Archive - Jun 15, 2012 - Story

Though the November election will be hyped as two opposites squaring off against each other, both candidates are considered rather moderate compared to who could have been the nominees.

The question is, are Barack Obama and Mitt Romney really that moderate?

Let’s account for the similarity in policy of both.

What makes for a good investment is price. Price is everything. You need to receive value in excess of the price paid. An investment’s value is the amount of real cash its underlying assets can reasonably be expected to deliver to its shareholders in the future, discounted for its risk – period. The investment’s price will either be higher than its value (an uncompensated risk), the same as (neutral) or lower than its value (a compensated risk). But since value is an imprecise measurement, the best one can do is to build in a margin of safety by buying investments that are at deep discounts to a reasonable estimated value. Too many investors let an investment’s short-term price movements, or perceptions of short-term price movements drive their decisions. But since short-term price moves are unknowable, irrelevant and independent of investment merits, this is not worthy of any time spent analyzing. If short-term price moves were knowable, then a cadre of top-performing chartists and market technicians would have far greater net worths than Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and the Saudi Royal Family. They would need only apply leverage to their process and repeat it a few times in order to accrue hundreds of billions of dollars. Question: How many market technicians occupy the Forbes 400? Answer: Zero. Why? Because successfully guessing future price moves based on charts, MACD indicators or tea leaves is not a repeatable process. Investors who do this generally have poor outcomes because they are pursuing answers to the wrong question.

The right question is: where is the value?

Don't read this if you have high blood pressure or if you are a client of MF Global's, whose money is still held by JP Morgan.

The pages of the financial press overflow with opinions on what targets would make the world safer: what ratio of risk-weighted-assets banks should target, what RoE targets they would be safe at, what inflation target the central bank should aim for, or what growth target is appropriate for China. When SocGen's Dylan Grice was asked if he was a fan of the idea of nominal GDP targets! He snapped he is not and thought it "a terrible idea". As he opines, today’s various issues – the euro, China’s economy, over-indebtedness – are the cumulative unintended consequences of such past targets, and the naïve presumption that complexity can be commanded. Even mildly complex systems, any outcome is the wrong thing to target, with the process being where the focus should be. Expressing how little time he has for macroeconomics, reasoning that it’s obsessed with the targeting of interest rates, GDP, inflation, unemployment, exchange rates, et cetera, as though such a thing was possible without unintended consequences; Grice notes that Austrian economists understood this too. Ludwig von Mises distilled social phenomena to the simple observation that "man acts purposefully".

Obama is about to address (as of 1:15 pm Eastern, so the sandtrap was obviously a monster) America's illegal immigrants, and critical Hispanic vote, advising them he has successfully avoided this pest known as Congress, and that henceforth not all of them will be deported. The immigrants that is, not Congress... although that too may change. Because remember: the only thing better than record part-time jobs is recorder part-time jobs. Also remember: one can't affix a price to securing the vote... of those who are ineligible to vote.

Yesterday's rumor that global central banks may, just may, respond to a Greek exit from the Eurozone, which would send the world into tailspin sent stocks higher. Because without said rumor nobody, repeat nobody would possibly imagine that there could be a coordinated response to an event that would send global risk down over 20%. Today, it gets even dumber:

• ECB MAJORITY SAID TO OVERCOME CONCERN ON CUTTING DEPOSIT RATE.
• ECB POLICY MAKERS HAVE OVERCOME A KEY CONCERN ABOUT TAKING THE BECHMARK RATE BELOW 1%

At least yesterday the source was some discredited G-20 member. Now it appears that the media has a front-row seat to ECB deliberations. Fascinating. And what is even more fascinating is that the market continues to fall for these rumors "breaking news" and rumors time after time after time...

For some reason, whenever people want to make a historical example of a hyperinflationary period, they always bring up the Weimar Republic, aka Germany in 1920-1923. Yet with a highest monthly inflation of just under 30,000%, Weimar was a true walk in the park compared to the 309,000,000% monthly inflation in 1992-1994 Serbia, but especially to the 12,950,000,000,000,000% inflation that Hungarians had to deal with in the aftermath of WWII. For these and more  comparative examples of hyperinflation, particularly relevant now that the entire world is rumored (for now) to be getting ready to print, see below.

It remains tough to handicap the results of this weekend's events - most notably Greek elections (though Egypt could be the blacker swan of the two). It seems New Domocracy has a slight edge on SYRIZA at the bookies in Europe but the most likely event remains that no single party would have a sufficient majority to forma government and coalition talks will be required. Barclays expanded decision tree is 'everything you wanted to know about European uncertainties but were afraid to ask' and along with our earlier note of what to expect from asset class returns in the various scenarios provides the key guide to positioning into and beyond the weekend.

Overnight, Goldman's Robert Boroujerdi released a report whose conclusion we have been warning about for the past 3 years, which also happens to be its title: "ETFs: An Imperfect Hedge?"  Goldman's findings in a nutshell: "The rise of investor usage of ETFs as hedges continues. In a bid to gain quick exposure to evolving markets, avoid single stock M&A risk or take sector views, we believe the use of “blunt force” hedging via ETFs may impair portfolio returns and potentially create negative alpha." Read that again: not zero alpha, i.e., same returns as market, but negative alpha. In other words, the great cottage industry that has been the basis for so many riches for the likes of BlackRock, and that has ensnared so many gullible retail investors, is essentially a guaranteed money losing get rich quick scheme?

Who da thunk it.

What is more curious, are Goldman's observations on historical cross industry correlations because they show that in the grand scheme of things, virtually everything trades as one!

Spanish sovereign bonds ended the week at all-time record wide spreads to bunds, pushing back up near 7% yields today before falling back into the close, and +55bps on the week. This is a 50bps underperformance of Italian sovereigns on the week, while Spanish stocks notably outperformed Italian stocks on the week (though faded notably today having been unable to regain Monday's opening highs). German Bunds also deteriorated notably relative to Treasuries on the week (the biggest weekly jump in Bunds-Treasuries in almost 7 months) and while equity and credit markets reconverged into the weekend - with position-squaring evident - as the shifts in Swiss rates suggest all is not well under the surface as repatriation flows drove EURUSD up over 115pips on the week to near its Sunday-night opening highs (amid a 200 pip range). Finally for all the ebullient US investors, we note that Europe's VIX was bid notably higher today (to over 33%) to near a 3 week high relative to US VIX as hedges into the weekend were very prevalent.

The untouchables are rapidly becoming touchables, as former Goldman director and McKinsey head is found guilty of insider trading.

• RAJAT GUPTA CONVICTED OF INSIDER TRADING BY U.S. JURY
• GUPTA FOUND GUILTY OF FOUR COUNTS AND ACQUITTED ON TWO CHARGES
• RAJAT GUPTA MAY REMAIN FREE ON BAIL UNTIL SENTENCING OCT. 18
• GUPTA FOUND NOT GUILTY ON ONE COUNT, JURY STILL READING VERDICT

Next up: McKinsey issues a case study on the proper way to leak confidential, material non-public information.

Since Mario Monti was appointed to replace Berlusconi back in November's coup-de-banker, the parties backing him have lost more than 10% of popular support and, as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, this leaves the four main political groups behind the unelected puppet below 50% for the first time. Just as elsewhere in Europe, support is surging for an anti-austerity bloc as 'The 5 Star Movement' - with a restructure-debt-and-exit-the-Euro stance - has become Italy's second biggest party as technocrat Monti's own popularity has fallen to 33% - less than half the level when he was appointed. The sad truth is no more dramatically highlighted by "the growing discontent with Monti’s action, because the crisis goes on and on and many realized that he hasn’t got a magic wand to overcome it. The rise of Beppe Grillo's anti-bailout party and realization among Monti's backers that maybe a 'softer stance' towards challenging austerity policies remains the only way to keep their salaries leaves Italy's 'fiscal rigor' in question and with Europe's second largest debtload (and now rising costs of funding once again), the contagion continues (in risk markets and populist politicians)

Whether it is the need to soak up all of the Fed's sub 3-year sold on an almost daily basis by the Fed courtesy of Operation Twist (which despite ending in 2 weeks, has already brough the average SOMA holding maturity to a record 105.5 months despite the Fed's implicit target of 100 months, meaning the Fed has overshot its duration ramping target by a lot), or because dealers are suddenly very concerned with having equity exposure, in its last update, the NY Fed has disclosed that as of June 6 Primary Dealers held a record $128 billion in Treasury holdings, a massive 41% increase over the prior week's $91 billion. Whatever the reason, Dealers are now firmly into Trasurys, having increased their net holdings across the curve by $170 billion from -$48 billion last April. And just as notably, for the first time since May 2010 Dealers held no offsetting short positions anywhere on the curve. In conclusion: absolutely everyone is now on the same side of the UST trade.

Equity markets remain exuberantly willing to carry risk into the weekend on the "it's discounted" argument or the "Central Banks will save us" scenario. However, it appears investors are more anxiously buying Treasury bonds into the weekend as safe-haven flows continue (and Spanish bond yields press back up to 7%) and Swiss 2Y rates hold at -32bps. Euro strength on repatriation flows and stocks diverging from risk-assets in general make us nervous for this rally holding (especialy given the underperformance of financials from the open).