Archive - Nov 2, 2012 - Story

Supposedly this is big news, so we probably have to report it. Just out from the NY Mayor's office:

We have decided to cancel the NYC marathon. The New York Road Runners will have additional information in days ahead for participants.

— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) November 2, 2012

... and just as the residents of some NY boroughs were eagerly looking forward to the New York version of the hunger games.

From the ECB's Virtual Currency Schemes, aka the "Bash Bitcoin Boondoggle" (p. 27): "A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity." Considering that this elucidation comes from the very same entity that launched the SMP, LTRO, OMT, EFSF, ESM, oh, and of course, TARGET2, and whose head said to not short the EUR as there is "no risk" whatsoever in holding said currency, one would expect that this definition is absolutely spot on...

What a roundtrip! After starting off November with a bang, and after nearly retracing all October losses in the aftermath of the NFP headfake in less than 2 trading sessions, the S&P futures literally imploded, and dropped 23 points from the intraday high, the same distance traveled as it crossed yesterday, only to the downside and on very strong volume for the second day in a row. While the 1400 support in ES is once again in play (ES closed literally on the lows of the session at 1405.5), as we suggested earlier, the far more ominous news is that the AAPL bubble appears to have popped (but, but, it is so cheap on forward multiple basis: guess what - forward multiples are based on forward earnings, which may very well never materialize! and thanks to the dividend, not even AAPL's cash hoard is the bastion it one was) and is now close to entering bear market territory, down just shy of 20% from its all time highs of $705.07 hit on September 12. Now with the 200 DMA taken out, the next support is the 20% retracement from the high which is at $564. After that it is freefall for a long time as a very deep gap needs filling. It is unclear just how much of the selling was there to cause max pain for Dick Bove and Rochdale, for whom every tick lower in the stock means a bigger margin call.Finally, news hitting literally seconds ago that MSFT may be launching its own phone if its partner strategy falters, means there go even more margins.

Perhaps the reason why AAPL is having its biggest daily tumble in recent history on the day it officially launched the iPad mini for retail sale, is because all the people who otherwise would be waiting in line in front of FAO Schwartz and inhaling the smell of fresh horse excrement, are doing all they can to obtain gas. Any  gas. Because iHeater, iShower and iFridge just lack that little "oomph" when dealing with people who are cold, smelly and hungry.

When the hits just keep on coming:

Moments ago AAPL broke the 200 DMA. Whether or not this was due to the earlier news from Rochdale getting caught with its pants down, and supposedly losing tons of money due to a rogue trader "buying" the stock as its proceeded to tumble from its all time highs less then 45 days ago (during which time it has lost more than 10 years worth of dividends in market cap), is unclear. What is quite clear, is the moment when the general market realized what had just happened. Sure enough, the jobs number came and want, and ES largely faded that move in under an hour. It remains to be seen if a technical indicator for the world's most widely held stock is more important to the general stock market than how many 60 year old workers the US economy added in October. Oh, and as for that whole iPad mini launch spectacle? Sorry. Time for the iPad Mini Magnum launch... or maybe even the maxiPad.

Bloomberg has an update on the most amusing story of the day, namely that Rochdale appears to have blown daytrading Apple. And guess what: taking a cue from SocGen, UBS, and JPM, it's all a "rogue trader's" fault. Of course, if the trade had gone the "other way", Rochdale would not be needing a bailout, and the rogue trader would be looking forward to a generous holiday bonus.

• Rochdale bought more Apple shares than the brokerage’s management intended around the time of the technology company’s Oct. 25 earnings report, two people familiar told Bloomberg’s Hugh Son, Saijel Kishan and Zeke Faux.
• Rochdale officials told employees a rogue trader amassed the position, one of the people said.

We wonder how many more such "rogue traders" who dabbled in AAPL, and blew up after leveing the house in hopes to make their year on AAPL soaring into year end, will emerge before the next week is over...

The traditional excuse apologists for America's collapsing labor force participation rate use every month is that due to "demographics" and retiring baby boomers, increasingly more old workers are no longer counted by the BLS and as a result, are skewing the labor force. That's where they leave it because digging into details is not really anyone's forte anymore. This would be great if it was true. It isn't. And nowhere is this more visible than in today's jobs report. On the surface, the US generated a whopping 413,000 jobs (after generating a massive 873,000 last month) according to the Household Survey in October. That's great, unfortunately breaking down this cumulative addition by age cohort confirms precisely what we have said: all the jobs are going to old workers, who have zero wage bargaining leverage (as they just want to have a day to day paycheck). To wit: when broken down by age group, the total October increase shows that of the new jobs, 10.7% went to those aged 16-19 (source), 11.6% went to those aged 20-24 (source), a tiny 9.8% went to the prime agr group: 25-54 (source), and a massive 67.8% went to America's baby boomers: those aged 55 and over (source), and who refuse to leave the workforce and make way for others.

And it was shaping up to be a slow news days. From Bloomberg:

• ROCHDALE SAID TO SEEK CAPITAL INJECTION AFTER TRADING ERROR
• ROCHDALE EXECUTIVES SAID TO TIE CAPITAL SHORTAGE TO APPLE TRADE
• ROCHDALE SECURITIES ANALYSTS INCLUDE DICK BOVE

By that logic, can one imagine the epic bailout Rochdale would need if Bank of America trades back to its rightful price well over 50% below current levels? Also, why is Rochdale trading on its own account? According to an unverified rumor, a Roch trader was supposed to be buying 125 shares every half hour, and instead bought 125,000. If correct, oops: that's a $74 million margin call. Finally, the question of the day: How many more funds will claim they bought AAPL due to an "error" and now need a bailout?

You cannot "reform" away the dysfunction of the Greek Status Quo without dismantling the vested interests and the ruling Elites that benefit from the Status Quo. The same can be said of the Status Quo everywhere from the U.S. to China.

You read about it here first (here and here). Now it is time for the sellside (whose products your soft dollars so generously fund) to wake up to what is happening next week.

When summarizing yesterday's first of the month ramp, we said: "Should the NFP disappoint for whatever reason, today's rally will be promptly unwound. On the other hand, as the final major economic datapoint before the election, there is a snowball's chance in hell the NFP beats at anything less than 1 standard deviation [ZH: this was proven this morning when the NFP printed above the highest Wall Street estimate, a 3std dev beat]. The good news, for those who are sick and tired of the constantly fudged metrics, is that after next week, we revert back to normal, and the mysterious economic push higher (a lot of it reflexive: Why are you confident? because stock are higher. Why are stocks higher? because I am confident) in the past 2 months will finally dissipate." Which is why anyone looking for a reason why the futures have proceeded to slide to their day's lows, this may be it: all the good news is now fully priced in. Things to look forward to now: Fiscal Cliff, Debt ceiling debate, further collapse of Greek and potential resumption of Grexit speculation (just look at the EURUSD), Spain bailout (Spanish bonds today are very unhappy), and the prompt unwind of all "better than expected" jobs number following the election, regardless of who wins the Oscar for best presidential performance. Because now there is an alibi for not only weak future numbers, but for historical revisions. It's name is "Sandy" - get used to it: it will be the excuse for every upcoming economic data miss until January.

Democracy has become a religion and anyone who criticises it is labelled a heretic.

As we first observed in February of 2012, we will not tire of repeating that when it comes to the jobs picture there are two key components: the quantitative, or the headline jobs and unemployment rate numbers everyone is fascinated by at 8:30 am each first Friday of the month, and the qualitative, or the number that gets far less attention, yet which is so very critical to Americans on those occasions they want to use their earned wages to purchase goods and services. And this is where the ugly side of today's jobs report came out. Because while the quantitative data was good, just as we and everyone else had expected from the final datapoint before the election (the good news there is that finally we will revert to reality following November 6), the qualitative data was ugly. How ugly? As the BLS reported, the average hourly earnings in October declined from $19.80 to $19.79 in September, and at $19.57 last October. This was only the fifth sequential decline in this series since the start of the Depression in December 2007. But more important was the Y/Y change in average hourly earnings. At 1.1% (down from 1.4% a month ago), this was the lowest Y/Y increase in this series, topping the collapse in real earnings which started in December 2008, and is now the lowest in history. In other words, more jobs may be added, but on a real basis, wages are not even keeping up with inflation!