Archive - Mar 2011 - Story

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 01/03/11

Even as gold closed at all time highs, and silver surged to a fresh 31 year closing high, the most important observation is that the market snapped the critical 7 month winning streak of major surges on the first day of the month (we will provide an update on this shortly). This means that all lemming momentum chasers are now blind deaf and mute, with no orientation in a suddenly very unfriendly stock market. In the meantime, all those who continue to believe that with oil over $100 the biggest winners will be gold and silver, are, for the time being correct. The attached charts confirm it.

It was just earlier this week that a bunch of irrelevant confidence trackers said that US consumer confidence had hit 3 year highs. Oddly enough, ground data not only does not confirm this data, but says it is merely more baseless propaganda. According to Gallup, which actually knows how to poll, "Americans have become much less confident in the U.S. economy over the
past two weeks, with Gallup's Economic Confidence Index falling from -18
to -30 during that span. The -18 Index score from two weeks ago was the
most positive Gallup had measured in the last three years." And as we suspected when we reported the latest confidence data "These results ... indicate the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Index of
Consumer Sentiment, released Friday but based mostly on interviewing
from early and mid-February, was essentially out of date when it was
released. The Index of Consumer Sentiment showed consumer confidence to
be the highest it has been since January 2008, similar to what Gallup
showed two weeks ago. But Gallup's latest weekly update suggests
consumer confidence has fallen back to where it was in early December." Luckily bad news no longer matters, because if it did Gallup's forecast would guarantee QE3,4, and so forth: "The short-term prospects for a turnaround in consumer confidence do not appear great, with gas prices likely to continue to rise, with state and federal governments facing increasingly difficult budget situations, and unemployment remaining high."

Update: Canada has now sent a warship to Libya as well.

Here we go:

GATES SAYS 400 MARINES BEING SENT TO JOIN RELIEF EFFORT (as we predicted yesterday)
GATES SAYS WILL `PROVIDE PRESIDENT WITH FULL RANGE OF OPTIONS

And to those who think the good Colonel will leave his oil in the hands of the infidels, we suggest you short Brent now.

Just in time for silver to catch a breather, gold steps in, and hits a fresh all time high of $1,432.57. Alas since this price action is merely stragglers loading up as a semi-mute Cramer, who suddenly has no 100x fwd P/E momentum stocks to pitch, goes back to pushing gold. As such the spike is likely rather temporary (for now).

Guggenheim's Scott Minerd has released a somewhat controversial piece looking at several steps forward in case the MENA crisis escalates to the point where dominoes start toppling each other. His conclusion: "After all these dominoes fall, global investors will likely find themselves in a world that looks like this: the Middle East is highly unstable, emerging market economies are slowing, and the crisis in Europe has been exasperated by shrinking exports, leading to a decline in the value of the euro. Against this landscape, the U.S. economy and dollar-denominated financial assets will look increasingly attractive on a relative value basis." Needless to say we disagree with this rather simplistic assessment, or rather, with a very large caveat: in nominal terms, Minerd may well be right, but the resultant surge in oil to well over $200 (should his thesis pan out) will cripple the US economy, force the Treasury to turn on the afterburner on debt issuance, and ultimately result in the biggest bout of monetization ever, resulting in the death of the US dollar (and thus, the resurgence of the gold standard). That said, it is a good piece, if one takes the conclusion with a big piece of salt. In our opinion, the only clear winners from the domino collapse will be oil as we have claimed since early January... and the PM complex of course.

While GM has traded below its IPO price in the past, so far the most coddled IPO of 2010 has yet to close below its IPO price of $33. Indeed, while the special services of HFT powerhouse GETCO have been instrumental in allowing the car maker to continue diverging with its true price, courtesy of massive bouts of momentum buying every time the stock price appears to break with government regulation, today may be the day when gravity and reality finally wins. And considering that GM just released its February sales data, which confirmed that the company continues to engage in dealer inventory stuffing, with 517,000 cars held in dealer inventory, compared to 510,000 in January, and 420,000 a year ago, (and the second largest amount in history after the 536,000 in November), the veneer off the world's most overvalued carmaker is finally starting to come off.

Reuters presents an interesting chart, which shows the historical correlation between oil (both Brent and Crude) and equities. After we had seen a positive correlation, either weak or strong, between the commodity and the risk asset for two and a half years, the correlation has finally flipped and gone negative. And while many debate whether or not the WTI is relevant at all any more with all the factors that have caused a record spread between it and Brent, one thing is obvious: the last time WTI to Stocks hit a correlation of -0.5 is just after the market peaked in late 2007, early 2008, as the market had started its decline which culminated with the global sell off of everything not nailed down, bringing the S&P to 666. The correlation between the two assets is again -0.5. If Brent confirms the WTI correlation, it may be time to run.

... for those who are lucky enough not to drive a gas consuming vehicle. Alas, with well over 254 million registered passenger vehicles in the US as of 2007, that's probably not that many. As for CNBC's claim that food inflation is somehow "taking care of itself" due to demand destruction, they may well be all too right: a few more revolutions, and resulting "disappearances" of protesters, and there will be far less organic demand for such a headline CPI nuisance as food.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 01/03/11

Counterfeit money exploits trust by presenting a facsimile of authenticity. A high-quality counterfeit bill (for example, the $100 bills exported by North Korea) are facsimiles of authentic paper notes which then gain the trust of users. A counterfeit gold bar is a piece of lead coated with a layer of authentic gold. The mechanism is the same: a veneer of integrity tricks the buyer into trusting the validity of the entire bar. The U.S. has a deeply counterfeit economy.

Following the insider dump of well over $1.3 billion in shares a fortnight ago, this week insiders sold "just" $503 million in shares of their companies, in 118 transactions. Alas, while the selling to buying ratio was a modest 61.4x at last check, the ongoing collapse in insider buying has once again reared its ugly head, and only $4 million worth of stock was purchased. The biggest insider purchases in the past week focused on CB Richard Ellis, Lorillard and Noble, with all at a million or less. On to selling, which is relentless: the top selling names were Sara Lee ($122 million), Franklin Resources ($51 million), and Intuit ($37) million. As for full month February, forget about it. Insiders sold a total of $5.4 billion and bought $128 million, a 41.6x ratio. In layman's terms: they can't wait to dump all they can, leading with Sensata insiders who sold $1.2 billion, followed by Microsoft selling $575 million and Molycorp $363 million.

After a two month delay, gold is about to take out it all time high, silver has just passed $34.50, and, shockingly, the dollar is down as the Chairsatan drones on.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced insider trading charges against a Westport, Conn.-based business consultant who has served on the boards of directors at Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble for illegally tipping Galleon Management founder and hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam with inside information about the quarterly earnings at both firms as well as an impending $5 billion investment by Berkshire Hathaway in Goldman.The SEC’s Division of Enforcement alleges that Rajat K. Gupta, a friend and business associate of Rajaratnam, provided him with confidential information learned during board calls and in other aspects of his duties on the Goldman and P&G boards. Rajaratnam used the inside information to trade on behalf of some of Galleon’s hedge funds, or shared the information with others at his firm who then traded on it ahead of public announcements by the firms. The insider trading by Rajaratnam and others generated more than $18 million in illicit profits and loss avoidance. Gupta was at the time a direct or indirect investor in at least some of these Galleon hedge funds, and had other potentially lucrative business interests with Rajaratnam.

Why choose to participate in a system that doesn’t work? A system that is designed to drain the people of wealth instead of enriching them and their lives? A system that is constructed upon irrational principles, faulty laws, and unstable values? A system on the verge of collapse? This is the question that the Alternative Market Movement (AMM) poses to the American citizen. Why continue living under an economic structure that is poised to erupt, threatening you, your family, and your ability to provide a meaningful future for them? Would anyone voluntarily choose to live under the barrel of a gun their entire lives?