Archive - Nov 2012 - Story

Hopes for an early recovery in the global economy may be overoptimistic, according to CLSA's Russel Napier, as he notes the expansion of China's reserves, which has been an engine of global economic growth, is about to come to a shuddering halt. As eFinancial News notes, Chinese reserves have decelerated dramatically over the last five years and are now close to zero. Napier said of the graph: "It is the most important chart in the world. The growth in Chinese reserves has determined all the key developments in financial markets in the last two decades. It printed lots of currency and artificially depressed the US yield curve. It has been the cornerstone of global growth, and now it's over."

Argentina's bonds suffered one of their largest single-day price drops on record today as it appears ever more obvious that a re-default will occur. With Elliott still battling over holdouts from a prior life, it seems the smart-money is long-gone this time leaving the momentum-chasing yield-grabbing flow suddenly fully cognizant that the bonds are in fact dead. 'Acceptance' is upon us as we wrote a month ago: "As for the Argentina vs Elliott bare-knuckled match, enjoy it while you can: very soon the Latin American country will likely proceed with yet another round of creeping selective defaults, exchange offers, consent solicitations, and other debt reorganizations, which will make the current free-for-all into a total and epic labyrinth of creditors, interests, bondholder classes, general unsecured claims, and other total confusion."

On a day when many will gorge excessively, some will starve still. Giving thanks for the simplest of staples is hard for many (and getting harder). As a result of the drought this summer the Federal government ended up buying less food than normal, and because this excess food is used to provide assistance to the poor in many cases, there simply may not be enough to go around.  This sets up a potentially tragic situation as we head into 2013, and is likely to bring heightened social unrest to our shores as we outlined in my recent article The Global Spring.

Most recently, in "Elliott Management Vs Argentina Round 2: Now It's Personal" we laid out the story of how in the ongoing legal fight between Argentina's prominent distressed debt creditor, and exchange offer holdout, Elliott Management (and to a smaller degree Aurelius), and distressed debtor Argentina, the moving pieces continue in flux, even as various US legal institutions have demanded that Argentina proceed with paying the holdouts despite the Latin American country's vocal prior refusals to do so, and most importantly, the lack of a sovereign payment enforcement mechanism. Last night, the fight escalate one more, and perhaps final time, before the Rubicon is crossed and Argentina either pays Elliott, "or else" the country proves all those who furiously bought up Argentina CDS in the past two weeks correct, and the country redefaults on $24 billion of debt. Because as Reuters reports, late last night, US District Judge Griesa overseeing the Argentina case, ordered the Latin American country to make immediate payment with a deadline for escrow account funding of December 15.

About a month ago, in the third-quarter report of a Canadian global macro fund, its strategist made the interesting observation that “…Four ideas in particular have caught the fancy of economic policy makers and have been successfully sold to the public…” One of these ideas “…that has taken root, at least among the political and intellectual classes, is that one need not fear fiscal deficits and debt provided one has monetary sovereignty…”. This idea is currently growing, particularly after Obama’s re-election. But it was only after writing our last letter, on the revival of the Chicago Plan (as proposed in an IMF’ working paper), that we realized that the idea is morphing into another one among Keynesians: That because there cannot be a gold-to-US dollar arbitrage like in 1933, governments do indeed have the monetary sovereignty. It is not; and in the process of explaining why, we will also describe the endgame for the current crisis... "…We cannot arbitrage fiat money, but we can repudiate the sovereign debt that backs it! And that repudiation will be the defining moment of this crisis…"

The Austrian central bank keeps most of its 280 metric tons of gold reserves in the United Kingdom, Vice Governor Wolfgang Duchatczek was quoted as saying in the finance committee of the country’s parliament today, according to Bloomberg. Answering lawmakers’ questions, Duchatczek said 80%, or 224.4 metric tons of the metal was stored in the U.K., 17% or 48.7 metric tons in Austria and 3% in Switzerland, according to a summary of a closed-door committee meeting provided by the parliament. The reserve has been unchanged since 2007, Duchatczek was quoted as saying. The central bank has earned 300 million euros ($385 million) over the last ten years by lending the gold, he said.

With America shut for Thanksgiving today, what was going to be an abysmal volume day, coupled with the usual any news is good news levitation following the lowest volume day of the year, will be even worse. Sure enough, the overnight session started off with a bang, when in the vacuum of night, a lift everything algo sent the EURUSD soaring by 40 pips higher on no news. With the entire risk complex firmly anchored to the EURUSD pair as the key driver, it pushed risk across the entire market well higher to set the early session mood with the very first trade. Followed light trading and a gradual drift lower which could not be offset even with a China HSBC Flash PMI print of 50.4, up from 49.5 in October, and the first 50+ print in 13 month (to accompany the new political regime: after all, the US is not the only nation where economic data mysteriouly levitate with key political events). This continued until about Europe open, when the monthly release of European PMIs came out, which once again were confusing to say the least with France posting the biggest and most surprising pick up, after its Manufacturing PMI rose from 43.7 to 44.7, on expectations of 44.0, while the Services PMI increased from 44.6 to 46.1, well above the expected 45.0 print. Germany was less exuberant with manufacturing rising from 45.5 to 46.2, although the Services PMI dropped from 48.4 to 48.0, missing expectations of 48.3, sending the series to its lowest in 41 months.

Green shoots, growth off a small base, and self-reported awesomeness notwithstanding, the crux of many investors' thesis for believing in a housing recovery is the fact that homebuilder stocks have risen so magnificently; after all the stock market is a 'discounting mechanism' right? (aside from September 2000 and October 2007) The funny thing is - we've seen this kind of 'rally' in homebuilder stocks before, and somewhat remarkably we are following its trajectory almost to the day. 284-days from the March 2009 trough, XHB (the homebuilder ETF) peaked and then lost 30% in the next 45 days. Today marked Day-285 of the current homebuilder rally (coincidentally running at around the same 120% annualized return and exhibiting similar short-squeeze tendencies). Add to that worrying analog, the third divergence between homeowner 'comfort' and renter 'comfort this year - each prior time ending in a rapid collapse in homeowner confidence; and we remain skeptical that the 'market' knows best in this case.

The Telegraph reports that George Osborne thinks big banks are good for society. Why would Osborne want to see more of something which requires government bailouts to subsist? Because that is the reality of a large, interconnective banking system filled with large, powerful interconnected banks. Under a free market system (i.e. no bailouts) the brutal liquidation resulting from the crash of a too-big-to-fail megabank would serve as a warning sign. Large interconnective banks would be tarnished as a risky counterparty. In the system we have (and the system Japan has lived with for the last twenty years) bailouts prevent liquidation, there are no real disincentives (after all capitalism without failure is like religion without sin — it doesn’t work), and the bailed-out too-big-to-fail banks become liquidity sucking zombies hooked on bailouts and injections.

When it comes to government bailout case studies, the past four years have plenty. One among them is the financial company jovially called Ally - a name which well-paid nomenclature consultants were convinced would inspire confidence and trust. And to an extent they were right - after all we are talking about a firm which several years ago had a far more unpleasant name: GMAC, short for General Motors Acceptance Corporation. It was GMAC which, as one of the various entities on the receiving end of involuntary taxpayer generosity in 2008/2009, received a $17.2 billion bailout. The reason for GMAC's Ally's collapse is that the firm was loaded up to the gills on various subprime and other NINJA auto-financing loans used to purchase cars made by that other spectacular collapse: General Motors, maker of such external combustion vehicles as the Chevy Volt. Over the past several months the Ally CEO, Michael Carpenter, decided to little by little start paying taxpayers back, having sold a Canadian unit to RBC in October for $4.1 billion, and its Mexican Insurance business to Ace Ltd for $865 million. Moments ago the firm just announced it would be selling its international auto-finance businesses, including its operations in Europe, LatAm and a 40% stake in its Chinese JV (a business it previously said it would not seek to divest), for a total of $4.2 billion. The buyer? Another previously bailed out company, and one which still counts the government as its biggest shareholder: General Motors. And so the vendor financing circle is now complete, with GM finally reuniting with its old captive finance units, or at least the international part of them, which were fully owned until GM sold 51% of it to Cerberus in 2006, after which everything went to hell.

2012 was a tough year for some European government bond markets (Spain +100bps). Even with the rallies of the last few months, we remain dramatically wider than at the beginning and primary issuance is becoming increasingly reliant upon domestic bank reacharounds and/or ECB handouts. UBS expects 2013 to be similar in terms of gross supply to 2012 (around EUR 772bn) and aggregate net supply to fall slightly to EUR 208bn. However, these modest improvements overall (driven by drops in France, Germany, and Holland gross issuance) hide the biggest concern. Spain's gross (and net) issuance is likely to rise to EUR 124bn in 2013 (up 20% over 2012!) and Italy's net supply will rise notably next year (even with significant redemptions). Portugal, also faces a very significant increase in net supply in 2013.

Occasionally history repeats. Sometimes history rhymes. Just One Year Ago, the market world was saved... Happy Thanksgiving (and Hope-taking)

S&P 500 futures saw the lowest non-holiday trading day volume of the year and the lowest average trade size of the year also but capped a four-day win streak (biggest in four months) with small gain. The overnight plunge in futures (on EUR weakness following the Greek #Fail) was entirely retraced - slowly but surely but once Europe closed, the US was dead. Treasury weakness and EUR strength (JPY weakness) were the correlated drivers of equity exuberance today, oil flip-flopped in its non-believing 'cease-fire' way (recoupling with gold on the week); Silver surged; and credit tended to track stocks but HY modestly outperformed (though HYG closed red). VIX traded with a 14 handle briefly but ended +0.3 vols at 15.4%. Stocks (especially the big bellwethers) tracked VWAP all afternoon as all but Johnny-5 had left the building. HP Bonds cracked, AAPL green, SPY green, HYG red, VXX green, volume negligible - that is all.

Everyone loses:

• HOSTESS JUDGE APPROVES MOTION TO WIND DOWN COMPANY
  
• HOSTESS WINS APPROVAL TO CLOSE AND BEGIN SELLING ASSETS

Next up: the Twinkie economy.