Archive - Jul 2012 - Story

Back on April 30, when the US Treasury, together with the TBAC chaired by Matt Zames (who as everyone knows is being groomed to take over JPMorgan after Jamie gracefully steps down) sat down put together its latest debt funding needs projection, we openly mocked the numbers when we said "Now obviously we are all for the US needing less debt, however we wonder: did the US discover some magical source of tax revenue: last we checked the companies with $100+ billion in cash were paying virtually zero taxes, and US workers were making less and less courtesy of more and more jobs being converted into temp jobs with lower wages, and less withheld tax as a result." Sure enough, minutes ago the Treasury just admitted what we and our readers knew all along: in its quarterly Treasury refunding appetizer, it noted that during the "September 2012 quarter, Treasury expects to issue $276 billion in net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-September cash balance of $60 billion.  This borrowing estimate is $12 billion higher than announced in April 2012.  The increase is primarily due to lower receipts, higher outlays, redemptions of portfolio holdings by the Federal Reserve System, and higher issuances of State and Local Government securities." In other words: if only it wasn't for that pesky lack of revenue and excess spending our mocking would have been for nothing. Alas, it was spot on, and as a result instead of needing $253 billion in fiscal Q4, the US will need $272 billion (after having a $5 greater financing need in Q3 as also expected).

Equities traded in a very narrow range (aside from an early day-session stop-run) amid extremely low volume in equity cash and futures markets and ended the day modestly lower (holding the post-Draghi gains). However, a funny thing happened on the way to the equity bull market; HY and IG credit have underperformed since mid-day Friday, VIX (+1.3vols to 18.03%) has risen notably since the open on Friday - completely shrugging off equity's strength, and while Treasuries saw a great deal of ugliness at the end of last week - and a pull back would be expected - they notably outperformed (relatively speaking) their equity cousins today. The USD gained 0.25% today as the EUR dropped a notable 0.5% but only WTI reacted to that (by dropping 0.67% today) while Copper and Gold trod water and Silver spurted to a high-beta 1.7% gain (crossing back above its 50DMA for the first time since mid-March). As Unilever and Texas Industries issue debt at record-low coupons we also note that IG/HY advance-declines lines are extremely high and along with implied-skewness in SPY options suggests a very high level of complacency.

Group-On, Group-Off is not the title of the new Karate Kid movie but we couldn't resist but highlight the sheer lunacy of this market...

Did you know that, according to Capgemini and the Royal Bank of Canada’s latest World Wealth Report, there are now more millionaires in Asia than North America…? An estimated 3.37 million individuals in the Asia-Pacific region have a liquid net worth of over US$1 million. That compares to 3.35 million in North America. The same trend is evident in the gold market. While the current world hubs for gold trading and storage are London, Zurich, and New York, stores of physical metal are also beginning to migrate east. Gold storage facilities are springing up all over Asia like mushrooms after a summer rain. Back in 2009, the Hong Kong Airport Authority set up the first secure gold storage facility inside the confines of the Hong Kong Airport. This September, Malca-Amit, the Tel Aviv-based diamonds and precious metals company is opening a second state of the art facility at the airport, which will have capacity for 1,000 metric tons of gold. That compares to the 4,582 tons that the US government claims is in Fort Knox, and the record 2,414 million tons that the world’s exchange traded gold funds collectively held – mostly in London– as of July 5th.

Today's NYSE total volume has a run-rate around 15-20% below its average for this time of day. This is 2 standard deviations below average and most notably the lowest non-holiday day/week volume so far. At the same time, volume in the futures market is even worse with S&P 500 e-mini futures (ES) trading volumes around 30% below their recent average. It is perhaps no surprise then that ES is jiggling in a narrow 3pt range between its lows and its VWAP/unch level.

The expanding-multiple-dependent US equity market that we have discussed numerous times (most recently here) appears to have hit a snag. While we noted the almost perfect correlation between forward-looking P/Es and the market during the last three years - and the clear hope-iness nature of said multiple expansion (and reality contraction) - what we failed to note until now is the significantly diminishing multiple-expansion impact from each of the Fed's actions. QE1 created a plus-4x multiple expansion (from ~10 to ~14), QE2 created a plus 1.5x pop in multiples, and Operation Twist around the same. Critically though, as soon as the Fed-sponsored money-supply 'flow' expansion ended, so the P/E multiple-expansion ended (and indeed reversed very quickly). It really is about the flow; and the threat of a crack-addicted market's requirement for perpetual QE.

Just over three short years ago, as equity markets were re-surging on a wave of taxpayer-funded bailout euphoria, we wrote "There is nothing that can be done at this point to prevent the administration from leeching every last dollar out of its taxpayers to benefit the terminally addicted and zombied bank system". We, in the imagined words of Ryan Lochte on Saturday, "Nailed It" as we see a market now so bereft of any human-based reaction to reality and merely a product of a drug-peddling central bank that appears to have become self-aware in its omnipotence. To wit, the present day; as we are teased and tickled day after day with the promise of more CB crack if we are just good boys and BTFD, the sad nay terrible fact is that even the most 'say hello to my little friend' of drug-dealers - those of the Brazilian Favelas - have decided to refuse to sell their 'crack' to their own people since it "also brought destruction in [the] community". Maybe, just maybe, the Fed will up its level of conscience this week to that of Brazilian drug-dealers.

First some German dares to suggest Mario Draghi's ECB should be sued for getting a "bigger than god complex", and now the EU's ombudsman has the temerity to suggest Mario Draghi may have conflicts of interest due to his previous jobs, most notably at Goldman Sachs, a topic beaten to death on these pages... and various other factors.  From Spiegel: "As soon as you took office, there were discussions about his past in the U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs - now has Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, and problems with the EU ombudsman. It's about the membership of an influential banking lobby organization." What are the "other factors": well, one is Draghi's presence in the Group of 30 which as we have explained previously, is the real behind the scenes central planning group which decides the fate and future of the world (an extended write up here). The other factor? Mario's son Giacomo, who just happens to work as an interest rate trader at Morgan Stanley London.

• *COMMERCE DEPARTMENT ISSUES DECISION ON WASHERS IN STATEMENT
• U.S. FINDS DUMPING OF SOME LARGE WASHERS FROM MEXICO, S. KOREA
• *U.S. SETS DUTIES OF AS MUCH AS 82% KOREA-PRODUCED WASHERS
• *U.S. SETS DUTIES OF 72% ON MEXICO-PRODUCED WASHING MACHINES

Who is Jamie Dimon?

• New York Banker: 14%
• Texas Congressman: 9%
• X-Games Skateboarder: 7%
• Daredevil Motorcyclist: 4%
• Don't Know: 66%

Factual data point after factual data point is indicating more than a little stress in the Chinese economy (and the Asian engine of growth in general). Whether it is bank loan losses escalating, shadow-banking stress, real-estate corruption, dismal retail spending, the shrinking textile industry, the artificial production in the crushingly slow metals industry, the construction industry's contraction, or the massive '50%-above-demand' channel-stuffing now occurring in the Chinese auto market, Diapason Commodity's Sean Corrigan succinctly notes: "China bulls will not heed any of this, of course, for they are prisoners of the nested illusion that all increases in outlay represent genuine growth (cf, Occidental property bubbles) and that higher growth must imply greater profitability. They will also argue, on any uptick in the macro numbers, that the worst is not only behind us, but that it has been more than fully priced in." Given a picture paints a thousand words; Asian trade volumes have ended their rebound and are now exhausted, just as Chinese authorities are still giving off signals that they will not repeat the indiscriminate orgy of spending of 2009-10.

Timothy Geithner and Wolfgang Schäuble today met on the island of Sylt to use the informal atmosphere for an open exchange of views on global, U.S. and European economies. They emphasized the need for ongoing international cooperation and coordination to achieve sustainable public finances, reduce global macroeconomic imbalances, and restore growth.

Two months ago it was the Schrodinger market, best exemplified by China where the economy was both rising and contracting at the same time depending on what data one looked at. Now, that the global contraction is confirmed and one can no longer claim anyone is decoupling from anyone else (especially not with a fiscal cliff looming), it is the Copperfield market: everything and anything all about distraction. Today we present the latest math-based fact that will need the loudest distraction from the ECB yet (or maybe, the reason why Draghi, for three days in a row, was posturing with promises of inevitable intervention). As the ECB has just announced, and as the Fed will disclose on Thursday with the usual 4 day lag, 10 European banks, via the ECB's swap line with the Fed, have demanded a whopping $8 billion in 7 Day FX swap operations for the week starting July, double the prior week's $4.2 billion (by presumably the same 10 banks), and the most so far in 2012. Looks like not only is Europe not fixed, but banks suddenly have developed a huge appetite for USD - could it have something to do with forced over-repatriation of all EUR-based assets, in a desperate attempt to keep the EUR higher, even if it means ending up with far less USD than capital levels demand? No worries, there is always the ECB to cover the underfunding if and when needed.

With expectations for a muddle-through slight positive print, the headline Dallas Fed index just printed at -13.2 (exp. 1.9). This is its lowest level since September of last year and the biggest miss of expectations since May of last year. The headline index is teetering on the edge of its worst levels since 2009 as the month to month change in the general business activity index dropped a massive 19pts - its largest drop since April 2005. Specifically it appears the outlook for capital expenditures was among the largest sub-index to have its hope crushed - and this strongly suggests (and confirms) a sub-50 ISM print.