Archive - Nov 29, 2012 - Story

Just as the ever soaring Argentina default swaps indicated that a technical default for the Latin American country - one which would eventually morph into a second full blown default in a decade - was all but inevitable (and previews extensively here), the twisting and turning multi-year story of Argentina vs its "vulture" holdout creditors got its latest dramatic installment last night. Shortly after market close, the Second Circuit court of appeals once again override last week's critical order by Judge Griesa that Argentina promptly pay everyone or face monetary exclusions, lumping together any and all agents who facilitated the ongoing isolation of the holdout hedge funds from the broader group which in Griesa's view had pari passu status throughout.

As ever, it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly why gold and all precious metals fell in price. Interestingly, oil fell by even more - NYMEX crude was down by 1% and was down by more than 1.7% at one stage. The CME Group, which operates the U.S. COMEX gold futures market, said Wednesday's plunge in gold was not the consequence of a "fat finger" or a human error. The trading wasn’t even fast enough to trigger a pause on Globex, said CME.  One thing that we can say for certain was that there was massive, concentrated selling as the New York stock markets opened with some 35,000 lots sold which is equivalent to 3.5 million ounces and saw the price fall from $1,735/oz to $1,711/oz between 0825 and 0830 EST. One sell order alone was believed to be 24 tonnes or 770,000 troy ounces.  Incredibly there was 35% daily volume in just 60 seconds. The selling, like all peculiar, counter intuitive, sharp sell offs in recent months, was COMEX driven with COMEX contracts slammed leading to further stop loss selling. The selling may have been by speculative players on the COMEX. It may have been algo or computer trading driven or tech selling – although this is less likely. Informed commentators questioned the nature of the selling as a large institutional COMEX trading entity would normally gradually sell a position of this size in order to maximise profit.

• As this has been priced in since September 13, it should come as no surprise to anyone: Fed Stimulus Likely in 2013 (Hilsenrath)
• Bowles Says Fiscal Cliff Deal Unlikely by End of Year (Bloomberg)
• Argentina debt repayment order frozen (FT)
• Obama Is Flexible on Highest Tax Rates (WSJ)... not really
• Geithner deployed for fiscal cliff talks (FT)
• Audit firms Deloitte and KPMG sued in HP's Autonomy acquisition (Reuters)
• Euro-Zone Budget Proposal Is Unveiled (WSJ)
• EU Nations Clash on Thresholds for Direct ECB Oversight (Bloomberg)
• LDP leader Abe: BOJ must ease until inflation hits 3 percent (Reuters)
• SNB’s Jordan Says High Swiss Franc Burdens Many Companies (Bloomberg)
• EU to launch free trade negotiations with Japan: EU officials (Reuters)

We have again reached a point where attempting to explain away an utterly irrational market, in which sentiment and momentum shifts on a dime overriding any fundamental newsflow, and summarizing overnight catalysts has become a moot point. With stocks acting and reacting like petulant, schizophrenic children with ADHD, fundamentals are totally meaningless: yesterday and the overnight trading session have become perfect examples as prepared bulletins by two politicians, which said absolutely nothing of significance or constructive - have been enough to override 72 hours worth of actual fundamental deteriorating data, and also offset each other. Will Congress resolve the Fiscal cliff in its 10 remaining days in session without a major impetus to move such as a market plunge? Of course not, but once again the question has become one of who sells first, and the momentum piles on - and if there is no downside momentum, there are no volume ramps. In the meantime all the sellside firms have gone uber bullish on 2013, setting up the Fiscal Cliff as a perfect strawman. Of course the "Cliff" will be surmounted eventually, and after some near-term pain, but the reality is that the resulting rising taxes across the world in 2013 will be a major economic headwind, just the opposite of what the sellside crew is saying as one after another strategists push out optimistic outlooks on the next year to sucker in what little remaining retail interest in the farce formerly known as the market may be left.

Those who have been following the recent developments over the Greek distressed debt buyback, which in any normal universe would have been considered an event of default but certainly not in "special cases" such as Greece where the country's official default would start the Lehman-like domino collapse as apparently getting a 70 cent haircut in 8 months is a "voluntary" event, have been quite confused by the internal dynamics. On one hand the sole beneficiary of the transaction are those hedge funds who bought the GGB2 bonds when they tanked to lows just barely in the double digits as a % of par; on the other, there is absolutely no benefit to the Greek people as a result of this sub-par prepayment, as the only fund flow benefits hit the bondholders (and it is up to Greece to figure out how to grow its GDP by over 4% per year over the next 8 years). Then let's not forget that nobody has any clue yet where the funding for said buyback will come from. And finally, as Kathimerini just reported, we learn that one group that has just vocally declared against the buy back are the very people who are supposed to be benefiting from the Greek bailout: i.e., the country's bankers.

Three years ago, a hard fought landmark FOIA lawsuit was won by the great Bloomberg reports, the late Mark Pittman, in which the Fed was forced to disclose a plethora of previously secret bailout information, which in turn spurred the movement to "audit the Fed" and include a variety of largely watered down provisions in the Frank-Dodd bill. This victory came despite extensive objections by the Fed and the threat that the case may even escalate to the highly politicized Supreme Court, which lately has demonstrated conclusively that not only is justice not blind, but goes to the highest ideological bidder. Moments ago, Europe just learned that when it comes to secrecy of its supreme monetary leaders, in this case all originating from Goldman Sachs and defending data highly sensitive to the same Goldman Sachs, the European central bank's secrecy is not only matched by that of the Fed, but even more engrained in the "judicial" system of the Eurozone, after the European Union General Court in Luxembourg just announced that the European Central Bank will be allowed to refuse access to secret files showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its debt. Why? Simple: recall that it was Goldman Sachs who was the primary "advisor" on a decade worth of FX swaps-related deals which allowed Greece to outright lie about both its fiscal deficit and its total debt levels, and that it was a Goldman alum who became head of the same Greek debt office just before the country imploded. And certainly the ECB was involved and knew very all about the Greek behind the scenes shennanigans. And who happens to be head of the ECB? Why yet another former Goldman worker, of course. Mario Draghi.

UPDATE: 0143ET - entire ramp has been retraced

First we saw some shenanigans in Gold and Silver this morning, followed by some very jerky moves in S&P 500 futures off the lows. Tonight while everything was gliding along quietly, someone in their infinite wisdom decided that 0005ET was the perfect time buy around 11,000 S&P 500 e-mini contracts (or around $750mm notional exposure); instantly devouring the entire stack of orders. This move was not in any way followed by any other asset class (EURJPY twitched a little at it) and as far as we can see there was/is absolutely no news to accompany the flash-smash. That is all...