Archive - Jan 2012 - Story

We discussed the bullish themes (and Nomura's skepticism) earlier today but as the S&P 500 cracks 1300 once again and banks (GS cost-cutting sustainability?) and builders (NAHB Index? context please) are off to the races once again, we thought it might be appropriate to see just how well the worst of the worst has outperformed the market. Using our standby GS index that tracks the most shorted names in the broad market, we see that year-to-date, the most-shorted names are up 5.8% against the Russell 3000 which is only up 4%. Furthermore, since late yesterday, the most-shorted names have doubled the market's performance (+2.1% vs +1% from 1430ET yesterday).

Presented with little comment except to note that Bloomberg's Chart-of-the-Day highlights specifically what we have been discussing for weeks as in this earnings season, only 47% of companies in the S&P 500 have so far exceeded analyst expectations - the lowest since before the credit crisis. S&P 1300 FTW.

One reason for the severity of the financial crisis, and the losses incurred by banks, is that bankers and financial analysts were using linear tools in a non-linear, highly complex environment otherwise known as the financial markets.The models didn’t work. The problem we face now as investors will end up being existential for some banking institutions and sovereigns. Our (uncontentious) core thesis is that throughout the west, more debt has been accumulated over the past four decades than can ever be paid back. The question, effectively to be determined on a case-by-case basis, is whether bondholders are handed outright default (which looks increasingly like the case to come in Greece) or whether the authorities, in their understandable but misguided attempts to keep the show on the road, resort to a policy of inflation that could at some point easily spiral out of control. As Rothbard wrote, “The longer the inflationary boom continues, the more painful and severe will be the necessary adjustment process… the boom cannot continue indefinitely, because eventually the public awakens to the governmental policy of permanent inflation, and flees from money into goods, making its purchases while [the currency] is worth more than it will be in future.” “The result will be a ‘runaway’ or hyperinflation, so familiar to history, and particularly to the modern world. Hyperinflation, on any count, is far worse than any depression: it destroys the currency – the lifeblood of the economy; it ruins and shatters the middle class and all ‘fixed income groups;’ it wreaks havoc unbounded… To avoid such a calamity, then, credit expansion must stop sometime, and this will bring a depression into being.”

The Greek PSI is once again (still) hitting the headlines. Here is what we think the most likely scenario is (80% likelihood). Some form of an agreement will be announced.  The IIF will announce that the “creditor committee has agreed in principle to a plan.”  That plan will need to be “formalized” and final agreement from the individual institutions on the committee and those that weren’t part of the committee will need to be obtained.  The headline will sound good, but will leave a month or so for details to come out.  In the meantime every European and EU leader (or employee) with a press contact will say what a great deal it is.  That it confirms that Europe is on the path of progress and that they are doing what they committed to at their summits. That will be the hype that will drive the market higher (or in fact has already done so). However, the reality (as we noted earlier in Einhorn's market madness chart) is that this still leaves hedge funds to acquiesce (unlikely) and furthermore focus will switch to Greece's actual debt sustaianability post-default (yes the d-word) and as we are seeing recently, Portugal will come into very sharp focus. If they cannot bribe and blackmail and threaten their way into something they call PSI, then we will see Greece stop making payments, and then the markets will get very ugly in a hurry.

CNBC's lonely realist took just over three minutes of his busy day today to explain in language that even the e*Trade baby could understand, why he fears for his First Amendment rights. As more sites take a stand against 'top-down' decision-making and who decides what is fair, Santelli veers from SOPA to Obamacare to the EPA in today's well-warranted and reasoned rant at the top of a slippery slope.

Who needs actual jobs when you can have crony solar companies which go tits up in under 2 years at a cost to taxpayers of over half a bill. From Bloomberg: "The Obama administration will likely announce rejection of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline later today or tomorrow, according to two people familiar with the matter. The decision will probably come from the State Department, which has been charged with reviewing the project, and a joint statement will come from some of the larger unions and environmental groups in support of the decision, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity before the announcement is made. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the administration would continue studying alternative routes for the pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast."

As headline after headline suggest that the PSI deal is getting closer and the market appears to be pricing in that headline-driven excitement, we cast a very skeptical eye over the performance of Greek bonds today. Short-dated GGBs, the August 2012 issue for instance, would be expected to rally if the deal was close (or even anticipated by the market) but instead, this 8-month bond traded to new record low price (and obviously therefore record high yields of 421%) today with quite a significant drop from EUR31.5 to EUR30 on the day. Further out, the 5Y GGB is the cheapest-to-deliver and is trading at EUR18.75/23.25 (quite a spread), down more today, and still well below an approximate EUR32 take-out. While there may have been some unwinds in the cash-CDS basis today, it seems to us that the greek bond market is absolutely not expecting a PSI deal and therefore risk-on rallies on the back of this (a debt reduction that will still leave Greek debt unsustainable) seem overdone at best (unless the IMF can cajole the US Congress to untighten its wallet some more - and even then, its not the solution Greece needs).

Sean Egan strikes again, this time downgrading Germany from AA to AA-.

Anyone wondering why FSLR just jumped, it is because as was just made known, David Einhorn's Greenlight has decided to close its FSLR position, after bleeding that particular corpse dry. "Our largest winner by far was our short of First Solar (FSLR) which fell from $130.14 to $33.76 paper share and was the worst performing stock in the S&P 500." Einhorn also announces that he was among the "evil" hedge funds who dared to provide market clearing transparency and buy CDS on insolvent European governments: "We also did well investing in various credit default swaps on European sovereign debt." As for losers, Einhorn and Kyle Bass can commiserate: "For the second year in a row, our biggest loss came from positions designed to capitalize on eventual weakening of the Yen." He summarizes the global economic environment as follows: "The global environment is very complicated. On the one hand the Federal Reserve has taken a much-needed break from quantitative easing (at least for the moment). Accordingly, inflation in oil and food has abated, providing relief to the US economy. Bearish forecasts that the US was headed back into recession proved wrong for the third time since the end of the last recession. On the other hand, Asia appears to be in much worse shape than it was at this time last year and could be a drag on the world economy going forward. Very few people trust any of the economic data coming out of China, making it difficult to gauge the situation there. Some of the smartest people we know have very dim views. The Chinese have been a leading growth engine for the last two decades and are largely credit with leading the world out of the recession in 2009. A change in their economic circumstances could really upend things." Yet the best thing is his summary of the current investing climate in our utterly and hopelessly reactionary broken markets.

By now we know that at least according to conventional wisdom says one has to be a banker, lawyer, or hedge fund manager to be guaranteed a spot in the fabled "1%". But a still outstanding question is what college-level studies do future 1%'ers take to end up in the top of the social pyramid? As the NYT shows, the result is quite surprising. As it turns out, "the majors that give you the best chance of reaching the 1 percent are pre-med, economics, biochemistry, zoology and, yes, biology, in that order." Just as curious, in terms of actual proportional representation, coming in at 1.9 million, the second most represented major within the 1% is... English and English Language. Bottom line - good news for Liberal Arts majors: all you have to do to get that PM job in Greenwich is to convince the boss that extensive knowledge of Shakespeare's sonnets is conducive to procuring some quality "information arbitrage" (on an untapped phone line of course). Alas, bad news for sociology and geology majors - these two are nowhere to be found, dooming the Rocks for Jocks crowd to a life of "99%"ism.

Last week we heard from Nomura's bearded bear as Bob Janjuah restated his less-then-optimistic scenario for the global economy. Today his partner-in-crime, Kevin Gaynor, takes on the bullish consensus cognoscenti's three mutually supportive themes in his usual skeptical manner. While he respects the market's potential view that fundamentals, flow, valuation, and sentiment seem aligned for meaningful outperformance, it seems actual positioning does not reflect this (yet). Taking on each of the three bullish threads (EM policy shift as inflation slows, ECB has done and will do more QE, and US decoupling), the strategist teases out the reality and what is priced in as he does not see this as the March-2009-equivalent 'big-one' in rerisking (warranting concerns on chasing here).

Tomorrow the BLS will announce that last week's initial claims number was revised to over 400K, the first time this important level has been breached, this time in an adverse fashion, in the past 2 months. But why is 400K important, and why do economists and pundits put impact on this particular number? Here is Bank of America with the explanation in the form of a historical matrix, correlating the historical relationship between these time series, highlighting the notable patterns observed in the past several decade, and what it all means for the big picture.

Though it won't come as a surprise to too many who have seen us point to US equity outflows and the dreadfully declining volume on the NYSE, we leave it to UBS' Art Cashin to uncover where the real action is - and more importantly where it really is not. The experienced Cashin points to the early excitement as Asia and Europe remain active and the dramatic ebb as both of these markets head off to supper, leaving just US traders (and investors we assume) sitting on their hands, twiddling their thumbs, and generally not playing the game (aside from the general rumor-mongery that appears to be rising day by day).