Archive - Mar 2012 - Story

Why are we not surprised at the fact, as reported by the WSJ, that Deutsche Bank AG changed the legal structure of its huge U.S. subsidiary to shield it from new regulations that would have required the German bank to pump new capital into the U.S. arm. The bank on Feb. 1 reorganized its U.S. subsidiary, known as Taunus Corp., so that it is no longer classified as a 'bank-holding company' (BHC). The technical change has important consequences. Taunus—which at the end of last year had about $354 billion of assets and 8,652 employees, making it one of the largest U.S. banking companies—won't have to comply with a provision of the U.S. Dodd-Frank regulatory-overhaul law that essentially forces the local arms of non-U.S. banks to meet the same capital requirements that American banks fact. A provision of the Dodd-Frank Act was going to require Deutsche Bank to infuse Taunus, which for years operated with thin capital cushions, with what executives feared could be as much as $20 billion. Taunus is no longer a bank-holding company and won't have to comply with the tougher capital rules, even though Taunus still houses Deutsche Bank's U.S. investment bank, making it unclear what jurisdiction the Fed will have to intervene in the investment-banking arm if it has concerns about how the unit is being run or whether it has adequate capital buffers. So much for all that systemic risk control and lessons learned as hey-presto - everything is sidestepped as the farce continues.

Forget China - now this is a hard landing. Because what's $20 million in taxpayer funded equipment between soldiers: LTRO 1+2 alone were like 650 of these...

Moments ago the Chinese PMI as tracked by HSBC/Market (not to be confused with the other PMI, tracked by China itself, which will likely show expansion, like last month), came and printed at 48.1, down from 49.6, and representing a 5th consecutive monthly contraction for the Chinese economy. Whether this means that China will promptly unleash more easing, or will simply wait to import some of Bernanke's own QEasy cooking, remains to be seen. What is far more shocking is that futures are indicating some very odd, ungreen color. It is on the tip of our tongue, but we can't quite place it... We are trying to think back to the last time futures were bathed in this particular shade of non-green, and can't - after all it was banned by the Chairsatan himself. We can only assume that the algos responsible for ramping the futures up are currently on their oil change break.

Following last Friday's majority vote by the Israel Security Council authorizing Iranian "action" when required, answering the "if", the only open question remains "when." As it turns out, based on the following analysis by Rapidan Group, there are only 10 or so distinct 10 day New Moon windows for the remainder of 2012. If one removes the sandstorm prone months of April, July and September, there are 7 periods in which a military strike is realistic. Also CVN 65 is moving at a snail's pace and is just now approaching the Straits of Gibraltar.  Since any action will likely not take place unless 3 aircraft carriers are in the vicinity, and because the ICE yesterday instituted ultra-short term trading spike curbs in crude, starting April 1, one can likely eliminate the immediately proximal March 17-27 window. Which leaves six. Our advice would be to buy up OTM calls in Brent in the days just ahead of the start of any such window, as any "surprise" attack will have a uplifting impact on all combustible assets, doubly so for levered ones.

There was a time when catching the silver "whack-a-mole" algo, or process, or intervention, or manipulation, or whatever one wants to call it, in action was a myth: an urban legend, perpetuated by silver conspiracy theorists. Until today that is. Courtesy of Nanex we now have direct evidence of just what the reflexive market (in which derivative products such as ETFs influence underlying assets) goes to town by taking silver to the woodshed at a whopping 75,000 times per second! From the broken market sleuths at Nanex:  "On March 20, 2012 at 13:22:33, the quote rate in the ETF symbol SLV sustained a rate exceeding 75,000/sec (75/ms) for 25 milliseconds. Nasdaq quotes lagged other exchanges by about 50 milliseconds. Nasdaq quotes even lagged their own trades -- a condition we have jokingly referred to as fantaseconds." Translation: so desperate was the desire to crush silver at precisely 13:22;33, that the Nasdaq order flow directive ended up moving faster than light. Frankly, we don't know about you, but when someone is willing to bend the laws of relativity, just to get a cheaper price in silver, to perpetuate a failing monetary system or for any other reason, we quietly step aside...

One of the biggest surprise stories of the past several months, in addition to economic activity skewing record warm weather, and the New Normal seasonal adjustments (which as Albert Edwards noted earlier are giving data an upward bias for each of the past three years), is the consistently "better than expected" jobs numbers. There is one problem: as discussed previously, the rising jobs are purely a quantity over quality trade off, as every month more and more temp jobs take the place of permanent ones, especially those of former professionals from the FIRE sector. In fact, in January temp jobs soared by the most on record, and the total number of temp workers was just shy of all time highs. Ironically, as this happened, discretionary online retail companies have seen their stock price soar to record highs. One of the primary drivers for this has been the increased "efficiency" at these companies' hubs - their warehouses. Which just happen to be staffed with temp workers. The following infographic presents the reality behind these American "sweatshops" - because this is the "quality" of job that is rising rapidly in the current economy (at the expense of traditional permanent jobs) to give the impression of an economic recovery. There is no point in making an ethical judgment - work conditions are as they are. Just as workers at FoxConn likely have far better conditions than their peers, at least in their view, so do these temp workers view their life as better than the alternative, which is unemployment. It is, as they say, what it is.

What a difference two months of record high gas prices make. After Obama unceremoniously killed the Keystone XL pipeline proposal in January, and has since seen his popularity rating slide in inverse proportion to the surge in gas prices, which as noted yesterday have now passed $4 (still quite a bit better than Europe's $9.81 average/gallon), he is now actively seeking to fast-track its approval. Or at least half of it. Per Reuters: "President Barack Obama will issue a memo on Thursday directing federal agencies to prioritize permitting of TransCanada's southern leg of the Keystone oil pipeline, a senior White House official said on Wednesday. With his Republican opponents hammering away at the president over high gasoline prices, Obama will visit Cushing, Oklahoma on Thursday to promote his energy policies, which include support for the southern leg of the pipeline." In the meantime, enviromentalists just realized they were Corzined.

Ever dreamed of getting all the fiat money skeptics together at the same time, all in the same place? Your dream has now come true, courtesy of "End of the Road - How Money Became Worthless."

The money-on-the-sidelines argument has reached deafening and self-confirming as anchoring bias among any and every swollen long-only manager seems to have made them ignore the realities of the situation. David Rosenberg, of Gluskin Sheff to the rescue with good old fashioned facts - as much as they might disappoint the audience. Barton Biggs quote in the USA Today article points out how bullish he is and how cash levels are very high and "idled money is ready to be put to work". However, as Rosie points out equity fund cash ratios are at a de minimus 3.6%, the same level as in the fall of 2007 and near its lowest level ever. The time when cash was heavy and 'ample' was at the market lows in 2009 when the ratio was very close to 6%. Bond fund managers, it should be noted this includes the exuberant HY funds, are now sitting on less than 2% cash so if retail inflows continue to subside as they did this week, buying power could weaken over the near-term. What David points out that is more interesting perhaps is the converse of most people's contrarian dumb money perspective - the household sector appears to have used the rally of the past three years, for the most part, to diversify out of the equity market (getting out at price levels they could only dream of seeing again). As we have pointed out again and again, the retail investor has been a net redeemer in equity funds for nine-months running and has been rebalancing since the March 2009 lows in a clearly demographic shift towards income strategies as the memory of two bursting bubbles within seven years is seared into most private investors' minds.

That Diamond Foods is a dead man walking has been known for a while. Today we merely got the latest confirmation, after the company announced that it has reached a forbearance deal with its lender through June 18, in exchange for suspending dividends (duh) as well as a one time 25 bps loan fee, and an interest increase by 75 bps until June 18. At that point the company will still have to find a replacement facility, or do another forebearance deal which extracts even more equity value and hands it on a silver platter to secured creditors... kinda like Greece. Curiously, moments before close the market reacted like a stung HFT algo (see chart below) to a headline from the WSJ that "Diamond Foods in Talks With PE for Minority Investment." Sure it is - the problem is that any minority investment at this point will likely come below market, as this is not an M&A deal but a vulture equity financing. In fact, we would not be surprised if the lenders are contemplated a debt for equity exchange. However, for it to make sense, the stock would have to be far lower. Anyway, the stock reopens at 5:15pm. Stay tuned.

Goldman screams it is a generational buy, Larry Fink goes all in stocks, Notorious BIGGS is 90% long, anchors on comedy-financial fusion channels are channeling the producer in their earpiece and screaming at the teleprompter to "sell bonds and buy stocks", even as stocks are at their highest in nearly 5 years and... what happens? In the latest week, ICI just reported that domestic equity retail funds just saw another $2.9 billion outflow, the 4th consecutive in a row, and the 23 of out 27 outflows during the entire parabolic blow off top phase the market has undergone since October, and instead put another $9 billion in fixed income funds "soaring" yields be damned. What does this mean? Probably that the stock ramp is about to get uber-parabolic for the simple reason that this is the only thing left in the status quo's arsenal - to keep doing the same old same old, hoping for a different outcome, because this time it's different. Only this time the dumb money either doesn't have the cash to burn, or just doesn't want to participate in a rigged, corrupt, centrally-planned market. Whatever the case, the Primary Dealers and the Fed will just have to keep hoping more central banks pull a Bank of Israel and sell the hot grenade axes to them, since Joe Sixpack is done being the "dumb money."

Volumes in cash equities (NYSE) and futures (ES) were on the low-side for the year today but what was shocking and perhaps the sign that this rally has run out of real-money to push it higher is that fact that today saw the lowest average trade size in the S&P 500 e-mini futures contract of the year. This follows the peak (in average trade size of the entire rally) on Friday as stocks bump up against the March 2009 low up-trendline. We can't help but feel the professionals (who will tend to trade in larger size) are leaving the building rapidly with only the algos and correlations to hold this up for now (as Treasuries start to lag back down) as we note (h/t John Lohman) that this was the 6th lowest relative range in cash S&P for the year. The sell-off into the close dragged stocks back in line with broad risk (as CONTEXT had underperformed all day) as well as credit and vol markets as 10Y Treasuries rallied the most in two weeks now lower in yield for the week (and flatter). Oil outperformed as the USD meandered higher (and JPY stronger) while commodities were generally quiet. Credit was weak - led by HYG - as IG remains the up-in-quality favorite (though suffered a little from its richness today) as VIX dropped and its term structure flattened modestly led by the longer-end.

It appears we are, as a nation of desperately consuming investors, becoming increasingly cognitively dissonant. Charles Biderman, of TrimTabs, leaves the ominous clouds of the Bay Area for New York City and addresses our seemingly Pavlovian response for the third year in a row to a rising stock market (flooded with portfolio-rebalancing duration-destroying Central Bank money) as evidence that the real economy must be doing great. Of course, relying on tried and true facts such as real job growth and real wage growth and understanding the seasonally-abused-adjusted housing data realities, Biderman notes that the only money driving stocks up is corporate buybacks dominating selling pressure. While modestly bullish on these flows, he is growing more anxious. He sees insider selling surging (from 5:1 January to 14:1 February to 35:1 in March), there has been no new 'cash-takeovers' announced this month compared to $15bn per month last year, and the IPO pipeline is ramping up fast (supply will dominate demand) as the end of Operation Twist approaches removing yet another prop to the perceived reality of stocks.