Archive - 2015 - Story

This morning's decision by the Swiss National Bank has polarized the investing community. From the 'smartest men in the room' to the 'most renowned newsletter writers in the world', the reactions could not be more different...

With the biggest miss since August 2011, The Philly Fed Factory Index crashed from 21 year highs in November to the lowest since Feb 2014. The headline 6.3 print, missing expectations of 18.7, follows last month's drop for the biggest 2-month drop since Lehman. Under the surface things are even worse with the employment sub-index plunging to its worsdt since June 2013 and the outlook for CapEx slashed in half from 24.8 to 13.2. But but but fundamentals...

Thanks to the SNB surprise this morning - and FX market volatility (and illiquidity) at insane levels - liquidity in the S&P 500 e-mini futures contract is at its lowest in at least 3 years... (i.e., prepare for volatility)

Another day, another Kermit kicks the can. .

"This is a massive message from SNB to the market : ECB is going to do QE, and it’s going to be big..." notes Goldman Sachs and it appears Gold and Crude Oil are starting to get on that bandwagon.

The last thing anyone will care about today is seasonally-adjusted US economic data, but in any event, it is worth noting that in a world allegedly drowning in inflation, moments ago the BLS reported that December wholesale producer prices, while dropping less than expected -0.3% on the headline, actually jumped 0.3% excluding food and energy. The 0.3% decline in the final demand index can be traced to a 1.2-percent drop in prices for final demand goods. In contrast, the index for final demand services moved up 0.2 percent. The headline drop was as expected once again driven by declining gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas, home heating oil, and diesel fuel prices offset by advances in the indexes for motor vehicles, up 0.6%, eggs for fresh use, and residential natural gas. In fact, the 2.1% annual increase in final demand services was the highest since May of 2014.

Tumbling retail sales and now surging jobless claims... perhaps the "low oil is awesome" narrative is not true after all. Initial Jobless claims surged to 316k (smashing expectations of 290k) and has not been higher since June 2014.  The BLS reports no unusual activity - so economists can't hust shrug this one off. Details on state-by-state job losses are lagged a week so we will not know if this is Shale Oil region-related but yesterday's Beige Book and day after day of announced job cuts by the energy sector suggest it is.

January 12, 2015: "We took stock of the situation less than a month ago, we looked again at all the parameters and we are convinced that the minimum exchange rate must remain the cornerstone of our monetary policy," SNB's Jean-Pierre Danthine.

January 15, 2015: "Recently, divergences between the monetary policies of the major currency areas have increased significantly – a trend that is likely to become even more pronounced. The euro has depreciated considerably against the US dollar and this, in turn, has caused the Swiss franc to weaken against the US dollar. In these circumstances, the SNB concluded that enforcing and maintaining the minimum exchange rate for the Swiss franc against the euro is no longer justified."

The US markets are just waking up to the bright red margin calls but the carnage in Switzerland remains. The Swiss Market Index plunged almost 15% on the SNB news (and is bouncing back modestly) to 3-month lows (Bullard lows) before bounciung back modestly. The Swiss yield curve has been crushed 10-20bps lower with yields negative all the way out to 9 year maturity... EURCHF is holding 1.02 for now...

The other question is about the cost of today's decision for the SNB, both in monetary and credibility terms. The SNB is holding roughly half of their CHF500bn in euros, which implies a loss of possibly not dissimilar to the CHF38bn that the SNB made in profit last year. The monetary impact might thus be manageable. The credibility impact might be harder to gauge though. Domestically, many economic actors relied on what was seen as a 'promise' to hold the 1.20 floor. Internationally, following the negative rates confusion back in December today's decision might be further undermined the standing of the SNB among investors.

Following disappointing results from JPM and Wells Fargo yesterday, it was Bank of America's turn to "surprise" investors with its disclosure just how bad its quarter was. And with the bank reporting a 50% collapse in its sales and trading from Q3, down $600 million from a year ago to just $1.7 billion in Q4, it should come as no surprise that the bank just reported Net Income, before the usual spate of amusing addbacks, of $0.25 well below the $0.31 expected. And while one may argue whether ot not BofA's EPS deserve non-GAAP adbacks, it was the Revenue of $18.96 billion, which missed expectations of $21.03 billion by over $2 billion (!) and down $2.7 billion from a year ago, that was truly a showstropper and shows that without the Fed's visible hand manipulating markets every day, banks are a ticking time bomb just waiting to blow.

To paraphrase a trader who walked into the biggest FX clusterfuck in years, "it's total, unprecedented market turmoil."  So while the world gets a grip on what today's historic move by the SNB means, which judging by the record 13% collapse in the Swiss Stock Market shows clearly that the SNB market put is dead and the SNB may be the first central-banking hedge fund which just folded (we can't wait to see what the SNB P&L losses on its EURCHF holdings will be), here is what has happened so far for anyone unlucky enough to be walking into the carnage some 2 hours late.

Over a decade ago, George Soros took on the Bank of England, and won. Less than two hours ago the Swiss National Bank took on virtually every single macro hedge fund, the vast majority of which were short the Swiss Franc and crushed them, when it announced, first, that it would go further into NIRP, pushing its interest rate on deposit balances even more negative from -0.25% to -0.75%, a move which in itself would have been unprecedented and, second, announcing that the 1.20 EURCHF floor it had instituted in September 2011, the day gold hit its all time nominal high, was no more. What happened next was truly shock and awe as algo after algo saw their EURCHF 1.1999 stops hit, and moments thereafter the EURCHF pair crashed to less then 0.75, margining out virtually every single long EURCHF position, before finally rebounding to a level just above 1.00, which is where it was trading just before the SNB instituted the currency floor over three years ago.