Archive - Aug 2011 - Story

Bank of America is doing all it can to delay the inevitable equity issuance. Reuters has just broken the news that the bank is in active negotiations with Kuwait and Qatar sovereign wealth funds to sell its $17 billion China Construction Bank stake. There are several problems with this approach: first, the petrodollar sovereign wealth funds just lost over 20% of their AUM courtesy of the global equity rout and of the plunge in oil by more than 20% in less than 2 weeks; Second: everyone recalls what happened to Alwaleed when he bought his "Blue Light" citi stake; third: if BAC does indeed sell its CCB stake, it will leave it with zero disposable assets and will have no choice but to approach the equity market. Fourth, the fact that it needs this cash is validation of all the rumors that the bank's capitalization may be urgently strapped very soon, and that today's Berkowitz call was nothing but lies (in typical BAC style); last, since the final cash need when all is said and done, when all the litigation is over and when the NY AG is done with the bank, BAC will need far, far more cash than $17 billion. Which is why any BAC bounce in the AH session should be viewed very skeptically.

For all those wondering what may force the "GREAT RESET", we now know. According to the below email from the Nasdaq sent out 24 minutes before close, we were just 10% away from the Nasdaq essentially DKing all trades on one of its UTP channels, and "restarting the outbound message count. If the count is restarted, the UTP SIP will be unable to process any UQDF retransmission requests for the affected data channel..." All we need now are the HFT quote churners to put the empty churn knob on max tomorrow, and the market, well, breaks.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 10/08/11

Remember when the Chairsatan announced that the US entered a recession yesterday and nobody noticed, even when Zero Hedge said it would take the market a day for the "sophisticated market players" to figure what just happened. No? We have one word... well, and one number: DOW(N): 521.

We bring you this special announcement courtesy of the White House which has informed that American plebs that following a fantastic job well done, in which the market is now back to pre-QE2 levels, unemployment is near record highs, delays for presidential press meetings compare with Newark airplane take offs, pessimism is at record highs, America's credit rating has just been downgraded, the country was nearly bankrupted, and sales of end of the world provisions are through the roof (not to mention ammunition), president Obama is taking a well-deserved vacation at Martha's Vineyard at the end of the month. From Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama will vacation with his family in Martha's Vineyard at the end of this month as he's done in years past, the White House said Wednesday, despite the weak economy and negotiations on the nation's debt problem. Press secretary Jay Carney defended Obama's plans to take a break even as he's pledged urgent action on those issues. "I don't think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the president would spend some time with his family," Carney said." Spot on, Jay, spot on.

As the market dips to intraday lows, quote stuffing spikes as if on demand. Now the only question is did the market drop because of the spike in empty packets, or vice versa... We have an idea or two. So does Nanex. But not the SEC. Definitely not the SEC.

Update: aaaaand it's up. DJIA must be down only 300 now...

Without looking at the ticker we will assume that market selling has accelerated since the BAC call ended and the DJIA is down 400... Were we right?

Perhaps someone should staple the following latest poll from Reuters/Ipsos to the office door of the Fed chairman in the Marriner Eccles building, according to which a record number of people or 73% of all Americans, believe the economy is headed in the wrong direction. This is the highest number measured since the poll started its survey in February of 2009. Only 21% believe the US is on the right track: we assume these are the few people who actually made money in the stock market in the past few months, in other words those long various precious metals [/sarcasm]. Additionally, 47% of respondents believe the worst is yet to come for the economy, the highest since the March 2009 low when the number was 57%. Furthermore, Obama's approval rating dropped from 49% to 45% over the past month. Perhaps it is time to kill Osama for the 3rd (or is that 4th?) time. Bottom line: pessimism is now at or near fresh all time highs. And this is the environment in which the true viceroy of the Americas, Goldman Sachs, has now decreed will proceed with QE3? If the American revolution was deferred back in November when QE2 was enacted, we fail to see how it will be avoided this time around when people realize that gasoline is headed for $9/gallon. Or roughly what Europeans pay today.

... then it's not a very big net worth, we are sorry to say (and it will get even smaller).

Oversold rallies notwithstanding, the Debt-Junkie Market just stumbled into the pool and was barely saved from drowning. The stock market party isn't over for strictly technical reasons, though the technical damage is severe. The party's over for a much deeper reason: faith that the Fed can fix the economy has faded, and participants no longer believe Wall Street's self-serving hype about the recovery and rising markets. Oh sure, people go through the motions of expressing faith in the market, in corporate profits rising forever, in official pronouncements of the Fed's omnipotence, and in whatever snapback rally is in play at the moment, but it's all for show; nobody really believes any of it, they just don't want to be the odd man out by confessing their loss of faith in the false idols. The financial Status Quo has an unsolvable problem: reality isn't swayed by propaganda. Does anyone really believe another couple years of low interest rates and a snapback rally or two will fix what's broken in the U.S. and global economies?

After previously testing its mettle in such markets as Natural Gas and Crude Oil, the fractal algo, just like the StuxNet virus, is now ready to progress to its real test: equity products, and specifically ETFs. Courtesy of Nanex' sharp eyes (and extremely complicated market scanners), today we have the first official spotting of the fractal algo moving away from commodities and into extremely popular ETFs, in this case the bearish bond synthetic CDS better known as the TBT. The pattern below is quite unmistakeable. It is quite amazing that just one algorithm can override the entire market and determine the trading pattern of some as hugely popular as an ETF which most hold. We expect that very shortly, we will be observing daily fractal patterns in that most liquid and traded product of all- the SPY, as the market proceeds to become nothing more than a real life version of Nuke-em Duke-em robots.

Markets are trading sharply lower this morning after yesterday’s late afternoon rally on the change in language in the Fed statement that will keep short interest rates essentially at zero until 2013.  As I have stated before, I believe they will ultimately be forced to keep rates low forever, or at least until the bond market vigilantes eventually rise up and shock the world by demonstrating that indeed you can fight the fed.  Which begs the question, who will be the George Soros that breaks the US Fed?  We’ll see.  In any case, by 2013, it’s highly likely that the US will have over $16tr in debt.  If the average rate across the curve in 2013 is only 4%, which is low by any historical standard, then our annual interest payment will be over $600bn, or almost 30% of annual tax revenues.  So the Fed faces problems on a number of fronts.  They have to be seen as actively trying to do something so they continue to manipulate the price of money to artificial levels which only serves to send misleading signals throughout the economy.  QE1 and QE2 have come and gone and yet unemployment remains sticky above 9%.  Their balance sheet remains abnormally large and their policy tools to manipulate the market is dwindling.  Now add to that the reality of the math of our huge fiscal debt and deficits.  No matter which way you spin it, we have some tough times ahead that will involve some asset prices falling (commercial/residential real estate and other levered assets), other asset prices rising (agricultural land, commodities, gold/silver) and the façade that the Fed is all-powerful to come crashing to the ground. 

There were many odd things about today's $24 billion 10 Year bond auction, which just closed at an all time low yield of 2.14% (down from 2.92% in July), the pricing being just one of them. That this was a very favorable result is a given judging by the yield just following the auction which has since tumbled to the lowest ever except for yesterday's dramatic collapse in yields. At this point, courtesy of the Fed's genocidal policy, it is very possible that the 10 year could drop below 2% shortly. What was probably just as interesting about the auction was the unprecedented surge in Direct Bidder take down which soared from 13.9% to a record high 31.7%, a number not seen since the last time the world was imploding or back in May 2009, when it hit the then high 25%. The reason why Direct had to step in? A massive collapse in the Indirect Bid, plunging from 42% to 35%, the lowest since February 2010. Either the Fed's proxy account finally came out of the closet or China is now very confused and telegraphing a plunge in Indirect Bidding even as it buys up ever more via its London accounts. Either way, the first 10 Year auction since the downgrade passed with stunning success: congratulations, cherry popped.

Ahead of today's Bank of America conference call organized by Fairholme's Bruce Berkowitz which has one purpose only: to rescue his losing investment in Bank of America, which is down almost 30% in the past week, below, courtesy of Manal Mehta, we present 6 prepared questions which we are confident will all get their due attention by Mr. Berkowitz because unless these core questions, which go to the heart of all investors fears about Bank of America, are not answered, and instead nothing but fluff is discussed, the whole exercise will lead to an even greater panic in Bank of America stock. And what would be more ironic than another 20% drop in the BAC stock during this call. Also, in addition to the questions below, we post the following, based on an analysis by Compass Point Research & Trading, which matches an analysis conducted independently by Zero Hedge, and according to which BofA could be forced to repurchase between $28.4 and $62.2 billion, or between $10.6 and $44.4 billion above the bank's current reserves, which would immediately impair the firm's Tier 1 Capital, trimming it by more than 50%, and forcing the company to immediately issue an equity follow on, which will likely lead to a stock price also about 50% lower.

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