Archive - 2012 - Story

At the current pace of 'improvement' in the unemployment rate, it appears the Fed will cease its 'stimulation' in early 2015 - and based on the empirical relationship between unemployment rates and the S&P 500 that implies a healthy retracement to around 750. Seems like the index is comfortable trading back to that level...

"There’s a problem with kicking the can down the road" - Ben Bernanke, (December 12 2012)... We’ve taken this quote out of context - Bernanke was actually talking about the fiscal cliff, and not monetary policy; but kicking the can down the road is exactly what Bernanke is doing in his domain. Instead of letting the shadow banking bubble burst and liquidate in 2008, Bernanke has allowed it to slowly deflate, all the while pumping up the traditional banking sector with heavy, heavy liquidity. The reduction in shadow liabilities remains a massive deflationary and depressionary force (and probably the main reason why a tripling of the monetary base has not resulted in very severe inflation). Trillions and trillions of liquidity later, Bernanke is barely keeping the system afloat. We chose the path of Japan (which has spent the last twenty years depressed) not the path of Iceland (which is emerging from its depression). We chose to kick the can down the road. The system is rotten, and the debt load is unsustainable.

The strength of the Japanese stock market over the past few weeks has been at once heralded as anticipation of Abe's policies and the renaissance of this island nation's faltering reality. However, as Bloomberg's chart of the day points out, this performance trend (just as we saw in sentiment and market performance in the US) is absolutely normal heading into an election. As the chart below shows, the election day (on average) has marked a significant short-term top in the market 12 of the last 13 previous cycles. So while Jeff Gundlach is short JPY and long NKY, we suspect there will be a better entry point for the latter 'lomg' leg just a few days after the election landslide. As Daiwa's Soichiro Monji noted "Investors buy on promises and ideals up until the election. When the parliament starts a normal session, they will start trading on reality."

Investors are being hit from all sides now. We face the fiscal cliff and the quite real possibility that we will go over it, the debt ceiling and then we are assuaged by various tax and spending schemes. The stock market chugs along with their “What me worry” attitude. Just because we are now in a world drowning in apathy do not think that this will go on forever. The problems have become magnified by the slush of capital thrown about by the world’s central banks so that when the bough breaks; it will be a systemic break. It will flash right across the world and we will have another “Oh My God” moment which, as I peer into the future, may come in the next year.

InTrade may have gotten the Obamacare outcome horribly wrong, but it was spot on in predicting the Obama presidential victory. And if it has continued its accurately predictive ways, it will mean a lot of pain is in store for the market (if not so much the President) very shortly, because the online betting service, now only accessible to offshore based US residents just saw odds on a debt ceiling deal plunge to all time lows of 10% earlier today, before rebounding weakly to 16%. As a reminder, Harry Reid has said on numerous occasions that there will be no Fiscal Cliff resolution without a favorable debt ceiling outcome, which therefore means that according to InTrade the odds of a Fiscal Cliff getting done in 2012 have plunged to 16%, and the probability of a market tumble, as the cliff moving over to 2013 means a cornucopia of unintended consequences, is logically (1-16%).

Consider the consequences of the efficient subsidizing the inefficient. As long as the surplus generated by the efficient is larger than the cost of supporting the inefficient, the system can continue. But once the cost of subsidizing the inefficient exceeds the surplus generated by the efficient, the system is doomed to eventual insolvency. There is one way to fill the deficit, of course: borrow money. This is the strategy being pursued by the Status Quo in developed and developing economies alike. As long as the inefficient are protected from competition and amply subsidized, there are no incentives to become more efficient. In effect, becoming more inefficient is rewarded.  What happens when the efficient sectors that are propping up a vast array of inefficient sectors falter? The politically expedient answer is of course to borrow more money. But that creates another kind of financial fragility. Borrowing money only masks the fragility for a time, while adding another layer of fragility beneath the apparently prosperous surface.

A funny thing happened today. For the first time, the equity and bond market closed red (and VIX green) on a Federal Reserve QE-announcement day. Gold outperformed stocks and Treasuries underperformed everything... From the FOMC announcement, Gold and Silver closed green but stocks, bonds, oil, financials, and apple all lost ground (as did the USD very modestly)...

To paraphrase Tim Geinter: "Risk of the Fed ever ending its monetization? No risk of that." Why? Because as the FMS just reported, the February budget deficit was $172 billion, up $52 billion from a month ago, and $35 billion from a year ago. In brief: in the first two months of Fiscal 2013, the US accumulated a $292 billion budget deficit (compared to $236 billion a year ago), a number which is simply scary when annualized. What does this mean? That as long as the Treasury runs $1+ trillion budget deficit, the Fed will never, ever be allowed to stop monetizing, especially with China and the other legacy foreign borrowers just saying nein. Which in turn means that it will now be in the Fed's favor to paint the economy with uglier colors (recall that the Fed now needs unemployment deterioration to have infinite free monetization reign). Does this mean that going over the Cliff is now an absolute certainty.

It has been three years and nine months since the Fed announced 'real' QE1. Presented for your convenience below is the market's reactions then and for comparison we have included today's reaction. It seems the markets - whether Gold, FX, or Treasuries - have become numb (or engorged) on the Fed's actions. This leaves us with the sad conclusion, which the Fed will be last to acknowledge: the ammo, it's gone. It's all gone.

Having released the somewhat less exuberant economic projections (see below), the great one is about to explain the fact that his regime shift in 'rules-based'-doctrine is in fact not, as tin-foil-hat-wearing fringe blogs would suggest, a 'true' counter-cyclical policy by which investors will antithetically hope for worse economics to improve their nominal-priced 401(k)s. Over to you Ben...

*FED: 2012 GROWTH OF 1.7%-1.8% VS 1.7%-2.0% IN SEPTEMBER
*FED: 2013 GROWTH OF 2.3%-3.0% VS 2.5%-3.0% IN SEPTEMBER

It will take the market some time to figure it out, but there were two main parts to the Fed's announcement: the actual breakdown of the $85 billion/month QE4EVA which were priced in as far back as the day QE3 was announced and were not a surprise at all; and the employment and inflation hard-targeting part, the so-called Evans Rule, which is, or at least should be, a shock to the market, only it hasn't quite realized it yet. Why shock? Because starting today, every incremental economic data point that is materially better, brings us closer to an explicit end of Fed intervention. Because at least before the Fed's calendar target was as soft as it gets; now the Fed will have no choice but to terminate its monetization once the unemployment rate plunges (be it entirely due to part-time jobs or 68 year old workers, as has been the case lately). It also means that as the economy continues along an "improving" glideslope, whether real, manufactured or doctored, the market will start pricing in its own "flow"-based demise. Because once the Fed's $85 billion/month in new Flows ends, it's game over.

S&P 500 futures were initially undecided but eventually auctioned up to the highs and pushed on past (though somewhat un-confidently). High-yield credit is bid and leading the ETFs higher. Precious metals and Oil are the winners at the moment though (beta-adjusted) with Treasury yields snapping higher and holding those yield gains. The USD is weakening led by EUR strength (as pressure reverts back to Draghi) but JPY weakness is tempering the overall USD weakness. Energy by far the outperformer post-FOMC as the rest are moving almost entirely systemically with the synthetics (though Tech is lagging). As we post, the initial exuberance is fading across most risk assets.

Just as consensus demanded expected, the FOMC transformed sterilized 'Twist' into unsterilized QE4 in addition to QE3's MBS buying and lowered economic forecasts - dropping calendar-based rate guidance unchanged with a shift to "Evans-Rule"-like threshold-based guidance. High inflation, forget it; 'lower' unemployment, naah; market wants 'moar' so market gets 'moar'. $4 Trillion balance sheet here we come (check to Draghi's OMT and Spain or EUR 'richness' crushes hopes of recovery).

• *FED BOOSTS QE WITH $45 BILLION IN MONTHLY TREASURY PURCHASES
  
• *FED TO KEEP BUYING MORTGAGE BONDS AT PACE OF $40 BLN PER MONTH
• *FED SAYS MONTHLY PURCHASES TO TOTAL $85 BLN
• *FED ADOPTS ECONOMIC THRESHOLDS FOR POLICY TIGHTENING
• *FED: RATES TO STAY EXCEPTIONALLY LOW WITH JOBLESS ABOVE 6.5%
• *FED: RATES TO STAY LOW WITH INFLATION SEEN AT 2.5% OR LESS

Disappointingly for AAPL investors, there was no explicit decision to monetize mini-iPads (or their own subsidized student loan debt in the ultimate reacharound).

Assuming that Ben Bernanke unveils the transition from 'sterilized' Twist to 'unsterilized' QE4 today (which if he doesn't will upset more than a few long-only managers looking to make their year), then the chart below shows the incredible and insatiable demand for money printing (and the central banks' acquiescence). Looking at just outright incremental injections of excess reserves (money-printing), since the whole 'experiment' began, the Fed and ECB have embarked on more and more frequent attempts to prop up this 'fundamentally' sinking ship. Perhaps this is what the Hong Kong Monetary Authority warned of? At the current average decay period of around 40% per action, we should see the ECB or Fed enact something new by around February 4th (just as the debt-ceiling comes to a head).