Archive - Nov 2012 - Story

But, but, a central bank can never lose money. Bzzzz, wrong. As it just so happens, the world's most tragicomic farce of a central bank, and one which is about to officially lost its (faux) "independence" and become a branch of the Japanese government if the up and coming PM Abe has his way, the Bank of Japan, just reported that in the quarter ended September 30, the Japanese central bank reported an operating loss of ¥183.4 billion, and a net loss of ¥232.9 billion. As a comparison, the loss in the same period in 2011 was "only" 91 billion. This is a harbinger of the total collapse that is the utterly meaningless capital tranche of all central banks will go through before the terminal phase of the global Keynesian experiment is finally completed.  But in the meantime, enjoy this chart of the Bank of Japan's balance sheet returning back to a record ¥156... trillion.

In a few minutes - and only a few minutes late - our leader will opine on the topic du jour. While Reid's voice shuddered risk-takers, and Boehner's was perfectly pitched to get the algos juices flowing - we wonder what effect Obama's dulcet tones will have on a now-happy equity market, and if the second-term president is once again merely a catalyst to sell.

Europe was looking a little dark this morning; EURUSD was sliding, sovereign bonds flat-to-wider, and European stocks and credit were at one week lows. Then Speak Boehner opened his mouth and the correlated world of systemic cliff-on / cliff-off jumped to life and saved the day for all asunder. EURUSD remains down on the day as GGBs lose some hope, credit remains an underperformer but the jerk higher in stocks into the close was just remarkable in its idiocy. The equity move looks far out of line to the rest of risk assets for now...

While the common wisdom, espoused by any and all commission-taking wealth manager looking to up his AUM, is that Black Friday sales (and the anecdotal evidence from self-referential store-owners and CEOs) can tell us about the trend in the economy or they offer some divine extrapolated insight into the year's final sales number. The truth; you can't handle the truth.  As BofAML's Michelle Meyer notes, there is no correlation between total holiday sales and Black Friday sales over the past seven years. In fact, we believe that not only are the early estimates of Black Friday sales insignificant, they can send misleading signals. More fundamentally, Black Friday sales can either signal a healthy consumer or a desperate one, depending on the state of the economy. The bottom line is that we advise fading the Black Friday sales reports, but paying attention to the aggregate holiday sales reports.

Just 12 days ago (before the cone of silence began), we saw the beginning of the Boehner bounce as the speaker spaketh and the market obeyeth. Headline-chasing algos know only one thing it appears, when Democrats speak, sell; when Republicans speak, buy... oh how we love these efficient markets...

There are those who may be surprised that last month's number of Seasonally Adjusted New Home Sales, which was then reported at 389K, and which number hit the airwaves days before the Obama reelection, was the highest since April 2010. We are not among them, as we were fully expecting today's number to be a major revision of the September number lower - as just happened, with the whopper of a print revised far lower to 369K - but doubled down with the additional miss of expectations of Seasonally Adjusted annualized new home sales of 390K for October when in reality only 368K were sold. All these numbers are annualized. When observed on an as is basis, in October there was a grand total of 29,000 new homes sold in the entire USA, with the Northeast representing a whopping... 2,000 of this. Oh and of the 29,000 houses sold, 9,000 were not even started. And finally, for those who enjoy pointing out the rise in home prices driven only and exclusively by foreclosure inventory stuffing and removal of all such real estate from the open markets, both the median and average new home price ($237,700 and $278,900) printed at at the lowest since June. Oh wait, we know: Sandy's fault. Which explains all bad data. When the data is good, it is nobody's fault.

Greece and the grand machinations of the European Union came to mind as it occurred to me that all of the fine points aside; Greece had become a ward of the State. The math doesn’t even add up so it can be said that it was a poor attempt at hide-and-seek but we suppose it was the best they could do given their skill-set these days. As you watch the antics of the politicians in Spain you realize that they are first cousins to the Greeks. Prime Minister Rajoy and his merry band of henchmen are playing the same tunes as we have all heard before. The reasons that Spain has not come begging for alms yet is not too complicated. They don’t want to be audited by the Troika, God forbid, they want no one peering at the actual state of their Real Estate market, they don’t want anyone but paid flunkies examining their banks. The ECB will save the world subject to the decisions of Europe’s political leaders. Saving the world is a good thing and keeps getting promised by virtually every religious leader for the past several thousand years; the second Spanish Inquisition is about to begin and the zealot may be found wanting.

Where will the €10bn for the buyback come from? This is far from clear but it is hard to imagine it being found anywhere other than the bailout funds, meaning a new transfer of around €9bn will be needed. This again poses significant political problems as leaders in Germany, the Netherlands and Finland (to name but a few) try to convince their parliaments (and public) that this is not more money into a black hole. It has been suggested that some of the other mechanisms mentioned below could be used to fund the buyback, but this looks impossible since they are being tapped to fill the existing funding gap. These substantial obstacles to a successful debt buyback are crucial since the IMF has already stated its on-going participation in the Greek bailout hinges on this policy. The likes of Finland and the Netherlands have also previously stated that IMF involvement is requirement if they are expected to continue to aid Greece. With a plan on the buyback expected to be in place by 13 December, to allow for the release of the next tranche of bailout funds, this deal could hit a wall even sooner than many expected.

It turns out the topic of today's much expected conference call originating at 72 Cummings Point Road Stamford, is what many already knew yesterday, namely that the SEC has warned SAC that after years and years of pursuits, the enforcer is finally getting close in for the kill, and has sent a Wells Notice, usually a first step before civil charges are filed.

• SAC SAID TO TELL CLIENTS IT GOT WELLS NOTICE FROM SEC LAST WEEK

The notice will be filed against the holdco, implying Cohen himself will be implicated, instead of just the CR Intrinsic OpCo where Martoma worker. Usually the SEC does not file Wells Notices without sufficient backing, so this may finally get interesting. But we are not holding our breath. One needs to simply recall how the SEC bungled its CDS insider trading case vs Millennium and Deutsche to see how the endgame here could well be another epic humiliation for the soon to be Schapro-less regulator.

Harry Reid’s publicly displayed dismay at the lack of progress in the fiscal cliff negotiations finally injected a dose of realism into the process after investors threw caution to the wind and seized on the optimism offered by the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker Boehner on November 16.  We view yesterday’s sound bite as more negative than the aforementioned statement on the White House Lawn, for we now sit 11 days closer to the New Year’s deadline.  Despite this asymmetry, equities suffered only moderate losses giving up just a modicum of the gains from last week. The relative lack of a response to the comments seem puzzling given the price action from the prior several days; however with month end looming, enough buyers kept stocks from selling off violently. My November 13 “Missive” outlined a game theory exercise that suggests this rancor will continue until very late into December and/or the capital markets dislocate thereby ensuring either a falling over the cliff or a band aid solution to avoid the crisis temporarily.  Both parties unfortunately may assume that by agreeing to postpone the tough decisions, they will have prevented a rout in equities; however, the August, 2011 precedent of raising the debt ceiling out of desperation hints otherwise.

Presented with no comment...

Currency wars are set to intensify as the US Senate is considering new sanctions against Iran that would prevent Iran getting paid for its natural resource exports in gold bullion. The new sanctions aimed at reducing global trade with Iran in the energy, shipping and precious metals sectors may soon be considered by the U.S. Senate as part of an annual defense policy bill, senators and aides said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. The sanctions would end "Turkey's game of gold for natural gas," Reuters reported a senior Senate aide as saying, referring to reports that Turkey has been paying for natural gas with gold due to sanctions rules. The legislation "would bring economic sanctions on Iran near de facto trade embargo levels with the hope of speeding up the date by which Iran's economy will collapse," the aide said. Last week Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan has revealed a critical detail about a widely discussed Turkey-Iran gold trade boom, disclosing that the Islamic republic was exporting gas to Turkey in exchange for payment in gold bullion. It is also reported that Iranians are buying Turkish gold with the Turkish Lira, which is deposited into their bank accounts in exchange for Turkey’s natural gas purchases, the deputy prime minister said at midnight Nov. 22 during a parliamentary session. Iran cannot transfer monetary payments to Iran in U.S. dollars due to U.S sanctions against the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Iran has been forced to shun the international financial system and the petrodollar as means of payment and turn to the international gold market to ensure it gets paid for its natural resources in order to prevent absolute economic collapse.

• Egypt protests continue in crisis over Mursi powers (Reuters)
• Greece hires Deutsche, Morgan Stanley to run Greek voluntary debt buy back, sources say (Kathimerini)
• Executives' Good Luck in Trading Own Stock (WSJ)
• Hollande Presents Mittal Nationalization Among Site Options (Bloomberg)
• Eurozone states face losses on Greek debt (FT)
• Spain's rescued banks to shrink, slash jobs (Reuters)
• EU Approves Spanish Banks' Restructuring Plans (WSJ)
• At SAC, Portfolio Managers Are Treated Like Stocks (BBG)
• China considers easing family planning rules (Reuters)
• European Court to Rule Over ECB’s Secret Greek File (BusinessWeek)
• And another top tick indicator: Asia Funds Buy London Offices in Bet Volatility Is Past (Bloomberg)
• Harvard Doctor Turns Felon After Lure of Insider Trading (BBG)
• Zucker Is Lead Candidate to Head CNN (WSJ) - it's not true until CNN misreports it
• Iran "will press on with enrichment:" nuclear chief (Reuters)

It seems like it was only 24 hours ago that Europe bailed out Greece for the third time and everything was "fixed", with a resultant desperate attempt to validate this by pushing the EURUSD above 1.3000. Sadly, as always happens, Europe, and especially Greece, refuses to be fixed, because as we will not tire of saying: you can't fix debt with i) more debt, ii) hockeystick projections or iii) soothing words of platitude and an outright bankruptcy, just like that which Argentina is about to undergo, will be needed. If that means the end of the EUR and the delusion that the Eurozone is a viable monument to the egos of a few technocratic career politicians, so be it. As a result, this time around the halflife of the latest bailout was precisely zero, as was that of the latest Japanese QE episode, as the entire world is now habituated to the lies emanating from Europe, and demands details, which in turn are sorely lacking, especially as relates to the question of just where will Greece get the money desperately needed to fund the Greek bond buyback. But at least Kathimerini was kind enough to advise readers that said buyback must take place by December 7 in time for the euroarea finmins to approve the payment of the next Greek loan tranche at the December 13 meeting, something which will likely not happen, especially if Germany's SPD party delays the vote on the Greek bailout until the end of December as was reported yesterday. We can't wait to learn the details of the buyback package, which will come in the "next few days" per ANA, and especially where the buyback money will come from, especially with the FT reporting that various European countries will already lose money next year on the latest Greek bailout.