Archive - Aug 2012 - Story

The US stock market is up about 9% since June 1 despite weakening fundamentals for US companies and weakening economies around the world, including in Europe. Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker thinks the reason for the rally is investors’ dream that macro policy in the US and Europe will prove to be more effective this time around than in the recent past. Underneath the market rally there has been some abnormal micro structure, including the fact that mega-caps have outperformed in an up tape, high beta has underperformed, and in the last month energy was the best-performing sector while materials was the worst, despite the 0.83 correlation between the two over the past 40 years. His response to all this optimism is to remind investors that analysts and investors tend to want to be optimistic and that the market runs on a buy-the-dream mentality. Everyone talks about being pessimistic, but what we hear from our conversations with investors is generally optimism: "I am wary when people claim to be a contrarian bull today. They should not pretend they are alone on an island in their bullishness."

You may recall that one of the “tricks of the trade” was the use of people in the audience. They stood up and claimed that they had taken the magic potion and were cured of rheumatism, arthritis, cancer and that ninety year old Uncle Elijah and been able to throw away his cane after imbibing the stuff. This may remind you of what is going on in Europe presently as politicians from each and every nation claim that the newest European snake oil will cure the ailments of Europe for all time, for forever and for always. Yes, well, the printing of money has a cost besides the paper and brandishing yourself as the next new Savior of Europe is the trick of Kings and countless empires on the Continent and yet here we are after being saved so many times in the past. So I will tell you this; you produce the Vampire and then I will buy the garlic and we’ll leave it at that!

The European start was quiet in terms of news-flow, with concentration still centered on the finances of the peripheral nations as Spain still refuses to accept they may need a bailout for the country as a whole. The Spanish short-end has seen a continuation of yesterday’s downside, with profit-taking noted following last weeks rally. Bund futures have seen a part-retracement of yesterday’s weakness, boosted by a well-bid 10yr German auction and as sentiment takes a turn towards safer havens. The headline event today came out of London with the Bank of England quarterly inflation report. Alongside expectation they cut growth forecasts for this year and next, although against forecasts the report and comments from Governor King were less dovish than anticipated causing strengthening of GBP, with moves to fresh highs in GBP/USD. Short sterling suffered downside following comments from King who said cutting interest rates would damage some financial institutions and would be partly counter-productive.

A curious thing happened on the way to (ever deferred) recovery: America's goods manufacturing sector has been resilient, and in line what one would expect from a recovery. So far so good: the problem as everyone knows, 70% of US GDP is based on "services." And it is here that things get very ugly. As the charts of the day below show, while "goods have been good", it is services that have stunk up the economy in the post-depression era, and are what the Fed has been unable to do anything to stimulate, and by implication have kept US GDP subdued at stall speed levels.

• Regulators irate at NY action against Standard Chartered (Reuters)
• Recession Generation Opts To Rent Not Buy Houses To Cars (Bloomberg)
• Egypt launches air strikes on militants in Sinai (Reuters)
• Loan-Shark Lending Surge Feared In Japan (Bloomberg)
• US seeks $3bn for Sudan oil deal (FT)
• Home Prices Climb as Supply Dwindles (WSJ)... not really- just money laundering in the form of ultra luxury home purchases soars
• A lifeline is thrown to the periphery - Smaghi (FT)
• Standard and Who? Greece Credit-Rating Outlook Lowered by S&P as Economy Weakens (Bloomberg)
• BOE Cuts Growth Forecast, Sees Inflation Below Goal in Two Years (Bloomberg)
• S&P Takes CreditWatch Actions On Four Spanish Banks (Reuters)
• Japan Gets Reprieve as Drop in Oil Eases Trade Impact (Bloomberg)

A funny thing happened in European peripheral bond markets: they sold off - Spain is wider across the board, with the 2 Year back over 4%, and the 10 Year threatening to blow out above 7% for the first time since the market was re-re-fooled by Draghi. Same in Italy, where the 2s10s is once again in flattening mode. In other words after getting Draghi right for one day, then flipping and confusing what he said for the next week, the market is back to being right in itis initial kneejerk reaction to the ECB head's words. One reason (among many) - a Rabobank report by Richard McGuire and Lyn Graham-Taylor which states that Spain won’t ask for more aid if more conditions are attached add to likelihood "crisis must worsen before it improves." Hmm, where have we seen an identical turn of the phrase before. Oh yes, here. Rabobank also adds that the ECB will have to show willingness to buy across the curve (not just in tenors of less than one year) when it does intervene. Of course, for that to happen, things must get far, far worse. Just as we explained to the five-year olds in charge of the market this past weekend.

Emotion, while an important element in man’s array of mental tools, can unfortunately triumph over reason in crucial matters. In the context of simple economic reasoning, today’s intellectual establishment often disregards common sense in favor of emotional-tinged policy proposals that rely on feelings of jealously, envy, and blind patriotism for validation rather than logical deduction.  “Eat the rich” schemes such as progressive taxation and income redistribution are used by leftists who style themselves as champions of the poor.  Plucking on the emotional strings of envy makes it easier to arouse widespread support for economic intervention via the state. Printed money is not the same as accumulated savings which would otherwise fund sustainable lines of investment. The truth is that capital is always scarce; there is never enough of it. Krugman and Stiglitz believe, as most do, that Americans should be born with the opportunity to succeed. What they fail to see (or refuse to acknowledge) is that the free market provides the best opportunities for someone to make a decent living by providing goods and services.

In a world of slow stagnating growth, foreign exchange variations can have a dramatic impact on top and bottom lines - especially in a market where hedges are flummoxed by government-influenced gap-after-gap and mismatch. As Goldman notes the headwinds of FX into Q2 are acute and have been painful for multi-nationals - with several high-profile companies missing and or adjusting down forecasts due to the rise of the US dollar. In spite of all the focus on Q2 earnings, we remind investors that Q3 and Q4 will also see significant currency headwinds - an impact we (and Goldman) believes is far from priced in for many companies in the market - a total top-line drag of over 5% YoY.

While we have looked in the past at the incredible dominance of FOMC days when it comes to stock market performance, recent intraday performance of the major equity indices has had a somewhat repetitive and rhythmic structure. We know volumes surge, pause, and surge; Tradestation has dug one step deeper into the actual performance structure intraday and found some fascinating trends. From the extremely clear final-hour ramp to the oscillating bull-bear opening moves (and the European close positive bias) across almost 30 years of price behavior in bull and bear markets. The afternoons dominate market performance in bull markets and the morning session dominates the weakness in bear markets - so fade the opening rally, buy the dip, cover half into Europe, hope into the close appears the 'empirical route of least resistance' - for now. And this tidbit, if stocks close higher on average into the 3 p.m. hour, their probability of moving higher into the 4 p.m. close is 70%.

Retail gasoline prices in the U.S. Midwest were as much as 50 cents higher than in the rest of the country. By Monday, the price of a gallon of regular unleaded jumped 13 cents from last week in Detroit to settle at $3.99.  The spike in retail gasoline prices follows a series of pipeline spills in Wisconsin and refinery shutdowns in Chicago and elsewhere. The impact of the string of industrial incidents on consumers in the region may be short-lived, but retail prices rarely decline as fast as they increase. The 'cluster of bad luck' leaves refineries shut down at a time when the region is using "summertime gasoline," a blend not manufactured very much outside of the Midwest.

Previously we showed that when it comes to Wall Street's returns, the 8% market return benchmark that every first year analyst finds in Ibbotson's is for naive amateurs. With corporate lobbying returning anywhere between 5,900% and 77,500%, the real money is to be made in the buying and selling of politicians. Yet in our day and age, when information propagates rapidly and when political muppets can be exposed for the Wall Street purchased frauds they are, lobbying is getting increasingly more complicated. Which leaves one other high returning "investment", which unlike lobbying is completely riskless when one is a Wall Street firm: crime. But not just any crime, the type of crime where a firm settles "without admitting or denying guilt" and in the process is slapped with a fine that barely covers the government's legal fees. Case in point: U.S. v. Morgan Stanley, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York Case #11-6875, where MS was punished with the epic disgorgement penalty of $4.8 million. Of course, the fact that Morgan Stanley, who did not admit wrongdoing, generated profits of $21.6 million, is merely a triviality. But a useful one: it allows to calculate that on Wall Street crime does pay, and the IRR is in give or take 350%.

While the surging unemployment rates across Europe are the most troublesome for politicians (and the extreme youth unemployment even more so), if we take a closer and more 'local' view of the stress, it is interestingly more regional than national. While Spain and Greece stand out, the unemployment rate, as analyzed in the chart below by Flute Thoughts blog, does not follow national borders. Northern Italy, for example, seems to have more in common with the German-speaking regions of Europe than with Southern Italy; France appears more peripheral than core; and the former eastern Germany still has not caught up with the west (so much for fiscal integration). Eastern Europe also has some striking differences as we suspect the ovals are slowly collapsing in on themselves as the reality of lower revenues from more unemployed procyclically pulls the euro-zone into depression.

Last Friday, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced HR 6357, a bill which aims to ‘prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens’ by the federal government. In other words, in the Land of the Free, they need to pass a law to prevent the government from indiscriminately murdering its own citizens. Now if this doesn’t give one reason to pause and consider the distortions of liberty that have taken place in western civilization, I don’t know what will. Ask yourself, are you really living in a free society? Are you free? If not, why not? What else could possibly be more important? It takes courage to answer honestly.