Archive - Sep 2011 - Story

An hour after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao dropped all pretense of working together for the greater good, markets around the world are reacting more notably than many would have expected. With most talking heads still clinging to the line about 'helping the Europeans' and missing the quid-pro-quo of it all that we so clearly intimated from his speech, expectations of a risk-on 'we-are-all-saved' reaction have been dashed on a beach of the-trade-wars-have-begun. ES is -13pts from the day session close (and almost 20pts from intraday highs), having taken out intraday swing support levels around 1154.

After over two years of over 200 posts discussing the dangers of High Frequency Trading on Zero Hedge, the mainstream media (and its comedy-finance fusion Comcast offshoot) has finally made its goal in life to destroy HFT. The only reason for that, of course, is that HFT, by definition, tends to accentuate moves. And while it did so to the upside, nobody but Zero Hedge and a very few other blogs, most notably Themis Trading, cared (and a whole lot of other "experts" ridiculed our views of HFT as liquidity extracting, because yes they are, rebate chasing, sub penny frontrunning parasites). Now that the tables have turned, everyone, up to and including that caricature Jim Cramer can't get enough of bashing it. Which is why for anyone still relatively new, and thus unjaded, to the topic, we present this informative and succinct six-part videoclip series just released by Securities Technology Monitor titled "High Frequency Minutes" discussing all the latest paradigms in the world of modern cutthroat, nanosecond trading.

Poor Ben Bernanke. The greatest financial train wreck in history is going to happen on his watch, and it will be mostly his predecessor’s doing. But not the work of Alan Greenspan alone. The Washington elite and their compulsively clever counterparts around the world have set the US (and global) economy up for a currency crisis of gargantuan proportions.

When?

Soon.

When in doubt, recycle... In this case the rumor that China would bail out Europe is about to get second billing. From Bloomberg, quoting Wen Jiabao at the Dalian World Economic Forum:

• WEN SAYS CHINA WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE INVESTMENT IN EUROPE
• WEN SAYS CHINA IS WILLING TO EXTEND HELP TO EUROPE

Granted, nothing new here, and it simply means that China will be happy to buy European assets at firesale prices and invest in 20%+ IRR projects, but the algos, which have not yet seen this news, are expected to kneejerk higher, regardless of how short the latest intervention halflife will be (recall that China already has sizable investment in Greece, Portugal, the EFSF and the EUR). Call it what it is - doubling down, all over again. That said, the bailout for Europe will not come free, and once that realization hits the market, this may have a completely opposite reaction that the one intended...

It is one thing (what thing that is we are not sure, but we have heard others say it, so like all good lemmings we will say it too) for Rick Perry to call Social Security a ponzi scheme. After all he is some crazy, foaming in the mouth conservative, as uber-Keynesian liberal Paul Krugman may call him. And that's fine. What confuses us, however, is why Social Security would be called a ponzi by the same liberal noted previously: none other than Paul Krugman himself.

In a moment of clarity, Tiger's Julian Robertson educates the money-honey on just how bad things are. Robertson started by trumpeting how bad macro is everywhere, moved on to Europe being in a 'state of financial collapse', likes shorting weak European currencies (Hungarian Forint) and warns of the possibility of a rapid rise in interest rates in the US. He is positive on NOK, thinks Canada is a 'very well run country', is a buyer of US large cap tech (citing GOOG and AAPL specifically), and sees Visa/Mastercard growing at 20%+ per year for some time.

While two weeks ago the notable feature in the NYSE short interest update was that it had grown by a whopping 1 billion shares, or the most in over two years, this week's highlighted feature is that in the second half of August evil "speculators" did not relent in their negative bias, and brought the total NYSE Group short interest to a two year high or 14.9 billion shares, a 484 million share increase from the prior week, and the highest since July 2009 when the market still was unaware that central planning was the name of the game, and being short actually meant taking on the Chief Printing Officer head on (and fewer still realized that being long gold was the only effective way to "fight the Fed"). And just like last week when we speculated that we can "expect some even more furious short covering sprees to send the S&P much higher on an intraday basis" courtesy of this massive short interest overhang (which will without doubt be used by stock custodians to create a rally if and when needed, just like back in March of 2009, by making recalling shorts in every name), the probability of a massive "face off" rally grows as more and more join the ranks of those believing that the US capital market still plays by the rules. Newsflash: it does not. And anyone trading stocks, on either the long or short side, is guaranteed to lose.

Since there is no point anymore in doing any analysis or wasting time thinking, here is the copy and paste of the relevant section from a just released piece in Bloomberg. "Greek Default, Euro Exit Inevitable, Std Chartered CEO Tells Sky. Default, euro exit won’t “necessarily” occur in next 1 or 2 mos., but “quite likely at some stage,” Standard Chartered CEO Gerard Lyons tells Sky News. Greece “not going to pull down Europe” or cause world recession." Actually, the last bit may be a rumor, at least if one remembers what happened to global banking after Lehman was taken down in a "controlled" Chapter 7. Anyway, Johnny 5: take it away.

While 30 minutes ago Brazil's Central Bank policy head Mendes spoke in Brasilia saying that the "Euro is less important in Brazil international reserves", and "Brazil seeks reserve currencies with solid fiscal positions", we are now supposed to believe a rumor cited by Reuters that BRICs are setting up for coordinated buying of European peripheral sovereign debt? It appears Rumor Fatigue has taken hold as the market rallied 6pts and then sold it all back within the same minute.

Add this from Reuters to today's rumor trifecta to make the day RDA allowance of crazy pills complete:

• BRICS COUNTRIES IN "VERY PRELIMINARY" TALKS TO COORDINATE PURCHASES OF EURO ZONE SOVEREIGN DEBT - BRAZIL GOV'T SOURCE

And so in one day we have heard rumors of China, Russia and Brazil (in this case"citing a monetary official"... sure beats "unidentified Italian government sources" ahem FT) all bail out Europe, none of which will inevitably happen mind you because these countries aren't governed by idiots, although "idiots" is precisely who trades this market. See the attached chart for the kneejerk reaction to this latest headline.

Even though it has since provoked a firestorm of denials and refutations, the reality is that Dutch media RTLZ probably had some very good sources (certainly better than the FT's yesterday when China was supposed to LBO Italy for the 4th time in 2011) to release the following information, namely that according to the Finance Ministry, the bankruptcy of Greece is inevitable, and that the "question is no longer whether but how Greece goes bankrupt." Additionally, Reuters added that according to Jan Kees de Jager, "We are studying scenarios in secret together with the Dutch central bank (DNB) and also with other countries. We are looking at our own economy, our government finances, the financial sector and consequences for Europe," De Telegraaf added that the "other countries" also included Germany and Deutsche Bank. He said it was difficult to let a country go bankrupt in a controlled way. "Always, if something goes wrong there are effects on other countries, on central banks. So you will have to take into account side-effects. That is precisely the reason why we are looking at different scenarios behind closed doors." A ministry source later confirmed a report on Dutch broadcaster RTL that the scenarios being studied included default by Greece. Of course, in keeping with the European M.O. of spreading a rumor, gauging the market response, and if response is unpleasant, to immediately refute it, Dow Jones and everyone else has since reported  that the Dutch were only kidding and were not calling for an orderly default for Greece. Sure. Just preparing for one. Huge semantic difference there...

Heeeeere's the teleprompter again. Because it was at least 24 hours since he was on TV again spewing gripping rhetoric and doing his hypnotrance: "you must pass this bill...you must pass this bill...you must pass this bill...you must pass this bill..." PS - shot for every time Obama says, "you must pass this bill" or a version thereof.

One of the parallel consequences of the market plunging (although nowhere near as far as it would had central bankers not be ubiquitously present to cushion every blow) in the past month on fears of another Great Financial Crisis, coupled with concerns of global insolvency, has been a surge in stock correlations (if not so much between stocks and other risk assets such as bonds and gold), to the highest point since the Lehman collapse. Putting a number to the "point" - 97.2%. Here is how BNY Convergex' Nicholas Colas summarizes the recent surge in cross sector correlations: "Disparate markets – stocks, bonds, currencies, and the like – have a lot in common lately. Whether they want to or not. Average correlations between the 10 major sectors of the S&P 500 have reached 97.2%, from 82.1% just three months ago. That’s the highest level of such common price action since the Financial Crisis. Gold and silver have continued to provide actual diversification, and Investment Grade bonds are also holding their own in this regard. They are at least moving on their own, rather than lockstep with the rest of the world. The difference between investing in Emerging Markets equities, Developed Markets equities, and High Yield bonds is now effectively zero. We think these high correlations will plague markets through the end of the year, since they are fundamentally caused by worries over European financial market solvency. Those aren’t going away any times soon." Well, they might, if someone actually believes the lies spewed by European bankocrats, who have now reached new lows in dealing with information, by sicing regulators against those who write OpEds. Very soon the dissemination of facts will also be made illegal, but until then, we will likely see correlations continue to trade, and soon hit 1.000 as everything trades in perfect lockstep with every other robot traded "thing."

The only notable thing about today's $21 billion 9-year 11-month reopening was the yield which at 2.00% was the lowest ever. Granted less than half was allocated at the high but obviously the interest was there, even with Direct Bidders tumbling from a record 31.7% take down in the last auction, to a perfectly average 11% today. In their place came Indirect Bidders, who saw their take down rise from 35.4% to 48.9%. And while the Bid To Cover dropped from 3.22 to 3.1, it was still just in line with the LTM average, and is not at all indicative of weakness as some speculated, especially with the WI trading at 1.99, just before the pricing, indicating the auction was in line with expectations, if maybe a tad on the weak side. Following tomorrow's final auction of the week, in which the Treasury sells 30 Year bonds, which may or may not be very well bid depending on Op Twist expectations (although if Gross' record duration extension is any indication, the copycats will be there in full force), total US debt will be knocking on $14.8 trillion's door once this week's auctions are settled.