Archive - Aug 2012 - Story

While we already presented, courtesy of Nanex, the modus operandi of the Knight berserker algo, there was one outstanding question. What was the bottom line. And no, not how much the loss on Knight's Income Statement would be as a result of this glimpse into what really happens in the market: we already knew that would be $440 million. The question is what is the notional amount of stock that this algo bought in the 45 minutes in which it was operational. We now know: $7 billion. Or $155 million per minute. Or $2.6 million per second. Or, assuming the algo impacted just 150 stocks as previously reported, it was buying on average $17,333 in each name every second. Or, assuming an average stock price of the universe of 150 stocks of $30/share, the Knight algo lifted the offer roughly 600 times each second. For 45 minutes straight! That's right - the market making algorithm of a designated market maker which is responsible for 10% of the order flow in the US stock market, entered a pre-programmed mode (because the computer was told to do whatever it did by someone, and not without reason) that saw it buy up $2.6 million worth of stock every second.

"At this juncture . . . the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained" - Ben Bernanke, March 28, 2007

"I don’t think student loans are a financial stability issue to the same extent that, say, mortgage debt was in the last crisis because most of it is held not by financial institutions but by the federal government" - Ben Bernanke, August 7, 2012

Please mark your calendars accordingly as yesterday the Chairman just guaranteed that student loans will be cause for the next "financial stability issue."

Imagine you are driving to work this morning in Las Vegas (yes, you are one of the select few locals who has a job that does not involve relying on the strip's ever declining gambling revenues or flipping a house to John Paulson in the second, and far shorter, coming of the regional housing bubble, with poppage imminent), and you observe what appears to be a man who hung himself below a billboard saying "Dying for Work." Confused, you continue, only to drive by another billboard with what seem to be a man hanging off, this one saying "Hope you're happy Wall St." Slowly it all clicks: the man is not real, and this is not a suicide done in protest by some depressed unemployed person, instead it is merely a mannequin all part of some attempt at a statement. Would this be considered shocking, and will the thousands of commuters who saw this feel any worse or better toward Wall Street and its employees - America's bankers - having seen this, or will they merely continue with their lives? What if the dummy was a real person? And is this merely a foreshadowing of things to come in a country in which class warfare has never been as violent, and in which the divide between the haves and the have nots has never been as wide? And what happens when the next such stunt is a real person? More importantly, what happens if a depressed jobless person takes their life but first takes out some of those he thinks are responsible for his plight - say Wall Streeters?

It would appear that the dilemma of the world exporting more than it imports (that we initially pointed out here) is starting to come to a head in reality with a negative export trade shock. As Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg notes, since the recovery began three years ago, over 70% of the real GDP growth we have seen was concentrated in export volumes and inventory investment; and recent data from the ISM (here and here) points to a dramatic slowdown in both. Compounding this weakness is the fact that the remaining growth was from Capex - which is now likely to slow given the weakening trend in corporate profits - and will more than offset any nascent turnaround in the housing sector - if that is to be believed. The consumer has all but stalled and adding up all these effects and there is a high probability of a 0% GDP growth print as early as Q4.

The government’s central planning of Olympic ticketing has been a complete failure, perhaps best evidenced by the THOUSANDS of empty seats at many of the events.  The government has managed to monopolize an entire industry and screw it up with Soviet-level inefficiency… then make it a criminal offense for the private sector to fix it. This is typical of how a government operates. They take a very cavalier attitude because they don’t care about results, they only care about maintaining control. As a result, they run their operations based on the premise that people really have no choice. With regard to Olympic ticketing, this is mostly true. My choice was either to go through the system legitimately (albeit painfully), deal with some dodgy backroom ticket broker at three times the price, or just watch it on television.

The lunatics are running the asylum. This is the only conclusion one can come to when considering the nonchalance with which what was once considered an extraordinary policy with a firm 'exit' in mind is now propagated as a perfectly normal 'tool' to be employed at the drop of a hat. We refer of course to so-called 'quantitative easing' (QE), which really is a euphemism for money printing. Apart from his sole focus on short term outcomes, an important point that seems not be considered by the FOMC's Rosengren this week is the question of what should happen if the 'open-ended' QE policy were to fail to achieve its stated goals. He seems to assume that it will succeed in lowering unemployment and creating 'economic growth' as a matter of course. It goes without saying that money printing cannot create a single molecule of real wealth. If it could, then Zimbabwe wouldn't be a basket case, but a Utopia of riches. We must infer from Rosengren's idea of implementing open-ended QE until  certain benchmarks in terms of unemployment and 'growth' are achieved, that in case they remain elusive, extraordinary rates of money printing would simply continue until the underlying monetary system breaks down.

Anyone who has been following US fiscal policy over the past three years, which by implication means US monetary policy since Congress and the president have dumped everything in the lap of the Fed, which by implication means the Fed's guide to investing in the Russell 2000, knows too well that it can be summarized in two words: financial repression. Read the attempt to force everyone out of "riskless" assets such as Treasurys and mortgages and into risky assets such as Amazon and its 200+ P/E. All else equal, there has been one huge error with this policy which is akin to the Fed attempting to herd cats: instead of pushing investors into other asset classes, all the Fed has achieved is to get everyone to front run it in buying whatever bonds the Fed has not committed to monetizing just yet as we showed before. The other problem is that all else is not equal, and as SocGen shows Financial Repression, even by construct assuming practice and theory were the same, will not be sufficient due to the following three reasons.

It's very simple really. Please point out where on the below list of Top 20 contributors to a randomly selected US politician, in this case New York's Chuck Schumer, can one find Standard Chartered, Barclays, or HSBC?

For the last four days, HYG (the high-yield bond ETF) has seen a significant underperformance in the latter part of the day. As we noted yesterday, high yield bonds (and investment grade) are seeing the advance-decline line rolling over. Stocks stand notably expensive relative to high-yield credit once again and VIX smashed over 1 vol lower from its gap up open at 16.5% to end at near 5 month lows under 15.25% - its most discounted/complacent to realized vol in over six months. A weak 10Y auction spurred Treasuries to underperform - which helped pull S&P 500 e-mini futures (ES) risk higher (along with oil strength) but in general stocks and gold tracked one another loosely higher while the USD pushed conversely higher - ending the week so far unch. Cross-asset-class correlations drifted lower all day - with credit and carry FX listless while stocks/oil/Treasuries did their risk-thang (though oil tapered back to lows of the day by the close as Gold/Copper/Silver trod water. Three days of terrible volume, even worse average trade size, and the lowest range in five months suggests anyone serious has left the building and perhaps explains why stocks aren't following credit lower.

Every now and then we prefer to sit back and let some of the smartest money speak, especially when said smart money agrees with us. In this case, we hand the podium over to none other than Paul Singer's Elliott Management, which after starting with $1.3 million in 1977 was at $19.8 billion most recently. No expert networks, no high frequency trading, no "information arbitrage", no crony capitalism and pseudo monopolies of scale, and most certainly no bailouts: Singer did it all the old fashioned way: by picking undervalued assets and watching them appreciate. The timing is opportune because while Elliott has much to say about virtually everything in their latest 20 pages Q2 letter, it is the billionaire's sentiment vis-a-vis US Treasury debt that may be most critical, and may be the catalyst that resulted in today's abysmal 10 Year bond auction. To wit: "long-term government debt of the U.S., U.K., Europe and Japan probably will be the worst-performing asset class over the next ten to twenty years. We make this recommendation to our friends: if you own such debt, sell it now. You’ve had a great ride, don’t press your luck. From here it is basically all risk, with very little reward." There is little that can be misinterpreted in the bolded statement. And while many have taken the other side of the Fed over the past 3 years, few have dared to stand against Paul Singer because if there is one person whose opinion matters above most, certainly above that of the Chairsatan, it is his.

In a genuinely free market, rich corporations people have both the resources and incentive to corrupt the government in order to make the market less free. In other words, Capitalism only works in a world in which people have integrity and are accountable to others and themselves - which is the weakest link. And so you end up with? America. In short: "there ain't no such thing as a free market" - which is not to say that we shouldn't try. The following clip points out that even seemingly pro-business legislation is not beneficial to society or businesses themselves broadly with the analogy that "what's good for GM may not be good for America after all"; which begs the question: do humans doom capitalism by default?

Just over a month ago we laid out the market's key indicator for whether NEW QE (or the just as fungible LTRO / unsterilized money printing from Europe) was likely. The 5Y5Y forward inflation expectation has been invaluable in front-running decisions by the world's anti-deflation central banks. What is amazing is that the market has become so conditioned now to the glut of easy money (knowing deep down it fixes nothing but needing that fix for their 'assets') that based on this framework, it appears inflation expectations have now priced in another EUR1 trillion worth of LTRO. We strongly suspect, given the one-year highs in inflation expectations that the Fed will disappoint in September (no matter how much insanity Rosengren spouts) but Draghi will come under increasing pressure not to disappoint (like he did last time).

Trying to be “outside” of consensus is difficult, as it requires “mental capital”. You have to be able to withstand the daily barrage of tainted news, opinions and stock price movements. Going against the stream does not “feel” good and consumes more energy than simply floating with the tides. No pain, no gain. It is not easy to maintain your views given the unhelpful mainstream media (concerned about advertising dollars from financial services firms). Politicians and central bankers are nothing but bubbling fountains of propaganda (they somehow make it easier to read the truth between the lines, since they always seem to lie; for example, if the Spanish Prime Minister says “Spain has not asked the IMF for a bailout” you can safely assume that he if just off the phone with Christine Lagarde, begging the IMF for help)....Back to the stock market: even IF everyone was smart enough to buy stocks in the darkest days of a recession it wouldn’t work – every buyer needs a seller. The structure of the market – relatively constant supply of shares and relatively constant amount of money available for stock market investments (= demand) require any changes in investor preferences (cash or shares) to be resolved via the price. Humans are hard-wired to behave rationally. This makes it so hard for us to escape the “rationality-trap” of the stock market.