Bond

Today the PIIGS are back at the ECB subsidy trough with Portugal taking center stage with its E500 million 6-month bill auction. The next country to implode sold E500mln of 6-month Bills, and while the bid to cover was just a slightly better 2.6 compared to the 2.4 before, the yield again surged, hitting an unsustainable 3.686% versus 2.045% previously. The net result of this jump in yields is that peripheral spreads have once again commenced leaking wider, with the Greek spreads to Bunds pushing to a new record wide at 974 bps, a 10 point move. This is hardly the last we have heard of record Greek spreads it, and while it is very feasible we will see a four digit spread in the next few days, who really care anymore. After all it is just the ECB that will end up holding the toxic paper.

When Nassim Taleb and Marc Faber say that US government debt is a suicide investment, one can be allowed some skepticism. After all, they are likely just talking their book. On the other hand, when the manager of the world's biggest bond fund, whose flagship fund Treasury holdings amount to almost $80 billion goes on Bloomberg and says to "avoid dollar-denominated government debt" better known as US Treasuries, and instead recommends viewers invest in "stable" currencies like the Peso, the BRL or the CAD, then you know the bottom in bonds is in. So in addition to dumping fixed rate bonds (which means Pimco will again be able to buy on the cheap ahead of QE3, which as Larry Meyer has by now likely advised Pimco is a sure thing), Gross also told Bloomberg that his other two strategies are to buy floating rate debt (over fixed), and lastly recommend credit spreads over interest rate duration risk. For those who find something troubling with a $1 trillion fixed income manager talking down his investments, and are still wondering whether or not QE3 is coming, we suggest putting one and one together. And while at it, they should also consider that Pimco now holds over $100 billion in MBS: a notional amount last held just as QE1 was announced.

The inflection point has arrived. After pulling money for 33 consecutive weeks, and withdrawing over $98 billion in capital from domestic equity mutual funds, in the week ended December 21, the Fed has finally succeeded in getting the rotation out of bonds and into stocks as per ICI. After a total of $4.4 billion was redeemed from bond funds in the same week, mostly from municipals but also $837 million from taxable bonds (still a major decline from the almost $9 billion in bond outflows the prior week), domestic equity funds saw a token inflow of $335 million, compared to last week's $2.4 billion outflow. Just enough to halt the seemingly endless outflow. Still, since the bulk of the move seems predicated upon a move out of muni bonds, with $9.5 billion in outflows in December alone, should the muni crisis accelerate, and validate the investor concern, stocks as an asset class will certainly be impaired once the muni insolvency thesis start being played out... unless of course it is met with further action from Ben Bernanke in the form of QE3, as most Zero Hedge readers believe will inevitably happen. At that point, and as always when the Fed intervenes, all bets are off, suffice to say that gold will be well over $2,000 by then.

And like that, Brian Sack's market manipulation for 2010 is over. Then again, with practically no trading days left, and no volume to speak of, it was to be expected. Of today's $5.4 billion POMO, which brings the Fed's Treasury holdings ever higher in the trillion club, $2.4 billion went to buy back the PV6 which were auctioned off barely a month ago. This means that 15% of the Primary Dealer allottment of that particular auction ($16.4 billion) has already been sold back to the Fed at a decent profit. And so the shell game continues. What is ore surprising is why the PW4s auctioned off on Monday were neither in the inclusion, nor exclusion lists for today's POMO. After all, there is nothing the PDs would love more than a last minute taxpayer gift to the tune of a few hundred million in a quick two day flip to pad that third private island sinking fund with that little extra in risk free compensation.

Following today's ugly 5 Year auction, and hot on the heels of the 180 degree EUR reversal from this morning, coupled with the renewed surge in gold and silver, the entire bond complex is again in free fall (and no, Build America Bonds has not and likely will not be renewed in its current form), lead by the 30 Year. And if this was based on an expectation of real rates rising, as the pundits would claim, which would be an expectation of economic improvement, then gold would not be flirting with its all time highs. Which means that today's market action in every asset class is representing the economy accurately, especially following the 4th consecutive home price drop be Case Shiller... every asset class except for stocks of course. Then again, with volume once again abysmal (MVOLNYE just under 1,400), HFT/Fed levitation programs are the only thing that is trading 100x P/E hot grenades as per always.

Today, to little fanfare, the ECB managed to obtain just E60.8 billion in tender interest for its most recent 7 Day SMP "peripheral bond monetization" operation, whereby it needed at least E73.5 billion to be able to offload all of its cumulative acquired sovereign bonds to other financial institutions: a de facto sterilization, which is why the ECB has so far been claiming it is not monetizing debt (as it constantly rolls the held balance on other bank balance sheets). That is no more: following today, the ECB is left with just under E13 billion in sovereign holdings and thus are not sterilized. This development follows Monday's announcement, which was reported first on Zero Hedge, that the ECB acquired 100% more in peripheral bonds in the prior week compared to two weeks ago. Another notable development: the number of bidding banks participating in the tender operation dropped to just 41- the lowest since the inception of the program in May when Greece went tits up and all of Europe was supposed to bail each other out in perpetuity. And what is most disturbing is that this complete lack of interest (or telegraphed lack of bank liquidity) happened even as the marginal rate jumped by over 50%, from 0.6% to 1%- the same as the maximum rate allowed on an auction. Should banks not come back with tender takedown interest next week, this could very well be the catalyst for the next leg down in the European crisis. Because despite what ING economist Martin Van Vliet told Reuters, "It has happened before but I wouldn't make too much of a big deal out of it", we would make a big deal out of it, as this has actually not happened before. For confirmation that ING economists may want to take an Excel 101 chart, below is the buffer shortfall in every auction since the program's inception. As is all too obvious, this was the first one that missed by a mile.

That sneaky JC Trichet: while the rest of the banker world was preparing to hit the Telluride slopes to spend some of that hard earned taxpayer bailout cash, and otherwise leaving the fate of capital markets to Getco and two or three HFT traders, Trichet was once again busy bidding up every sovereign bond in the secondary market he could find. While in the week ended December 20, the ECB bought just E600 million, which in turn was the lowest since October and before Europe went bankrupt for the second time in a row, last week purchases jumped by nearly 100% to E1.1 billion, bringing the total to E73.5 billion. Which is surprising as there was very little on the surface to indicate that there was so much revulsion associated with sovereign exposures at least as determined by European stock bourses, meaning that equities and bonds even in Europe where there has been at least some tenuous linkage, have completely decoupled and joined their American cousins.

For the second week in a row, those claiming that flows will any.minute.now. shift away from bonds and go to equities are proven dead wrong. ICI has just reported that in the week ended December 15, not only was there another massive outflow, the 33rd in a row, from domestic equity mutual funds to the tune of $2.4 billion, but taxable and municipal bonds saw a stunning $8.6 billion in outflows, including another record $4.9 billion in muni outflows. At this point absent another major pull back in bond prices, we anticipate that bond inflows will once again resume, even as stock outflows persist indefinitely. Year to date investors have pulled just under $100 billion in money from US-focused equity mutual funds, offset by just $16 billion in comparable inflows into equity strategies via ETFs as we described yesterday. The reason for this seemingly endless boycott of stocks via the bulk of the population was given best by Geoff Bobroff, who told Bloomberg: "I would guess most retail investors are staying put
because you aren’t seeing the money go anywhere else." Another explanation, and just as spot on: nobody, save for a few hedge funds, gives a rats ass about manipulated stocks prices anymore.

In the past few days, European peripheral spreads have once again taken to widening both in absolute terms and relative to Bunds. The culprit: the ECB's permabid for insolvent debt has plunged from €2.7 billion to €603 million in the past week: this represents the lowest amount of bonds purchased by the ECB since the beginning of November. And without the backstop of wanton ECB buying sure enough the sellers emerge. Total debt holdings in the ECB's SMP program are now €72.5 billion. Incidentally one country which is certainly not benefiting from Jean Claude Trichet's largess with his bank's money is France, whose CDS earlier today hit an all time wide of over 100 bps on completely unfounded rumors that the country may be downgraded by one or more rating agencies. At this point expect to see the chart below yoyo in direct correlation to just how steep the sell off of European bonds may have been in the prior week.

While it was no surprise to readers that equity mutual funds saw the 32nd consecutive outflow from domestic stock funds (for a total of $95 billion YTD), what was far more surprising is that flows out of credit, and particularly high grade, surged. As Bank of America notes, "high grade mutual funds saw outflows of $2.5 billion, the largest dollar amount on record and just the fourth occurrence this year so far, according to data from EPFR." The question then becomes where did, and will, all this cash go: if now following such a massive outflow from the traditional flow safe-haven, no money still goes to equities, then it will be fairly simple to conclude that no matter what happens, that equities are now thoroughly embargoed by the vast majority of retail investors: those that, incidentally, account for just under 40% of market capitalization (a number which curiously is almost comparable to the amount of stimulus notional, both fiscal and monetary, since the Lehman crash).

Diapason Securities' Sean Corrigan is rapidly emerging as one of our favorite macro commentators. With his dose of weekly skepticism, he has quickly assumed the position vacated by Goldman Sachs' Jan Hatzius when it comes to the 3Ms: market, monetary and macroeconomic commentary (courtesy of the now well-known and very infamous flipping by the German strategist on his outlook on the economy). In his latest outlook piece, Corrigan dissects recent moves in the bond market, noticing a 6 sigma, three-decade statistical aberration when it comes to the 2s5s30s butterfly, and continuing through the implications of increasing bond vol on other risk assets (a topic which we believe will receive much more focus in the coming weeks and months), on fund flows (his views on the implications of the December Z.1 statement are worth the price of admission alone), on the cooling off of the European "economic miracle", and lastly, on what China's refusal to attempt a soft landing means for global risk. His conclusion is as always absolutely spot on: "in short, that risk assets can continue to rise, pro tem, it also means that RISK itself will be climbing inexorably up the scale and on into the danger zone."

That ICI has just confirmed the 32nd consecutive outflow from domestic equity mutual funds is not surprising. After all, we have long been saying that retail's love affair with stocks has gone straight to the bitter divorce stage. That the amount of outflows was a massive $2.7 billion is a little more surprising: after all last week was just $1.7 billion, and the market really surged since then in its last ditch attempt to get the dumbest money in. It failed (and total outflows year to date are not $96 billion: we expect $100 billion through the end of the year). But what is truly surprising, and what debunks every myth that investors are now rotating out of bonds and into stocks, is that in the last week in addition to a surge in domestic equity outflows, for the first time in what seems forever, there was also an outflow of $401 million in taxable bond funds (in addition to $1.3 billion in outflows from muni bonds). Hopefully we can now leave all debate about capital rotation out of fixed income into stocks, courtesy of rising rates, in the dust (same as debunking the whole "money on the non-repatriated sidelines" falacy). In fact the only asset class that saw any inflows were foreign equities. Of course should the reverse decoupling that the "experts" on TV are predicting, and the US outperform developing markets, the foreign asset flows will promptly reverse as well. Yet the bottom line is that all who were expecting a rotation out of bonds and into equities, are proven wrong, and just as we have been predicting for 32 weeks now, equity-related capital withdrawal decisions are completely disconnected from what happens in the rates domain, and the primary objective is capital extraction. Simply said: the latest target of all outbound sector rotation is cash.

According to Simon Hobbes over at CNBC, rising yields are good for stocks (just as dropping yields were, gasp, good for stocks). Which is why the following chart which shows how BAB bonds after going parabolic are now going vertical should send the Dow to 36,000 post haste. Also, for those who care about facts and not propaganda, the last time yields were here was on December 28, 2009.

But see, it's all good, cause it's all based on the strong economy. And the suddenly dropping stocks completely confirm this.

The most important piece of news announced last week was the Fed’s release of the schedule for its second round of QE 2 bond buying. All told, the Fed intends to buy $105 billion worth of bonds through January 11, 2011. The purchases will occur practically every other day and are broken down into $6-8 billion increments. Now, the Fed has made it clear that it intends to prop stocks up at ANY cost.