Archive - Nov 2014 - Story

The S&P 500 is now up 12.5% from the Bullard lows in mid-October and has broken to new record highs over 2048 - within 2 points of Goldman Sachs year-end target. Since Bullard's comments, the S&P 500 has been up 19 days and down only 5 (and today will be the 23rd day in a row of closing above its 5-day moving-average - a record!) WTI crude oil prices are collapsing back to cycle lows below $75 but perhaps most notable is the plunge in 'implied correlation' - which measures the relative demand for individual stock protection over index macro protection. Implied correlation is at a record low - which suggests capitulation among those with macro overlays (like Carl Icahn)...

The bad news in today's PPI inflation report: por prices soared by 7% in the past month, while beef prices hit a new record high, rising 2% in the month, and up nearly 30% from a year ago. The good news: for the first time in years, booze prices declined from a year ago. So, with compliments of the hoapy president: don't be moapy and start drinking cheap booze, preferably early and often, as you try to remember - in an alcoholic daze - what beef tastes like.

Janet Yellen will be pleased... or not. Producer Price Inflation printed hotter than expected across all its various incarnations (good news, no deflation; bad news, no deflation excuse for The Fed). Ex Food-and-Energy prices rose 1.8% YoY (4-month highs), considerably more than the 1.5% expectations but surged 0.4% MoM - the most in 16 months. PPI Final Demand rose 1.5% YoY (1.3% exp). The rise in PPI appears driven by Food prices which are up 1.0% (the most since April) and Trade PPI (+1.5%) thanks to a 26.1% jump in margins for fuels and lubricants retailing (under new calculation methods) accounted for nearly 40% of the rise in final demand.

Major equity / Credit divergences should always be taken very seriously. They were among the best forward looking indicators at almost every major turning point for equities over the last 20 years. Today, the divergence is visible again. The fact that all this is happening while bullish sentiment in the US is at record highs is of particular worry. Everyone is expecting higher equities due to lower yields and depressed food and energy prices. But when everyone is thinking alike, no one is really thinking...

A few weeks after VIX, aka market implied vol, soared from the mid teens to 30 following the Trasury flash crash and the subsequent near correction in the market before the much publicized James Bullard stick save of the "wealth effect", VIX has since tumbled and at last check was once again trading in the 13/14 range, above the recent all time lows hit over the summer, even as the market continues to levitate on zero volume to ever higher record highs. So what does this mean for that other volatility, actual realized? As Newedge's Brad Wishak points out, "30 days ago 5 day realized was printing 2yr highs (28%) vs 1% y'day." He also notes that the only lower realized vol print in the past decade was in September 2005.

• Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Calls Snap Election (WSJ) - as repeatedly priced in...
• Flash Boys Raising Volatility in Wild New Treasury Market (BBG)
• Not Greece again: Greek Bailout Review Stalls as Troika Demands Final Steps (BBG)
• Iran uses China bank to transfer funds to Quds-linked companies (Reuters)
• Porn Mags With Free Madrid Theater Tickets in Tax Protest (BBG)
• Hong Kong, China stocks ease on profit-taking after stock connect launch (Reuters) - Hang Seng down 500 points in past 2 days
• Halliburton Mega-Deal Sealed by CEOs Over Coke and Coffee (BBG)
• Wall Street to Reap $316 Million From Day of Mega Deals (BBG)
• Mass murderer Charles Manson gets marriage license, state says (Reuters)

After weeks of relentless flashing red headline barrage whose only purpose was to force snap algo buying of the USDJPY pair time after time after time, Japan is once again out of FX algo danging carrots after moments ago Abe confirmed what everyone had known already: he called a snap election to seek a mandate for his decision to delay by 18 months a further sales-tax increase that had been planned for next year; he also said he would dissolve the lower house of parliament on Nov. 21 in preparation for an election in December, without specifying a date. Cited by the WSJ, Abe said "To ensure the success of Abenomics, I’ve concluded that it shouldn’t be carried out next October and instead be postponed by 18 months,” the prime minister told a nationally televised news conference, stressing that the additional tax burden would risk putting the economy back into deflation. “I will seek the people’s judgment over our economic policy."

Dear California readers: if you drank tapwater this morning (or at any point in the past few weeks/months), you may be in luck as you no longer need to buy oil to lubricate your engine: just use your blood, and think of the cost-savings. That's the good news. Also, the bad news, because as the California’s Department of Conservation’s Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay Area, California state officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump up to 3 billion gallons (call it 70 million barrels) of oil fracking-contaminated waste water into formerly clean aquifiers.

If you like your Jon Gruber "brightest minds from academia, that I have stolen ideas from liberally", you can keep your Jon Gruber...

If only George Orwell could see us today.  When he wrote “1984” back in 1948, he probably never imagined that the “totalitarian, bureaucratic world” that he imagined would ever actually become a reality.  But that is precisely what is happening. The control freaks that run our society are absolutely obsessed with watching, tracking, recording and monitoring virtually everything that we do.  We truly are becoming a “1984” society, and if we continue on the path that we are currently on eventually our world will be transformed into something more hellish than anything that George Orwell ever imagined.

While forcing citizens to work for no money may appeal to European policy-makers as a solution to their youth unemployment problem (as we discussed here and here), it is a problem that covers a stunning 35.8 million people in the world who are classified as slaves, according to the latest data.

Something is dreadfully wrong in America.

Despite The Fed's Jim Bullard proclaiming last week that inflation expectations had rebounded (by which we assumed he meant the Dow), 5-year forward 5-year inflation expectations just dropped in the US to the lowest since 2008. The rest of the world is no better. In spite of promised and delivered policies Japanese and European inflation expectations are also near multi-year (if not all-time) lows... which must mean only one thing - we need moar money printing.

Since Ben Bernanke reminded the world of the existence of government printing-presses, echoed Milton Friedman's "helicopter drop" solution to fighting deflation, and decried Japan for not being as insane as it could be... it has only been a matter of time before some global central bank decided that the dropping of cash onto the populace was the key to economic recovery. Having blown their wad on QQE (and been left with a triple-dip recession), it appears Japan has reached that limit. As Japan's News47 reports, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed his cabinet to develop economic measures such as handing out 'gift certificates' to the poor to "support personal consumption directly."