Archive - Nov 2013 - Story

It would appear that the Horatio Alger myth - that hard work and pluck will lift a person from dire circumstances to enviable success - is not living up to expectations for Americans. As WSJ's Lauren Weber notes, 40% of Americans think it’s fairly common for someone to start off poor, work hard and eventually rise to the top of the economic heap but a new Pew study shows that in reality, only 4% of Americans travel the rags-to-riches path. Unfortunately, they discovered considerable “stickiness” at both ends of the income spectrum and that Americans attached to the rags-to-riches myth might be disappointed to know that other countries show greater mobility among have-nots - "this is what we call the 'parental penalty,' and it's really high in the U.S. - If you’re born in the bottom here, your likelihood of sticking in the bottom is much higher."

Bloomberg may be in hot water for scuttling an article that "might anger China" as exposed over the weekend, but that was only after winning investigative prizes for its series of reports exposing the epic wealth of China top ruling families in 2012: a topic that has received prominence at a time when the forced wealth redistribution plans of developed and developing nations, usually originated by these same uber-wealthy families, is all the rage. Another country, whose oligarchic wealth had largely escaped press scrutiny, was Iran. At least until today, when in a six month investigation culminating in a three-part report on the assets of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Reuters exposed Setad, an Iranian company that manages and sells property on order from the Imam. In a nutshell, the company has built up its wealth by seizing thousands of properties from Iranian citizens. According to the investigation, Setad’s assets are worth $95 billion – 40 percent more than Iran’s total 2012 oil exports. It is this confiscated "wealth" that has allowed the Iranian clergy, and especially the Ayatollah, to preserve their power over the years.

"It will end badly," Marc Faber explains in this brief CNBC clip, "the question is whether we will have a minor economic crisis and then huge money printing or get into an inflationary spiral first." If you thought that "we had a credit crisis in 2008 because we had too much credit in the economy," then Faber notes "there is that much more credit as a percent of the economy now." Of course, as Bill Fleckenstein recently noted, as long as stocks are rising, investors remain blinded by the exuberance, but as Faber concludes, "we are in a worse position than we were back then," and inflation is already here...

There is currently a debate being waged on Wall Street.  On one side of the argument are individuals who believe that we have entered into the next "secular bull market"  and that the markets have only just begun what is an expected multi-year advance from current levels.  The other side of the argument reiterates that the current market advance is predicated on artificial stimulus and that the "secular bear market" remains intact, and the next major reversion is just a function of time. The series of charts below is designed to allow you to draw your own conclusions. While it is certainly easy to be swept up in the daily advances of the stock market casino, it is important to remember that eventually the "house always wins."  What has always separated successful professional gamblers from the weekend sucker is strictly the difference of knowing when to cash in your chips and step away from the table.

The administration had estimated that nearly 500,000 people would enroll in October, according to internal memos cited last week by Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.); but as WSJ reports, initial reports suggest that fewer than 50,000 people successfully navigated the troubled federal health-care website to enroll in private health insurance plans as of last week. The figures represent an improvement from the website's first days. On Oct. 1, when it opened, only six people signed up for coverage, according to internal administration memos but remains 90% below expectations with only 4 months until seven million are expected to have signed up for private coverage when the open-enrollment period is set to end.

The latest myth of a European recovery came crashing down two weeks ago when Eurostat reported an inflation print of 0.7% (putting Europe's official inflation below that of Japan's 1.1%), followed promptly by a surprise rate cut by Mario Draghi which achieves nothing but sends a message that the ECB is, impotently, watching the collapse in European inflation and loan creation coupled by an ongoing rise in unemployment to record levels (not to mention the record prints in the amount of peripheral bad debt).  Needless to say, all of this is largely aggravated by the EURUSD which until a week ago was trading at a two year high against the dollar, and while helpful for Germany, makes the so-needed external rebelancing of the peripheral Eurozone countries next to impossible. Which means that like it or not, and certainly as long as hawkish Germany says "nein", Draghi is stuck in a corner when it comes to truly decisive inflation-boosting actions. But what is Draghi to do? Well, according to BNP's Paul-Mortimer Lee, it should join the "no holds barred" monetary "policy" of the Fed and the BOJ, and promptly resume a €50 billion per month QE.

Isn't it intriguing that with the cash bond market closed, every other risk-asset-class in the world dies a horrible death of volume-less list-less price action? Today's only activity - bearing in mind the absence of the bond-market's almost ubiquitous POMO leveraging idiocy - was from the US open to the European close. From that point on FX markets (JPY crosses) and stocks went dead-stick pinned to VWAP (but managed new highs in the Dow). There was some divergences... HY credit (via ETFs) dropped rather notably to its lowest in almost a month; VIX was banged back under 12.5% - its lowest in almost 3 months; and crude oil prices jerked higher. Treasury futures indicate a 1-3bps yield rise on the day, the USD leaked lower (led by EUR strength), and PMs went nowhere fast treading water with modest losses. Stocks closed at record highs as the dash-for-trash remains front-and-center: "most shorted' names have tripled the market's 1.4% gain in the last 2 days!

Investors who believe that history has lessons to teach should take our present concerns with significant weight, but should also recognize that tendencies that repeatedly prove reliable over complete market cycles are sometimes defied over portions of those cycles. Meanwhile, investors who are convinced that this time is different can ignore what follows. The primary reason not to listen to a word of it is that similar concerns, particularly since late-2011, have been followed by yet further market gains. If one places full weight on this recent period, and no weight on history, it follows that stocks can only advance forever. What seems different this time, enough to revive the conclusion that “this time is different,” is faith in the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing. The problem with bubbles is that they force one to decide whether to look like an idiot before the peak, or an idiot after the peak...

With global financial company stock prices soaring, analysts proclaiming holding bank shares is a win-win on rates, NIM, growth, and "fortress balance sheets", and a European stress-test forthcoming that will 'prove' how great banks really are; the question one is forced to ask, given the ruling below, is "Why is ISDA so worried about derivatives-based systemic risk?"

History is full of people and institutions that rose to positions of supremacy only to come crashing down. In most cases, hubris – a sense of invincibility fed by uncontested power – was their undoing. In other cases, however, both the rise and the fall stemmed more from the unwarranted expectations of those around them. The more responsibilities central banks have acquired, the greater the expectations for what they can achieve, especially with regard to the much-sought-after trifecta of greater financial stability, faster economic growth, and more buoyant job creation. And governments that once resented central banks’ power are now happy to have them compensate for their own economic-governance shortfalls – so much so that some legislatures seem to feel empowered to lapse repeatedly into irresponsible behavior. The trouble is that few outsiders seem to be listening, much less preparing to confront the eventual limits of central-bank effectiveness. As a result, they risk aggravating the potential challenges.

JPM's "flows and liquidity' expert Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, who last week spotted the "most extreme ever excess liquidity" bubble, has just noticed yet another indication that not even corporations believe in further equity upside. Simply said, this means that that for the first time since the Lehman crisis, non-financial corporations within the entire developed, G-4 (US, Europe, Japan and UK) world, have shifted from net buyers of stock to net sellers, as net "equity withdrawal" have just turned positive.

With stocks at record highs, ongoing commentary that retail is back and will lift all boats to infinity and beyond, it seems the professionals in the credit market are not amused. We have noted the ongoing divergence between the asset-classes for two weeks now but with today's ultra-low volume drift higher in stocks, the drop in high-yield bonds is even more notable. The question we have is - as we have explained in great detail before - if rates for leveraged firms is rising, how will management maintain their exuberant re-leveraging to buoy their stock prices in the face of crushing top-line deflation?

The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will double the pay of contract workers as part of a revamp of operations at the station, after coming under criticism for its handling of clean-up efforts. Reuters reports, hazard pay for the thousands of workers on short-term contracts will be increased from 10,000 yen ($100) to 20,000 yen a day, Tokyo Electric Power Co said in a statement on Friday. The plan released on Friday also lays out improvements to the management of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water building up, which comes from groundwater mixing with coolant poured over melted uranium rods. All of this as the riskiest phase of the decommissioning of Fukushima begins soon...

The pushers of Obamacare had years to plan. Everything looked right on paper. No expense was spared. There were thousands of meetings, a foolproof plan, mountains of numbers to back it all up. Then finally you press the button. The whole thing explodes — and not just the website. The risk pools will not lower premiums. The mandates will not cause people to experience health-insurance bliss. The price controls will not control costs. The new tools for access will not lead to greater access. Science is glorious. But government is not science, and society cannot be managed scientifically from the center. Ludwig von Mises had a phrase he used to describe every attempt: “planned chaos.” There is a plan, and the experts are in charge with all resources and conviction. But the results are crazy, random, irrational, confusing, and chaotic. It would be the greatest legacy of the Affordable Care Act if the government finally understands this message.

Just when Twitter briefly dipped in bear market territory from its post IPO highs, and threatened to wipe out the retail mania of 2013 (very much as FaceBook did in 2012), here comes the hail mary to provide the most anticipated IPO of the year its second wind. "From its inception in 1974, the intent always has been for the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index to be the most complete and investable measure of the total U.S. equity market," noted Robert J. Waid, managing director. "As a rules-based index, the Wilshire 5000 does not need to make special accommodations for early entry of large IPOs, like Twitter, as stock additions always have been made monthly for U.S. companies with readily available price data. The Twitter IPO is no exception," he concluded. Of course, how inclusion in the Wilshire 5000 will boost TWTR profitability, remains a mystery.