Archive - Feb 2015 - Story

As the dash-for-trash continues in US equities, Neuberger Berman sums up the state of investing currently, "there has certainly been little reward for owning high-return, superior business models that are conservatively financed," as Bloomberg notes, Fed policy has had the “unintended consequence” of boosting the stocks of companies with heavy debt and little or no earnings. Typically after a recession, such companies lose out to firms that generate more cash and have better balance sheets; this time, no “Darwinian” shakeout happened and low-quality stocks ruled. Managers say they haven’t changed, the market has.

The post-1945 European settlement had many successes. But it is now crumbling. It needs drastic modification. That requires statesmen of the calibre of the men of 1945. It is time for politicians who wish to earn a place in history and upgrade themselves to statesmanhood to step up to the challenge.

Modestly higher than the 'contractionary' 49.7 print in Janauary, February's Markit (flash) China Manufacturing PMI printed at 50.1 (beating expectations of a drop to 49.5). However, before global investors pop the proverbial champagne corks of global recovery, we note that employment's drop accelerated, New Export Orders contracted the most since June 2013, and prices continued to fall. Of course, HSBC is careful to note that "more policy easing is still warranted" because they believe, "domestic economic activity is likely to remain sluggish and external demand looks uncertain." For now Chinese stocks are holding losses after the lunar new year and the Yuan has weakened further near 30 month lows - once again testing the upper 2% fix band.

This is the war on success that our government is waging...

Before the world morphed into what it has become, the relationship between stock prices and intraday ranges was somewhat positively correlated (as one would imagine) - higher prices and a steady vol means absolute ranges will trend higher. However, the last few years - and most especially the last few months - as equity index prices soared, so intraday ranges collapsed. In fact, the last 3 times a new low range was made, that marked a local high in stock prices. Along with the fact that the VIX term structure is the steepest since the pre-Bullard collapse,  hedging - as opposed to BTFTAH - seems more appropriate in the short-term at least.

With more than 60 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and a whopping 24 percent of the country has more credit card debt than emergency savings, when the coming economic crisis strikes, more than half the country is going to be financially wiped out within weeks. If you are trusting in the government to save you when things fall apart, you will be severely disappointed.

One big problem... or two?

So did Greece write the Greek reform memo or was it someone from the European Commission?

"The best environment for man is the environment of liberty." - former President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus

Liberty is a fundamental human right; it is the cornerstone of our existence. But liberty is under attack from all directions, whether through higher state control or individuals themselves. Liberty is in search for its protector.

It's different this time...

When last week's API inventory hit, WTI crude tumbled $2 (only to rip higher the next day on a massive EIA build - yeah). Today, API reported an 8.9 million barrel build, greater than expected again and that pushed WTI Crude back to a $48 handle testing the day's lows...

The Federal Financial Institution Examination Council recently told banks that, “if a particular asset . . . has features that could place it in more than one risk category, it is assigned to the category that has the lowest risk weight.” This gives banks extraordinary latitude to underreport the risk levels of their investments. Bankers can now arbitrarily decide that a risky asset ‘has features’ of a lower risk asset, and thus they can completely misrepresent their investments. Bottom line, it’s becoming extremely difficult to have confidence in western banks’ financial health.

As the chasm between earnings (tumbling most since 2008) & macro data (90% misses in February and weakest  in 11 months) and the inexorable rise of the US equity market yawns ever wider, we thought the following clip (from South Korea) perfectly summed up what happens next...