Archive - Feb 2013 - Story

The financial world is used to bubbles. We like to speak about them, point to them, bet upon their comings and goings and wave facts and figures about them like wild men when we appear in the media. It is the way of the markets. We have had bubbles in Real Estate, dot.com, bonds, stock markets and all kinds of other singular spaces. What we are faced with now is also a bubble but one unlike we have ever seen before because all of the major central banks have acted in concert which pumped money in from everywhere while, at the same time, limited what could be done with our new found small bits of paper because they playing field was leveled by distortion en masse. I would say that the entire financial system, every market, every space is in a bubble as a result of what they central banks have done.

It seems the world may have been this close to World War III as recently as last week. Kyodo reports that a Chinese warship last week directed "fire-control" radar against Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel in the East China Sea, where Japan and China are involved in a dispute over the ownership of a group of uninhabited islands, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Tuesday. The Japanese government lodged a protest with China on Tuesday afternoon as the radar was for taking aim at a firing target.  "Beaming of radar for firing is very abnormal, and it could have put us in a very grave situation if things went wrong," Onodera told a press conference, urging the Chinese side to refrain from taking such aggressive moves.

In case there was any doubt that the European circus could get any more ridiculous, here comes Spain's uber-unpopular Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, already embroiled in a massive kickback political scandal, with a quote that just blows everyone away: "I repeat what I said Saturday: everything that has been said about me and my colleagues in the party is untrue, except for some things that have been published by some media outlets." And scene as your frontal lobe explodes.

• Obama to meet with Goldman's Blankfein, other CEOs Tuesday (Reuters)
• Chinese Firms Shrug at Rising Debt (WSJ)
• McGraw-Hill, S&P Sued by U.S. Over Mortgage-Bond Ratings (BBG)... but not Moody's or Fitch
• Dime a Dozen: Dollar Stores Pinched by Rapid Expansion (WSJ)
• Dell Board Said to Vote Monday Night on $24 Billion LBO (BBG)
• BOJ Governor Shirakawa to step down on March 19 (Reuters)
• Alberta may offer more to smooth way for Keystone (Reuters)
• Facebook Is Said to Create Mobile Location-Tracking App (BBG)
• Barclays takes another $1.6 billion hit for mis-selling (Reuters)
• Apple App Advantage Eroded as Google Narrows IPhone Lead (BBG)
• Texas School-Finance System Unconstitutional, Judge Rules (BBG)
• World Risks ‘Perfect Storm’ on Capital Flows, Carstens Says (BBG)

Just when one thought the old overnight futures levitation on a surging EURUSD regime was over, and was replaced by some semblance of normalcy, here comes Europe, sending the EURUSD screeching higher by some 100 pips from a support threatening 1.3460 on no news, with absolutely nothing changed, and pushing US futures to virtually unchanged from yesterday morning wiping out the entire day's losses in 3 short hours of near-zero volume overnight trading.

Did Carl Icahn just take his feud with Bill Ackman to the next level? He very well might have, and the stakes have never been higher...

This week's Barron's cover looks like a pretty strong warning sign for stocks (not only the cover, but also what's inside). However, there may be an even more stunning capitulation datum out there, in this case a survey that we have frequently mentioned in the past, the NAAIM survey of fund managers. This survey has reached an all time high in net bullishness last week, with managers on average 104% long. The nonsense people will talk – people who really should know better -  is sometimes truly breathtaking. Recently a number of strategists from large institutions, i.e., people who get paid big bucks for coming up with this stuff, have assured us that “equities are underowned”, that “money will flow from bonds to equities”, and that “money sitting on the sidelines” will be drawn into the market. These fallacies are destroyed below. And finally, while, theoretically, the “inflation” backdrop is a kind of sweet spot for stock, even to those who insist that stocks will protect one against the ravages of sharply rising prices of goods and services, As Kyle Bass recently explained, the devaluation of money in the wider sense was even more pronounced than the increase in stock prices. Stocks did not protect anyone in the sense of fully preserving one's purchasing power. The only things that actually preserved purchasing power were gold, foreign exchange and assorted hard assets for which a liquid market exists.

As the government continues its ongoing scheme of handouts for everyone, it is worth perhaps reflecting on this behavior as non-optimal. Of course, printing money and handing it out for various grants, subsidies, and handouts was really wealth creating, the rent-seeking behavior would continue forever and everyone would be rich. However, as Professor Michael Munger points out, sometimes more money will be spent in total trying to compete for a grant or handout than the amount of money being given away. These costs are rarely considered in policymaking, but perhaps they should be. Of course, what really happens is the government awards money to organizations with the best lobbyists - not necessarily those that need it most or offer the best services. Perhaps its time for all of us to learn that you can't just (costlessly) keep giving money away.

Up until now, Argentina's descent into a hyperinflationary basket case, with a crashing currency and loss of outside funding was relatively moderate and controlled. All this is about to change. Today, in a futile attempt to halt inflation, the government of Cristina Kirchner announced a two-month price freeze on supermarket products. The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation’s largest supermarkets — a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto, Jumbo, Disco and other large chains. The companies’ trade group, representing 70 percent of the Argentine supermarket sector, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, the government’s news agency Telam reported. As AP reports, "The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep receipts and complain to a hotline about any price hikes they see before April 1."

In the same way as any and every risk-asset in the world, the price of yield-providing CMBS (commercial mortgage backed securities) have risen to post-crisis highs in the last few months. These are some of the epicentric deals from the crisis that now trade close to par once again. However, the last month or so has not seen CMBS prices push higher with stocks and it appears, as the FT notes, that the reason is becoming clear in the post-holiday-shopping period. CMBS cash-flow streams are set to drop considerably as up to 15 per cent of the country’s suburban retail centres forecast to close over the next five years in the face of online competition. Retail is regarded as an especially risky component of CMBS as a mall can go downhill if an important tenant shuts its store because other tenants are usually able to renegotiate their leases if a traffic-driving anchor tenant leaves. That can have severe consequences for CMBS exposed to the mortgage on the property.

It was just a matter of time before the most powerful crony capitalist bank in America decided to join the housing trade.  Making money running the food stamp program just wasn’t enough for Your Crony Highness Jamie Dimon and company, it’s time to join his financial oligarch brothers in the bidding war to corner the housing market and become your overlord.  That way they can control how you eat (food stamps) and where you sleep.  It’s become very clear what the large financial interests in these United States are attempting.  Funnel all the low interest crony American money, with a dash of Chinese laundered money, into the “housing recovery.”

Following our earlier discussion of the echo-boom in housing, David Stockman appeared on Yahoo's Daily Ticker with Lauren Lyster to pour come much-needed cold water 'reality' onto the hopes of an increasingly sheep-like investing public. Homebuilder stocks up 100%-plus simply reflects that "we are in a bubble once again." The former CBO Director added that "in a world of medicated money by the central bank, things aren't what they appear to be," as he explained there is "no real organic sustainable recovery." 

Earlier today the US Treasury released its latest Borrowing Estimates for Q1 and Q2 of calendar 2013. In brief: in the ended quarter, the Treasury borrowed some $297 billion, $9 billion more than the $288 billion previously predicted. One reason for this miss is the build up of cash in the quarter which ended at $93 billion instead of the $60 billion initially expected. However the extra cash buffer will be used in Q1, in which Treasury now expects to burn some $63 billion instead of the $30 billion forecast before, ending the quarter with $30 billion in cash. To get there, Treasury will need to raise some $331 billion in debt in January through March, just shy of the prior estimate of $342 billion in funding need in this quarter. And since the US debt to the penny counter has been stopped since the debt ceiling breach, and is still at the December 31, 2012 debt limit of $16.432 billion, this means we now know, approximately, that US debt on March 31, 2013 will be $16,763,730,050,569.10, give or take a dime, or said otherwise, assuming a generous 1% sequential growth in Q1 GDP, a 105% debt/GDP in two months.

While it was relatively well-known (or expected) that YUM's China business was hurting (after its PR snafu), this is considerably worse than expected (hoped for). Revenues and earning met considerably lowered expectations but the outlook is drastically slashed:

*YUM SEES CHINA COMP SALES JAN AND FEB COMBINED DOWN 25% :YUM US
*YUM! SAYS CHINA DIVISION JAN. EST. COMP SALES FELL 37% :YUM US

which leaves them expecting *YUM SEES YR ADJ. EPS DOWN MID-SINGLE DIGITS VS $3.25, EST $3.57. But there's always hope...* YUM! SEES KFC CHINA COMP SALES POSITIVE IN 4Q :YUM US. The stock is down 8% after-hours (for now). The question is - of course - WWJCD?