Archive - Jul 13, 2012 - Story

In the second part of our five-part series on The Olympics (Part 1 here) we ponder the impossible to predict - the medal count. As Goldman notes: Economists like to think that the toolkit of their profession helps them explain many things or, as some would claim, everything that is interesting about human behavior. In the context of the forthcoming Olympic Games in London, therefore, the key question is whether economic variables can help explain and predict success at the Olympics itself. At one level, this seems like a daft question even to consider. It is hard to imagine that economic variables could even begin to capture the kind of individual skill, mental determination and hunger that drive athletes to perform feats of unimaginable virtuosity that is the stuff of Olympic legends. But at the level of a country, it may be possible to identify the ingredients that unlock success at the Games. As British Paralympian Tim Hollingsworth explains: "...when you create a world class environment you are far more likely to create world class athletes." What is a 'world class environment' and how do we measure it across countries? Luckily, we have an answer in the GS Growth Environment Scores (GES), a broad measure of growth conditions across countries - and, indeed, this is what we find: gold does go where the growth environment is superior. The forecast leaves USA, China, and Great Britain battling it out for 'Most Golds' and USA leading China overall - but remember "the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part."

Lots of people have made good profits on Treasuries by buying them and flipping them to a greater fool or a central bank. On the other hand, so did many during the NASDAQ bubble, or during the ’00s ABS bubble. Bubbles are profitable for some, and that’s why there have been so many throughout history. But once the money starts to dry up they become excruciatingly painful. In theory, there are no limits to how low rates could go. In theory, nominal yields could go deeply negative, so long as there are buyers coming into the market ready to buy at a lower rate, and a push a profit to bond flippers. The inherent value in a bond is its yield; everything else is speculation. It is hard to really call the timing on the end of a bubble. People and events can always get more irrational. Japan has kept the Treasury ball (painfully) rolling for far longer than most of us expected (through market rigging as much as anything else). But this cannot end well.

Since January 2007, long-only equity funds have seen redemptions of $545 billion. In the same period bond funds have seen inflows of $630 billion. In the last few months, cumulative flows into equity funds have retraced all the way back to 1996. While every day is a QuEasy day for stocks, it seems the 'financial repression' is working as instead of getting everyone else to do the opposite of what the Fed is doing by making yields on other 'riskless' assets meaningless, all that the Fed has succeeded in doing, is getting everyone in the world to frontrun it in buying bonds. Period

S&P 500 e-mini futures (ES) traded up to almost perfectly recapture their 415ET close from last Friday after a 15-point, 30-minute ramp out of the gates at the US day-session open recouped five days of losses - as once again - we go nowhere quickly. Just for clarity: China GDP disappointed and provided no signal for massive stimulus; JPM announced bigger than expected losses, cheating on CDS marks, and exposed just how large their CIO was relative to income; Consumer sentiment printed at its worst this year; and QE-crimping inflation printed hotter than expectations - and we get a more-than-30 point rally in the S&P. Whether the fuel was JPM squeeze or another big European bank biting the liquidity dust and repatriating cajillions of EUR to cover costs (or Austria needing some cash for a debt payment), what was clear was equity market's outperformance of every other asset class - with the late day surge for a green weekly close particularly noteworthy. Apart from unch on the week, ES also managed to close right at its 50DMA, revert up to credit's less sanguine behavior intra-week, and up to VIX's relative outpeformance on the week (as VIX ended the week with its steepest term-structure in over 4 months). Treasuries ended the week 6-9bps lower in yield at the long-end (2-3bps at the short end) but the USD's plunge, on the absolute rampfest in EURUSD, took it back to unch for the week. Despite the USD unch-ness, Oil and Copper surged (on the day to help the week) up 2.5-3% on the week while even Gold and Silver managed a high beta performance ending the week up around 0.5%. ES ended the day notably rich to broad risk assets - and wil need some more weakness in TSYs and carry crosses to extend this - for now, the steepness of the volatility slope, velocity of squeeze, and richness of stocks to risk makes us a little nervous carrying longs here.

Much has been said about JPM's CIO Loss (which so far has come at a little over $5 billion, just as we calculated in the hours after the original May 10 announcement). And with the so called final number out of the way, investors in JPM have breathed a sigh of relief and are stepping back into the company hopeful that a major wildcard about the firm's future has been removed. The issue, however, is that the CIO loss was never the question: after all JPM could easily sell debt or raise equity to plug liquidity shortfalls. The real issue is that just as we explained months before the loss was even known, the Treasury/CIO department was nothing short of the firm's unbridled hedge fund which could do whatever it chooses, and not be held accountable to anyone at least until its counterparties broke a story of an epic loss to the media. And thus the problem becomes apparent: now that every action of the CIO group is scrutinized under a microscope by everyone from management to auditors to regulators to analysts to fringe blogs, the high flying days of whale trades are forever gone. The question then is just how big was the contribution of the Treasury/CIO group, which until today was buried deep within JPM's Corporate and PE Group and not broken out. Thanks to the new breakout, reminiscent of Goldman starting to break out its own Prop Trading group some years ago, we now know exactly just how big the contribution to both revenue, but more impotantly, net income was courtesy of JPM's Hedge Fund.

The result is nothing short of stunning.

In an extended discussion with various pro- and con- European Parliamentarians, everyone's favorite (well, most forthright, for sure) British MEP, Nigel Farage, opined on entering the hallowed halls of Europe's Hogwarts-like hub in Brussels that he is surprised:

"After five (soon to be six) nations already bailed out, that so few people inside these institutions are even prepared to contemplate that there might be something wrong with the Euro project"

adding that he feels that:

"he is surrounded by some weird cult - that, even after disaster, continue to believe"

"I have committed fraud. For this I feel constant and intense guilt...

 

The forgeries started nearly twenty years ago...

 

Should I go out of business or cheat...

 

I guess my ego was too big to admit failure..."

Duration mismatch is when a bank (or anyone else) borrows short to lend long.  It is fraud, it is unfair to depositors (much less shareholders) and it is certain to collapse sooner or later. This discussion is of paramount importance if we are to move to a monetary system that actually works. By taking demand deposits and buying long bonds, the banks distort the cost of money.  They send a false signal to entrepreneurs that higher-order projects are viable, while in reality they are not.  The capital is not really there to complete the project, though it is temporarily there to begin it. Capital is not fungible; one cannot repurpose a partially completed desalination plant that isn’t needed into a car manufacturing plant that is.  The bond on the plant cannot be repaid.  The plant construction project was aborted prior to the plant producing anything of value.  The bond will be defaulted.  Real wealth was destroyed, and this is experienced by those who malinvested their gold as total losses. Note that this is not a matter of probability.  Non-viable ventures will default, as unsupported projects will collapse. Unfortunately, someone must take the losses as real capital is consumed and destroyed - and these losses are caused by government’s attempts at central planning, and also by duration mismatch.

UPDATE: Suicide note details added:

• *WASENDORF SAID HE USED PHOTOSHOP, SCANNER IN FORGERY, U.S. SAYS
• *WASENDORF SAID CHOICE WAS GO OUT OF BUSINESS OR CHEAT: U.S.
• *WASENDORF'S STATEMENTS MADE IN SUICIDE NOTE, PROSECUTORS SAY
• *PEREGRINE'S WASENDORF SAID `I HAVE COMMITTED FRAUD,' U.S. SAYS

While unable to successfully kill himself, it appears the CEO of PFGBest is even less successful at evading the police. As just reported,

• *PFGBEST'S WASENDORF ARRESTED IN IOWA
• *FED PROSECUTORS CHARGE IOWA FIRM CEO  W/ LYING TO REGULATORS:AP
• *PEREGRINE CHIEF WASENDORF CHARGED BY FEDERAL PROSECUTORS (with making false statements to the CFTC)
• *WASENDORF FRAUD AT PEREGRINE LASTED 20 YEARS, PROSECUTORS SAY

What is probably more concerning to him now is the fact that he was not a Presidential bundler - as the Big House is definitely calling...

Since the EU-Summit, US and European equity markets have (in general) outperformed. From being in sync before the Summit, US equities went into the weekend with a sell-off, which then spurred a short-squeeze push as the S&P 500 was over-exuberant (relative to European equities) on the way up at the start of last week. That cracked back to reality at the end of last week - squeezing the over-levered longs to a significant underperformance relative to European equities. It would appear that in the last 24 hours, US equities are now rallying back to that European 'surreality'. Surreal because European stocks remain dramatically exuberant relative to European (peripheral spreads unch and AAA massively bid) and US (Treasuries bid) bonds and European corporate and financial credit. As we stand, the S&P 500 has retraced back to Europe's 'fair' perspective.

Whether 'size matters' or not to the average hedge fund matters is a question many ask; but as Goldman's Hugo Scott-Gall summarizes perfectly in this chart, it is clear that the preference for herding into the biggest of big caps is becoming ever more crowded. Certainly this likely accounts for the massive rise in correlations (and the over-crowded momentum factor style skew in the market) but the dilemma is foraging for alpha in these huge mega-cap over-researched names is an ever-decreasing game of a-fraction-of-a-basis-point-of-alpha against a sea of beta - and for that mutual-fund-like return, you pay your 2-and-20.

Immigration is always a tricky subject to address honestly. Racists and the far right have dominated the debate and appropriated the language necessary to make even a well reasoned argument. Nevertheless, I think it is about time that some aspects of immigration, in the context of it’s supposed benefits (cui bono ?) are more widely understood and if by doing so I upset anyone, then I hope it will suffice to say that it is not my intention to do so. If you are from the USA you may like to know that the UK, with a population of 63 million, is one fifth of that of the USA, but the USA has a land mass 38 times bigger. In the USA there are 32.3 people per square kilometre, in the UK it is 250.2 per sq km.

Just two weeks after the 'Back To The Future'-Day hoax, Citi's Global Head of International Economics Nathan Sheets, notes that, the experience with fiscal deleveraging after World War II offers some striking lessons, as well as some important caveats, for the United States in the present episode. With the debt again on a high and rising trajectory, even if the headwinds that are now afflicting U.S. aggregate demand quickly abate, economic growth is unlikely to be as strong as that recorded in the late-1940s and 1950s. At the very least, demographics are less supportive. Similarly, while we cannot dismiss the risk that the Federal Reserve may stumble as it eventually exits from its unconventional policies. The key, Sheets concludes, is to find a path for expenditures and revenues that avoids the so-called “fiscal cliff” in the near term but that firmly reduces the trajectory of the debt over the medium to long run. Without such a solution, we leave ourselves vulnerable to the vagaries of sentiment in the bond market, thus opening the door to an unwelcome set of severe financial risks.

Here are the choice highlights from the Fed datadump as we see them.

From Barclays to NYFed:

"Libor's going to come in at.. .. three-month libor is going to come in at 3.53.

 

...it's a touch lower than yesterday's but please don't believe it. It's absolute
rubbish. I, I, I'm, putting my libor at 4%

 

...I think the problem is that the market so desperately wants libors down it's actually putting wrong rates in."