Archive - Mar 15, 2012 - Story

South Africa's gold output fell again in January and was down a very large 11.3% in volume terms in January.  Annual gold production is set to be close to 220 tonnes which is a level of gold production not seen since 1922 (see chart below). The falls were seen only in the gold market with production of other minerals holding up with total mineral production down only 2.5% compared with the same month last year. South Africa as recently as two decades ago was the world's largest producer of gold by a huge margin. Only 40 years ago South Africa produced more than 1,000 tonnes of gold per annum but will only produce some 220 tonnes in 2012. Production peaked in 1970 and has been falling steadily and sharply since. The nearly 80% fall in South African gold production has led to it being recently overtaken by China, Australia and the U.S.  It is now even at risk of being overtaken by Russia. The massive 11.3% decline in South Africa was more than even that seen in December when gold output fell by 8.2%. The continuing output decline is due to many of the country's biggest gold mining operations having reached the ends of their lives and having closed down.

Here is today's full data dump, presented in summary form

• Initial claims: 351K vs 356K Expected, Previous revised higher of course from 362K to 365K, just as we predicted last week.
• Empire Fed: 20.21, Exp. 17.50, up from 19.53 previously
  • New Orders 6.8 vs 9.7
  • Prices Paid explodes to 50.62, 25.88 previous. One of the highest rises on record
• PPI: 0.4% vs 0.5% Exp, 0.1% Previous
  • PPI ex food and energy: 0.2%, Exp 0.2%

MF Global's creditors (and clients) in Europe, and everywhere else, have many reasons to be furious. Now those in Europe have one more to add to their list of grievances: a complete and totally public disclosure, courtesy of KPMG, of not only how much they are owed, but their mailing, and in many cases, home address. In other words, not only will these individuals not receive their full claims in the insolvent entity whose primary specialty as it turned out was rehypothecating what little assets it did have, but now have to worry about the taxman coming after them.... As well as promptly changing their home address. One party, however, that will hardly mind, is JPMorgan which is supposedly owed just over €100 million. Luckily for them, they already quote unquote collected the (client) money.

Without a doubt, retail has fallen in love with corporate bonds.  Fund flows were originally into mutual funds, and have shifted more and more into the ETF’s.  The ETF’s are gaining a greater institutional following as well – their daily trading volumes cannot be ignored, and for the high yield space, many hedgers believe it mimics their portfolio far better than the CDS indices. The investment grade market looks extremely dangerous right now as the rationale for investing in corporate bonds – spreads are cheap – and the investment vehicles – yield based products. With corporate bonds spreads (investment grade and high yield) already reflecting a lot of the move in equities, it will be critical to see how well they can withstand the pressure from the treasury markets.

I have suggested for weeks, I suggested in my piece yesterday, that you take some money off the table, sell some of your bullets, and re-deploy. Quantitative Easing is coming to an end and there will be ramifications for the bond markets and, eventually, for the equity markets. The days of free money, newly printed money, are coming to a close as America begins to right itself and as our banking system is mostly out of the woods. The longer end of the curve, hit hard yesterday, is heading to higher yields in my opinion. We will also begin to see inflation creep in for a variety of reasons and I point specifically to the price of gas at the pump which, while no one was looking, has hit its all-time highs this week as each penny of increase adds $1 billion to household spending and gasoline has risen thirty cents in the last month.

Busy day with the usual Thursday fare of Initial claims, as well as Empire Manufcaturing survey, PPI, and the Philly Fed, which will reflect just two things - the reflation in global capital markets courtesy of non-Fed balance sheet expansion, and soaring gas prices courtesy of the same. Average regular is now $3.821, an all time high for this day in history.

• Obama, Cameron discussed tapping oil reserves (Reuters)
• Greek Bonds Signal $2.6 Billion Payout on Credit-Default Swaps (Bloomberg)
• China leader's ouster roils succession plans (Reuters)
• China’s Foreign Direct Investment Falls for Fourth Month (Bloomberg)
• Greek Restructuring Delay Helps Banks as Risks Shift (Bloomberg)
• Concerns Rise Over Eurozone Fiscal Treaty (FT)
• Home default notices rise in February: RealtyTrac (Reuters)
• China PBOC Drains Net CNY57 Bln (WSJ)

Relatively quiet overnight session in the markets, where Europe has seen several bond auctions, most notably in France and Spain, whose good results has in turn sent the German 30 Year Bund yield to the highest since December 12, all courtesy of the recently printed (and collateralized with second and third-hand Trojans) $1.3 trillion. Per BBG, Spain sold 976 million euros of 3.25 percent notes due April 2016 at an average yield of 3.37 percent. The bid-to-cover ratio was 4.13, compared with 2.21 when the notes were sold in January, the Bank of Spain said in Madrid today. It also auctioned 2015 and 2018 securities. France sold 3.26 billion euros of benchmark five-year debt at an average yield of 1.78 percent. The borrowing cost for the 1.75 percent note due in February 2017 was less than the yield of 1.93 percent at the previous sale of the securities on Feb. 16. Elsewhere, we got confirmation of the collapse in Greece, where Q4 unemployment rose to 20.7%, up from 17.7% in the prior quarter. China weighed on Asian market action again following ongoing concerns about domestic property curbs, and a slide in the Chinese Foreign Direct Investment of -0.9% on Exp of +14.6%. ECB deposit facility usage, primarily by German banks, was flattish at €686.4 billion, while in Keynesian news, Italian debt rose to a new record in January of €1.936 trillion. Watch this space, once inflection point occurs and vigilantes realize that not only has nothing been fixed in Italy, but the current account situation in Italy, and Spain, is getting progressively worse as shown yesterday, all at the expense of Germany.

Earlier we described why it is clear that the Fed will need to print exponentially to fill the void of the crunch in consolidated credit money but why does Bernanke remain so hedged and guarded in his optimism when the market is tearing bears' arms-and-legs off and every talking head from here to Tokyo is claiming we have reached the nirvana of self-sustaining recovery (with, we note one such reconstituted deal-maker claiming "we don't need the Fed's help anyway" after the FOMC meeting). It's the data stupid. Simply put, as the chart below shows, the strength of trend of key US data over the past three months has been disappointing in aggregate (of course one can cherry pick BLS prints or sub-indices of ISM) and the worrying similarities between 2011 (when the same overshoot of optimism occurred) is only too real a problem for Ben and his buddies if they take away the Kool-Aid too early once again and let us drink our own stale sugar-free water. So the next time you hear some long-only asset manager or octogenarian wealth adviser say the 'data has been very strong' so buy-and-hold big-tech or dividend-payers, do them a favor and remind them of this chart and what happened last year.