Archive - Aug 2011 - Story

About a month ago we penned a post to refute some misconceptions about a material spike in M2, which led such luminaries as Andy Lees and Art Cashin to get confused that this may be an indication that either the government was forcing money into the population with the end of QE2, or that this was actually a confirmation that QE was working. It was neither. As we explained it was a combination of the Treasury general account on the Fed's balance sheet soaring (from a balance sheet standpoint), and due to the repeal of Regulation Q (from an actual flow perspective), that led to the move. Sure enough, in the 3 weeks following, M2 dropped to very much unremarkable weekly change levels. Until the week of August 1, or the week in which the specter of a US bankruptcy came to life, and in which the market took its first notable leg down. In that week, the broadest publicly released monetary aggregated - the M2 - soared to an all time high $9.5 trillion, or a $159 billion weekly change. This make it the third largest weekly spike in history After the Lehman bankruptcy and September 11. Then again, this data includes the traditional seasonal fudge adjustments by the Fed. A look at the non-seasonally adjusted time series indicates that last week's spike in M2, primarily in demand and savings deposits at commercial banks, was the highest on record! Sure enough, the bulk of this cash ended up in America's largest depository institution, Bank of America. And yes, this was in the week prior to the massive market rout. Yet as the charts show, following every massive inflow of money into demand deposits and savings accounts, it goes right back out the next week. Which is why we wonder: is Bank of America, so flush with cash a week ago courtesy of the debt ceiling fiasco, suddenly cashless, as investors follow up with the kneejerk withdrawal of capital from the depositor bank due to worries of bank runs and other less quantifiable reasons? Does this explain why, in addition to the fact that the bank's sale of its China Construction Bank stake is not going well, BAC may soon be forced to enter the capital markets to raise equity capital, just as we have been predicting all along?

The Fed has helped print a new kind of currency, currency being a means of exchange that in and of itself offers no return whatsoever. This new kind of currency used to be referred to as notes and bonds. Please be mindful of this change if you plan on using the tired old phrase, “A man’s word is his bond”.  Remember to replace “word” with “money”, and you’ll be okay, at least until 2013. Money is freely available to those who don’t need it and don’t deserve it.  For everyone else there’s 29.99% Mastercard and Visa.

That the US postal service is on the verge of bankruptcy is well-known by now and was discussed by Zero Hedge long before it became mainstream news. Furthermore, as we previously noted, the key sticking point in cost reduction negotiations is the labor force compensation (80% of all costs), which is paid an average of $41.15 an hour, and which is over 60% unionized. As of today, we finally welcome the USPS to reality which has announced that, in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy, it is now seeking to reduce its total overhead by 20%, or a whopping 120,000 workers (a number which would amount to roughly an increase of 0.1% in the national unemployment rate). Ah yes, but this is prohibited by existing union contracts. Furthermore, WaPo writes that "SPS also wants to withdraw its employees from the health and retirement plans that cover federal staffers and create its own benefit programs for postal employees." Good luck trying to convince a labor union that cutting an ungodly amount of jobs is for the greater good. Alas, what happened in Greece (and what is about to happen in Italy) will be nothing compared to what will happen when the entire post office goes, well, postal.

Dear Mrs. Schapiro,

We would like to thank the SEC for implementing the Stub Quote Rule in December of 2010. While stub quoting did not cause the Flash Crash of May 6th 2010, it was a contributing factor and we welcome the stub quote ban.

However, after studying four recent trading days, we have a question. Is there any intention of enforcing the stub quote rule? If so, can you please tell us when?

While the president makes yet more speeches about how the time to leave the past behind us is now (while newly scapegoating Europe for the economic catastrophe), the sniping war against S&P continues, only this time with a twist. According to the FT, the SEC has asked the rating agency to disclose who at the company knew about the downgrade, "as part of a preliminary look into potential insider trading." The funny thing is that while the answer will be everyone, even in that case the SEC will end up doing nothing as it always 'does' (pun intended), and the whole process is nothing but a sham to humiliate the rating agency. "The inquiry was made by the SEC’s examination staff, which has oversight of credit rating firms, one person familiar with the matter said. The exam staff can make referrals to the SEC’s enforcement division if it believes any laws have been violated, but the inquiry might not result in a referral....Proving someone leaked information about the downgrade, or traded ahead of it, could be challenging. Many traders anticipated the downgrade and bets could occur across numerous securities or currencies without inside information. In a traditional insider trading case, there is often a more predictable correlation between a company’s stock price and a particular development." Of course the next question is what is the null hypothesis: that leakees would buy or sell bonds based on the info? Because the natural response would be to dump treasuries even as the real outcome was a plunge in equities and a scramble to safe one-ply paper. So is PIMCO about to be charged with insder trading for having sold 10 Years even though in reality the spread tightened by a record 60 bps in the following week?

Just as in the case of France, here is the official statement from the Comision Nactional de Marcado de Valores, disclosing the Spanish 15 day prohibition on shorting stock. The banks impacted are Banca Cívica, S.A., Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A., Banco de Sabadell, S.A., Banco de Valencia, S.A., Banco Español de Crédito, S.A., Banco Pastor, S.A. Banco Popular Español, S.A., Banco Santander, S.A., Bankia, S.A., Bankinter, S.A., Caixabank, S.A., Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, Grupo Catalana de Occidente S.A., Mapfre, S.A., Bolsas y Mercados Españoles, S.A., Renta 4 Servicios de Inversion, S.A. Unlike Frace, Spain has also explicitly banned not only short cash transactions, but also any position in OTC derivatives "which involves creating a net short position, or increasing an existing one." Next and last: the Italian statement, as frankly nobody cares about Waffles.

The 15 day short selling ban (which appears to include all shorts, not just naked ones), includes the following names: April Group, Axa, BNP Paribas, CIC, CNP Assurances, Crédit Agricole, Euler Hermès, Natixis, Paris Ré, Scor, Société Générale. We wonder whether the French AMF is also aware that one can just as easily create identical synthetic shorts by buying puts and selling calls on the names in question or maybe nobody in the French regulatory body has graduated beyond cash products and into derivatives. And the kicker, August 26 just went supernova, as this is the day the short selling ban expires, the BEA reports the second, sub 1% GDP revision, and Bernanke presents his 2011 Jackson Hole keynote speech.

Stop the presses. Barely did we have time to report that European regulators failed to impose a coordinated short selling ban, that Bloomberg reports that the countries most impact by the market plunge are about to impose standalone short-selling bans. These are Belgium, Italy, Spain and France. In other words, it really is on and the 2008 Lehman PTSD flashbacks may now resume. Until we get a headline that says it isn't. The rescue of the Borsa Italian is now more schizophrenic than that of Greece. As a reminder, in the previous post the FT quoted Abraham Lioui, a professor at the Edhec business school in France, who said “It is the worst thing to do right now. This would signal to the market there may be something fundamentally bad that is happening."  He is correct. Something is fundamentally very wrong and about to break.

The latest iteration of the "rip your face off rally" was fun while it lasted. And now, it is, once again, about to be replaced with the "face your rip off" version, after the FT reported that European regulators have failed to agree on a coordinated short-selling ban, "leaving France and other advocates of the curbs considering unilateral action to stem the recent sharp falls in share prices." This means that the last ditch effort to prevent the daily wipeout in the FTSE MIB has now been pulled off the table, and all those who otherwise would have been forced to cover their halted futures positions as cash soared, will now sit pretty and wait for the market to come to them. It also means that while Europe could have potentially stood united, if even for a few more days, divided it will fall. But not all is lost: there is a potential loophole, and if the Borsa opens limit down, it may well be the final recourse: "The new European Union market regulator, Esma, is trying to co-ordinate action by national regulators and more conversations could take place today. A Thursday evening conference call was unable to reach unanimity." That, however, now appears like a long shot.

Mark to market and monthly hedge fund returns are the new leverage.  So many of the old measures or guides to "leverage" in the system are just outdated.  You can get some stock exchange data on net margin, but how useful is that when so many ETF's exist.  If people are margining SH (inverse SPY), what does being margined mean?  Similarly, there is always talk about "cash on hand".  Don't worry about the markets are sitting on so much cash.  People still want to look at the VIX and say it has predictive value.  It is a co-incident indicator.  No one puts on hedges when the market is moving direction.  The single most important driver is monthly return.

When one sees a chart such as the one below, what can one say but... Bull Market! And "Fed-generated Price Stability" of course. For the first time in history, the Dow has moved up and down by over 400 points. And in the last 5 minutes we see a 20 point drop in ES. All in a day's work for schizophrenics. And now, we are all reminded yet again that Europe still exists, as do its markets, and tomorrow should be a truly fantastic day for "The Price Stability."

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

Some headlines to ponder as Jefferson Country's standstill expires tomorrow and the vote on whether to file Chapter 9 finally arrives:

• JEFFERSON COUNTY CH. 9 VOTE CHANCES `50-50,' COMMISSIONER SAYS
• ALABAMA COUNTY CONSIDERING BANKRUPTCY VOTE IN MEETING TOMORROW

A bankruptcy filing will certainly be spun as bullish to quite bullish.

...35 points wider: the highest since April 6, 2009. But fear not - credit has a reputation of being always wrong, while equities (especially short covering squeezes) are always right.