and 590bps in HY but we get the sense that tomorrow's action will be early and extreme based on the NFP print. 112.25bps and 600bps are entry levels for the short credit should we run so not much room given the recent vol - and anxiety levels high into a long weekend. HY, IG, and the S&P all now closed above their 50-day averages so that offers some support for now but has offered little critical insight in recent weeks.

Six months after our last update on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet in visual form, it is time to resume updating readers on what the biggest balance sheet in America looks like, especially since now that Fed is back in the monetization business. So without further ado, here is how Bernanke Capital, LLC looked as of September 1.

With just one month left in the quarter, most hedge funds continue to underperform the market, not to mention that the vast majority continues to be under their high water mark (most notably Citadel). And with fickle LPs, unbound by lock ups courtesy of the 2008 crash, knowing all too well they can now move their money with the facility of a HFT frontrunner churning AMZN one thousand times a second, threatening redemptions unless something changes in the last month of the quarter, hedge funds are, for lack of a better word, panicking. Yet as we have long been demonstrating, the vicious loop of high correlations and mutual fund withdrawals means that alpha generation is gone the way of the dodo. Which means that HFs will now seek to actively lever up into the market to chase the beta wave over September like never before. This is indeed confirmed by TrimTabs latest Hedge Fund Flow Report, which finds that the percentage of HF managers expecting to raise their leverage exiting August is 21.2%, the highest in 4 months, and possibly all of 2010, and triple the 7.7% responding affirmatively in May. And as riding a leveraged beta wave is nothing but a coin toss on the market with dire consequences if wrong, look for market volatility in September to hit multi-month highs, especially if macro economic conditions continue to deteriorate and investors are forced to buy against the grain.

We had called for 1,040 to hold in S&P futures and with the spike in volume into Tuesday's close for month end and in an uptick had rightfully assessed it was the start of the pull-back we expected technically towards 1,085/1,100. Here we are already... This market wastes no time. Two things are odd: After a 30 point move yesterday we did not even get a 5 tick retracement today, ahead of a job report tomorrow which cannot be that great if one is to believe ADP. Also today's price action is to put in light of how well supported it was: there are still a few minutes left but so far lower volume than Monday which was the slowest day of the year. Basically no participation in today's follow up. - Nic Lenoir

Gotta love those closing price targets, which were achieved to the penny. As for the market, the no volume meltups are once again back in vogue, as the ES and SPY both trade at two week low cumulative volumes.

A snapshot of the Market Wrap Up covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.

One of the stealthier developments over the past months has been the ever wider creep in Greek CDS, especially in the longer-dated part of the curve. In fact, everything to the right of the 3 Year point is now wider than it was both on the eve of the Greek semi-default, and just after the announcement of the European Stabilization Mechanism (ESM). How is it that with so much firepower, better known as free money, thrown at the problem, have spreads not declined? The CFR provides one interpretation, which speculates that once European banks find a firmer footing, that Greece, with the blessing of Europe proper, will be allowed to finally sever its mutated umbilical cord, and default. The catalyst would be Greece getting its primary deficit under control, at which point ongoing bad debt funding would no longer be necessary. Of course, this hypothesis is based on two very critical assumptions: European banks, especially in the periphery, as the second attached study from Goldman indicates, are still locked out. To think that Europe will be able to get to an equal footing for all countries seems like some wishful thinking at this point, especially if the market does consider the implications of what a Greek default will do to peripheral banking. Additionally, the ramifications to the euro in the case of a default will be dire, although that may be precisely what Europe is after all alone. Regardless, that is how the CFR sees things, rightly or wrongly. Keep an eye on Greek spreads in the coming weeks to see if the theory is validated.

And just in case Canada thought it was immune from waterborne crude (and derivatives) invasions, here is CBC reporting that a fuel tanker with 9 million liters of diesel has run aground in the Northwest Passage, on a sandbar close to the Nunavut community of Gjoa Haven. It is unclear if any of the diesel has spilled, although we expect some demonstrative eating of shrimp, penguins, Taq polymerase, or whatever it is that lives in these extreme temperatures, by some world leader, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all is well, and there is no need to panic.

FX Concepts John Taylor explains why as the deleveraging process becomes globalized, he expects global yield curves to "literally" flatten. He also explains why the Jackson Hole view that the Japan analogy is overdone, is wrong. Taylor does not go as far as Michael Pento to suggest that the Fed's next step will be to purchase equities, but its encroachment of the entire treasury curve means the "the Fed is already committed to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasuries just to maintain its current policy stance, we expect the persistence of weak labor markets to force it to launch “QE2”, further depressing back-end yields." Yet another addition to the "QE is imminent" bandwagon. The only question remains: will the formal announcement be the catalyst to go headlong into risk, and what will that mean for near-term inflation for items that really matter, yet are so conveniently ignored by the Core-CPI.