Archive - Nov 2013 - Story

One of the notable developments in the neverending China-Japan territorial sovereignty dispute over various rock formations (and potential massive natural resources located beneath them) in the East China Sea, has been China's launch of an "air defense zone" over said disputed islands. As AP reported previously, Beijing on Saturday issued a map of the zone — which includes a cluster of islands controlled by Japan but also claimed by China — and a set of rules that say all aircraft entering the area must notify Chinese authorities and are subject to emergency military measures if they do not identify themselves or obey Beijing's orders. Various Japanese airlines responded in a confused manner overnight, with neither JAL nor ANA sure whether or not to comply with China's new demand which is merely the latest territorial escalation.

The Greek stock market - seemingly unbreakable in its animal spirits that recovery is right around the corner for the increasingly depressed nation - has collapsed over 4% today, its largest plunge in 5 months. Being relatively illiquid, it is not clear what the catalyst is (one hedge fund exiting?) but the tensions growing in the fragile Greek coalition (over Venezuela-style controls on medicine prices) perhaps raise the specter of the worst possible scenario - political uncertainty. Also, quietly and behind the scenes, the extremely illiquid Greek bond market has seen prices drop to 6-week lows (yields 90bps higher in the last 3 weeks).

... According to the BLS, US jewerly imports in the month of October inexplicably just posted their biggest annual drop. On record.

"The silliness of it all is that the original price from which the discount is computed is often specious to begin with," sums up the seemingly obvious "retail theater" that plays out every Black Friday in mall after mall across America. As the WSJ reports, the common assumption is that retailers stock up on goods and then mark down the ones that don't sell, taking a hit to their profits. But that isn't typically how it plays out. Instead, big retailers work backward with their suppliers to set starting prices that, after all the markdowns, will yield the profit margins they want. Buyers don't seem to mind. What they are after, especially in such a lackluster economy, is the feeling they got a deal, "I don't even get excited unless its 40% off." The manufactured nature of most discounts raises questions about the wisdom of standing in line for the promotional frenzy that kicks off the holiday shopping season. It also explains how retailers have been able to ramp up the bargains without giving away the store - until now.

No matter what measure of confidence, sentiment, or animal spirits one uses, the consumer is not encouraged by the record-er and record-er highs in the US equity market. The Conference Board's consumer confidence data missed for the 2nd month in a row - its biggest miss in 8 months - as it seems in October consumers were un-confident due to the government shutdown... but in November they are un-confident-er due to its reopening. As we have noted in the past a 10 point drop in confidence has historically led to a 2x multiple compression in stocks (which suggests the Fed will need to un-Taper some more to keep the dream alive). Ironically, more respondents believe stocks will rise of stay the same over the next 12 months even as the 'expectations' sub-index collapsed to its lowest in 8 months.

Plan in the works to decontaminate Fukushima's J-Village in time to reopen it as soccer facility ahead of 2020 Olympics.

— SNA Japan (@ShingetsuNews) November 26, 2013

Concluding the trifecta of today's housing data, we present perhaps the most authoritative report on what is actually going on in the market, that by RealtyTrac. What RealtyTrac has to say is in direct contradiction with both the Permits and Case-Shiller data, both of which are now openly reliant on yield-starved institutional investors dumping cash into current or future rental properties. In fact it's worse, because if RealtyTrac is accurate, the great institutional scramble for any housing is now over - to wit: "Cash Sales Pull Back From Previous Month, Still Represent 44 Percent of Total Sales Institutional Investor Purchases Plummet Nationwide...  Institutional investor purchases represented 6.8 percent of all sales in October, a sharp drop from a revised 12.1 percent in September and down from 9.7 percent a year ago. Markets with the highest percentage of institutional investor purchases included Memphis (25.4 percent), Atlanta (23.0 percent), Jacksonville, Fla., (22.2 percent), Charlotte (14.5 percent), and Milwaukee (12.0 percent)." And plunging.

It's a full-on "Baffle with BS" onslaught this morning. On one hand, the Case-Shiller Top 20 Composite Index rose by 13.3% Y/Y, better than the 13.00% expected, and the highest annual price increase since 2006. Unfortunately, the ramp is coming to an end, especially since the touted NSA data shows that monthly price increases have slowed for the fifth consecutive month, and stood at just 0.7%. At this rate the sequential price change in October will be negative. This is further reinforced by today's "other" housing report: the September FHFA House Price Index, which unlike Case-Shiller rose 0.3%, below expectations and in line with last month. So on one hand home prices are better than expected, on the other: worse. Clear as mud.

Call it the last hurrah for Private Equity and hedge funds as they scramble to "telegraph" that there is still some interest in rental property conversions. Despite ever louder cries that the REO-to-Rent and the general surge into rental properties is over (see our report on RealtyTrac's latest data due out shortly), as many PE firms seek to cash out and to flip their existing exposure, today's Housing Permits number for October showed just the opposite.  Because while permits for single-family housing units was virtually unchanged month over month, barely rising from 615K to 620K on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, it was the structures with 5 units or more, aka rentals, that exploded by the most in the past two months going back all the way to 2008.

As we showed very vividly yesterday, while the world is comfortably distracted with mundane questions of whether the Fed will taper this, the BOJ will untaper that, or if the ECB will finally rebel against an "oppressive" German regime - with $3.5 trillion in asset (and debt) creation per year, is China. China, however, is increasingly aware that in the grand scheme of things, its credit spigot is the marginal driver of global liquidity, which is great of the rest of the world, but with an epic accumulation of bad debt and NPLs, all the downside is left for China while the upside is shared with the world.  Which is why it was not surprising to learn that China has drafted rules banning banks from evading lending limits by structuring loans to other financial institutions so that they can be recorded as asset sales.  And while we are confident Chinese financial geniuses will find ways to bypass this attempt to curb breakneck credit expansion in due course, in the meantime, Chinese liquidity conditions are certain to get far tighter. This is precisely the WSJ reported overnight, when it observed that yields on Chinese government debt have soared to their highest levels in nearly nine years amid Beijing's relentless drive to tighten the monetary spigots in the world's second-largest economy.

• M&A Mystery: Why Are Takeover Prices Plummeting? (WSJ)
• Hedge-Fund Fight Club Traded Illegal Tips Not Punches (BBG)
• Speed Traders Meet Nightmare on Elm Street With Nanex (BBG)
• A new wave of U.S. mortgage trouble threatens (Reuters)
• Penny Lane: Gitmo's other secret CIA facility (AP)
• US hardens threat to leave Afghanistan with no troops (WSJ)
• Russian Prison Stuns Captain of Greenpeace’s Bombed Ship (BBG)
• ECB's Weidmann Warns Central Banks Might Be Too Dominated by Fiscal Concerns (WSJ)
• China Air Move Splits Japan as Carriers Obey New Rules (BBG)
• Inside the Breakup of the Pritzker Empire (WSJ)

If yesterday Goldman was pitching going long of the S&P in AUD terms (the world renowned Goldman newsletter may cost $29.95 but is only paid in soft dollars) as its first revealed Top Trade of 2014, today's follow up exposes Top Trade #2: which is to "Go long 5-year EONIA vs. short 5-year US Treasuries." Goldman adds: "The yield differential between these two financial instruments is currently -61bp, and we expect it to reach around -130bp. On the forwards, the differential is priced at around -95bp at the end of 2014 at the time of writing. We have set the stop-loss on the trade at a spread of -35bp. The choice of Treasuries over OIS or LIBOR on the short leg is motivated by the fact that yields on the former could underperform more than they have already in relative space as the Fed scales down its asset purchase program."

In fitting with the pre-holiday theme, and the moribund liquidity theme of the past few months and years, there was little of note in the overnight session with few event catalysts to guide futures beside the topping out EURJPY. Chinese stocks closed a shade of red following news local banks might be coming  under further scrutiny on their lending/accounting practices - the Chinese banking regulator has drafted rules restricting banks from using resale or repurchase agreements to move assets off their balance sheets as a way to sidestep loan-to-deposit ratios that constrain loan growth. The return of the nightly Japanese jawboning of the Yen did little to boost sentiment, as the Nikkei closed down 104 points to 15515. Japan has gotten to the point where merely talking a weaker Yen will no longer work, and the BOJ will actually have to do something - something which the ECB, whose currency is at a 4 year high against Japan, may not like.

It’s interesting, disturbing and pathetic that this article emerged so shortly after we highlighted the fact that there is about to be a huge, and potentially disruptive reset in home equity loans over the next several years. So while we are still dealing with the ramifications of the prior housing bubble and the HELOCs associated with that debacle, we are right back at it. Extracting additional equity from another phony housing bubble to remodel homes that likely aren’t worth anywhere near what people think once private equity and money laundering oligarchs are done with their binge buying. As we have said many times before, QE makes a society lose its mind.

We are sure it was all planned a long time ago but the irony is not lost on us. A day after the US pisses the Israelis off with a sorta kinda deal with Iran, for the first time in Israel’s history, the Israel Air Force launched the “Blue Flag” training exercise – an international air force exercise with participation by the US, Italian and Greek air forces.