Archive - Jun 2011 - Story

Exhibit A.

A snapshot of the US Afternoon Briefing covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.

Corn traders, especially of a bullish persuasion, are being carted off trading floors feet first after a report by the USDA crushed expectations that there is a supply shortage. Reuters reports: "Corn futures plummeted more than 10 percent in early trading on Thursday after a U.S. government report said farmers were able to seed far more corn acres this spring than many analysts expected and that supplies are not as tight as many thought." And while the front month dropped by the maximum allowed limit, that did not stop the July contract, which has entered the delivery period and is trading without limits, to plunge by a whopping 70 cents. "The declines leave corn with the biggest monthly fall since June 2009." This is one time when those listening to Goldman would have been a well-advised action. From Damien Courvalin's note released yesterday: "We expect corn and cotton acreage will be higher than projected by the June WASDE, to the detriment of soybeans."

Goodbye net monetization of US debt. Going forward the Fed will only roll maturing debt, as per QE Lite announced in early August, and due to the fact that it will be roughly one fifth the notional periodic impact of QE2, is not what so many erroneously classify as QE2.5 (a topic beaten to death previously). The biggest question of who will buy bonds now that Primary Dealers will be unable to roll debt to the Fed remains, judging by today's carnage in bonds, completely unanswered. And confirming that PDs always and only cared about flipping the On The Run bond, is the just concluded last POMO, which out of $4.909 billion bonds monetized, saw a vast majority, or $4.405 billion in the form of Cusip QT7: the 7 year just auctioned off yesterday! In other words, Dealers held the On The Run for less than 22 hours before flipping it back to the Fed!!! Well, those days are now over.

The ever-recurring and oh so critical rhetorical Bill Gross Treasury question, which the head of PIMCO retweeted earlier this morning for emphasis, is starting to demand answers. And once today's window dressing exercise in stocks is over (which alas will not do much for most hedge funds which continue to underperform their benchmarks by a wide margin), and when the world wakes up to the realization that crude prices are rapidly heading back to triple digit levels, not to mention the dramatic rise in interest rates, vacuum tubes and momos will need to think hard and long about what the next upside catalyst will be.

We have a very tough time understanding those bearish arguments against silver. We look at the real silver market, and based on the supply and demand data coming from the real, physical markets for silver, the fundamentals are only getting stronger. And yet there exists another silver market, which as we’ve shown, is not very connected to the physical realm at all. And though silver investors have for decades suffered the tyranny of a rigged paper monopoly over silver price discovery, it appears to us that the tides are turning. In the age of QE to infinity, investors are being more scrupulous with their capital and as such they are demanding physical silver in quantity. With more and more dollars flowing into the silver markets and a finite supply of physical to meet that demand, the theoretical losses for the paper silver short-sellers are near infinite. And with such a skewed and obvious risk/reward payoff vastly favoring the longs, we pose the following question. Who is most at risk in the silver markets: the buyers of a scarce and real asset that serves a growing multitude of purposes, or the sellers, who are short a quantity of silver which may very well not even be obtainable at anywhere near current prices? Let the Seller Beware!

No TARP version 1-style surprises allowed:

PAPANDREOU HAS VOTES TO WIN SECOND BUDGET BILL; VOTING ONGOING

The Hamptons will be crowded this weekend. Keep an eye out for photoshopped receipts where hedge funds supposedly hold $100 million in accounts which only have $100,000 in FDIC insurance.

Making a complete mockery of regional Fed indices, the June Chicago PMI just printed at a ridiculous 61.1 on expectations of 54.4, up from 56.6, in the process posting its 21st month of growth. Everything is now being done to prevent the all critical now ISM from printing below 50 and to extract as much juice as possible from the last QE2 POMO (the subsequent POMOs are part of the continuing QE Lite). From the report: "PRODUCTION and NEW ORDERS accelerated to mark nearly two years of expansion while their three-month averages declined; ORDER BACKLOGS diverged from improvements in PRODUCTION and NEW ORDERS; Breadth of inflation reported in PRICES PAID eased for a third month." Among the indexes that surged were Production (up from 56 .0 to 66.9), New Orders (from 53.5 to 61.2) and Capital Equipment (120.8 to 135.0). While prices paid declined modestly from 78.6 to 70.5, the biggest drop was in Inventories which plunged to 46.9 from 61.6: this is not good for the I in GDP, although everyone has now written off Q2 GDP so this is irrelevant.As usual the respondents provide the best color, and nobody captures it best than this guy: "The recession, the "recovery," and the disappearance of industrial arts in our schools seem to have diminished a formerly strong labor pool" and this: "Hopefully something will break or the 4th quarter is going to look sad."

Three months ago, Goldman's Francesco Garzarelli released a note to clients advising them to short the 5 Year as follows: "We recommend going short 5-yr US Treasuries at 1.936% for a potential target of 2.30% and a close below 1.80%." Naturally, our cynical outlook on life prompted us to say the following: "As usual, since that would mean Goldman is now accumulating 5 Year inventory, it appears we will soon have a rather dramatic duel between the two biggest Wall Street titans: PIMCO and Goldman, at least as pertains to their outlook on rates." Well, Goldman won so far (its clients not so much). Today, Goldman is telegraphing that it is starting to accumulate the next batch of 5 years, which makes sense considering the point on the curve experienced its 3rd worst 3-day decline ever as reported yesterday. To wit: "Ahead of key data for June, starting with the June ISM report this Friday, we recommend initiating short positions in 5-yr UST at the current level of 1.70%, for an initial target of 2.00%, and stops on a close below 1.40%." Round two of Goldman vs PIMCO is now on.

Following the abysmal decision by the Obama administration, presented in IEA letterhead, to release crude stockpiles, the resulting lower prices lasted less than one week, and in the case of gasoline, the price has actually surged way above the decision day fixing. So what is an administration with no credibility to do? Why double down of course, and sell even more crude at firesale prices to the Chinese. Per Reuters: "The International Energy Agency could decide by mid-July whether the release of strategic oil reserves needs to be extended for a month or two, an official said." And there is that transitory word again: "Richard Jones, deputy executive director of the
IEA, said he believed the release would be temporary since demand would
likely drop in the fourth quarter." Well demand may drop, but the last time demand was actually relevant in price discovery was sometime in the 20th century. Welcome to the era of oil prices defined by monetary policy.

And the same old show and dance persists as initial claims continue confirming that at its core, the US economy is not improving one bit following the 12th consecutive claims pring over 400K. We still expect the June NFP consensus to be cut. The BLS reported that initial claims in the week ended June 25 were 428K, much higher than the expected 420K. Initial claims also missed expectations of 3,690K, printing at 3,702K. And guess what: this too is a drop from the upward revised 3714K, previously 3,697K. Both numbers this week will be revised higher next week, which will bring the rolling average far higher.

It is hard to define how much money Greece is getting. Is it the next tranche of IMF money? Is it the amount of cuts the Greek government agreed to take? Is it future promises of money from the Troika? It's hard to tell, but $20 billion seems to be about the amount that is being provided to get us through another 3 months...Let's assume the Lehman 2.0 and contagion crowd are correct. Is it realistic to assume that $3 per person is enough to save the world's entire economic model? If so, sign me up, I will contribute my $3. But the GDP of the U.S. $14.5 trillion (it is easy to remember since it is the same as the amount of U.S. debt outstanding). The GDP of the European Union is $16 trillion. Add in another $10 trillion for China and Japan and you have GDP of $40 trillion. The doomsayers are telling us that $20 billion is all that it takes to save a $40 trillion system? We have a $40 trillion global economy that hinges on getting $20 billion to Greece so they don't default.

While Goldman's traditional, client-facing sell-side research is terminally useless and empirical evidence suggests that doing the opposite of what is recommended yields profitable results more than two thirds of the time, what its trading desk releases to select clients is far more targeted, nuanced, and, in one word, correct. Which is why we were surprised to hear what Goldman's traders had to say about gold. To wit: "We are hearing anecdotes of strong physical demand already coming through in the last few days. Official sector buying is also likely to feature...Although having been rather wrong footed by this recent setback I
continue to believe that gold will have a strong end of summer into q4
and that current price moves are creating another great buying
opportunity." And unlike the reverse psychology in the research department, the sales guys are much more careful as they have named accounts they get make commission revenue from. Piss these off one too many times and you are cut off. Which makes us believe that Goldman is really long and strong here.

After trading higher in early European trade, equities pared back some of their gains as focus remained on the Greek austerity implementation details. In the forex market, EUR received support after ECB's Trichet said that the ECB is in a state of strong vigilance, which signals a possible change of rates, allied with news that German banks and the German government have agreed on a Greek debt plan. However, GBP/USD remained under pressure partly on the back of market talk that US names and a UK clearer were selling in the pair, with speculation of month-end demand from the Bundesbank assisting the rise EUR/GBP. Moving into the North American open, markets look ahead to key US economic data in the form of Initial/Continuing Jobless Claims and Chicago PMI figure, allied with GDP data from Canada. In fixed income, there is another Fed's Outright Treasury Coupon Purchase operation in the maturity range of Dec'16 - Jun'18, with a purchase target of USD 4-5bln.

• Rice Supplies Tightening in China May Increase Imports, Bolster Inflation (Bloomberg)
• IMF warns US of global debt ‘shock’ (FT)
• China may widen yuan trading band soon-Bank of China (Reuters)
• Italy May Raise Trading Tax (WSJ)
• Deutsche Bank warns on voluntary rollover (FT)
• GOP wants Senate to cancel vacation (Washington Times)
• As QE2 ends, market debates Fed's next move (Reuters)
• Greek parliament expected to endorse second bill (Reuters)
• Appeals Court Says Health Law Is Constitutional (WSJ)