Archive - Oct 2011 - Story

If anyone had any doubt this market is broken beyond compare and controlled by complete idiots, this should put all doubts to rest. Anyone wondering why stocks are soaring, the reason is that according to non-news, because this was first reported yesterday by the FT, Dexia will park €180 billion in worthless assets in a bad bank. This is beyond ridiculous as Belgium, even in JV with France, will be unable to ringfence and hence fund this amount of capital for the now nationalized bank. It also means that Belgium is about to be downgraded following a long-overdue warning by S&P and Moodys to cut the country. It also means that Belgian CDS will soon trade points up front. It also means that Belgian funding costs will soar. It also means that French CDS will explode tomorrow and that interbank markets in Europe will collapse (even more) once the market realizes that France has just diluted its "bailout dry capital" by rescuing a Belgian bank. And so on. And so on. But for now the ripfest is here. Fade every uptick as this is sheer desperation out of Belgium which pretends it is Switzerland and can do with Dexia what the Swiss did with UBS. Hint: it is not and no, it can't.

Update: Apple.com appears back up for now. Which is more than we can say about Countrywide Financial.

Millions of middle class citizens in the U.S. sink deeper into despair every day. Day by day hope is being lost that the future for our children will be better than our past. The political, financial, and corporate leaders of our country are intellectually and morally bankrupt. The major Wall Street banks are bankrupt. Social Security is bankrupt. Medicare is bankrupt. The whole damned world is bankrupt. Anyone with an unbiased view of our planet would conclude that we are in unfathomable danger. The list of impending catastrophic issues that will blow up the world for millions in the U.S. and across the globe is virtually endless... When I started to detail the issues facing our country today, I expected to come up with 10 to 20 bullet points of key concerns. As I methodically worked through the categories of challenges facing the American Empire, the total reached 76 bullet points. The facts as presented above paint a picture of impending doom for America. The slogans and vapid “solutions” proposed by political candidates and entrenched Washington politicians do not even scratch the surface of what would need to be done to save this country from economic collapse. Many of these problems took decades to create and are not solvable in a reasonable time frame. With the country still delusion, overleveraged, and underemployed, it seems like the existing economic and social structure will need to be blown up to restore hope in this country.

UPDATE: AAPL -5.25%, $354.24 lows - holding at 200DMA!

Everyone was expecting an iPhone 5 to be announced today, and... instead got a 4S. Whether due to infrastructure issues, or forward demand analysis, or merely Apple releasing the 4S today only to announce the 5 in a few weeks, is unclear, but the market is not liking the development, and has now dragged America's largest publicly traded company over 3% lower. The bigger problem, as always has been with this company, is when does a whale holder decide to bail, and be the first defector on the most storied company in recent history. As the second chart below reminds us, everyone is in Apple. With 181 key hedge fund holders (leaving slow money out of it), what are the odds one will pull out?

Recession.   It is now becoming clearer, even to the mainstream media, that the "Big 'R'" is rapidly approaching, or already upon us.  Without further stimulus from the government the economy will continue its slide into negative growth.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the "Calvary" will be charging to the rescue anytime soon.   Bernanke, at this point has effectively punted to the Whitehouse for stimulative action.  The Whitehouse is embroiled in partisan politics which will keep any action from occurring until most likely after the next election.   This leaves the economy and the financial markets to their own devices, and much like kids without parental supervision, they are running amok. I have been very vocal as of late commenting on the fact that a recession is fast approaching.   The trends of the economic numbers have all soured to the negative.   From manufacturing to personal incomes to sentiment they all are signaling a recession lay ahead.   Another confirming indicator of a recessionary track is the spread in yields between junk bonds and high quality bonds.  The chart here shows two different yield spreads.   The blue represents the difference in yields between AAA rated corporate bonds to BB rated bonds while the red represents the spread between 10-yr government treasuries to BB rated bonds.   The dotted horizontal lines represent when these spreads have signaled recessions in the economy.

Reverting back to short.  The sell-off this morning felt overdone, in HYG in particular.  We bounced on Bernanke, but it wasn't with much conviction.  Although BAC and MS bounced nicely off their lows, BAC hasn't been able to get green on the day, although MS has, but barely.  With such weak performance from ideal short squeeze candidates, it seems clear that we are not out of the woods yet.  I think the failure to trade up significantly means we go through the morning lows.

Five simple lessons from one of the original skeptics.

Today in Hong Kong at the Bank of China main branch on Queen’s Road, I bought an ‘unsealed’ Maple Leaf (i.e. loose coin) for just 0.5% over spot; I also purchased a ‘sealed’ Maple Leaf (i.e. collector-ready) for an additional $60, or about 4.5% over spot. Funny thing, it wasn’t even the best price in town. You can buy gold for as low as 0.2% over spot (practically a rounding error) in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, just about every bank was out of stock. This is a special holiday week they call ‘Golden Week’; it’s one of those manufactured holidays that the government uses to encourage domestic consumption. Given the name, a lot of people traditionally scoop up gold bullion… they apparently think it’s lucky to buy gold during Golden Week. Go figure. Needless to say, the banks start running out of stock and the premiums go up; if I had timed my visit a bit better, I could have gotten a better deal. Such is life. Now, let’s be clear about something– I didn’t buy this gold as a speculation. I’m not constantly refreshing my screen so that I can run back down to the bank and make a quick profit. You don’t buy something that’s appreciated 10-years in a row and has increased 7-fold in the same period as a speculation.

Yesterday, Goldman proclaimed that their new base case outlook is one of a double dip for Germany and France, and hence all of Europe. Now, it is S&P's turn. In a just released report, S&P says that "The prospect that Europe might dip into recession again is looking more likely. The flow of news and market developments in recent weeks, such as sharply deteriorating business sentiment and a projected slowdown in the U.S., has led us to once again revise downward our projections for economic growth in 2012. This follows a number of downside revisions in our last economic outlook at the end of August. We now forecast GDP growth in the eurozone at 1.1% in 2012, compared with 1.5% in our earlier projection. For the U.K., we expect a GDP growth rate at 1.7% in 2012, slightly below our 1.8% projection in August. We still do not expect a genuine double dip to occur in the eurozone as a whole or in the U.K., but we recognize that the probability of another recession in Western Europe has continued to grow. We now estimate the probability of a new recession in Western Europe next year at about 40%. In our baseline forecast, however, we continue to anticipate sluggish and unevenly distributed growth over the coming five quarters." Next up: rating warning for France, and all EFSF bets are off?

The US Treasury just issued $30bn four-week bills once again at the outstanding rate of 0.00000% as the bid-to-cover did drop a little from last week but remains on the same longer-term upward path of the last three years. This is not anomalous, as we see below, that all T-Bills out to 12/15/11 currently offer a negative rate - with most notably the very short-term (less than one week) charging even more to store your money (1.5bps to store our money in T-Bills for 1 week). The buyside demand declined as dealers dominated the bidding with almost $120bn and Direct bidders saw the lowest takedown since Jan10 on a relatively low bid size.

While everyone's attention is focused on just what unconventional policy Benny and the Inkjets will pull out of their collective sleeves to prevent another financial implosion (fear not, something will appear), it is time to redirect once again to the copper plated elephant in the room, China, which last week became the target of a "Hard Landing" vendetta by Bank of America's David Cui (noted here). Well, the China strategist just fired a follow up shot with "Four systematic risks & potential for financial market turmoil." So, for all those who need one more nail in the "China Bubble" coffin here we go, first textually... "we have sensed that the financial markets in China have become increasingly unstable and that the risk of a hard landing is rising. In this report we outline four systematic risks that we believe have the potential to cause financial market turmoil: 1) private lending (a current issue); 2) property price correction (potentially over the next three to twelve months); 3) bank bad debt write-off and eventual recapitalization (potentially over the next two to three years); and 4) “hot money” outflows (event driven and highly unpredictable). Many of these risks are intertwined which is why we refer them as systematic risks, i.e. difficult to mitigate via diversification. As a result, we suggest investors remain defensive in their portfolio construction in the medium to long term (although we recognize that some short term tactical bounces in the market are possible after the recent sharp sell-off)." And, more importantly, visually...

Bernanke will testify before the Joint Economic Committee today to offer his outlook on the state of the economy, governmental financial policy, and federal spending priorities. Last time he testified on the Hill, the Fed Chairman said the U.S. economy was showing signs of a "self-sustaining recovery" but cautioned that another four to five years may pass before unemployment levels fall to historic norms.  Presenting the semi-annual Monetary Policy Report provides an opportunity for the Fed to update its view on the economic outlook directly to Congress. Watch out for any notable keywords such as "QE3-XXX", "Keynesian Paradise", "Turboprint", "Hyperinflation" and last but not least "Gold is money."

The S&P fought reality valiantly, and after every other market in the world entered a bear market long ago, reality won. The S&P 500 is now over 20% lower from the highs, and we are officially in a bear market. Gun to our head, and with an eye on where MS is trading, we are going much lower. But even gun to our head we are unsure if the S&P will enter triple digits first, or if that will be preceded by Morgan Stanley "Benjamin Button-ing" its teenager status...