Bond

Durable goods orders for July and FHFA house prices. Also another $35 billion in 5 Year bonds to be auctioned off.

For those wondering why gold just surged by about $20 dollars, and why Gartman's cab driver once again proves to be far more astute than his passenger, we bring to your attention  a report just released by Goldman's Francesco Garzarelli which is appropriately titled "The Price of Slower Growth" - appropriately, because in it Goldman slashes the firm's outlook on global policy rates across the board, slashes to cut its 10 Year bond yield outlook from 3.75% to 2.75% in 2011 and from 4.25% to 3.50%, slashes 2012 US GDP from 3.0% to 2.10%, and once again makes it all too clear that QE3 is coming, and not only coming but is already priced in (to the tune of about $300-400 billion): "In previous work, we have estimated that every US$1trn in purchases, if maintained, decreases 10-yr Treasury yields by 25bp-50bp. If our subjective assessment that market participants now assign a greater-than-even chance of ‘QE3’ is correct, and considering that the expected ‘unsterilized’ size of these purchases is in the region of US$600-800bn, this would equate to as much as 20bp being already ‘in the price’. Clearly, these magnitudes are unobservable, and thus subject to great uncertainty. Nevertheless, our calculations would suggest that the bond market is already discounting a mild recession and the chance of a Fed reaction to it." Translation (and this is nothing new to ZH readers): Bill Dudley has his marching orders from Jan Hatzius: GS now sees deflation as the broader risk, and anything and everything must be done to make sure Wall Street has another record bonus season round, pardon, deflation must be halted.

The just completed auction of $16 billion in 30 Year bonds, was, as Rick Santelli said, "a failure". And while this may be a little dramatic, this was without doubt one of the ugliest 30 Year auctions ever seen. The 30 year priced at 3.75%, a huge 11 bps tail to the When Issued which was trading at 3.64%, the Bid To Cover plunging from 2.80 to 2.05, the lowest since February 2009, and, most shockingly, the Indirect Bidders Imploded to a paltry 12.2%! Those wondering if Chinese posturing would led to anything more than just jawboning have their answer. The Indirect tendered bids were just $3 billion or about 20% of the total auction size, which resulted in a $2 billion take down. It was so bad that the Directs were for the first time in 30 Year history greater than the Indirects. And yes, while the yield was close to record low it won't stay there especially if as is now expected, August 26 will see the BEA report a second GDP revision of ~0.6% at 8:30 am, which will be promptly followed by Bernanke's 2011 Jackson Hole address. And so the yoyo continues: what today's auction has proven is that going forward the Fed will be forced to crash the market every day that there is a Treasury auction, while ramping stocks on days when Treasury does not need to fund its borrowing binge.

After previously testing its mettle in such markets as Natural Gas and Crude Oil, the fractal algo, just like the StuxNet virus, is now ready to progress to its real test: equity products, and specifically ETFs. Courtesy of Nanex' sharp eyes (and extremely complicated market scanners), today we have the first official spotting of the fractal algo moving away from commodities and into extremely popular ETFs, in this case the bearish bond synthetic CDS better known as the TBT. The pattern below is quite unmistakeable. It is quite amazing that just one algorithm can override the entire market and determine the trading pattern of some as hugely popular as an ETF which most hold. We expect that very shortly, we will be observing daily fractal patterns in that most liquid and traded product of all- the SPY, as the market proceeds to become nothing more than a real life version of Nuke-em Duke-em robots.

Several B-grade economic developments on the docket, as well as the first post-downgrade 10 Year bond issuance. Latest monthly QE Lite POMO schedule released today.

The S&P downgrade was not as much a comment on the numbers of credit service as a comment on the political process. The political process is about confronting the probability of a hyper-inflationary collapse of our currency if fiscal irresponsibility, entitlement spending and bank bailout mentality are not addressed. If the credit rating firms had continued the charade of AAA quality, it would merely enable the not sustainable march toward hyper-inflation. Ultimately, the S&P downgrade of Treasuries is a downgrade of all dollar denominated assets. If we can print dollars to pay Treasury debt, it is the currency that is at risk. A nominal default of Treasury obligations is not going to happen. Yet, a real default as a currency event is the risk. In order to save the currency,  we must sacrifice the money center banks. A sacrifice of the international banking system is a deflationary event. For Treasuries to rally in a flight to quality as a market reaction to their own downgrade is a flight to the relative safety that remains. Anticipation of the deflationary political discipline of an S&P downgrade is the rational reaction of capital flight away from securities propped up by the reflationary status quo.

On Friday, when we discussed that the EFSF could potentially be expanded to a ridiculous E3.5 trillion, we made the following observation in advance of the prediction that Germany would eventually throw up all over the creeping euro bailout proposal, we said:  "In the meantime, short Bunds (or to borrow a Gartmanism, go long gold in Bund terms) ahead of the market's realization that peak risk transfer from the periphery to the core is now in process." Well, the first eurobond prints are in (we already know where gold is trading), and the losers (and winners) are...

The newsflow just keeps getting worse. Via Dow Jones we have learned that Spain, not Italy, has decided to pull its August 18 auction and will instead launch its 5 year auction on September 1. Once again, Zero Hedge being just a little prescient with our 7 am commentary that we "look for Spain to follow Italy in a self-imposed bond market exile." And in far worse news, we now get a schism within the European banking authority itself after Bloomberg reported that the Bundesbank's Weidmann is said to be opposed the resumption of ECB bond buying, at least two bouts of which already took place earlier, most likely in Italian and Portuguese bonds. "Weidmann was not the only Governing Council member against the move, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity because the ECB policy meeting is not public. Bundesbank spokeswoman declined to comment." The last thing that that the market needs to see now is uncertainty. That the market will see idiocy is a given, but at least keep the idiocy constant. That someone may be a voice of reason only sends shudders of terror through the spine of billions of vacuum tubes around the world which have no idea how to predict the future at this point.

The collapse in the global Ponzi scheme is intensifying. Liffe down next, even as the FTSE MIB has reopened, only to plummet to 5% down for the day with Unicredit and Intesa halted yet again. We expect Italy may not reopen tomorrow.

And the news just gets uber-surreal. According to a Reuters report, the Italian Treasury has a "larger cash pile than generally perceived according to sources." As a reminder this is precisely the excuse that Italy used when it scrambled to cancel medium and long-term auctions for late August as was previously noted. Which can only mean one thing: in order to prevent more ongoing routs, Italy will likely now withdraw from all bond auctions for the "foreseeable future" in order to not give the market a chance to do some real price discovery. Sure enough, the subsequent Reuters headline says that the "Italian Treasury's cash pile is enough to last most of 2011." Odd that we predicted this, and the next steps, just this morning, when we said: "look for Spain to follow Italy in a self-imposed bond market exile." Translation: while Greece, Portugal and Ireland are unable to access capital markets, Italy, as we predicted, has just self-imposed a capital markets exile likely until the end of the year.

When it comes to its opinion on the shape of the bailout, Goldman is a force to be reckoned with (as in every other endeavor, no matter how self-serving the outcome ultimately is): after all it was Goldman which first proposed expanding the EFSF and using it as a "bad bank" SPV which has the extra benefit of being off the balance sheet, and can issue more debt than virtually any financial institution in the world (see EFSF - Too Small? Too Big? Or Just Wrong?). Which is why when Goldman discusses next steps, you can be positive, this is precisely what will end up happening, and that Goldman is already well positioned to profit from whatever policy recommendations it has imposed. So without further ado, here is Dirk Schumacher's latest outlook on how to perpetuate the European status quo.

Unlike the past last auctions in the current week, in which the 2 and 5 year both priced far weaker than expected, and saw a surge in Direct bidders absorb the absence of foreign demand, today's 7 Year auction was largely unmemorable. Granted, it did price with a 1.5 tail, coming in at a high yield of 2.28%, after with the When Issued trading at 2.265% second into the close, indicative of last minute weakness, but the other metrics were largely in line. The Bid To Cover came at 2.63, same as last month's, although well below the LTM average of 2.84%. The internals were stronger with Directs not surging as many has expected, and taking down just 9.26% of the auction, meaning Primary Dealers had to consume 51.2% of the auction. That left foreign bidders recycling their trade surplus to take on about 39.55% of the auction, better than last month's 32.17% but worse than the 12 month average of 43.33%. As noted: rather uneventful and on the weak side. What is more disturbing is that absent a debt ceiling hike, this may well be the last bond auction for a long, long time. And without more auctions, what will Bernanke monetize?

Citing the most hilarious explanation we have ever heard for not daring to approach the capital markets, Dow Jones reports that following a comparable announcement from Austria earlier, none other than clutch euro Domino Italy, whose bond yields surged by about 40 bps today, has decided to take a sabbatical from accessing capital markets, and will not issue medium and long-term bonds in August. Of course, the real reason is that the spreads are prohibitively high but that's a story for another reason. The problem for Italy, however, is that it will end up burning through a lot of cash over the next 45 days and then far more will depend on the successful passage of the country's auctions in the following month, when the next scheduled medium term auction is on September 13 (full auction schedule is here). Amusingly, while all of Europe complains that the Greece, Ireland and Portugal have no capital markets access, some of the better of PIIGS make the voluntary decision to avoid price discovery. We fail to see how this can possibly result in anything than another loss of credibility in the eurozone rescue package.

While there is nothing new in the just released Jim Rogers interview with the WSJ, it is always refreshing to hear him tell the truth, which is, of course that "the US has already lost its AAA status. Who cares what Moody's say." As for the response: "The market looks ahead: this is not the first time that the market has dealt with the fact that the US is bankrupt." As for his proclivity to buy long term US debt: "I wouldn't lend money to the US in US dollars for 30 years at 3%, or 4%, or 5% or you name the interest rate.... I shorted it June 10. I am short the US bond market as we speak." Great stuff as usual.

After mysteriously, and briefly, appearing two weeks ago, and then again last week, we are once again experiencing one of those eerie "cross the streams" kind of moments, when both stocks and bonds are sold off (and gold jumps to record highs) on renewed concerns that the ponzi is unwinding and central planning committees around the world are furiously scratching their bald heads for contingency plans (that do not involve a Gulfstream and a crate of sold gold) which do not exist aside from doing the same old even more furiously. Below is how tonight's modest sell off in bonds looks like. In the absence of any additional newsflow (don't laugh, read this) we expect the mean reversion bots and buythedip-o-matics to get us green overnight, totally screwing up Obama's plan to scare the bejeezus out of any of his GOP adversaries on the debt hike issue courtesy of a market plunge. Elsewhere, be on the look out for yet another BOJ intervention should "newsflow" return as Japan’s Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda says “will take resolute actions when necessary” in currency market. Then again he has been saying that for two weeks straight now, and absolutely nobody is taking the BOJ seriously any longer.