Archive - May 2013 - Story

"We believe that the global central bankers, led by the Fed as “thought leader,” have no idea how much pain the world’s economy may endure when they begin the still-undetermined and never-before attempted process of ending this gigantic experimental policy. If they follow the paths of the worst central banks in history, they will adopt the “tiger by the tail” approach (keep printing even as inflation accelerates) and ultimately destroy the value of money and savings while uprooting the basic stability of their societies....  At some stage, central banks inevitably realize, regardless of whether they admit the catastrophic nature of their own failings, that the cessation of money-printing will cause an instant depression. Even though at that point the cessation of money-printing may be the only action capable of saving society, that becomes a secondary consideration compared to the desire to avoid immediate pain and blame."

With Iron Man 3 taking the theaters by storm this weekend, it is only appropriate that Iron Ben would make a cameo appearance now that the impregnable Dow crossed 15K, the S&P is over 1600, and pretty much everything is higher, literally and metaphorically, than it's ever been.

With macro data becoming worse and worse (more and more bullish for Fed free money) and stocks off to the races (despite earnings that are abysmal), we thought a litle reminder of just what is driving this un-reality in nominal price moves. As the following chart, inspired by UBS, shows, each time the S&P 500 shows any sign of weakness, US money grows dramatically (money defined as the sum of M2 and foreign custody repo-able holdings at the Fed). Simply put, this is the reaction function of the Bernanke Put and explains why any weakness in Europe causes problems for the US - as the foreign banks repatriate and impact this 'growth' support. Correlation is not causation, but it is a strong hint.

According to the media hype, stocks are never expensive; but if you care a little about the actual price you are paying for stocks, perhaps the following two charts will at least raise a doubt about chasing this fun-and-games. The prospective P/E on both US and non-US equities are now at the top of the post crash range. Multiple-expansion has driven the rally in large part on the basis that central banks have removed the downside tail to investing but at these valuations (and with the expectations that are still priced in for H2 2013 earnings - up 14% vs up 4% in H1) surely caution is warranted.

Succinctly summarizing the positive and negative news, data, and market events of the week...

"Records being smashed left and right on Wall Street today" Better-than-expected 'mediocre' payrolls data was enough to drive pre-open S&P futures well over 1600, provide just the right sprinkling of short-covering scramble and euphoria to smash the Dow through 15,000 and the S&P through 1,600 and up to its long-term up-trend. Treasuries snapped higher in yield, catching up to equity exuberance (after disagreeing all week). The Brent Vigilantes are awake and paying attention with their biggest 2-day rise in nine months with WTI back above $96. Copper also surged (+3.9% on the week) and Gold/Silver ended +0.5% on the week. FX markets went wild around the NFP print - JPY crumbled (ending the week -1%) but EUR round-tripped from its initial dip; JPY-carry was very supportive of today's excitement (until late on). Risk markets in general stayed highly correlated until some give back into the close that stocks ignored. Credit markets were not amused and faded the initial equity spike all day.

Following today's flashback to the most euphoric and irrationally exuberant days of market peaks (and bubbles) gone by, driven entirely by the now constant central-planner dilution of current and future wealth, these selected excerpts from Seth Klarman's latest letter to investors is just the cold water of common sense everyone needs:"The average citizen knows that a society's wealth is not unlimited, and that if the economy is so fragile that the government cannot allow failure, then we are indeed close to collapse. For if you must rescue everything, then ultimately you will be able to rescue nothing. They also know that the only reason paper money, backed not by anything tangible but only a promise, has any value at all is because it is scarce. With all the printing, the credibility of our entire trust-based monetary system will be increasingly called into question. And when you tell the populace that we can all enjoy a free lunch of extremely low interest rates, massive Fed purchases of mounting treasury issuance, trillions of dollars of expansion in the Fed's balance sheet, and huge deficits far into the future, they are highly skeptical not because they know precisely what will happen but because they are sure that no one else--even, or perhaps especially, the  policymakers—does either."

That modern markets are broken beyond repair should by now be clear to everyone: with liquidity that can be shut off at the flick of a switch, 70% of overall market "volumes" merely churning between various rebate collecting HFT algos, and the consolidated quote tape stuffed by billions of cancellation-sniffing quotes, it is surprising that major, marketwide millisecond +/- 2% swings are not a daily occurrence (as opposed to single-stock flash crashes and smashes which now do take place daily). However, said realization must also be followed by political and regulatory action, which will not come as these same politicians and regulators are beholden to precisely the same financial parties that have broken the market microstructure and who generously benefit from their Marketstein monster creation. Which means the best everyone else can do is sit back and watch the accelerating cannibalization with which these same market players go after one another until there is nothing left, and there is no other choice but to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. To help pass the time, here is a short clip from Nanex showing just what happens at the proper timescale of modern "markets" - half a second - in the trading of Johnson & Johnson stock. If anyone had any doubts as to the stability of the market before, this should alleviate all doubt.

It seems as if those engaged in food fraud just want to keep escalating their game.  First we were horrified by horse meat and fake tuna, then dog meat, but now it’s gotten worse.  Much worse.  In China, the food fraudsters have take things to an entirely new level by mixing rat, fox and mink meat with gelatin additives and passing it off as lamb.  You may want to avoid that food cart next time you’re in Shanghai.

We discussed previously the slowing of the global economy and the drag on global trade and it appears that despite some hope-ridden headline data from China, things are definitely troubling under the surface. As Bloomberg Brief's Michael McDonough notes, while superficially, export growth was a rare bright spot in the first quarter, it may have been exaggerated by exporters inflating invoices. Excluding exports to Hong Kong, March’s export growth would have fallen 4.8 percent year-on-year compared with the reported 10 percent. China’s exports to 14 of its top 20 trading partners declined in March year-on-year. Tepid global demand may continue to weigh on China’s exports and domestic economy - and in its vicious cycle manner, feed back into global growth (and stain the US 'clean' shirt).

Jeff Gundlach has been asked "Why Own Bonds?" twice in his career. The first time was in the 90’s when bonds and stocks were highly correlated. If stocks rose, bond prices fell, and vice versa. Therefore, investment managers decided that they should only own stocks as there was no advantage in being diversified. Unfortunately, we all know how well this turned out. Today, investment managers are making the same decision but for a different reason. With the Fed’s artificial suppression of interest rates to historic lows; the return from owning bonds has become painful particularly for underfunded pension funds. That pain, combined with the inflation of asset prices via continuing QE programs, has forced managers into overweighting stocks. The other reason that managers are jumping into stocks is due to the belief that interest rates are going to start rising on “Tuesday.” Gundlach clarifies, “Let me be clear. This is absolutely wrong. Yields are NOT going to rise any time soon.”

As reported earlier, JPM's head commodity maven, Blythe Masters (her very rare public appearance can be seen here) suddenly finds herself in hot water for, among other things, allegedly lying under oath, obstructing justice and "engaging in a systematic cover up" to "approve schemes" seeking to defraud the states of California and Michigan in electricity trading (Enron flashbacks are more than welcome). So just who is Blythe? Most people on this site should be very familiar with her work by now (the NYT has a good recap), so instead of reconnecting the dots, we will once again dig up the presentation by one very young Ms. Master, introducing her then quite innovative product: the Credit Default Swap, titled appropriately enough "The J.P.Morgan Guide To Credit Derivatives" (by Blythe Masters). Because it is always best to let one's work speak.

While everyone was focusing on the quantitative component of today's BLS number, it appears what was once again missed in all the noise was the mention of the quality aspects of today's BLS report: those parts which actually look at the quality of new jobs, not only their earnings power (which as we showed in the breakdown of the April job gains were all toward the lower paying spectrum of available jobs) but also taking productivity and labor demand into the picture. It is here that we find this month's biggest BLS report weakness, and surprising finding: an implied 618,000 worker decline?

Wondering why we didn't push any higher on today's seemingly awesome payrolls print? Wonder no longer... The S&P 500 futures just surged up to perfectly tap the lower edge of the November 2012 up-trend. Today's volume is heavy - centred around the spike - with average trade size very large (highest in 2 months) - are pros buying the highs or selling? Do we go on to greater things and retest the upper-edge? or is this the squeeze that ends it? Who knows - but given what CNBC thinks, we will never fall again.