Archive - Sep 6, 2015 - Story

Presented with little comment aside from a snarky glare as Xinhua's headline "After a roller coaster rush since July 2014, China's stock market has stabilized and risks have been released to some extent, the securities regulator said Sunday." CSI-300 was limit up 10% shortly after the open, then was hammered 5% lower. Shanghai Composite was not as easily manipulated and is down 0.5%!!

As an investor, you have enough to be concerned about just taking into account factors like inflation, deflation, Fed policy and the overall state of the economy. Now you have another major threat looming – financial warfare, enabled by cyberattacks and force multipliers. What can you do to preserve wealth when these cyberfinancial wars break out? The key is to have some portion of your total assets invested in nondigital assets that cannot be hacked, wiped out or disrupted by financial warfare. The time to take defensive action by acquiring some non-digital assets is now.

Even before China reopened from its 5-day holiday, regulators were pitching Chinese stocks as cheap (37.3x P/E) and less-margined (+108% YoY) and promised to "safeguard stability" in a "variety of forms" seemingly pouting cold water on The FT's recent report (and the malicious instigator of China's market crash). All of this is quite ironic, given China's chief central bankers admitted "the chinese bubble has burst." As stocks open, CSI-300 (China's S&P 500) has confirmed a 'Death Cross' which in 2008 was followed by a further 60% decline. More troubling, however, is the incessant rise in interbank rates as despite CNY530bn of liquidity injected in the last 3 weeks, overnight rates have doubled. China credit risk jumps to 2-year highs and AsiaPac stocks are generally lower at the open (as US futures dumped'n'pumped) not helped by Japanese weakness on BoJ tapering concerns. PBOC strengthened the Yuan fix for the 4th day in a row - the most since Sept 2010.

Having recently detailed the automakers' worst nightmare - surging new car inventories - supply; amid rapidly declining growth around the world (EM and China) - demand, it appears the bubble in new car sales is about to be crushed by yet another unintended consequence of The Fed's lower for longer experiment. As WSJ reports, Edmunds.com estimates that around 28% of new vehicles this year will be leased - a near-record pace - leaving 13.4 million vehicles (leased over the past 3 years in The US) - compared with just 7 million in the three years to 2011 - set to spark a massive surplus of high-quality used cars. Great for consumers (if there are any left who have not leased a car in the last 3 years) but crushing for automakers' margins as luxury used-care prices are tumbling just as residuals have surged.

The world is in the waning days of a historic multi-decade experiment in unfettered finance. International finance has for too long been effectively operating without constraints on either the quantity or the quality of Credit issued. From the perspective of unsound finance on a globalized basis, this period has been unique. History, however, is replete with isolated episodes of booms fueled by bouts of unsound money and Credit – monetary fiascos inevitably ending in disaster. We see discomforting confirmation that the current historic global monetary fiasco’s disaster phase is now unfolding.

The centrally-planned house of cards is finally starting to shake uncontrollably.

Presented with no comment...

The catchphrase that seems to be picking up more and more steam is “cutting the cord” when referring to those that are dropping traditional cable TV for viewing choices or alternatives by other means. However, is “cutting the cord” really the reason for ESPN’s loss of millions viewers? Perhaps a large part of the underlying reason is: ESPN (like a few notable others such as NBC™) has seemingly transformed at near hyper-speed from sports reporting – to political sports reporting. The political edge now rampant throughout the shows, games, interviews, et al is overbearing, overburdening, and overdone.

As Dow futures opened ahead of this evening's China open (after being closed since Wednesday), it appears someone (or something) decided it was time to test down 100 points to Friday's pre-ramp lows. Of course that mini-flash-crash has now been followed - since stops were run - with a 140 point ripfest, we assume gunning for the stops just above Friday's late-day highs...

To summarize: in order to get the Saudis to "agree" to the Iran deal, all the US had to do is remind King Salman, that as long as oil is where it is to a big extent as a result of Saudi's own record oil production, crushing countless US oil corporations and leading to the biggest layoffs in Texas since the financial crisis, the country will urgently need access to yield-starved US debt investors. If in the process, US corporations can invest in Saudi Arabia (and use the resulting assets as further collateral against which to take out even more debt), while US military corporations sell billions in weapons and ammo to the Saudi army, so much the better.

The Icelandic government is reconsidering its national refugee quota after a social media campaign resulted in over 11,000 Icelanders (the "most peaceful nation in the world") offering up a room in their homes to refugees. As Europe struggles to cope with unprecedented levels of those seeking shelter, residents of the sparsely populated Nordic island country resorted to direct action to pressure their leaders.

Despite Brent crude prices easing modstly last week, WTI crude gained nearly 2% (after screaming higher the week before). With the 2nd largest speculative short position since 2006 in NYMEX futures and options, the prompt market is significantly unbalanced and extremely susceptible to upside catalysts.

It is interesting that the free market has actually found a way to undermine a cartel that up until recently appeared to be completely safe. In some cities, Uber is being fought tooth and nail to protect the sinecures of the established taxi industry. It is a microcosm of the cronyism that is the rule almost everywhere these days. Just think about how greatly our lives would improve if all the regulations that have been designed for no other reason than to protect established businesses against competition from upstarts were rescinded.

Before China’s bursting equity bubble grabbed international headlines, and before the PBoC’s subsequent devaluation of the yuan served notice to the world that things had officially gotten serious in the global currency wars, all anyone wanted to talk about when it came to China was a "hard landing." Now that the yuan devaluation has all but proven that China has landed, and landed hard, here are the five channels of contagion.