Archive - May 2013 - Story

"Inflation is a state of affairs in which there is too much money," Jim Grant notes in this Bloomberg TV interview, however, "It's not too much money chasing too few goods," he corrects the misnomer, "the thing this money chases is variable." Whether it is Iowa farmland, housing, stocks, or bonds, central banks are stuffing us with it. Yes, equities are high, but Grant explains, "beneath the surface of things or not so far beneath the surface of things," it is not at all good, adding that, "Central bank 'original sin'," is akin to Revolutionary France, and he shows no concerns over Gold's recent dip, noting "a general fatigue animus towards gold," that seems predicated on more confidence in central bankers; to Grant, "that confidence is utterly misplaced!"

More and more companies are stashing their cash offshore, and they're doing it at alarming rates. Why? Put simply, it's about eluding the tax man.

Most of our frequent readers are very familiar with the work Eric Hunsader and his Nanex crew. It is not for them, but for everyone else who is still not been familiar with what the Wired business conference defined as "flash trading detective work" that we present the following 14 minute clip exposing the philosophy of the forensic consolidated tape detectives. But more importantly, Eric explains how his firm took otherwise boring terabytes of trading data and made it into a fascinating and informative explosion of animation, color and sound, all of which proves one thing: the equity markets have been hijacked from the humans, and are now dominated and controlled by the robots who provide a tsunami of liquidity when it is not needed, and dry up like the Gobi desert just as the market is imploding, as we all witnessed most recently during the AP hack-induced Hash Crash.

The following two charts represent the equity market performance of two rather well known nations in the last 6 months or so. One is a nation on the verge of cataclysmic currency devaluation and the other is in the middle of a catalcysmic currency devaluation. Of course, both would be at the top of every CNBC talking head's list of buys since performance has been so great - so which would you prefer? As we celebrate USDJPY 100, Nikkei 14,500, and whatever else it is that we should be celebrating about the surging input costs for Japanese businesses - the lesson is clear for those who want to send their market soaring - crash your economy.

On the surface, Abenomics - the radical unlimited stimulus plan put in place by newly elected Japanese PM Shinzo Abe – appears to be working. The Nikkei is up 68% since July, 2012, the yen has weakened by 30% over the same time frame, and Japanese consumer confidence is up sharply to the highest levels in six years. The theory behind Abenomics is that the rising stock market will create capital, and the falling yen will make Japan’s export-based economy more competitive in global markets, while newly profitable companies will hire more workers. In order for Abenomics to work, four things have to happen (below). Don’t hold your breath. Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Longer-term, Abenomics is a recipe for disaster - have no illusions about that. But short-term … that’s another matter entirely, and therein lies opportunity.

Despite "the most inappropriate monetary policy in history," and warnings of bubbles, Bloomberg notes that South Korea’s 'surprise' rate cut overnight was the 511th reduction worldwide since June 2007 (and show no signs of stopping the Einsteinian madness). Behind the stepped up stimulus: another swoon in the global economy barely five years after it fell into its deepest recession since World War II. Citi's G10 Macro surprise index shows that the major economies began coming in below forecasts in the middle of March and the index is now near its weakest since last August.

For a country, whose founder Chairman Mao once upon a time envisioned great wealth equality for all and a communist utopia, things sure have had a very capitalist ending. Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than in Mao's lineage itself, where we find that the granddaughter of Mao, Kong Dongmei, managed to rise above the great unwashed mass of egalitarianism, and ended up just slightly more equal as a result of the Great Leap Forward, with a personal fortune amounting to $815 million according to New Fortune, a Chinese financial magazine. But it is not so much the realization that the occupation of politics is one grand lie (second perhaps only to economics) and where preaching equality for all is merely a means to achieve great wealth for yourself, but that the 40 year old descendant of the Chairman, with her wealth of nearly $1 billion, is merely the 242nd richest person in China, which means there are over 200 billionaires in the country, the bulk of whom we can only imagine are descendants of the original "communist" founders of the country.

The legal claims on physical gold far exceed the amount of physical gold that the banks actually have by a very, very wide margin.  And right now the bankers are scared out of their wits because their warehouses are being drained of physical gold at a frightening rate.  So what happens when their physical gold is gone but they still have lots and lots of people with legal claims to gold?  When that moment arrives, it will represent the end of the paper gold scam. Many believe that the recent takedown of the price of paper gold was a desperate attempt by the bankers to put off that day of reckoning, but it appears to have greatly backfired on them.  Instead of cooling off demand for precious metals, it has unleashed a massive "gold rush" all over the globe. This is creating havoc in the financial community, and at least one major international bank has already declared that it will only be settling those accounts in cash from now on.  The paper gold scam is starting to unravel, and by the time this is all over it is going to be a complete and total nightmare for global financial markets. For years it has been widely known that the promises that banks have made regarding their gold far exceed their actual ability to deliver, but we have never reached a moment of such crisis before.

While, as we recently destroyed here, the current meme is that "bonds are mispriced" due to the Fed and so holding them is an idiot's play as at some point they will normalize (which somehow means equities are a great investment - as they apparently never drop in price). DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach appeared on CNBC this morning laying out a few very obvious (but entirely overlooked by the mainstream) reasons why a 'rise' in interest rates (and the bond price drop implicit in that) is not necessarily positive for most of the equity-type investments currently. We see four reasons why the "bonds bad, stocks good" meme is fundamentally flawed and why a great rotation remains a myth... Gundlach also warned flow-driven equity bulls, "QE effects are in the eighth inning."

After another five-day run of higher prices and lower volumes (and following yesterday's 2013 high average trade size), all it took was a twitter-based rumor of the possibility of a pause in the Fed's punchbowl for the S&P 500 futures to see their biggest intraday drop in May. It seems, for once, that 330 Ramp Capital was trumped by the HashCrash as stocks closed an odd shade of green - called red. Today was extremely volatile where-ever you looked - FX, rates, credit, vol, and commodities; but perhaps the JPY move triggered some unintended consequences in rates/swaps.

Following up on the earlier report that Israel had warned the US that Russia was preparing to sell "advanced" military equipment to Syria (in False Flag Broken Telephone fashion), it was only a matter of time before the new US Secretary of State voiced his indignation over a development whereby someone else was providing arms to a conflict country's government, instead of the US providing its own weapons to said country's Al Qaeda-assisted rebel forces. Sure enough, he did: "I think we have made it crystal clear that we would prefer that Russia is not supplying assistance," Mr. Kerry said at a news conference after meeting the new Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino." While there was no immediate quote substantiating it, there is a rumor that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov's response was a less than politically correct phrasing along the lines that he "would prefer that the US not supply assistance to Syrian rebels."

S&P 500 futures are currently experiencing the largest intraday drop in May - seemingly set off by this which was largely a joke uttered about an hour ago...

Over/under on a 3pm Hilsenrath article hinting tapering is coming sooner than later

— Andrew Yorks (@andrewyorks) May 9, 2013

... Which promptly escalated into a full-blown rumor that Hilsenrath is about to issue an article heralding the end or tapering of QE.

Sigh.

This is not Thursday Humor - though perhaps it should be. First, the Japanese promoted bond-buying as not just patriotic, but a manly endeavour that will get you the girls; but now the idea of inflating assets has been taken one step further. The Japanese have argued that 'sex sells bonds' in the past but now, as Reuters reports, the lingerie-maker Triumph's Japanese division has launched a special edition "growth strategy" Abenomics Bra. "We hope that, as the Japanese economy grows, we can also help bust sizes to get bigger," a spokewoman noted as the bra features a rising trendline, three arrows pointing up, and promises a 2% increase in volume with extra padding. The analogy of an exogenous force maintaining a natural force at an unsustainable size is just too easy - as, just as in the real-life, at some point that 'supportive bra' of monetary policy has be removed.

The number of people on SSDI now exceeds the entire population of Greece. The aging of the population has nothing to do with the increase. In 1968 there were 51 workers for every person on disability. Today there are 13 workers for every person on disablity. Even the most pollyanna would agree that medical advancements since 1968 have been significant. These medical advancements would argue for less people being on disability and unable to work. Workplace safety measures have been increased exponentially since 1968, so that also argues for less disabled workers. The good old ADA law forced all workplaces to become disabled friendly. That argues for less people on disability. The country has transitioned from a manufacturing society to a service society. Workers don’t work on dangerous assembly lines anymore. Robots do the dangerous stuff. This should have dramatically reduced worker injuries and disabilities. The tremendous increase in people on SSDI is nothing but a gigantic fraud. The government broadened the scope of disabilities to include stress, depression, and non-diagnosable things like aches and pains. And don't forget, you get the added benefit of Medicare coverage after only two years of SSDI stress.

The morning started off with the ubiquitous JPY-carry spike pre-US-open and has now extended (post the 30Y auction) to the new normal 140 pips rise to break the magical 100 JPY level to the USD. It has been seven months since Shinzo Abe first hinted at his extreme policy prescription for his ailing nation. Since the start of October 2012, the JPY has lost 30% of its value and the FX-carry market's holy trinity of Aso-Kuroda-Abe can wave their initial "mission accomplished" banners this evening. Fifth time was the charm it seems as after four times trying and failing in the last month, USDJPY has just passed the 100 level for the first time since April 2009 - and while Abenomics lives on, it was initially 'designed' to bring the JPY back into line after its massive strengthening post the crash lows in 2009. Interestingly, USDJPY risk-reversals (from the FX option market) suggest traders are less confident that the devaluation continues apace. We shall see...