Archive - Nov 3, 2011 - Story

Was it just two weeks ago when we penned "Another Quarter, Another Blatant Window Dressing By The Primary Dealer Banks To Make Their Balance Sheets Seem Strong", the same post in which we said, "We have made it clear time and again, that this chart demonstrates nothing short of the end of quarter window dressing, when PDs convert their asset holdings into cash to make their Tier 1 Capital much more robust than it truly is. After all, none other than JPM and Citi were praising just how prepared for Basel III they are with their "sterling" capitalization ratios... which were only sterling courtesy of precisely the highlighted window dressing which occurs each and every quarter. We expect nothing less from Bank of America and Morgan Stanley when they report their own numbers in the coming days. We also expect the regulators to do absolutely nothing to prevent this blatant abuse of fiduciary duty which has no other purpose than to hide the true sad state of America's banking system." Ironically, we have just found out that had regulators not only listened to us over the two years we have been pointing this out, but also done something on it, MF Global would likely not have filed for bankruptcy. Here is the WSJ, confirming all our worst fears: "For the past two years, MF Global Holdings Ltd. may have disguised its debt levels to investors by temporarily slashing the debt it was carrying before publicly reporting its finances each quarter, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal. The activity, referred to in the financial industry as "window dressing," suggests that the troubled financial firm was shouldering more risk and using more borrowed funds to facilitate its trading than investors could easily detect from the firm's regulatory filings. And scene: but wait, there's more. As we have shown over and over and over, this has continued for 8 quarters in a row since Lehman first exposed this criminal activity. Sure enough, another company just went bankrupt because of the SEC's gross and criminal negligence, incompetence, and overall corruption.

Four months ago we predicted that in response to the latest round of global economic deterioration, every central bank would very soon join the toner party. Since then we have seen the Fed commence Operation Twist and telegraph another episode of MBS asset purchases; a new QE episode at the Bank of England; a new round of covered bond purchases at the ECB, coupled with an interest rate cut by its latest Goldman Sachs-based president, not to mention the persistent attempts to generate a backstop central bank in the form the EFSF Frankenstein Swiss Army knife; a new round of asset purchases and a massive, several hundred billion snap FX intervention by the Bank of Japan; and last but not least, that stalwart of stability, the Swiss National Bank, went ahead and destroyed the Swiss Franc as the sanest among the fiats by pegging it to that most unstable of currencies, the Euro. In light of the above how gold is not trading north of $2000 is still beyond us, although whether by manipulation or market inefficiency, we can not complain: it is easier to buy gold at $1,750 than at $7,150. Yet not even we could possibly predict just how far the global ponzi cartel would fall to extend the status quo by a few extra months. Because according to Dow Jones, the latest and greatest purchaser of Heidelberg Mainstream 80 machines will be the, drum roll, the IMF! Yes, the same organization that DSK swore would never join the global central banking stupidity, since deposed with a false allegation, and now headed by the woman who brought France to the brink of ruin, will be the marginal printer, now that everyone else is "dodecatuple all in" and sitting all day on the Turbo Print button.

Tomorrow's much-watch-moment, aside from NI HEADS on the Bloomberg Terminal for every second-by-second market-ramping/crushing headline from Europe, is the non-farm payroll print. With a median estimate of +95k across the 91 'economists' that Bloomberg keeps an eye on, we did notice that the dispersion is considerably lower than normal (expectations are more 'confident' than normal). Not one 'expert' sees a drop in payrolls with Sean Incremona (4Cast) and Pierre-Livier Beffy (Exane) at the low-end with +50k and everyone's favorite talking-head, Joe LaVorgna of Deutsche, topping us out at +150k. At almost 3 standard deviations above consensus, Joe is going for the home-run as we note the last time he was this 'positive', back in May/June 2011, NFP missed expectations dramatically - printing below the lowest estimate.

When Lehman filed for bankruptcy in that fateful week of September 2008, one thing caught everyone's attention: the epic surge in the Fed Reverse Repos originated by "foreign official and international accounts": essentially cash placed at the Fed by foreign institutions in exchange for collateral, primarily in the form of Treasurys, as well as other securities. This is nothing but an immediate cash parking in a 'safe place', which withdraws overall liquidity from the market, and as has been noted elsewhere, serves as an indirect gauge of banking system funding stress. In the week of September 24, this number soared from $46.6 to $93.7 billion, a $44 billion increase, or the single biggest jump in the history of the series. Well, as the chart below demonstrates, what happened with MF Global caught foreign banks, which as we have noted over the past several weeks have been dumping US Treasury and MBS paper, entirely by surprise as they scrambled to withdraw the last traces of available liquidity from the market, and to place as much of it as possible within the safety (and we use the term loosely) of the Fed. In the just released H.4.1 update, foreign Reverse Repos with the Fed soared from $81.3 billion to $124.5 billion, the most ever, and a weekly surge of $43.2 billion, the second largest ever, second only to the Lehman collapse. Furthermore, as noted daily, European banks have been doing precisely that with local cash from non-US subsidiaries, and parking near record amounts with the ECB (today the European central bank disclosed a whopping €253 billion had been deposited with it: just shy of the 2011 high), even as they have been dumping US Treasurys on one hand, and now are forced to repo what little paper they have left with the Fed due to systemic uncertainties in the MF aftermath, one can see why suddenly there was absolutely no liquidity left in the market, and why the meager €3 billion EFSF bond offering, so desperately needed to fund the ongoing Irish bailout and which incidentally is the story of the week, had to be pulled.

You know the old drill – China and Asia produce, the US consumes.  They cycle their greenbacks back over this way, finance our debt, we buy more of their stuff, and the beat goes on. This model officially stopped with the launch of QE2, Hendry says, as the US officially started rejecting the globalization that had made the global economy hum (perhaps largely at the expense of US employment and manufacturing).  With QE2, dollars were printed and exported – along with inflation – to Asia. This led to the countries in Asia – and Europe, too – raising rates to combat inflation.  The result, he says, is that global economic growth has essentially ground to a halt. So what’s next? A crash, of course. All this and much more, but probably most notably, we learn that Hendry's has made bets that he says will deliver a 40-to-1 return if the ECB cuts rates below 1% next year. More inside.

Trading in JEF made some sense today, Greek bonds diverged from Greek headline exuberance, ECB rate cuts helped US equities but its impact was mixed across European sovereigns, and the G-20 chatter seems optimistic but known by all. Enough to warrant equity market exuberance or more Sisyphean struggling - only time (or tomorrow's NFP) will tell.

Remember when even the worst of all trading desks on Wall Street, that of Bank of America could do no wrong and disclosed a trading quarter of pure perfection? Yeah, that's over. The bank, which just jolted shareholders with news of material common dilution, in the form of $2.5 billion in new equity capital to be raised, has released its trading days data for Q3. Per the 10-Q: "During the three months ended September 30, 2011, positive trading-related revenue was recorded for 69 percent (44 days) of the trading days of which 47 percent (30 days) were daily trading gains of over $25 million, nine percent (six days) of the trading days had losses greater than $25 million, three percent (two days) of trading days had losses greater than $100 million and the largest loss was $119 million." On the flip side, BAC had not one $100MM+ trading win. In other words, BAC posted losses on a whopping 31% of the trading days (compared to 0% two quarters ago), something that indicates a very violent return to normalcy: after all if banks, with ZIRP, legal frontrunning, profit from default risk surges, and POMO are unable to make money 100% of the time, who else, besides all the day traders on twitter and the fine men and women on Fast Money of course, will post flawless trading records in the future?

Amid average volume, ES managed to rally an impressive 45pts off overnight lows to close just shy of the 200DMA on what was mixed (at best) macro data in the US and seemingly more chaos in Europe (does anyone know for sure whether there will be a confidence vote?). High beta and most-shorted stocks dramatically outperformed the broad equity markets as 4% swing days have become so de-rigeur nowadays! Financials went from major loser soon after the open to middle of the pack by the close with only a very late day disconnect between HY credit and stocks (HY outperformed after the bell) of any note as we leaked higher all day long. Heavy new issuance in IG credit saw secondary bond trading pretty balanced from a net-buying/selling perspective - even as TSY yields rose significantly. TSYs saw 2s10s30s rise notably but combined with FX carry crosses, oil, gold, and the dollar - risk asset drivers in general were far less excited than stocks by the close. Commodities lifted further after Europe's close as the USD weakened more leaving gold and oil up around 1.5% on the day.

And to think it was less than two months ago that Warren Buffett took a bath to provide the bank with capital it had "absolutely no need for" but was happy to take it anyway. Well, it turns out the firm is preparing to raise just a "little" more capital. From the just released 10Q: "During the third quarter, global economic uncertainty and volatility continued as described more fully in the Executive Summary – Third Quarter 2011 Economic and Business Environment discussion on page 7. Concerns over these and other issues contributed to a widening of credit spreads for many financial institutions, including the Corporation, resulting in lowering of market values of debt and preferred stock issued by financial institutions. The uncertainty in the market evidenced by, among other things, volatility in credit spread movements, makes it economically advantageous at this time to consider retirement of issued junior subordinated debt and preferred stock. As a result of these matters, we intend to explore the issuance of common stock and senior notes in exchange for shares of preferred stock and, subject to any required amendments to the applicable governing documents, certain trust preferred capital debt securities (Trust Securities) issued by unconsolidated trust companies, in privately negotiated transactions. If we pursue the exchange of Trust Securities, we would immediately use the purchased Trust Securities to retire a corresponding amount of our junior subordinated debt that we previously issued to the unconsolidated trust companies. These transactions would increase Tier 1 common capital and, on an after-tax basis, reduce the combined level of interest expense and dividends paid on the combined junior subordinated debt and preferred stock....We will not issue more than 400 million shares of common stock or $3 billion in new senior notes in connection with these exchanges."

When it comes to the almighty corporation, employees are naturally expendable. Sure enough AMD is all too aware of this, per AP: "Advanced Micro Devices says it is cutting 10 percent of its workforce amid weak PC market. The chip-maker made the announcement Thursday after the market closed. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. says the cuts should help the company save $10 million in the fourth quarter and $118 million next year. The layoffs are expected to be finished by the end of the first quarter of 2012." From the company's 10K: "As of December 25, 2010, we had approximately 11,100 employees." Of course, in Banana America, this means tomorrow's NFP number will be a massive beat.

Carry on.

While Athens' political parties are recreating a mediocre episode of gossip girl, with accusations of blackmail this, and traitor that, and somehow everyone (not only in Greece but in Europe) has gotten their period at the same time, G-Pap is currently holding his second address to Parliament (view here) in which he is seriously rambling like a deranged lunatic but where he just had the following eerily most anti-prescient statement ever:

• PAPANDREOU SAYS `NOT ATTACHED TO ANY POST'

Below is an artist's rendering of the post in question.

After reading the following just released announcement from Bloomberg stating that "the U.S. SEC is reviewing trades in MF Global Holdings Ltd. convertible bonds to determine whether some investors sold the debt based on confidential information before the firm’s demise, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg’s Joshua Gallu and Shannon D.Harrington" we are quite stunned: how on earth will the SEC, which is the official depository of the dumbest and most corrupt people on earth, go about doing this? And what about what is an already confirmed act of gross fiduciary duty breach in the form of commingling client accounts: is that one too complicated for the SEC, so it has to proceed with this ridiculous diversion and pretend it is doing something when the biggest criminal is right there starting everyone, especially those from New Jersey, in the face?

"Nothing has changed and absolutely nothing has been accomplished.  There is no “solution” to the crisis that will not result in massive pain, confusion and wealth decimation.  The reason is patently obvious.  At least half the continent is completely and helplessly bankrupt.  There are only two outcomes to the entire situation.  Either the sovereign debts are written off aggressively and the banking system declared insolvent and restructured or the ECB decides to turn on those printing presses to the tune of trillions and destroys the purchasing power of the union in Zimbabwe-like fashion.  People will read this and think I am exaggerating .  The phrase “it takes 5 minutes” keeps running through my head because all it takes is a small amount of time to see the situation for what it is.  I am not that smart.  This is obvious.  The scary thing is that it is abundantly clear that the vast majority of U.S. investors have not bothered to take the 5 minutes necessary to understand how extreme and binary the outcomes to all this is.  Their clients will suffer massively in the months and years ahead as a result of their laziness and lack of macro curiosity. " - Mike Krieger

As we have been claiming for months now, Italian banks will have no choice but to raise capital to prevent their undercapitalized status from stirring the insolvent bank vigilantes and making them into the next MF, or Lehman, or pick your favorite bankrupt bank metaphor. Today we get confirmation of this, after Reuters reported that Italy's UniCredit will proceed with a €4 to €7 billion capital raise. So far so good. Where it gets somewhat entertaining is the disclosure of who it is that will be "advising" UniCredit on its capital raise. Per Reuters, "Mediobanca and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch are advising Italy's UniCredit on a capital increase seen in a range of between 4 billion and 7 billion euros, although no formal mandate has been given yet to form a consortium for the operation, sources close to the matter said on Thursday. The sources said a decision on the size of the capital hike depended on a series of factors, including whether UniCredit would be allowed to calculate convertible notes worth some 3 billion euros as core capital." Did they just say Mediobanca and Bank of America advising another bank on... a capital raise? Uh, pardon our ignorance, but shouldn't Mediobanca and Bank of America be focusing on their own capitalization first before advising someone else? Does this mean that Bernie Madoff has somehow magically made his way to the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee and is now advising Tim Geithner on how to raise debt? Or that Jon Corzine is running for US Attorney General? Frankly, nothing would surprise us any more... Presenting the YTD performance of all three banks.