Archive - 2011 - Story

So the market has completely latched on to the idea that LTRO is back-door QE. Does this make any sense and can it even work? So banks can borrow money for up to 3 years from the ECB.  They can buy sovereign bonds with that money.  Those bonds would be posted as collateral at the ECB. The bull case would have banks buying lots of European Sovereign Debt with this program. The purchases would be focused on Italian and Spanish bonds with maturities less than 3 years. Buying bonds with a  maturity longer than the repo facility is risky.  The banks would need to be assured they can roll the debt at the end of the repo period.  Some may be convinced, but the bulk of the purchases will be 3 years and in so that they loans can be repaid with the redemption proceeds. So banks buy the bonds and earn the carry and all is good?  Not so fast. The LTRO can help the banks with their existing funding problems without a doubt, but it is unclear that encourages new bond purchases. I think we have already seen the initial impact.  There will be significant interest in tapping the LTRO for existing positions.  Some small amount of incremental purchases may occur at the time, but the banks will use this to finance existing positions. Now we will wait to see rates do well, but will be disappointed.  The big banks with risk management departments will decide to decline.  The risk/reward just won’t be attractive to them. In the end, this won’t do much for the sovereign debt market, but will shine a spotlight on which banks should be shorted and will possibly expedite their default.

A week ago, we touched upon the likelihood that the recent gold sell-off was driven primarily due to a quirk in liquidity provisioning in which gold plays a key role via its "forward lease rates", or the Libor-GOFO differential. Specifically, in "As Negative Gold Lease Rates Collapse, The Gold Sell Off Is Likely Coming To An End" we said, "In a nutshell, negative lease rates mean one has to pay for the "privilege" of lending out one's gold as collateral - a prima facie collateral crunch. The lower the lease rate, the greater the use of gold as a source of liquidity - and since the indicator is public - it is all too easy for entities that do have liquidity to game the spread and force sell offs by those who are telegraphing they are in dire straits and will sell their gold at any price if forced, to prevent a liquidity collapse." Said otherwise, the lower lease rates drop, and they recently hit a record low for the 3M varietal, the likelier it is that gold may see substantial moves lower. Today, Morgan Stanley's Peter Richardson recaps precisely what was said here, in a note titled "Recent fall in gold prices points to bank funding costs." Granted, MS only looks at the first part of the equation - the dropping lease rates, and ignores the re-normalization in gold, aka the tightening in lease rates. Well, with the 3M forward lease rate now almost back to unchanged, it appears our speculation that the gold sell off, with spot at $1575 on the 15th, is over were correct, and gold is now $40 higher, and just below the critical 200 DMA that everyone saw as the catalyst of gold going to $0. So what does MS have to add to our analysis? Well, much more optimism for one, because not only does the bank think we are right that the collapse in negative lease rates (i,e., the flattening to practically unchanged) mean the sell off is over, but such a normalization of the gold lease market has "the makings of a renewed upward assault on the recent all-time high.... Our current gold price forecast for 2012 of US$2,200/oz remains in place under these circumstances." Qed.

While the world of risk explodes to the upside on the back of the LTRO-based carry trade expectations (which is not evident at all in some of the more technical relationships across the sovereign space no matter what headlines try and tell you), the very backbone of support for the fiscal evolution that Europe thinks it will achieve is now trading at a five-day low price having dropped notably post the earlier Fitch 'FrAAAnce' announcement. It is simple enough to think that banks will rapidly seek risk and buy sovereigns with their newfound wealth, but looking at CDS-Cash basis (the difference between CDS spreads and bond spreads) there has been almost no shift in supply/demand (which we would expect to tip to bond outperformance if the carry trade were being placed) and moreover, the sovereign spread curves are NOT bull steepening as one would expect from modest reach for say 2Y/3Y peripheral yield versus the 3Y LTRO. The bottom-line seems to be that equity markets are buoyed by a broad risk asset rally (and TSY selling and 2s10s30s rally) while the underlying beneficiary of this 'solution' does not seem to be improving so much. The strength in ES appears like simple momentum off an overshoot yesterday as risk assets broadly never really sold off like ES did and are now holding up well enough for today.

As pointed out earlier, today's manic shift in market sentiment is being squarely attributed to the latest deux es out of Europe - the last Hail Mary attempt to come out of Europe - the 3 year LTRO, which was announced 2 weeks ago. So before said machnia becomes a flop ex, here is, courtesy of Bloomberg, a summary of Wall Street's expectations for what tomorrow will bring. Incidentally, the reason why the bulk of outlooks on the LTRO are negative, is because all this action does is push any real action from the record-levered ECB (whose balance sheet can be seen in its full perspective here) further back, and forces Europe's banks (and numerous American ones) to hope and pray they can survive one more [day|week|month] on their own without real central bank support.

With many thanks to Art Cashin, whose note this morning reminds us of today's bipolar shift in the market attitude. Of course, if said "Yes, Virginia" letter was written today, it would come from a desperate hedge fund manager seeing fax after fax of inbound redemption notices, and the New York Sun's response would even be able to give the name of the appropriate individuals in the Santa Claus Central Planning administration.

We thought we had seen it all. And then comes Goldman. The firm, which continues to eviscerate its clients, just closed its Long Copper and Zinc June 2012 trades at massive losses: the first was opened on May 23 at $8,804/t, and closed on December 19 at $7,274/t, for a loss of $1,530/t, the second opened May 23 at $2,189/t, closed on December 19 at $1,891/t, for a loss of $298/t. So far so good - as all our readers know by now, one should do what Goldman does (i.e., sells to "clients"), not what Goldman tells its clients to do. This is not surprising. What however, is hilarious is that in the same report that Goldman closes its June 2012 Cu/Zn longs, it also... opens Cu/Zn longs. That's right - "While we maintain our bullish views on copper and zinc into 2012, we close out our May 23 recommendations for these metals at a considerable loss, and resetting the recommendations at December 19 prices." So somehow, while losing clients up to a blended 15%, Goldman continues holding the feet of those who still listen to them to the fire. Because this time it will be different.

Once again the US Department of Truth succeeds in fooling the algos: today's November Housing Starts number was a blockbuster: at 685K annualized units, it came higher than the highest estimate (range was 600K to 655K), and certainly higher than the average estimate of 635K. It was obviously higher than the downward revised previous number of 627K. All great: housing soaring, employment must be back. Right? Wrong. One peek under the covers shows where all the "growth" comes from - the entirety of the surge was due to the absolutely hollow 5+ multi-family units which jumped by a whopping 25% sequentially, and which as everyone in the industry knows are nothing but inventory padding by homebuilders who "build just to build." Unfortunately, as the all important 1 Unit structure trendline shows, there is absolutely no improvement in this critical series. But hey - it fooled the robots. And now it will take at least 12-24 hours before vacuum tubes process the reality of this latest spin. By then, however, we may well have had our Christmas rally.

While well-known to most, what may be lost on all those calling for the ECB to commence outright printing, is that as today's Bloodmberg chart of the day shows, the ECB's balance sheet is not only far greater than the Fed, at $3.2 trillion compared to $2.9 trillion for Ben Bernanke, but at 30x leverage, has the same risk as Lehman did at its peak. However, one major distinction between the Fed and the ECB is that while the Fed continues to be shrouded in almost impenetrable secrecy on an absolute basis, it is transparent as a wet t-shirt competition during Spring Break at Panama City Beach compared to the ECB. From Bloomberg: "Without information on the quality of assets on the ECB’s balance sheet or how far it’s willing to allow leverage to increase, investors may doubt the bank’s ability to prop up the financial system, and demand higher yields to buy some countries’ bonds, he said. "Sovereign spreads could rise again if investors become uncomfortable with ECB leverage without a fully detailed rescue package,” said Tyce. “The ECB is providing liquidity and confidence to the banking system, yet all the while its own leverage and balance sheet size is hitting new highs. It seems likely that the market will begin to watch the rising leverage with interest and growing concern."

• According to an EU source, EU finance ministers failed to agree on raising ESM/EFSF EUR 500bln joint ceiling. However, Eurozone finance ministers agreed to provide EUR 150bln in bilateral loans to the IMF for bailout use, according to an EU statement
• Stronger than expected IFO data from Germany, together with successful T-Bill auctions from Spain helped risk-appetite
• Weakness in the USD-Index provided support to EUR/USD, GBP/USD, commodity-linked currencies, and WTI crude futures

• FBI Runs ‘Perfect Hedge’ to Nab Inside Traders (Bloomberg)
• Japan in Talks With China About Purchasing Government Debt (Bloomberg)
• Bankers Seek to Debunk ‘Imbecile’ Attack on Top 1% (Bloomberg)
• UK rejects EU pleas to boost IMF coffers (FT)
• Spain borrowing costs dive, ECB loans seen at work (Reuters)
• Dexia Sells Off Luxembourg Division (FT)
• Japan Plans to Bolster Intervention War Chest (Bloomberg)

While European banks may or may not succeed in delaying the inevitable unwind of the Eurozone by a month or two, the European credit catastrophe is taking on a grotesque form, first in Greece, where following news that the budget deficit will soar past an unprecedented 10% of GDP, the Greek government has halted virtually all cash outflows. Ekathimerini reports that "The government has decided to stop tax returns and other obligation payments to enterprises, salary workers and pensioners." In other words, the entire government has now virtually halted one half of its operations - the outlays - as the country reverts even more to its status as European bank debt slave, in perpetuity, or until the country breaks away from the Eurozone and reinstitutes the Drachma (which as Zero Hedge pointed out first in August, continues to trade When Issued at various desks) whichever comes first.

Tomorrow's LTRO is now the latest deus ex out of Europe soon to become a bust ex machina. With consensus for Europe's TLGP operation, which the wildly optimistic ones equate with a Risk On facilitating carry trade expansion facility, at roughly €250, some banks have indicated just how desperate they are and outlier estimates such as those from Citi and RBS see allottment hitting as much as €550 billion. As explained previously so many times, a carry on trade presumes incremental leverage and loading up on even more sovereign debt, something even bank CEOs have said they can no longer afford to do, and furthermore as Exane explained "analysts question whether banks will heed Sarkozy’s suggestion they use the LTRO to finance euro-area governments; it is no substitute for QE." Ironically, by letting the ECB off the hook, for the time being, the LTRO being misperceived as a QE equivalent is making Europe's reality even more difficult as it has greatly weakened the case for Draghi printing. And that is the only thing that can help Europe, if only in the short- to medium-term. But for now, with one day left until the latest Christmas illusion is shattered, we had some great news out of Spain which managed to place 3 and 6 month bill at plunging rates.

Fitch admits, via Bloomberg headlines, what we already knew:

*FITCH: EFSF DEBT 'AAA' RATING DEPENDS ON FRANCE REMAINING 'AAA'

*FITCH SAYS RISK OF EFSF DOWNGRADE HAS INCREASED

It is no surprise that the ECB has been less than overwhelming in its optimism, unlike Messers Barroso, Van Rompuy et al. when discussing the current and future state of the union that is Europe. While not pessimistic per se, the focus on zee stabilitee and lack of bazooka (no we don't see the 3Y LTROs as a magic bullet) is perhaps related to their view of the difficulties faced in addressing the needs of an increasingly disparate gaggle of countries. In their December Financial Stability Review, the ECB points to four key risks: (contagion, funding, macroeconomy, and trade imbalances), they fear "euro area financial stability increased considerably in the second half of 2011, as the sovereign risk crisis and its interplay with the banking sector worsened in an environment of weakening macroeconomic growth prospects". Summarizing into seven charts, the ECB provides a quick-and-dirty perspective on what is increasingly becoming obvious as capital flows and funding needs interplay with one another (for worse rather than better).