Archive - Apr 17, 2012 - Story

It will come as no surprise that the Spanish 'experiment' with the euro is not going well. Spain now relies more heavily on the ECB than at any time and today's bill auction sums up all that is wrong about our financial markets when an event that absolutely should be expected to be a non-event (a sovereign nation selling a small amount of short-dated debt) becomes a catalyst for algorithmic excess. In perhaps the greatest analogy for today's auction, Micheal Cembalest pronounces "throughout my career, central banks having to buy or finance sovereign debt to avoid a debt crisis was like going to the prom with your sister: there’s something very unnerving about it, even though it looks normal from a distance." It did not take long for the honeymoon following LTRO2 to end and despite today's exuberance, Italian and Spanish equity markets (as well as financial credits) have collapsed as Spain's sovereign risk has skyrocketed. While Spanish bank holdings of Spanish govvies, ECB lending to Spanish banks, and Spanish credit risk are surging so is one other much more worrisome fundamental trend - that of corporate non-performing loans. Dismissing the dichotomous relationship between consumer and residential delinquency calmness relative to unemployment's explosion (much as the market has in its pricing of bank stocks), the JPM CIO remains underweight Europe arguing that while contrarian calls are often the most profitable, this time being underweight European equities is the gift that keeps on giving.

Recently I was asked by a high school teacher if I had any ideas about why students today seem so apathetic when it comes to engaging with the world around them. I waggishly responded, "Probably because they're smart." In my opinion, we're asking our young adults to step into a story that doesn't make any sense. Sure, we can grow the earth's population to 9 billion (and probably will), and sure, we can extract our natural gas and oil resources as fast as possible, and sure, we can continue to pile on official debts at a staggering pace -- but why are we doing all this? Even more troubling, what do we say to our youth when they ask what role they should play in this story -- a story with a plot line they didn't get to write? So far, the narrative we're asking them to step into sounds a lot like this: Study hard, go to college, maybe graduate school. And when you get out, not only will you be indebted to your education loans and your mortgage, but you'll be asked to help pay back trillions and trillions of debt to cover the decisions of those who came before you. All while operating within a crumbling, substandard infrastructure. Oh, and by the way, the government and corporate sector appear to have no real interest in your long-term future; you're on your own there. Yeah, I happen to think apathy is a perfectly sane response to that story. Thanks, but no thanks. To understand how our national narrative evolved (or, more accurately, devolved) to become so unappealing, we have to take an honest look at money.

Sure enough, just out from the FT: Argentina will not pay Repsol of Spain what it is asking ($10.5bn) in compensation for nationalization of YPF, says deputy economy min

... but will settle for what it ends up getting: nothing. Of course, in the meantime, there will be a lot of kicking and screaming, but that's great: Risk On - Off markets demand distractions. From the FT: "These acts will not go unpunished" said Antonio Brufau, Repsol’s executive chairman during a two-hour press conference on Tuesday, at which he attacked Argentina’s “revisionism” over YPF’s success, and its energy policy over the past decade." Said otherwise, this aggression will not stand, man. Ok, fine. Here is Argentina's counteroffer.

While a lot of time is spent scrubbing through the details and nuance of each and every macro data point, auction result, earnings comment, central-banker hint, and politician's demeanor, from the top-down the imbalances created by the euro between the North and the South are, in Michael Cembalest's opinion, skyrocketing. They are far greater than any that preceded the Euro, even during the bouts of inflation and devaluation which beset the South in prior decades. Nevertheless, the region appears committed to soldiering on with it, despite the costs. These developments are amazing for a project like the Euro, which was designed to harmonize and sustain Europe’s post-war social, political and economic integration.

As reported last week, and as shown brilliantly by Artemis Capital, the end of every reliquification phase by the Fed, such as the imminent end of Operation Twist with nothing firmly set to replace it, is always accompanied by a surge in vol, which in turn leads to market days like the past week, when market summaries are simple: either it is all Risk On, or Risk Off. Expect many more of these until Twist finally ends in just over two months at which point much more liquidity will be needed to achieve the same "flow" results. It just so happens that today is a risk On day, driven by previously noted "catalyst." Yet what is great about such days is that they allow all the bad news to be packed into a tidy little package and disseminated without anyone noticing, or pretending to notice. Such as the just announced headline from Reuters, which on any other day would have crippled the mood, that "Italy will delay by a year its current plan to balance its budget in 2013, according to a draft forecasting document to be approved by the cabinet on Wednesday." And while we have seen this over and over in the past 2 years, first with Greece, then with all the other PIIGS, it merely exposes the fact that exuberant optimism never pans out in a world in which the real average debt/GDP is what Reinhart and Rogoff would simply call "unsustainable." And while this news will matter once Germany realizes that its precious fiscal pact is already been soundly rejected, first by Spain and now Italy, for now it is but a footnote in the otherwise lacking newsflow: after all Spain managed to issue €2 billion in Bills, which contrary to yesterday, provides that all is again well in Europe. Until Thursday at least when Spain has to issue 10 year bonds, which just happen to mature outside of the LTRO. The narrative then may be somewhat different.

Just as with the broad market, Apple is showing the schizophrenic signs of a market caught between two increasingly distinct Known Unknown scenarios. From down over three-standard deviations (most in 6 months) to up over two standard-deviations (most in 3 months) - even as implied vols remain elevated (as realized vol starts to pick up once again), Apple manages to deny gravity (for a day so far) as it has its best up day in over a month.

The Fed and the Administration should be on their knees and giving thanks for the blessings they have received for the economy over the past 9 months.  First, falling oil prices last summer gave individuals an effective $60 billion tax cut.  Then during the winter where normally heaters are turned up to stave off the wintery blasts the balmy winter added roughly $30 billion to consumer's wallets due to decreased utility costs.  Those impacts gave individuals more dollars to spend and when combined with seasonal adjustments it gave the illusion of a strongly recovering economy. With "Operation Twist" now rapidly coming to an end and the Fed apparently in a trap of rising inflation I am not sure what the next "support" for the economy will be.  My expectation continues to be that the economy will continue to run at a sub-par growth rate though the end of 2012 and that we could see a recession by the end of 2012 or by mid-2013.  Of course, that is assuming we are boosted by further rounds of artificial intervention by the Fed or Mother Nature. 

While many are celebrating the all-clear again as Spain manages to sell Spanish bills to Spanish banks at a huge risk premium to the last time it did the same, it is perhaps not surprising to hear that this was the biggest gain for the broad European equity market since November. What concerns us most is the absolute schizophrenia that the market is undergoing as the swings in European (and for that matter US) markets is extremely reminiscent of the absolute chaos that reigned last summer as markets suddenly flip-flop +/-2 standard deviations. The sad fact is how quickly our memories (or the algos that surround us) forget just last week we saw the same - exact same - euphoric response to Italy managing to sell short-term Italian bills to Italian banks (again at a significant yield premium to their prior attempt) and the mainstream-media's irrational pump that this is somehow important or noteworthy (remember even Greece managed to sell short-dated bills during the middle of its PSI discussions). European equities are back to pre-NFP levels (same as last week) and credit markets have snapped tighter today (just as they did last week as they got squeezed). This time, however, financials are lagging still and the squeeze in credit is not as hard as overall they remain less ebullient than equities. Sovereign spreads are following the same path as last week also, Italy and Spain yields compressed - though we note that they remain (especially Spain) notably wider than last week's rally. Will the rest of the week play out in a similar manner to last week? As longer-dated auctions and financials weigh heavily on risk sentiment?

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath was kind enough to present to the general public some 515 pages of massively redacted Fed transcripts from the oh so very interesting period of 2007-2010, ahead of schedule. Unfortunately those curious to find out the details of just what was going on in that critical period between March 2008 and March 2009 will have to wait another 3 years for the full declassification to take place. That said, digging among the unredacted data, one does find the occasional pearl. Such as the following exchange between CHAIRMAN BERNANKE and the Fed staff, from the October 28-29, 2008 meeting, in the days when AIG was dying, when Lehman had failed, when money markets had frozen and when the end of the world was nigh. Ironically, it is this one unredacted piece of data that pretty much says it all.

• I’d like first to do the open market operations, which I hope are not too controversial. [Laughter] (source: page 231 of 513)

And that, as they say, is that.

After Obama's "fairness doctrine" was roundly rejected by the Senate last night as the doomed from the beginning Buffett Rule was voted down, Obama needs to find some more evil villains for society to demonize, and whom to blame for the failure of central planning, or rather its success in pushing gas prices to all time highs. Today - it is that mysterious, amorphous blob of vile, conspiratorial henchmen known as "oil speculators." Forget that these "speculators" are merely conduits for the Fed to conduct its open market operations, forget that the same free liquidity that drives stocks up relentlessly in nominal terms (what? no demonization of evil stock pumping speculators?), even as it produces ever increasing inflation in all those items not tracked by the Fed, forget that Obama's speech is about to be replica of Jimmy Carter's Crisis of Confidence platitude in 1979. Finally forget that the biggest speculator is none other than the White House with its periodic release of SPR release rumors any time WTI approaches $110. Forget all that, and merely focus on the hypnotic, undulating intonation of the engrossing, populist sermon: that is all that is demanded of you. Everything else is to be ignored. And now since the time of "fairness" is over, it is time to do a shot every time "speculator" is uttered. And get ready for many, many CL margin hikes.

The Federal government is supporting its dependents and its crony-capitalist Elites with borrowed money: $1.5 trillion every year, fully 40% of the Federal budget. It is in effect filling the gap between exploding costs and declining income, just like the middle class did until they ran out of collateral to leverage. The dwindling middle class, now at best perhaps 25% of the workforce, has been reduced to tax donkeys supporting those above and below who are dependent on Federal largesse. Fisher found that this cycle ends in transformational political upheaval. No wonder; even as the class paying most of the taxes shrinks and is pressured by higher costs, the class of dependents expands as the economy deteriorates and the super-wealthy Power Elites continue to control the levers of Central State power.

With S&P futures, and most notably financials, staging the second overnight opening surge in a row, we thought it perhaps worth reflecting on five quite concerning fundamental reasons why dip-buyers (as anesthetized as they have become thanks to central bank 'protection') could face a tougher time. As Mike Wilson of Morgan Stanley notes, for those looking for a cause or explanation of recent weakness, feel free to blame it on the more hawkish Fed minutes, Draghi’s comments that it was now “up to governments to do the right thing” or the soft US payroll numbers. After such an uninterrupted run, some kind of correction was inevitable and simply a matter of timing. The bigger question to resolve is whether this pull back will look like what we experienced in 2010 and 2011 or end up being more muted. Obviously, the key variables for this analysis remain growth and liquidity expectations. The 'payback' that we have been warned about for such an unseasonably warm winter is upon us (as macro data surprises increasingly to the downside) and that is the first flaw in BTFD logic. Wilson goes on to point out that NFIB small business hiring intentions have dropped precipitously, GDP growth is weak but earnings growth is now catching up (down) to that weakness and for many stocks is rapidly falling towards zero, we remain in a 'liquidity lull' as central banks stand on the sidelines and reflect, and perhaps most worrisome is the rapid deterioration in the Bloomberg financial conditions index. All-in-all, these sum up to suggest a greater-than-5% correction is more than likely.

By now everyone is aware of Argentina's disturbing plan to nationalize YPF over the protests of Spain, and soon EU. And as we noted yesterday, the equity value of YPF is essentially a doughnut as BofA stated, if somewhat more correct politically. YPF continues to be halted on the NYSE as per a T2 halt (aka "The news has begun the dissemination process through a Regulation FD compliant method(s).") and there is little availability for price discovery at the first derivative level. However, where discovery is ample is at the second degree, namely Spanish Repsol-YPF which is a majority owner of YPF, whose CDS continue soaring, and hit a whopping 391 earlier today, well over 100 bps compared to the Friday closing spread. For a massive energy production company this is a big move and we can only hope its Spanish bank shareholders are well insulated from mark to market losses, although somehow we doubt it.

Gold has moved rather rapidly in the past few minutes and many are scrathcing their heads just why this is happening? The reason is simple: central planning script 101, page 1. As we noted earlier, the RBI did a  surprising overnight rate cut from 8.5% to 8.0%, in other words it has just joined the global central planning cartel in attempting to stimulate the economy nominally, even as inflationary packets still abound across the land (see China). Yet what does that mean from a modern monetarist standpoint: why crush gold as an alterantive to the local paper currency of course.  Sure enough:

• INDIA ECONOMY SECRETARY: EXPECT TO LOWER GOLD CONSUMPTION IN ECONOMY - DJ

And there you have it: because the last thing India needs is a surge in gold buying now that it too has joined the global reliquification parade. That said, we are curious in what parallel universe will liquidity easing result in less demand for hard assets. Aks the algos who are selling on nothing but headlines.

Today's futures pop on short-term bill auctions in Europe (that remain in a world of their own and should not be considered as anything but emergent in nature rather than indicative of investor demand) and ad hoc data in Germany that disconnects from any sense of reality in true economic environs only confirms Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson's perspective that there still isn't much fear out there. We remain in the midst of a longer-term deleveraging cycle, of that there can be little argument in reality (unless of course exponential trends are natural) and as Wilson points out we are likely to remain in the wide trading range that we have been in the past two years - however, many investors appear to disagree (not the least of which the effusively exuberant 'Ace' Greenberg this morning). Few expect a correction more than 5-10%, Buy-lists are already in great demand, and put-call ratios remain muted. "Of course, this is what happens when an animal becomes conditioned to buy the dip in a pavlovian manner over years during which they have remain unscathed by some of the biggest financial risks we have ever witnessed. As the saying goes, “the only fools bigger than those that are playing are those that are watching.” Of course, having some Fed official speaking every other day to remind us they are there to save the day in the event of trouble helps perpetuate this unnatural one way market." However, his bottom line is that slowing/disappointing economic data, zero percent earnings growth and a liquidity lull sounds like a recipe for more than a 5% correction.