Archive - Aug 2011 - Story

US companies' outlooks have been taking a turn for the worst since the end of QE2 as management are guiding (still overly rosy sell-side) analyst expectations down in a hurry. Seems it's not just the banks that are hoping for salvation in September...

Feeling like one of the 62 sellside analysts tonight, all of whom had no idea Brazil would cut its overnight rate by 50 bps? Wondering what this "unexpected, unprecedented" move means for Brazil? Curious what the implications of this shocking announcement are? Here is Barclays which while still shellshocked, is the first to try to put lipstick on the pig that the BRIC economy suddenly has become.

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As John Hussman correctly highlighted many moons ago, there is just one problem with the whole "cash on the sidelines" statement - it is completely and utterly wrong. Yet while we agree with it in principle, what is also true is that if you don't have cash, you can't buy stuff, period. Or in this case, equities. Yes, one can sell existing holdings to raise cash, but in an environment such as ours, in which underperforming the levered beta tsunami (or, unlike in 2010, the modest wakeboarding wave) means immediate termination, and where margin debt barely moved off its all time highs even as the general market (and especially fixed income) crashed in a repeat of late 2008, it seems nobody is willing to sell anything, come hell, high water or pink slip. Which is why, semantics aside, the fact that the mutual fund space just saw its total Liquid Assets drop to a new all time record low of 3.3% (down from 3.4%), or about $150 billion on $4.54 trillion in stock assets, is not good, no matter how one defines cash or sidelines. And with so little cash to bid up stocks even as they plunged (i.e., contrary to the expectation cash did not go up), the very troubling question arises yet again: just where will the purchasing power come from (and no, it's not retail: retail is long gone).

Watching as the market responds to every piece of bad economic news as if a brand new golden age had just been announced, can sure leave one dazed and confused with nauseating amazement at the success of central planning. Unfortunately for the central planners, and as demonstrated in the previous "Godfather" post, central planning can only do so much (as confirmed holistically by the empirical example of the USSR: no, Benny and the Inkjets are not the first to come up with the brilliant idea of having 13 people run $15 trillion out of a small room). As the following example from John Lohman vividly demonstrates, GDP does and always will impact stocks. Granted it may take them a little longer to respond, especially when prodded by the central printer, but ultimately what has to happen happens. And paritcularly when reaching key inflection points. Such as now. As Lohman notes, "As shown, the growth rate in S&P 500 earnings estimates, and hence expected earnings, has always peaked when the spread between estimates and GDP is more than 1 standard deviation from the mean.  In the most recent cycle the spread between profit expectations and economic reality has gone to all-time highs, but has now reversed.  As further empirical evidence of this phenomenon, the right side of the table at the bottom highlights the change to expectations in subsequent quarters.  Note that they are negative in every instance." Unfortunately, Bernanke can push stocks by promising the moon and the stars, but unless he succeeds in actually pushing GDP up, all his efforts to create a wealth effect will be very soon undone. And with fiscal stimulus still a kneeslapping joke (we won't dwell on the topic of the latest fiasco between Obama and Boehner, suffice to say that if the two can't come up with a decision on how to meet, how on earth will they agree on trillions in fiscal stimulus, especially at a time when America is under "austerity"), we remind readers that according to economists, when using monetary policy to boost GDP, every trillion in LSAPs is equivalent to 0.50% in GDP. Which means a whole lots of LSAPs are coming our way sooner or later.

To anyone who is still confused about why the Fed is on the fence about QE 3, the chart below, inspired by David Rosenberg's daily note, should explain it all. While we have repeatedly shown that the intervention of central banks in the FX arena gets progressively weaker with each incremental incursion by central planning into formerly free and efficient markets, the same can be said for not only fiscal stimulus (today's bankruptcy of Solyndra being merely the ironic cherry on top of the house of cards), the same is most certainly true about monetary intervention as well, in the form of LSAP or any other form of duration extension. And while many have already explained extensively why QE was a flop, here is Rosie with an angle we had not considered before: movie trilogies: "it's not as if QE2 accomplished anything except a blip on the screen as far as the market was concerned, and it elicited no lasting benefit for the economy either. QE1 did work but that was when the system needed to be saved - the S&P rallied 74% on that program. QE2 was nothing more than a gimmick shrouded in deflation concerns [uhm, this coming from Rosie? we'll let it slide] that never materialized, and during this program the stock market ended up rising just 16%. And so what will QE3 bring except more in the way of diminishing returns and resource misallocation caused by central bankers attempting to play around with mother nature by manipulating asset prices? Call it the equivalent to the Godfather Triology: Godfather I was epic; Godfather II not quite as good but still fine; and Godfather III was a dud." And as for the appropriate visual...

In a shocking move, one which is sure to reverberate around the Developing and certainly Developed World, the Brazilian Central Bank just announced that it was cutting its Selic (overnight lending) rate from 12.5% to 12.0%, citing "substantial economic deterioration" - something that not one of the 62 analysts covering Brazil had anticipated. It seems that following over a year of small arms fire FX intervention sniping, Brazil has finally reevaluated its growth prospects, and instead of dealing with the inflow of capital on a piecemeal basis by buying dollars daily - a move which has not worked at all, has decided to cut off flows at the stem. This is most likely the first of many rate cuts by Brazil which is obviously anticipating a major growth contraction in China, and as a result we expect the the other BRICs will very soon reevaluate their stance vis-a-vis being the remaining target of global capital flows. Ironically, up until now it was mostly the developed (read bankrupt) world that was devaluing its currencies... Well, make way for the new kids on the block because this is about to get interesting.

The question that I have been asked more today than almost any other time in the past month has been "Is This The Time To Start Buying Back In?".  With the recent rally off of very oversold conditions in July and August, a reflex rally has been in the offing.   Also, with this being the end of the month, we are seeing portfolio window dressing for mutual funds. However, a brief review of our technical indicators is in order to determine where we are in this current market environment and what the potential "risk" versus "reward" of being fully invested currently is. 

Some very out of left field late news from the only other tri-party repo in addition to JPM and key corrupt player in the Bank of America settlement litigation, BNY Mellon, whose Chairman and CEO Bob Kelly has just stepped down "because of differences with the board in the approach to managing the company." His replacement will be president Gerald Hassell, effective imediately. Uh, those never occur unexpectedly. Something big is happening behind the scenes, and alas we ave no idea what it is. Is this the first step to setting up the replacement for Brian Moynihan? Look for the kneejerk response in BAC stock for the answer. Or did the Bank of America settlement, already improbable, just get impossible?

Yes, you can't short them. But that doesn't mean you can't sell them. Which is precisely what index funds will be forced to do after the main European index, the Stoxx 50, announced that it will be removing battered SocGen, Intesa and Unicredit from its list of constituents (as well as that anachronism of a cell phone maker Nokia). Let's hope that European HFTs jump in to prop the bid. Oh wait, unlike our farce of a levitation machine, Europe does not have HFT, which is why following every overnight session it is our vacuum tubes' patriotic duty to buy everything up into the close with a millisecond holding pattern, only to dump it to other algos, and ultimately retail and ETF hands. And since every loser has an equal and opposite winner, the companies that will replace the aforementioned sinking ships are Unilever, LVMH, National Grid and Air Liquide.

Every now and then it is easy to forget that the one or two "better than expected" data points blasted by flashing headlines do nothing that merely mask what is an otherwise quite deplorable and deteriorating reality. For the disconnect between America and the rest of the world look no further than this chart showing the dramatic divergence between the DJIA, which has just gone positive for the year, and every other major global stock market. Yet for those who require a narrative to go with their numbers, here is The Economic Collapse with the latest of their traditionally comprehensive bulletins, this time summarizing the "25 signs that the financial world is about to hit the big red panic button."

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 31/08/11

And so it continues, as it was outlined yesterday, and the day before. There is little to add here: 50 ES points in three days on substantially below average volume (red area chart), robots gunning for VWAP, and nothing but hollow expectations for QE3 despite the clear quandary for the Fed that absent a clear deflationary threat, read a plunge in stocks, it will be very difficult for Bernanke to sell easing to the dissenting votes. The important thing: unlike every other relevant market in the world (Belarus may be a notable exception), the DJIA is now green for the year. In the meantime bonds continue to ignore the whole move in stocks. Of course, if this is just a career protection rally for the end of the month, the reconnection of stocks with gravity tomorrow will be painful. Alternatively, gravity will be even more painful if the Fed does end up disappointing on September 21, which it may have no choice but to do if stocks price all of it in by then.

Remember the 15 sigma move (yes, the move was 15 standard deviations) in Greek financial stocks on the failed attempt by the country to create its very own TBTBF bank with some Petrodollar support? Here is a quick update of how that ended up.

Compare these two statements: first from Reuters- "Greece's debt has run out of control and government policies are failing to restore finances, an independent parliamentary committee of experts wrote in a report released on Wednesday." And second, from Bloomberg: "Greece’s debt is on a “durable declining path” and new projections will show that the second rescue program reduces net  liabilities, European Union Economic and Monetary Commissioner Olli Rehn said." Sorry Europe: your credibility, whatever was left of it, just ran out. When the indirect object of your bail out effort (the direct one being naturally your central bank and your various local banking oligarchy of course) says in your face that you are full of excrement, it is time to put a fork in it.