Archive - Jan 27, 2014 - Story

In just over an hour Apple will report earnings which are expected to be a sole silver lining among the otherwise dreary retail landscape of the fourth quarter. However, those curious for an advance glimpse of what AAPL's margins may be are advised to look no further than its chief supplier - Taiwanese mega contract manufacturer FoxConn, with over 1.2 million employees on the mainland. The reason Foxconn may be of interest is that as Reuters reports, as a result of soaring wages on the mainland, and in its ongoing strategy to keep worker compensation as razor thin as possible, the fabricator is now actively looking to expand outside of China. Among the places considered? Indonesia of course. And, drumroll, the United States! In other words, from the perspective of Foxconn, US labor now has greater wage competitiveness than China.

The eurozone is caught in a diabolical loop, in which weak banking systems harm their sovereigns’ fiscal positions, which in turn compromise the banking system’s stability. But, over the last couple of years, policymakers have focused largely on reducing banks’ impact on their sovereigns – for example, through a Europe-wide supervisory authority and efforts to establish a European resolution mechanism – while ignoring the feedback in the other direction. European policymakers and regulators must act now to eliminate the negative feedback loop between sovereigns and their banks. Waiting for another crisis to strike could have devastating consequences for both.

We have some great news for those Americans who are still in the labor force (so that excludes about 92 million working age US citizens) and still have a (full-time) job: you are now working longer than ever! In fact, as JPM's Michael Cembalest observes using Conference Board data, the average manufacturing workweek is now just shy of 42 hours - the longest in over 60 years. And there are those who say Americans are lazy...

The H7N9 mutation of the bird flu virus is "more prone to human infection" than the H5N1 virus, with the fatality rate reaching 20-30%. China's National Influenza Center (CNIC) has reported athat H7N9 has killed 19 in China this year already and the total number of infections has reached 96. Although , as always, details are few and far between, CNIC's Shu Yuelong states that "the risk assessment of H7N9 epidemic outbreak is unchanged," despite the admission that the virus is more difficult to prevent as there is no obvious symptom for H7N9 infected poultry. South Korea has expanded a poultry cull on fears of contagion.

As all eyes are focused on US earnings and asset-gatherers cherry-pick beats and ignore the bellwether misses, we thought a gentle reminder of the other seemingly unbreakable 'meme' of the moment - that of Europe's recovery - was in order. The following chart, presented with little comment of schadenfreude, should clear up any doubts about whether Europe's economy is on the up... or down...

For the first time ever, working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps.

The US crackdown on Bitcoin has been long in coming, with ebbs and flows of enforcement as regulators have been unsure exactly how to proceed with dismantling the digital fiat alternative. This morning the ebb became a rising tide, after U.S. prosecutors announced charges against two men operating Bitcoin exchange businesses for attempting to sell $1 million worth of Bitcoin to users of the underground black market website Silk Road, which was shut down by authorities in September.... In retrospect Charlie's biggest crime was not being CEO of JPM or, at worst, HSBC, where money laundering and other criminal activity is not only encouraged but rewarded with soaring bonuses. The good news is that one can once and for all confirm that when it comes to "Justice" in the US, some - those who deal with legacy status quo mandated and enforced ponzi scheme fiat - are far more equal than anyone who dares to think outside the Fed's printer.

For a brief moment this morning - following Jim Cramer's exclamation that anyone who is still bearish following the China Trust bailout is "stupid" - there was hope that the drama had stopped unfolding. However, it has not. JPY carry continues to be battered and that is dragging every levered-long trade lower from European bonds to US small caps. The invincible Trannies have collapsed and are now -3.25% in 2014; having risen more than 6.5% from the Taper decision day, Trannies have tumbled to a mere 0.8% gain. But the S&P 500 and Russell are catching down to the Dow's underperformance and have given up their post-taper gains. Rather stunningly, Discretionary and Homebuilders are now the worst performing S&P sectors from the taper. VIX has surged to touch 19% - its highest since October 9th. Treasuries are modestly bid (1-2bps at best) and the USD is flat (despite major swings in AUD, CAD, and JPY). Credit is trading back to 3-month wides and stocks are catching down.

For a moment there, mid-year, when the French forgot to send texts out to all their unemployed people to confirm their joblessness, that French and European leaders looked at the French jobseekers data and hailed the corner as having turned. It has not! For the 30th of the last 32 months, French joblessness increased. At 3.303 million jobseekers, French unemployment is at an all-time record high (and 10Y French debt trades 36bps lower in yield than US 10Y). As France24 sums up perfectly in a flashing red headline on their front-page - Hollande's employment pledge has been broken.

One of the big disconnects over the past year has been the divergence between the price of paper gold and the seemingly inexhaustible demand for physical gold, from China all the way to the US mint. Today we get a hint on how this divergence has been maintained: it now appears the main culprit is the massive boost in supply by gold mints around the world working literally 24/7, desperate to provide enough supply to meet demand at depressed prices in order to avoid a surge in price as bottlenecked supply finally catches up with unprecedented physical demand.

In what is sure to be met with cries of derision across the European Union, in line with what the IMF had previously recommended (and we had previously warned as inevitable), the Bundesbank said on Monday that countries about to go bankrupt should draw on the private wealth of their citizens through a one-off capital levy before asking other states for help. As Reuters reports, the Bundesbank states, "(A capital levy) corresponds to the principle of national responsibility, according to which tax payers are responsible for their government's obligations before solidarity of other states is required." However, they note that they will not support an implementation of a recurrent wealth tax in Germany, saying it would harm growth. We await the refutation (or Draghi's jawbone solution to this line in the sand.)

As we noted earlier, the "surprise" factor of the Turkish Central Bank's (CBT) emergency meeting is seeming to have the desired effect as the Lira has rallied over 1000 pips since the announcement. Officially there has been no intervention and, despite Erdogan's political pressure on the CBT not to raise rates (because of the "interest rates lobby"), Barclays (as we noted here) and most other banks are expecting more conventional dramatic interest rate hikes (since everyone knows the FX reserves are running dry):

*TURKEY NEEDS TO RAISE O/N RATE 300BPS FOR MKT EFFECT: JPMORGAN

However, JPMorgan adds that it "strongly doubts this will regain investors confidence" and Finansbank warns it has "significant doubts" that the CBT will deliver. And this is what the rest of the market thinks...

The forest (the economy) can only remain vibrant and healthy if the dead wood is burned off in bankruptcy and insolvency. Retail commercial real estate is over-built and over-leveraged. If it is allowed to burn off as Nature intended, we can finally move forward.

With all eyes focused on China (shadow bank liquidity fears), Emerging Market currencies, and US equities; something very concerning has been going on in short-dated Treasury Bills. The ultra-short-term remain bid (near zero yield) as the saftey crush demand bids for them but move out one month - across the dreaded late-February debt-ceiling debacle maginot line - and suddenly yields are exploding! The March 16th yields have screamed from 1bps to 12.75bps in the last 2 days - now above the October debt ceiling levels..

In a 2-line statement, offering very few details, ICBC's China Credit Trust Co. said it reached an agreement to restructure the CEG#1 that ha sbeen at the heart of the default concerns in recent weeks. The agreement includes a potential investment in the 3 billion-yuan ($496 million) product but didn’t identify the source of funds, or confirm whether investors would get all of their money back. The media is very excited about this entirely provisional statement and we note, as Bloomberg reports, investors in the trust product must authorize China Credit Trust to handle the transaction if they want to recoup their principal which will involve the sale of investors' rights in the trust at face value (though no mention of accrued interest). As BofAML notes, however, "the underlying problem is a corporate sector insolvency issue...  there may be many more products threatening to default over time," and while this 'scare' may have raised investors' angst, S&P warns "a bailout of the trust product [leaves] Chinese authorities with a growing problem of moral hazard," and they have missed an opportunity  for "instilling market discipline."