Archive - May 2013 - Story

In chapter 8 of David Stockman's new book The Great Deformation, the power-that-be-turned-anti-establishment-reality-seeker explains his perspective on the myths of the New Deal Recovery: "The new deal was a political gong show, not a golden era of enlightened economic policy. It shattered the foundation of sound money and inaugurated a régime of capricious fiscal and regulatory activism that inexorably fueled the growth of state power and the crony capitalism which thrives on it. But it did not end the Great Depression or save capitalism from the alleged shortcomings which led to the crash. In fact, the New Deal introduced a severe dose of economic nationalism and autarky at a time when the only hope for speedy recovery was a reopening of world trade and reestablishment of a stable international monetary régime.... in reality, the notion that the New Deal had pioneered a road map to recovery by means of countercyclical fiscal policy is mostly a postwar academic legend."

Erasing Friday's gains (and the well-documented VIX-driven melt-up into the close), S&P 500 futures have opened down 4.5 points (against JPY-carry for now), Treasuries are indicated 4-5bps higher in yield, and Gold is opening down 0.4%. Not in itself a large move but perhaps indicative of some concerns that Hilsenrath is on to something and the punchbowl is being ever so gradually pulled away (though, we suspect it is only a matter of time before this article is spun in a bullish light, suggesting that the Fed still does not have a firm timeline in mind, which by implication is bullish - no news is good news - and much more jawboning has to come before the real tapering talk begins). In the meantime, we are sure the clarion call to Buy-The-Feding-Dip will be heard and in the interest of balance, we offer some insight into 'valuations'.

Only 25, self-described 'risk-taker' Dylan Collins plays the markets with a pot of more than $1 million - $100,000 of his own money earned from trading over the past two years, the rest provided by his bosses and partners at AMR Capital Trading. As The Washington Post reports, Dylan exclaims, "trading is fun; for me this is the dream job;" but as they note, for most of us, day trading conjures up the image from the dot-com era of some dude in his pajamas with a two-day growth of beard logged on to a Charles Schwab account buying Nortel Networks and Pets.com on margin. But have no fear for - New York-based AMR, a division of G-2 Trading, is a lot more disciplined and sophisticated than that - specializing in “momentum trading,” riding hot stocks up and cold stocks down, taking advantage of the irrational herd behavior that characterizes financial markets. “I understand the idea that maybe you’d want to do something more meaningful, but I don’t think I need to worry about that at my age,” Dylan explains as he exploits momentary mispricings and sudden spikes in volume. The thing about this kind of trading is that you don’t have to know very much about the companies whose shares you are buying or selling.  “So much of trading is just about intuition,” he adds brushing off how quickly knife-catching turns to blood (as the BTFD strategy backfired on Sino-Forest and Digital Domain). History repeating or Darwinian justice?

Manufacturing data in the last several months has suggested that economic growth around the world is slowing. However, China’s export growth surprised the market this week and unexpectedly accelerated in April, even as shipments to the U.S. and Europe fell. This has created a conundrum for analysts and market watchers. How can China be growing while the countries that purchase its exports are slowing? As we noted earlier, the numbers don’t add up. Many analysts have attributed China’s increasing imports as signs of a healthy manufacturing sector, or increasing investments in infrastructure and property. Our simple analysis shows that more than one third of the increase in imports is due to China’s increasing gold consumption. This new gold buying could have a significant impact on Chinese import statistics and force analysts to reconsider the strength of the Chinese domestic economy.

Think the best paid public servant in your state is some tax-collecting bureaucrat with a commission-based comp structure, or some administrative apparatchik? Think again. As the following infographic from Deadspin shows, in 41 US states, the highest-paid public employee is either the football, basketball or hockey coach at the local state school. Whick takes cares of the "Circuses" part. For now, at least, public sector bakers did not make the list...

Niall Ferguson recently remarked, "[Europe] is a politicial experiment gone wrong. The experiment was to see if Europeans could be forced into an even closer union - despite their wishes - by economic means, because the political means failed." In this brief clip, Lars Seier Christensen, co-CEO and co-founder of Saxo Bank, tells an audience at the Saxo #FXDebates in London that the eurozone will eventually break up as Brussels claims even more power from nation states. He warns investors that Cyprus was indeed a template for bail ins and that outright confiscatory wealth taxes, disguised as solidarity payments, could be used to raise funds. "The governments of Europe need money, and the private sector has it. It is as simple as that. Be very paranoid," he said, warning investors that the mattress may be a safer place to deposit money over the weekend than their bank accounts. "Frankly, it is a complete mess. And it is a mess that gets worse and worse every day," is how the outspoken truthiness begins, adding, "anyone with a rational view of the world now sees the currency collaboration as a historic failure that can lead to even further fatal consequences for Europe and the continent’s competitiveness vis-à-vis the rest of the world."

By definition, exports from country A have to equal imports from country B. Unless country A is China. Then, central planning magic happens, as can be seen in the chart below showing the misreporting of Chinese exports to HK compared to HK's reported imports from China, which is just the latest nail in the coffin of Chinese economic data "integrity."

Put down the Sunday newspaper; grab a pot of coffee; and call 'mom' and tell her she has to read this. Doug Rudisch has written a far-reaching summary of the true state of the world and 'why policy has failed'. Simply put, there is no faith in the system; real underlying faith and trust in the system, as opposed to the confidence born from economic steroid injections or entitlements. There also is a subtle but important distinction between faith and trust versus confidence. Faith and trust are longer term and more powerful concepts.There is more going on than a temporary lull in animal spirits that current fiscal and monetary policy will cure. If that was the case, it would be working already... We have ended up with a system where the worst of the risk takers have the ability to take the most risk and are currently taking it at extreme levels. We wish we could be more prescriptive and offer more solutions for the problems. But in order to solve a problem, you must first realize you have one. With respect to the Fed, we don’t think the U.S. realizes it has a problem.

That CNN's news coverage has been nothing but comedy-(and cringe-)worthy for the past several years, should not be news to anyone by now: perhaps there is no better testament to a society in which a network that breaks news based on fake twitter rumors is still held in high regard. However, in the spirit of reverse psychology memes, does the fact that Jon Stewart is now constantly poking fun at CNN's "news-slaughter", mean that it may be, paradoxically, time to start taking CNN - "the most busted name in news" seriously again? (...that's obviously rhetorical).

As reported on Friday, the most recent example of a breach in informational Chinese walls was confirmed at Bloomberg, where it was discovered that reporters have the same degree of client surveillance as workers on the API/terminal side. The reason why this is problematic is that since Bloomberg is a monopolist in the financial terminal industry, with such competitor attempts as Reuters' Eikon being massive failures, virtually every finance professional needs a terminal (even if the rate of sale of such terminals is slowing down as a result of the ongoing financial margin headaches). Which means that Bloomberg journos, an increasingly competitive service to the likes of Dow Jones, Reuters and AP, may have had an unfair advantage when it comes to tracking their "pray" - Bloomberg's own clients. And now, following the original Goldman complaint which Bloomberg said ended such informational commingling, it is the turn of the Treasury and the Fed (certainly very heave users of the BBG Trading terminal) to complain. What is left unsaid in all of this is the simple question of just why is it material information what the Fed, arguably an entity that at least in a normal world should not have any day to day trade interactions with financial markets, looked up on its trading terminal.

While the H7N9 birdflu epidemic is still raging in China, with 4 news deaths bringing the total confirmed death toll to 31 (and who knows how many unconfirmed) on 129 infections leading to a mortality rate that is simply staggering, even if the mordibity rate is largely a function of Chinese data censorship, Europe and the middle east may be set for a viral breakout of their own. First is the case of Saudi Arabia where two more people have died from novel coronavirus, a new strain of the virus similar to the one that caused SARS, in an outbreak in al-Ahsa region of Saudi Arabia, the deputy health minister for public health said on Sunday. What is more troubling is that with the lack of accurate newsflow out of Saudi Arabia, come unforeseen consequences, such as the eventual spread of the virus from its localized region to a new area, such as Europe or in this case France, to start. Reuters report that a "second diagnosis of the new SARS-like coronavirus has been confirmed in France, the Health Ministry said on Sunday, in what appeared to be a case of human-to-human transmission. The new infection was found in a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room with France's only other known sufferer, the ministry said in a statement."

Oh just another eight hundred page “bipartisan” bill that nobody will read, mainstream media will refuse to cover, and that will merely further destroy any remnants of freedom left in these United States.  Never forget the George Carlin quote on bipartisanship: “Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” Good thing the terrorists aren’t winning or anything.

Just over a year ago we discussed in great detail the cyclical nature of profit margins, the elegance of the Kalecki (profits) equation (and its Japanese outlier real-world fallacy), and the current desire to 'invest' in dividends and not CapEx creating a vicious cycle of cash-flow-sagging aging assets. The situation has not improved. As John Hussman notes, the Shiller P/E passed its 24x Maginot Line last week and yet, with revenues stagnant and earnings eking out gains, we are to believe valuations are cheap and margins will save the day. "The impression that stocks are “reasonably valued” relative to earnings is an illusion driven by profit margins that are 70% above their historical norm. Almost universally, Wall Street analysts are making the mistake of valuing stocks on the basis of a single year of forward operating earnings, as if the present estimate is a sufficient statistic that is representative of the entire future stream of cash flows." It is not...

The IRS conservative targeting scandal is going from bad to worse. Following the Friday revelations that despite all prior appeals to the contrary, the IRS did in fact apply political bias and prejudice in targeting conservative groups who had applied for exempt status (and who knows what other prejudice when targeting non-liberals entities - perhaps it is time to do an analysis of what the ratio of conservatives to liberals audited each year is?), culminating with the farcical response by an IRS official during the Friday press meeting, this may be just the beginning of a major political scandal which in additon to tangential fallout crushing the alleged "impartiality" of the Obama administration, additionally validates many of the heretofore right-wing "conspiracy theories." And as Zero Hedge has shown time and again, it is not a conspiracy theory if it is a conspiracy fact.

While high-yield bond yields are at record lows, the spread (or compensation for risk) remains above all-time record lows leaving some to suggest there is room for more compression and for the circus to continue. The credit market's disconnect from anything macro-, micro-, or cashflow-related (with CCCs now trading sub-7%) is purely a function of flow and yield-grabbing with WACC curves back at 2006 levels suggesting little pain for firms willing to relever to recap their shareholders. In late 2006, the high yield credit market surged ahead of stocks in an exuberant fanfare (heralded by many as the new normal then); it retraced quickly, only to re-accelerate (driven by the vinegar strokes of a CDO rampage) until April 2007 when it once again roared tighter (way ahead of stocks) in a final capitulative fervor. Fast forward 6 years and in September last year (QE3) HY raced ahead of stocks (only to retrace) and in the last few weeks credit has massively outperformed stocks in what feels very capitulative once again. Is this melt-up the message most ignored in 2007?