Archive - Mar 2014 - Story

U.S. stocks are like a duck, floating on a quiet pond – calm above the surface, but lots of furious churning invisible to the naked eye.  The S&P 500 looks like it will end the first quarter within a hair of the 1848 level where it started the year, but that doesn’t mean everything else is all stasis and light.  Today we offer up a quick ‘Top 10’ list of surprises from the last 90 days.  Gold, for example, is back from the grave, up 7.3%.  So is an imperial Russia, with the biggest land grab since the building of the Berlin Wall.  Mutual fund flows are ahead of exchange traded funds by a factor of 5:1.  And most of those ETF inflows are into bond funds, not the “Great Rotation” we all expected into stocks.  The 10-year U.S. Treasury yields all of 2.67%, and bonds have bested U.S. stocks consistently in 2014.  First quarter 2014 may not have been a long trip, but it certainly has been strange.

Yesterday's late bounce and this morning's opening follow-thrugh were heralded by many talking-heads this morning as the end of the sell-off and a great buying opportunity. Well, on the bright side, those stocks are now at least 3% cheaper having plunged from the opening highs - even as the broader indices hold in. The Momos, also considered to have seen the worst, are re-collapsing...

If there is one thing that unites trade unionists, Keynesian Cargo Cultists, free-market fans and believers in American exceptionalism, it's a misty-eyed nostalgia for the Golden Era of the 1950s and 60s, when one wage-earner earned enough to buy all the goodies of a middle-class lifestyle because everything was cheap. Food was cheap, land was cheap, houses were cheap, college was cheap and most importantly, oil was cheap. The nostalgic punditry quite naturally think of this full-employment golden age of their youth as the default setting, i.e. the economy of the 1950s/60s was "normal." But it wasn't normal--it was a one-off anomaly, never to be repeated.

Once upon a time, Tesla's Model S was supposedly the world's safest car. Then a few of them spontaneously combusted either in the comfort of their own garage, or while doing the unthinkable, i.e., driving over pieces of debris on the road, and questions emerged just how much money was used to bribe the NHTSA which had rushed to proclaim the Model S the safest car it has ever tested without apparently doing any actual testing. Today questions of NHTSA bribes re-emerged louder than ever after NHTSA reported earlier it had "closed an investigation into fires involving electric sports car maker Tesla Motors Inc's popular Model S sedans after finding no "defect trend." Obviously a forced recall by Tesla would have promptly shifted the spontaneous combustion from merely its cars to its all important for marketing purposes stock price.

You know it's bad when... Italy's new prime minister Matteo Renzi has decided that around 1,500 non-essential government official cars will be sold off (via eBay). As La Repubblica reports, the cars (among them dozens of BMWs, Alfa Romeos, Lancias, nine Maseratis and a couple of Jaguars) have come to be a symbol of wasteful government spending. Renzi noted, via Twitter, "Why should an under-secretary have an official car? The undersecretary should go by foot."

This week just happens to be the 160th anniversary of Britain and France’s declaration of war on Russia in what would eventually become known as the Crimean War. Part 1. At the time, Russia was a rising power. Other nations in the region– particularly France and the Ottoman Empire, were in obvious decline.  All of this should sound familiar. As Mark Twain said, history might not necessarily repeat, but it certainly rhymes. By dropping Russia from the G-8, they’re proving beyond a doubt that the G8 has no power... and practically shoving Russia into bed with China. This is a classic example of how formerly great powers accelerate their own decline. And Mr. Obama and his colleagues seem to be following this playbook to a T.

And the hits just keep on coming for new CEO Mary Barra. By now she must be suspecting Dan Akerson threw her under the bus as he left the sinking ship. On the heels of all-time record high inventories (over-built amid a frenzy of mal-investment last year), massive recalls (amid ignition switch problems linked to 12 deaths), and potential bankruptcy fraud, GM announced today that it has instructed dealers to stop selling 2013 and 2014 Chevrolet Cruzes but gave no reason for the halt.

Since the beginning of 2013, the market has been seen as invulnerable.  Despite issues in the Eurozone, rising turmoil in the Mideast, riots and political clashes, rising oil prices and weak economic data - these issues bounced off the markets will little effect.  The markets craved "bad news" as it provided insurance that the Federal Reserve would continue its "liquidity drip." It is important to note in the first chart above, that some of the biggest negative annual returns eventually followed 30% up years.  The current levels of margin debt, bullish sentiment, and institutional activity are indicative of an extremely optimistic view of the market. Regardless, it is important to understand that it is always just a function of "when" a mean reverting event will occur.  Unfortunately for many investors who fail to understand the "risk" they have undertaken within their portfolios, when that time comes it will matter "a lot."

"Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry, a precious metals specialist, reported that sales of gold ingots across seven of its shops are up more than 500% this month. At the company’s flagship store in Ginza on Thursday, people queued for up to three hours to buy 500g bars worth about Y2.3m ($22,500). March has been the busiest month in Tanaka’s 120-year history."... "Investors are being drawn to the metal not just because of higher taxes, said Itsuo Toshima, an adviser to pension funds.“Slowly and steadily, people are preparing for the worst, which is the failure of Abenomics." “To protect the value of wealth, gold comes into play as an inflation hedge, and if the economy goes back to deflationary circumstances then, again, money seeking safe havens would flow into gold."

The sanctioned Russian bank - Bank Rossiya - is "taking measures to protect its Russian clients" from potentially unfair actions by US banks by shutting correspondence accounts in the US. Furthermore, the bank, which is oh so grateful for the support of Vladimir Putin (who opened a personal account with the bank soon after the sanctions), added it will meet all obligations and will not need additional support as will concentrate only on its Russian clients and work only in Rubles.

While the government's survey of consumer confidence saw new cycle highs - progressing the multiple expansion dream - the University of Michigan (private) survey has been falling for 3 months and is now at its lowest since November. Both current conditions (reality) and expectations (hope) missed expectations (overall index missed by the most in 5 months) but "hope" did rise modestly from 69.4 to 70.0. Must have been a 'winter stormy' week when UMich surveyed consumers...

Presented with little comment aside to ask... sustainable? Every string will be pulled today to ensure that the S&P 500 closes in the green for Q1, this is just the beginning salvo...

Two weeks ago, when Bank of America found that its weekly retail spending data has continued coming in far weaker than expected compared to 2013, it did the laughable: it blamed not the weather in general, but one storm in particular, to wit: "once again adverse weather potentially impacted spending last week, as the storm “Titan” moved across the US over the weekend of March 1st and 2nd and was followed by yet another cold spell." Two weeks later, after shockingly BofA finds precisely the same weakness continuing into the end of a balmy March, it no longer even bothers looking for excuses. The sad reality: there are none.

As if you didn’t already recognize the serious threat to press freedom in the UK following authorities holding Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda for eight hours under “terrorism” laws as he transferred through London’s Heathrow airport. It’s not just the traditional press at risk in the UK either, the government is hard at work censoring the internet itself via ridiculous filters. Now we find out from the Irish Times that..."...Britain’s intelligence agencies visited [The Guardian] and told them they would be closed if they persisted in printing Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance