Archive - Jan 8, 2013 - Story

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between the balance sheets of the world's major central banks and risk assets in general are relatively closely correlated (that is not to say dependent to avoid the causation/correlation 'out'). A great example is the tight coupling between the EURUSD exchange rate and the ECB and Fed balance sheets over the past few years - and just what the EURUSD (market) is implying about forward central bank action. As Mark Faber has noted in the past though, the flood of liquidity from central bankers has the unintended consequence that they 'don't know' where that money will sloosh next. 2012 saw European stocks dramatically outperform US stocks, despite the 'unresolved issues', and the chart below of lagged performance of US over European stocks relative to the Fed and ECB balance sheets, suggests that this 'catch-up' of Europe has considerably more legs going forward even as the Fed's balance sheet is set to expand by $1trillion this year. A strange chart indeed...

The world’s largest reinsurance firm, Munich Re, has stated that Natural Disasters alone have cost the world $160 billion in 2012. The US accounted for 67% of those total losses, with Hurricane Sandy proving to be single most expensive disaster of the year, costing around $50 billion in total. Munich Re actually noted that, “had it not been for this exceptional storm, losses would have been very low in 2012.” Hurricane Sandy is the largest hurricane ever on record, and the second most expensive after Hurricane Katrina. The second most costly natural disaster was the summer-long drought which blighted the Corn Belt across the US Midwest, causing severe crop damage to the sum of $20 billion....  As high as the global losses were in 2012 they were still less than 2011 when the cost hit as high as $400 billion due to major earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and severe floods in Thailand.

In a somewhat surprising bid to avoid having even more Argentina assets impounded by the increasingly more belligerent hedge fund hordes, president Kirchner opted to squeeze the government's already dwindling coffers further and instead of using her official aircraft, she decided to pay British air charter Chapman Freeborn $880,000 for an airplane rental to take her to Cuba, the UAE, Indonesia and Vietnam. This happens even as Argentina is once again caught in a messy brawl with the UK over the Falklands. And while the nearly $1 million abuse of taxpayer funds will hardly pass unnoticed, we have no doubt that Argentina should be able to finance itself in the international markets efficiently should it choose to: just slap a high yield on the debt and pitch it to Elliott, already in possession of an Argentina boat, who may (or may not) gladly buy it. Stranger things have happened.

A month after December's 3 Year bond auction drew a record Direct bidder takedown, the Treasury has just auctioned off another batch of $32 billion in TSYs, which was almost a carbon copy of last month, with weak Indirect interest (28.4% Indirects), a stable Bid To Cover of 0.3623, increasing from last month's 0.3356%, a high yield of 3.85% (5.51% awarded at the high), just inside of the 0.386% When Issued, and another record Direct Bidder take down, rising to 26.4%, and just shy of surpassing the Indirects, as happened in December. The curious shift away from Indirects to Directs continues, even as Primary Dealers as usual pocket around half of the auction, to be used a near cash-equivalent collateral in various repo markets (and afterwards perhaps using the cash repo proceeds to sell IG9 indices?) Keep an eye on the Bid to Cover in future auctions as we may have hit a ceiling in this old-fashioned metric which has lately been moving sideways, and outright downward in some other TSY bond year.

2012 was unusual for many reasons. As Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker notes, the kind of stocks that worked in what was a big up tape were very atypical - higher-quality, larger-cap. While the Strategist graciously accepts that his year-end 'bearish' call for 2012's S&P 500 performance was a miss, it is his reasoning that is key. Having a framework is critical and while CNBC anchors merely look on and judge a book by its cover, Parker's critical insight that last year's performance was all multiple expansion and "The reason we got multiple expansion last year was the Fed is creating trillions of dollars on a computer" is perhaps the most critical take-away for anyone claiming victory. His succinct summary for 2013 (e.g. earnings consensus needs to come way down, and Fed unconventional policy-driven multiple-expansion has 'robbed from the future') in the following clip is also worthwhile to clarify exactly what is going on under the covers of our equity markets.

The debt limit was formally reached last week, and we expect the Treasury's ability to borrow to be exhausted by around March 1 (if not before) and while CDS are not flashing red, USA is at near 3-month wides. Like the previous debt limit debate in the summer of 2011, the debate seems likely to be messy, with resolution right around the deadline. That said, like the last debate we would expect the Treasury to prioritize payments if necessary, and Goldman does not believe holders of Treasury securities are at risk of missing interest or principal payments. The debt limit is only one of three upcoming fiscal issues, albeit the most important one. Congress also must address the spending cuts under sequestration, scheduled to take place March 1, and the expiration of temporary spending authority on March 27. While these are technically separate issues, it seems likely that they will be combined, perhaps into one package. This remains a 'very' recurring issue, given our government's spending habits and insistence on its solvency, as we laid out almost two years ago in great detail.

Perhaps it is time for the punditry and the chatterbox media to start considering what happens not when the much anticipated rotation out of bonds and into stocks, which has not happened for 4 years now, and won't, at least not until the government bond bubble finally pops which will only happen when the central banks finally lose control, but what happens if even a tiny amount of the global pension capital allocated to bonds and/or equities, is rotated into gold.

“Pension money invested in bullion is ‘peanuts’ at the moment,” Toshima said. “If 1 percent of their total assets shift to the metal, the gold market would explode.”

Could not have said it better ourselves.

The groupthink in the world of finance is some of the worst on the planet. It’s incredible how such an educated, experienced group can willfully ignore reality, stick their heads in the sand, and repeat the same mantras over and over again until they become axiomatic. The desire to be accepted by one’s peers is part of human nature. And when it’s one’s peers who are rigging the financial system, the pressure to adopt industrial groupthink is enormous. The dawning of a new year is invariably a time for forecasts. But we have some reservations about the seemingly ubiquitous binary decision to ditch bonds and put the proceeds into the stock market. To put it more plainly, ditching bonds to buy stocks may be jumping from the frying pan into another frying pan. To put it more plainly still, stock markets are only cheap by reference to grotesquely expensive government bonds, and the risk of significant price falls is ever present, especially at what is likely the tail-end of a multi-decade expansion in credit. A falling tide might sink more than one type of boat.

It is one thing for Pineapple republics like Greece (because only the US has full faith and credit in the "Banana" adjective) to have their former Prime Minister's mom be uncovered with $700 millions in Swiss accounts, or its former finance minister get caught literally whiting out his relatives (and perhaps himself?) from a list exposing tax evaders and offshore bank holders, but when the rulers of that bastion of neo-socialism, where everyone is equal, are shown as having done the same, and ostensibly "laundering tax fraud" and hiding unpaid taxes in some bank vault deep under the Swiss alps, implicitly having been part of that group of much hated "rich people" that the same regime is doing all it can to expel to progressive places such as Russia and Belgium, one can't help but wonder, are some more equal than others?

If corporate earnings have topped out, what will push the stock market higher? The usual answer is "central bank intervention," but history suggests that in the long run, the market eventually correlates to corporate earnings. Earnings up, market up; earnings down, market down.

As if Yum Brands were not suffering enough this morning - as they forecast China comp sales to drop 6% (more than the forecast 4% decline), it seems the UK has their next PR disaster waiting to happen, courtesy of their KFC brand. After a 19-year-old Brit found a "horrible wrinkled foreign body" in his fried chicken meal, KFC has apologized (rather magnanimously) saying "while there was no health risk, we agree it was unsightly." Judge for yourself just how puke-worthy and generally emotionally scarred you would have been after biting into this 'brain-looking' image. KFC clarifies: "Although we haven't received the product, it appears from a photograph that unfortunately on this occasion a kidney, and not a brain as claimed, was not removed in the preparation process." Oh, just a kidney? Pass the salt then.

Today's Sesame Street market moment is brought to you by the word "hope" and by the number '-0.025%'. For the last five months, Goldman notes that the US equity markets have rerated their economic growth view as hope remains for a future full of unicorns and faerie-fart-powered autos. However, the reality is that, as Goldman's macro-economic Swirlogram shows, that the data is no longer indicating expansion and in fact in December shifted into a 'slowdown' mode. Once again we are left, as we head into earnings season where headline numbers have been slashed to make the bar low for beats (but stocks have not re-rated yet), with a divergence between macro (and micro) reality and the nominal equity index implied reality that so many managers hope is true.

We were wondering how long until the latest lunatic idea out of the "serious economist" mainstream would get the proper comedic treatment it so rightfully deserves. That time finally came last night when Stephen Colbert gave it the 3 minutes of attention it almost deserves. Oh well, now that it has made the comic circuit it is time to officially forget about this idiotic idea... At least until the next debt ceiling crisis in a year or so when like a bad sequel to Weekend at Bennie's Bernie's, it is resurrected once more.

Sometimes you just have to laugh - or you will cry. In what could well have been Tuesday Humor if it wasn't so real, the AIG board (fulfilling its shareholder fiduciary duty) is considering joining Hank Greenberg's suit against the government over the cruel-and-unusual bailout that saved the company. The $25bn lawsuit, as NY Times reports, based not on the basis that help was needed but that the onerous nature "taking what became a 92% stake in the company with high interest rates and funneling billions to the insurer's Wall Street clients" deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment (prohibiting the taking of private property for "public use, without just compensation"). The 'audacious display of ingratitude' comes weeks after the firm has repaid the $182 billion bailout funneled to it and its clients by an overly generous Treasury. The firm has asked for 16 million pages of government documentation, this "slap in the face of the government" portends a question of whether the government will sue The Fed for enabling the recovery that strengthened Greenberg's case that the bailout was so harsh. Happy retirement Tim Geithner.

Reuters report that Asia's physical market has picked up so far this year, with buyers tempted by last week's big drop in prices -- when prices retreated to as low as 1,626 per ounce -- and on demand ahead of the Lunar New Year, traders said. The trading volume on the Shanghai Gold Exchange's 99.99 gold physical contract shot through the roof on Monday, hitting a record of 19,504.8 kilograms, after double-counting transactions in both directions.  "Physical demand is very strong," said a Beijing-based trader. "It's a combination of the attraction of lower prices as well as pre-holiday demand." But such appetite could waver if prices recover towards $1,700, he added.