Archive - Feb 2014 - Story

It appears it's not enough to have a record year on your stock market? Economic hardship, socialism, starvation, and not enough toilet paper have apparently led to the bloodiest riots in Caracas in years. As AP reports, at least 2 people were killed as large anti-Maduro protests engulfed the nation's capital.

While loathed to admit it, US auto makers have done it again. As we have vociferously explained month after month (and has been vocally denied until now by the car makers themselves), much of the recovery in auto sales has been a massive channel-stuffing make-work program (mal-investment once again triggered by 'false' signals created by Fed intervention). Now, as the WSJ reports, Detroit's big 3 are trying to sweeten discounts to clear a massive inventory of unsold vehicles from dealer lots (desparate not to start a profit-killing price war). "We believe we can sell our way out," said GM, but as Morgan Stanley warns, "the best of the U.S. auto replacement cycle is over." Good luck...

Disaster.

Dennis Gartman, already humiliated beyond any hope of reputation salvage in the media, appears to be refocusing his keen talents and acute sense of extrapolating instantaneous market momentum 1 millisecond into the future, to a renewed direct exposure in the capital markets. And while hoping that market junkies have forgotten the epic disaster that was his last foray into ETF-land with ONN and OFF, Gartman today announced that he is now launching his signature shtick as a brand new ETF: gold... in non-dollar terms.

Apart from a 45-minute period from 1030ET to 1115ET (POMO) of totally failed momentum ignition, US equities and USDJPY were once again perfectly coupled leaving the Dow and S&P in the red today and the rest practically unchanged on dismally low volumes. Treasuries continue to slide with yields now 5bps (30Y) to 10bps (5Y) higher in the last 2 days (the worst 2 days for 5Y in almost 2 months). The USD ended practically unchanged on the week (once again) as EUR weakness (Coeure comments on negative rates) offset GBP strength (Carney comments). VIX traded down to 14.02% intraday (and the term structure is very steep and complacent once again). Gold (new 3-month highs) and silver surged intraday but the afternoon saw selling even as bonds, stocks, and the USD weakened. Dow remains below 16k.

On the chart below, try to guess, without peeking, which is the average salary of a Federal worker in the US and which is the average per capita income for all Americans.

2014 has been an unusual year so far. The worst start for stocks in decades stunned many but has been saved by the best rally in a few years' asset-gatherers proclaim it was the dip to be bought but volume never came back to buy that dip (despite its exuberant surge). So where is all the volume in 2014? Nanex has the answer... investors have been geting 'high' by weeding-out OTC stocks...

It seems yet another (luxury) car maker did not get the "but it's the weather" memo. Following Mercedes record sales in January, Porsche has announced today that expects to hit a target of selling more than 200,000 sports cars next year, three years earlier than originally scheduled. As Reuters reports, Volkswagen-owned Porsche is entering the lucrative segment of compact SUVs with its new Macan model, which has already sold out about eight months of production ahead of its arrival at German dealerships on April 4. Wealth effect, of course, is all that matters... and the promise of higher minimum wages and a Maserati in every garage.

By the power of his pen... President Obama gives minimum-wage-earning Federal employees (and physically and mentally handicapped workers) a 39% pay hike to $10.10 (and there's nothing you can do about it) to "benefit hundreds of thousands of people." We suspect that the president will remind us to the new "myRA" program and its benefits and how we should all tell our young friends to sign up for Obamacare too... and how this is paid for by the usual unicorn-tears-for-dollars swap...

Many have opined that while the unemployment rate may be 6.6%, down from a peak of 10% three and a half year ago, the so-called recovery sure doesn't feel like one: after all so many Americans are still struggling to find work and as so many complain, employers are simply not hiring. Well, as it turns out, all those complaining are absolutely correct....

The default cycle that should have occurred, given historical patterns of issuance cycles, has morphed (thanks to the Fed) into a refinancing cycle; but while DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach suggests that fundamentals are supportive, "the valuation of junk bonds as a category is at its all-time overvalued versus long-time treasury bonds." So despite Yellen exclaiming that she sees no bubbles, one of the world's largest bond fund managers has never seen corporate bonds (investment grade and high yield) more expensive. Gundlach goes on to note he has sold some Apple (but believes it will remain range-bound), is baffled by the valuation of Chipotle, and sees 10Y Treasury yields dropping to 2.5% or lower.

In the aftermath of yesterday's 3 Year auction, which was nothing to write home about except for the surge in Indirect demand (and corresponding plunge in Direct take down), the Treasury just priced it latest soon to be POMO-ed 10 Year paper, $24 billion of it to be exact with a couple of reopenings scheduled in the near future, at a closing yield of 2.795% which was inside the 2.801% When Issued at 1 pm indicating solid demand dynamics during the auction process. That said, the Bid to Cover of 2.54 was well below both the January 2.68, and the TTM average of 2.69, and in fact was the lowest since the 2.44 print from last August. The internals were more solid, as Dealers took down 34.1%, below the 38.4% TTM average, while Indirects - like yesterday - soared to 49.7% of the final allocation, the highest since June's 51.7%. This means that Directs were left with 16.2% of the auction, or just below the 19.8% average. As a result of the auction failing to tail, the Treasury complex popped modestly higher in the aftermath of the announcement, although this bullish sentiment may not last unless DE Shaw links up its bond buying algo to the USDJPY to match its SPOO buying "logic."

Recently debates over minimum wage laws have flared up again. The starting point was president Obama's State of the Union speech, in which he announced that he would push through a higher minimum wage (among other things) regardless of the objections anyone in e.g. Congress might have. There can actually not be any controversy over the basic economic laws involved, and yet the debate continues to be revived again and again.

In what has to be the most surreal "news" of the past 24 hours, we learned that Spain, caught in the vice of an unprecedented historic depression, endless "recovery" propaganda notwithstanding, and Turkey, the country whose currency crashed to record lows against the dollar a few short days ago and whose government has been defending itself from a tsunami of corruption allegations and busy firing all the judges who dare to voice disagreement with PM Erdogan, have decided to jointly build ... wait for it ... an aircraft carrier.

We previously highlighted just how serious the situation was in Ukraine - and Victoria Nuland's FUBAR comments and clear US manipulation did nothing to calm matters - but today's news (via Ria Novosti) suggests things are escalating rapidly. Alexander Lobodenko - a 34-year-old district court judge who recently sentenced several political protesters to house arrest has been shot dead. Police have opened a criminal case into the death and said that Lobodenko was likely killed as a result of his judicial work.