Archive - Nov 25, 2013 - Story

After a year of talks over the post-2014 US military presence in Afghanistan, the US administration announced last week that a new agreement had finally been reached. Under the deal worked out with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the US would keep thousands of troops on nine military bases for at least the next ten years.  In fact, much of the US government’s desire for an ongoing military presence in Afghanistan has to do with keeping money flowing to the military industrial complex. Addressing Afghan tribal elders last week, Karzai is reported to have expressed disappointment with US assistance thus far: “I demand tanks from them, and they give us pickup trucks, which I can get myself from Japan… I don’t trust the U.S., and the U.S. doesn’t trust me.”  Let us hope that Karzai sticks to his game with Washington. Let the Obama administration have no choice but to walk away from this twelve-year nightmare. Then we can finally just march out.

A renewed confidence in the administration must be carried forward. We can't wait to hear how immigration reform will single-handedly fix the economy, joblessness, education, and healthcare... and if it's not passed, the failure of all those things is due to the Republican's unwillingness to negotiate... perhaps it is time for the Republicans to don their best Rouhani costumes?

We are used to hedge fund managers blindly making up "facts" to hide the reality that nothing else matters (most definitely not fundamentals) except the Fed's balance sheet (in order to defend his 2-and-20 sapping performance). So it is ironic that Pershing Square's Bill Ackman has added to his previous 342-slide PowerPoint presentation with the following 61 pages of his reality in the hope that market technicals (i.e. the weight of activist longs and shrinking float) and momentum will give way to his view that 'these' Herbalife's fundamentals will eventually win. Good luck with that...

Valuations still matter. Assuming that one is 'investing' as opposed to 'speculating', initial valuation (i.e. the price you pay for the investment) remains the single most important characteristic of whatever one elects to buy. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, “initial valuation” in the US stock market is at a level consistent with very disappointing subsequent returns, if the history of the last 130 years is any guide. Without fail, every time the US market has traded on a cyclically-adjusted P/E (CAPE) ratio of 24 or higher over the past 130 years, it has been followed by a roughly 20 year bear market... but there are plenty of other fish to fry...

Medallions – the yellow metal plates that essentially represent the right to operate a for-hail taxi in New York City – now trade for over  $1.3 million, an all-time record.  Part of this dynamic is fixed supply – there are just 13,336 medallions available for a city of 8.3 million people.  There is also a macroeconomic point, with a stronger NYC economy for those inhabitants who can afford the service... is this the real impact of trickle-down economics? Or yet another distortion?

In China, 9 out of 10 billionaires are self-made, the highest percentage of any country (and by self-made we are unsure whether BusinessWeek's Christina Larson means via entrepreurial spirits or government connected handout) but there is another fact that makes the Chinese billionaire different from the rest of the average run-of-the-mill billionaires we discussed here. The average age of the country’s 157 billionaires is 53 years old - nine years younger than the world average. But perhaps the most shocking statistic among the luxury buyer is that the average Ferrari buyer in the U.S. is 47 years old; in China, he is 32.

If one of the biggest concerns in early 2013 was the progressively declining Bids To Cover in US Treasury auctions, the past few months have seen a halt in this trend, while today's auction of $32 billion in 2 Year paper marked a substantial return to the high-flying  BTC day of yore when the just completed 2 Year auction not only priced strongly through the 0.303% high yield, pricing at 0.300, but more importantly, at a 3.54 Bid to Cover, a jump from October's 3.09, and the second highest since February excluding only April's 3.63. Curiously, the drop in the overall Bid To Cover (as can be sen on the chart below) correlates closely to the drop off in Direct take downs in the first half of the year. This too has reversed in recent months with Directs getting 27.28%, Indirects holding 22.47% and Dealers left holding just over half, or 50.25%. Over the next few days it will be revealed if the same rising BTC trend is sustained in the other near-term vintages, the 5 and 7 year auctions also due out later week.

The U.S. holiday shopping season traditionally begins on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, with alluring sales and promotions. On the day the ultimate discounter, Wal-Mart's CEO resigns, as Bloomberg's Rich Yamarone notes, the most agreed-upon take so far is that sales will be difficult amid a deteriorating economy - every major retailer in the Bloomberg Orange Book has made mention of the competitive market for the consumer’s dwindling dollar. Target Corp. CEO Gregg Steinhafel said, “it’s clear that the holiday season will be highly promotional and that consumers will be laser-focused on value.”

The story making the rounds these days is that the USA’s industrial economy is on the rise again; that the housing market has “recovered;” that (according to Meredith Whitney) the “central corridor” of the nation (Texas to Minnesota) is the second coming of Japan in the 1960s; that we have more oil than we know what to do with; that the nation has bred a super-race of intrepid entrepreneurial risk-takers like unto no other society in history; and finally that whatever else we are or are not, America is the cleanest shirt in the laundry basket of Mother Earth.

This is all horseshit of course, being smoked in the New York Fed’s crack pipe.

"Suicides rose by 17% between 2007 and 2009 and to 25% in 2010, according to unofficial 2010 data (398). The Minister of Health reported a further 40% rise in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Suicide attempts have also increased, particularly among people reporting economic distress (610). Homicide and theft rates have doubled. HIV rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with about half of new HIV infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month and faster admission on to drug-substitution programmes. Prostitution has also risen, probably as a response to economic hardship. Health care access has declined as hospital budgets have been cut by about 40% (398) and it is estimated that 26 000 public health workers (9100 doctors) will lose their jobs (611). Further cuts are expected as a result of recent negotiations with the IMF and European Central Bank."

Is it just coincidence that Twitter is being Baumgartnered and both the NYSE (stock) and BATS (options) markets have now broken!

This is just farcical now...

The difficulty of US workers to obtain "desirable" jobs has been noted here previously. Recall in 2012 when Delta received 22,000 applications for about 300 flight attendant jobs in the first week after posting the positions outside the company (which was an improvement from 2010, when the Atlanta-based carrier received 100,000 applications for 1,000 jobs when it last hired flight attendants in October 2010). Or when in 2011 McDonalds hired 62,000 minimum wage applicants out of one million total applicants. However, that is nothing compared to the job seeking frenzy in China, where as AFP reports, more than one million people took China's national civil service exam at the weekend in a modern version of an age-old rite, but faced huge odds against clinching one of the few government jobs available. A total of 1.12 million took the National Public Servant Exam, according to figures from the State Administration of Civil Service figures. How many total job openings were there? A tiny 19,000 according to China's Global Times, meaning less than 1 on 50 would be successful.

Even as the Dot-Com 2.0 exasperates to new highs, it seems Twitter - the darling of the no-profit-but-lots-of-hype recent IPOs - is losing its lustre. TWTR is down 4% today to new lows post-IPO. The catalyst for this latest slump appears to be a WSJ article about "fake accounts" - whocouldanode? Of course, it wouldn't be the new normal markets without an exchange 'breaking'... The NYSE and NYSE MKT cash equities markets is working to resolve an issue with customer connectivity.

Despite the downtick in rates for a month or two, the housing 'recovery' appears to have come to an end. This is the fifth consecutive monthly decline in pending home sales and even though a smorgasbord of Wall Street's best and brightest doth protest, it would appear the lagged impact of rising rates is with us for good (as the fast money has left the flipping building). This is the biggest YoY decline since April 2011 as NAR blames low inventories and affordability for the poor performance. Perhaps more worrying for those still clinging to the hope that this ends well is the new mortgage rules in January that could further delay approvals.

Nope, no bubble here... and no complacency either. And while just like last time, the tech companies still have no profits, at least this time they have revenues... most of which originate from the seemingly infinite advertising budgets at struggling discretionary retailers. By way of gentle reminder - In 2000, total US debt was $5.7 trillion. Now it is three times greater, or $17.2 trillion. As Kyle Bass once warned, "we are right back there! The brevity of financial memory is about two years."