Archive - Feb 14, 2011 - Story

Now that the $25 million AUM Egypt ETF is expected to be indicative of the entire Egyptian stock market, and which will likely be claimed to be correct even if its underlying securities never manage to trade up to parity, when and if it reopens, there is little that can surprise us anymore. With that in mind, we would like to present the MUB ETF, whose recent surge has left it trading at a premium to NAV that has not been seen since just before the March 2009 666 lows. As the chart below shows, the last time the MUB was trading at 100.79, it did so at a record discount to NAV. Now - about three months later, it is the inverse, as the municipal tracker has now inverted and is trading at a multi-year premium. This begs the question: does underlying value chase the synthetic price? And if so, does it mean that it is time for a compression trade in which the MCDX is sold coupled with selling of the MUB in anticipation of a return to parity spread. That would be the case in a normal world. In this one, in which the WTI-Brent spread just hit another fresh all time wide, who knows...

"Mark", a member of the ever growing cadre of disillusioned, disenchanted and disgruntled millions of American unemployed, has written a letter shared by A Company of One, in which he explains the plight of 99'ers (those whose extended unemployment benefits are set to expire) in which he chronicles his plight and his terminal disappointment with the American system. One can only imagine how all the "99'ers" would feel if they did not have the benefit of living at least partially subsidized for 2 years in the socialist state of America. If Bahrain is any indication, where the government's attempt to purchase the love of its people just failed today, pretty soon not even the 99 weeks of EUCs will do much to suppress what is an unmistakably rising anger among the broad US population. "This new America is alien to me -- it is an America of greed and corruption and avarice and mean spirited selfishness and hatred of the common good -- it is an America of savage beasts roaring and tearing at the weak, and bullying the humble and peacemakers and poor and those without means to defend themselves. I am not welcome here anymore. I don't belong here anymore. It's as if some evil beast controls government, the economy, and our lives now."

Blink and you will miss the latest revolution. Algeria riots yesterday, Bahrain earlier today, and Iran now. Per AP: "Clashes between Iranian police and tens of thousands of protesters wrecked central Tehran on Monday as security forces beat and fired tear gas at opposition supporters hoping to evoke Egypt's recent popular uprising. The opposition called for a demonstration Monday in solidarity with Egypt's popular revolt that a few days earlier forced the president there to resign after nearly 30 years in office. The rally is the first major show of strength for Iran's cowed opposition in more than a year. Police used tear gas against the protesters in central Tehran's Enghelab, or Revolution, square and in Imam Hossein square, as well as in other nearby main streets. Demonstrators responded by setting garbage cans on fire to protect themselves from the stinging white clouds." And a quick refresher in Geopolitics 101: Iran has lots of oil...and, supposedly, nukes (assuming Norton anti-virus has a Stuxnet patch).

The comedy value of the various interpretations of this chart is simply priceless. We leave it up to our readers to share their views on why Tungsten has almost doubled in the past year, and what that means for the cost-benefit analysis for central banks in substituting "one metal" with "another"...

Unless we are reading this just released 13G from the China Investment Corporation wrong, Morgan Stanley has just gotten a new second largest holder of its stock. According to the 13G, CIC now owns 150,782,379 shares, or 9.97% of the outstanding stock, compared to 34,719,468 as of August 9, 2010, which in turn was a sneaky decline of 1.6 million shares from the prior period. Instead of buying our bonds, are the Chinese now looking at purchasing our banks directly? The attached chart shows how MS' holdings looked just before this 13G filing. CIC is now the top 2 holder of MS stock, just behind State Street with 163.7 million shares.

This is simply stunning. A quick parsing of the data released every ten days by the National Bureau Of Statistics of China indicates that the average price of food in 50 cities in the January 21-31 period has increased by 4.6% compared to the prior 10 day period (and 416% annualized)! Granted, this is a simple average calculation of the 29 food items tracked without any weighing, although a quick glance at the components confirms that tonight's Chinese CPI will likely be a doozy. Some of the key changes: cucumbers up 28.2% in ten days, kidney beans up 21.9%, rapes [no pun] up 14.5%, tomatoes up 12.9%, hair tails up 4.7%, bananas up 3.6%, chickens up 3.1%. And this, again, is in the past 10 days! But not all is lost: Soybean oil actually dropped by 0.1%. Time for China to release an adjusted adjusted CPI which excludes all foodstuffs except for Soybean oil (and remember, in China, food is 31.4% of CPI)... which actually is exactly what is about to happen.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 14/02/11

We will spare you drinking (or reading as the case may be) the latest Koolaid from the White House. The only thing one needs to know about Obama's latest budget is that projected revenues are expected to grow from $2.2 trillion in 2011 to $3 trillion in 2013 (and $3.6 trillion in 2015). We wonder just where the tax increases will come from considering the new "compromising" administration has pretty much given up on the option of tax increases in order to get republican complicity to extend national looting and pillaging until the end of Obama's last term. What is unclear is whether the Treasury counts as revenues the interest payments remitted back to Geithner by the Fed on the trillions in monetized debt. In other words, the more debt monetized, the stronger the "revenues!"

The latest S&P 500 insider buys/sells report is out, and it is more of the same. Looking at the 8 inside purchases for a total of $21.4 million one may say that the buying interest was not too shabby. That is until one realizes that there was one purchase for $20.2 million by News Corp insider skewing the entire distribution. Where the fun was, however, is as usual on the selling side, where insiders dumped the biggest amount of shares so far in 2011, selling over $1.3 billion worth of stock (a 61.4x insider buying to selling ratio), which was nearly double last week's $749 million. The biggest selling: MSFT ($417 million), Nasdaq ($268 million), and, surprise, Juniper at ($65 million) and AutoNation ($30.5 million). In other words, with each artificial uptick in the market, we see a new YTD record pick up in selling. With that in mind, remember that the S&P will hit a fresh all time high before the end of June. Cause Bernanke said so.

As more and more contracts roll to an April OTR, the entire commodities curve is going parabolic.

And so, the departures will continue (following Warsh and Weber) until all dissent is eliminated. More if we get it, but it really doesn't matter. The greatest unsupervised ponzi wealth transfer has just been greenlighted.

The Fed is boxed in: by expectations of continued massive intervention and by political pressure to cease or curtail these very same interventions. Ironically, if the Fed flouts political pressure and ramps up its manipulations via a monumental QE3 program, that may well disrupt the markets as much as a policy of diminished intervention, for the markets would soon grasp that the Fed would be guaranteeing a political firestorm of resistance if the Fed's manipulations didn't spark a hiring/jobs boom by the 2012 election season.
And we all know the Fed's QE3 will not spark a hiring boom, for the Fed's policies are designed to serve one goal: preserve and enrich the financial sector's Elites. Now that they're safely in the lifeboats, the failure of the Fed's policies to "trickle down" to the steerage passengers is increasingly evident.

The recently released Presentation to the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (consisting of a 13-member committee of bond dealers and investors that meet quarterly with Treasury officials), which somehow managed to slip by under the radar, is a must read for anyone curious about the funding ability of the US government. A closer examination (and it is chock-full of must read observations) reveals far more conclusively than whatever today's budget myth may reveal, the US is truly in a dead-end situation, and that there is no way the Fed can now possibly step away from indefinite future debt monetization. And the stunner that nobody has yet mentioned: the US is actually considering GDP-linked bonds: the last recourse of a country about to go bankrupt.

"To sum up, although the national economy experienced a pick-up in activity during the last quarter of 2010, the region saw a pause. The loss of momentum locally is disappointing because until the fourth quarter, much of the region was recovering somewhat faster than the nation. However, I would not be overly discouraged by this. After all, soft patches are not uncommon during economic recoveries. Both nationally and regionally, unemployment remains stubbornly high, but many indicators suggest that conditions are in place for stronger growth in the coming months. With respect to debt, households in most parts of the region are in better shape than the nation as a whole. They increased their debt burdens less during the boom and thus have had less need to deleverage. In addition, there are emerging signs both nationally and regionally that consumers have begun to spend more and appear willing to take on some new debt. This bodes well for another step forward in terms of economic momentum in the nation and the region. However, high delinquencies in New York City and Long Island are a reminder that many households remain under significant stress." - Bill Dudley

Following Algeria over the weekend, the latest country to see an escalation in rioting following the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt, is the tiny island of Bahrain, situated just off the coast of Saudi Arabia, which just happens to be home to the US Navy's 5th fleet. From the Washington Post: "Bahrain's security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday at thousands of anti-government protesters heeding calls to unite in a major rally and bring the Arab reform wave to the Gulf for the first time." We are currently searching to bring readers a live feed, but don't hold your breath. As noted above, this country is situated just off Saudi, and the last thing the oil exporting country needs to show is how volatile the region has suddenly become despite attempts by various emirates in the region to purchase the loyalty of their citizens.