Archive - Dec 25, 2011 - Story

To all who still think that in the war of attrition between the USD and the EUR (because contrary to what some have "discovered" only recently, currency wars have been going on for a long, long time and will continue to do so, before morphing into trade and real wars), in which both currencies are doomed, and where the winner takes it all, if only for a few minutes, we bring to your attention the following most recent update out of the Pacific Rim (where incidentally the Shanghai Composite has resumed its relentless track lower with the obvious intention of closing 2011 at its 52 week low) in which we find i) that the dollar's hegemonic control over the world is ending, and ii) that the mercantilist relationship so long sustained between China and the US, may be shifting and reversing, and in its next metamorphosis will see Japan buying the bonds of... China (although probably not for long - see next post). As Bloomberg reports, "Japan and China will promote direct trading of yen and yuan without using dollars and will encourage the development of a market for the exchange, to cut costs for companies, the Japanese government said. Japan will also apply to buy Chinese bonds next year, the Japanese government said in a statement after a meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing yesterday." And before someone blows it off as merely more foreign relations posturing, "“Given the huge size of the trade volume between the Asia’s two biggest economies, this agreement is much more significant than any other pacts China has signed with other nations,” said Ren Xianfang, a Beijing-based economist with IHS Global Insight Ltd." As for China's reverse mercantilist move, one which will stun anyone who believes that Yuan is still undervalued, "Finance Minister Jun Azumi said Dec. 20 buying of Chinese bonds would be beneficial for Japan because it would help reveal more information about financial markets in China, the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves." Speaking of, has Albert Edwards gloated yet that given enough time, he always ends up being proven right, in this case about the CNY's upcoming devaluation?

Things sure have changed in the past 30 years...

Three years ago, when it first became largely adopted by the mass investing population as a hedge to a collapsing market, the 3x levered ETF known as the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares, or FAZ in short, was the hottest thing since sliced bread. Subsequently, it has transitioned form being an object of affection to one of infinite scorn, hatred and outright homicidal urges, for one simple reason: it, like many of its other levered bearish peers, is anything but a way to profit from a collapsing market. In fact, as a recent proxy filing by Direxion indicates, it is virtually impossible to make money in the long-term using FAZ... or medium-term... or, as many would say, even intraday as well. The reason for this is simple: while nobody gets the true inner workings of these inverse x-levered ETFs, certainly not the "experts" who post three times a day on Seeking Alpha, one thing everyone should understand is what the following table straight from Direxion is saying: namely that even if the market collapses by 60%, one could lose up to 96.1% of their entire investment in the FAZ, if for some ungoldy reason, annualized vol surges to 100%. Because, you know, vol only occasionally rises when the S&P plunges by more than half. The same is applicable on any time frame: in essence the FAZ only works if the two massively contradictory Venn diagrams overlap: a market plunge and not rise in vol. Uhm, maybe they should have disclosed that a little bit sooner...

While we have long known that the drachma, and recently the lira, have seen significant "when issued" interest by institutional clients desiring to hedge their currency collapse exposure, and thus early markets by various trading desks, little did we realize just how destabilizing this fact to the system would be, at least according to SWIFT. According to the WSJ, this organization, best known for making an abrupt appearance any time one wishes to do a wire transfer, then promptly disappearing until the next such instance, ended up promptly shutting down any Plan B optionality when "at least two global banks took steps to install back-up technology systems that could handle trades in old European currencies like drachmas, escudos and lire... quickly found, is not so easy in a financial world that is trying to both exhibit confidence in the ailing euro and—just in case—plan for its possible demise. Technology managers at the banks contacted Swift, the Belgium-based consortium that manages the network used in financial transactions, said people familiar with the matter. The banks wanted Swift's technology support and the currency codes that would be necessary to set up the backup systems." And got promptly rejected: "Swift declined to provide some information for such contingency planning, including whether old codes could be used in the system, said the people familiar with the matter." The reason is that in Europe, the mere admission that Plan B is a possibility, apparently set off a chain of events that makes Plan B an inevitability: "...officials there feared that releasing the information could fuel further doubts and instability in the euro zone."... And the kicker: '"As soon as you start contingency planning   . . . it can become a foregone conclusion," said Alastair Newton, senior political analyst at Nomura PLC.  "But if things go wrong and you don't have plans in place, you're in trouble."

Often times we are asked "why does Zero Hedge prefer to provide information in piecemeal increments and isolated snapshots (of irregularity) rather than write comprehensive articles (or even a book) that explain, from beginning to end why everything is broken - the end?" There are two answers - a short and a long one. The short answer is that finance, more so than any other field, changes so rapidly that the nuances are always and constantly on the margin, which in turn is stable only for the period of time that it is observed, and then it becomes part of "technical analysis." (Indeed, the Schrodinger wave function collapse is just as alive and well in finance as it is in the quantum arena). As such, we adhere to the paradigm describing the distinction between giving a man a fish and teaching a man to fish: we believe that it is far more useful to demonstrate all that ways in which the market (and global economy) works, or rather doesn't, than engage in extended exercises of vanity, which serve as much to stroke the author's ego, and demonstrate one's knowledge of SAT words, as they do to elucidate the matter at hand. By sharing our own views of events as they transpire in real time, be they right or wrong, we hope to provide our readers with the "connect the dots" patchwork required to evaluate relevant financial events as they occur in real time, instead of describing them in the in vitro vacuum of moody brooding. (As for a book, we are more than confident enough "independent" bloggers out there will succumb to the very system their protest against, and pen a few hundred pages on the goal-seeked topic of their choosing - the last thing the vast upcoming book pyre needs is our own intellectual self-pleasuring). The long answer is far longer, and, ironically, deserves a post of its own. But this is neither the time nor the place. What then is the purpose of this post is to break away from our tradition, but also not to recreate the wheel, as many others find delight in doing. Instead, as a special present to our readers, we share the seminal analysis by Citigroup's Matt King from September 5, 2008, titled "Are The Brokers Broken?" which in one place explains, better than anyone else has ever done, why the system is terminally broken, and why the best anyone can hope for is to keep kicking the can down the road until it all comes crashing down.

A contribution after the jump.