Archive - Aug 2011 - Story

Two weeks after the CME hiked gold margins by 22%, and two days after the Shanghai Gold Exchange sent them higher by 26%, here comes the CME, as we expected, with another 26% gold margin hike (previously: "Should we expect 3 more SGE margin hikes in the next 2 weeks? Or will the CME rightfully accept the baton and do everything in its power to dent the parabolic rise in the alternative reserve currency? We are cautiously looking at what the CME will do today and will advise readers."). And now we know that this particular margin hike was leaked well in advance, and explains the entire $100 plunge in gold today. And as a reminder, the August 1 CME margin hike worked... for about 30 minutes.

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

Market Recaps to help improve your Trading and Global knowledge

...Just because the surgeon general recommends laughing for 5 minutes at least once a day.

Whether the Fed will upgrade QE2.5, or "ZIRP through mid-2013", to QE3, or Operation Twist, the form we have been predicting it would take since May, is still unknown: very few people know what Bernanke will say on Friday, minutes after the first revision to Q2 GDP reveals a sub-1% number. What is known is that while cross-asset correlation has soared over the past few days, the biggest driver of stocks over the past few days has been nothing but the 2s10s30s butterfly, which in turn is driven by On and Off rumblings of Bernanke doing the Twist. And here is the rub: when the Fed announces Twist it will be extending duration, it effectively means selling everything 10 Year and older (yes, QE3 could very well be LSAD or Large Scale Asset Dumping instead of LSAP). The goal of this action: make the 2s10s will go vertical and to pancake the 10s30s: a move that the butterfly is now indicating it is once again pricing in - today alone we have seen a massive 15 steepening in the butterfly: a nearly 20% move in the curve. It also explains why gold is being sold off today, because simplistic investors believe that without an actual balance sheet expansion, the Fed will not be diluting paper. Completely wrong: it will merely do so synthetically, from a duration basis. Furthermore, the market will very soon read through the Fed's intention which will be predicated entirely on asset rotation and not on incremental fiat capital. The final outcome will be QE4 where the Fed will have to match the synthetic duration extension with actual cash bond deliverables, namely monetizing bonds, a move which will be even more critical once the deficit spend starts soaring again in the next 3 months. And when it does, it will have to do so double time, to make up not only for previous synthetic exposure extension, but for future priced in moves. In other words, nothing has changed, and we fully expect stocks to soar if indeed Bernanke mentions "duration extension", together with yet another gold dump. The issue is that Op Twist in the proposed format would be physically limited by the amount of 10 Year+ bonds held in the Fed's SOMA. At last check it was not that many at all. So any surge in stocks will be albeit both painfully transitory.

Muammar Gadhaffi’s 42 year-old regime is in its death rattle – maybe today, maybe tomorrow, his administration that has ruled Libya with a quixotic and brutal hand is about to pass, in Trotsky’s piquant phrase, “into the dustbin of history,” prompting the question “what next?” The glittering prize is Libya’s 1.6 million barrels per day output of high quality crude, which accounted for about 2 percent of global oil output drawn from Africa's largest oil reserves, whose exports have been stymied since the NATO-led campaign began six months ago. Projecting into the future, analysts believe that has reserves to sustain its previous level of production for 80 years. Who will eventually control this asset, with oil prices currently at roughly $84 a barrel, generating an income of more than $12.6 million per day? Italy’s ENI? France’s Total? Britain’s BP? U.S. companies? Or, will China add Libyan future production to its string of acquisitions, as it is already China’s eleventh largest source of imports? The crystal ball is murky indeed, but when the uprising against Gadhaffi began six months ago, according to the Chinese media, about 36,000 Chinese were in Libya working on 50 projects.

When noted English financial firm Tullett Prebon releases a report titled "Thinking the Unthinkable", which just happens to be the last part of its Project Armageddon series, you know it will be good. While the report is UK-centric, and focuses primarily on the particulars of the English economy (thus making it required reading for our British-Isle based readers), the overarching observations are more than applicable in any place that has too much debt, too little cash flows, and not enough growth. So basically every "developed world" country. From the executive summary:"Project Armageddon was established to examine the possibility that both sides’ warnings are correct but that neither side’s prescriptions will work. We conclude that Britain’s debts are unsupportable without sustained economic growth, and that the economy, as currently configured, is aligned against growth. Radical solutions are required if a debt disaster is to be averted. All macroeconomic options have been tried, and have failed. The only remaining options lie in the field of supply-side reform. Unfortunately, public opinion may be inimical to the scale of reform that is required." Bingo: this is precisely the same big picture summary of what ails the US right about now. We eagerly await for someone to undertake the creation of Project Armageddon for the US: we are confident it will not be that much different.

Apparently America's "Patriotic (yet just slightly hypocritical) Millionaires" phenomenon is spreading. In an open letter sent to the Government and to Parliament (we assume the post office can track down the recipients at whatever seaside resort complexes they are to be found), 75 Italian managers, industrialists and professionals, propose what in their opinion is best for the country, which is another way of saying avoiding anything that could potentially crimp their EPS (and take home bonuses) now that Italy is the latest austerity state. And while back in the US, those who are already rich are doing everything in their power to prevent those who wish to be, from becoming so, so in Italy the local upper class is all about instituting countrywide central planning in the form of pervasive capital controls: the one notable proposal is for all cash transactions over €300 to be banned, and to be permitted only in electronic format. We can't decide what is more hypocritical: our own pseudo-nouveau riche trying to pass for magnanimous, when everyone can see right though their act, or the Italians, where the cost of a few more years of profitability has to be borne not just be the middle class but by everyone. We just may leave it as a tossup.

The only memorable outcome of today's $35 billion 5 Year bond auction was that the yield plunged to a new all time low, nearly 30% below the July auction, printing at 1.029% compared to 1.58% before. With the When Issued trading at 1.03%, this was an "on the screws" type of auction with absolutely no surprise at all embedded. The Bid To Cover was modestly week compared to LTM, at 2.71, below the 12 auction average of 2.81. Take down was again skewed toward Direct Bidders, as Indirects accounted for 42.1%, Dealers for 44%, and Directs taking home 13.9% of the total. As yesterday's 2 Year, this was yet another snoozer, allowing the government to fund $35 billion in deficits at a record low cost. And as long as the rates remain here, the Treasury will issue as much debt as it can to prefund trillions of future deficits at the lowest possible price, regardless of what the CBO says.

The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing article earlier this week entitled “Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent With Guilty.” You can already imagine the crux of the article. In the United States, there are hundreds of regulations which authorize dozens federal agencies to confiscate private property– homes, cars, bank accounts, gold, company shares, and even personal effects. Ironically, most Americans still think that they live in a country where you’re innocent until proven guilty. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it’s just another clear example of how the US Constitution has become a worthless piece of toilet paper for the federal government. The Fifth Amendment states that “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Tell that James Lieto, a New York businessman who was relieved of $392,000 when the armored car company used by his check-cashing firm was taken down by the FBI. Lieto was innocent and not implicated in any wrongdoing, but the FBI took his money regardless as it just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Earlier today, Hurricane Irene was upgraded by the National Hurricane Center to category 3 as it passed above the Turks and Caicos, preemptively ending the holidays for quite a few Wall Streeters taking a well-deserved break from chasing levered beta. So admitting we know nothing about predicting the weather, we present the following update from Jeff Masters' Weather Underground blog.

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

Correlations are breaking down, and each asset class seems to be trading more and more in its own little world. Sometimes retaining old correlations and other times moving counter-intuitively. Each of those markets now seem to be driven primarily by fear. The markets have been split into two camps, those that are afraid of rallies and those that are afraid of sell-offs. The breakdown of many correlations is making it harder to hedge or to balance portfolios. It is adding the broken feeling in the market.

Today, the CBO whipped out its trusty old magic 8 ball, and released its revised forecast of the future. Since there is a substantial difference from the March forecast for the cumulative 10 year deficit over the 2012-2021 period, to the tune of $3.250 trillion, or just about 50% of the last deficit forecast of $6,737 billion, which is now a ridiculous $3.5 trillion, it is about that time for us to, in turn, whip out trusty old history and demonstrate just how worthless and criminally incompetent the CBO's estimates of the future are. Here is what we posted two short weeks ago: "While we reserve judgment for S&P's effectiveness at being accurate in anything they do (they are, after all a rating agency and as such they goal seek results to comply with what their paying groupthink seeking customers demand), we would like to redirect to the modest topic of CBO predictive efficiency (the organization that is at the basis of the current credibility spat between Treasury and S&P, and which, incidentally has created the baseline forecast against which the debt ceiling compromise plan is supposed to cut $2.1 trillion over the next decade), by pointing out according to the same CBO back in 2001, net US indebtedness in 2011 would be negative $2.436 trillion, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP would be 4.8%, total budget surplus would be $889 billion, and GDP would be $16.9 trillion. We won't comment on the error interval in CBO forecasts when compared to actual 2011 results, and we most certainly won't comment on the idiocy of the Treasury chastising someone, anyone, for erring, or disputing, forecasts." We will comment now: the CBO was off by tens of trillions. And it will be again. Expect massive future revisions to the August CBO baseline, which just cut the future decade cumulative deficit by 50%, however with one caveat: even the CBO admits it will most likely be horribly wrong.

And so the uber-idiotic rumor which spread like wildfire among desperate traders yesterday, namely that JPMorgan would acquire Bank of America, is next in the docket to be denied (after taking cheap shots at Henry Blodget):

• BANK OF AMERICA SAYS JPMORGAN MERGER SPECULATION IS `BASELESS'
• BANK OF AMERICA DISCUSSES MERGER SPECULATION IN INTERNAL MEMO
• BOFA REPEATS IT HAS NO NEED TO ISSUE ADDITIONAL COMMON STOCK

Now... If only Bank of America can focus its attention for 5 minutes and answer our questions and all shall be well.

Gold this morning is plunging by the most since December 2008. For those seeking the reason for the sell off, it once again appears that the market is about 24 hours late in processing news that has been out for over a day. One of the main catalysts for today's gold price is the realization that the Shanghai Gold Exchange hiked gold margins by 26%. Of course that this happened not one but two days ago (as we reported) is irrelevant. There are other factors to be sure: on Tuesday holdings of the SPDR Gold Trust , the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell by nearly 25 tonnes, their biggest one-day outflow since Jan. 25. Furthermore, there is another rumor that hedge funds that have been crushed by the market volatility over the past month are shoring cash ahead of Jackson Hole by selling their winners. Either way, at last check gold was down to $1770. This is the price it was on August 16: about a week ago. As for where gold will go next: we suggest investors consider what the options for the world central banking cartel are, and how many of them do not include diluting paper. We are eager to hear the alternatives.