Bear Market

I was a super bull of long-term bonds. I stated my case over 3 years ago with a yield target on 30-year maturities of 2.5%. Back then, the timing and structure looked right for another run to new highs. Discussions about hyperinflation were premature.

Until recently, the only question traders had to ask themselves was "how much more to buy?" The last week or so has left traders across the market now suddenly plagued by numerous questions. Will an Obama speech continue to be the catalyst for selling pressure to resume? Why is VIX 'low' when all around is asunder? When do the BTFD crowd step back in? Where's the 'wall of money' flowing now? From new issue demand to Italy's ratings agency trials and from bounce-buyers waiting for Godot to VIX's complacency, FBN's Michael Naso and Mint's Blain cover some of the conundra.

Back in the late 1980s, the entire business world was obsessed with Japan. It's no wonder that this was the case: here was a country which had emerged from the ashes of World War 2 and had become the world's second-largest economy. They made high-quality cars, consumer electronics, semiconductors, plus they seemed to have a management style and work ethic that put the "good old USA" to shame.

Hmmm… Initial rebound after yesterday’s bashing was rather modest, settling on a bit better and awaiting US input. Spain overdid its auction, which looked just good in the sense of being able to say it sold a new bond for size – to its dealers. ECB, happy to have provided the idea of OMT to save the world from simple panic, now going pessimistic (in non-panicky way). It’s just soft out there… It’s the economy, Stupid! And it is weak.
"Bop 'Til You Drop " (Bunds 1,36% -2; Spain 5,84% +16; Stoxx 2479% +0,1%; EUR 1,275)

UPDATE: Within the first 90 minutes of the open, AAPL has traded down to under $564 - officially entering bear-market territory (down 3.4% today)... These are 5-month lows for AAPL

From the $705.07 jubilant highs on 9/21, the most widely held stock among hedge funds is sliding in the pre-market very close to its bear-market barrier. A 20% slide from those 'peak AAPL' levels is around $564, less than $10 away. For some this is the buying opportunity of a lifetime as those $1111 price targets and Apple TVs are far from 'priced in'; for others, every VWAP rip is now faded and orderly lines are being formed at the 'get me out of this' window... What was the alpha-generating master-of-the-universe-making stock in the last few years, is now the overweight, over-crowded, waiting-for-the-straw-on-the-camel's-back holding that managers love to hate as their bogeys drift and portfolios plunge. So much for buying high-beta to chase performance eh?

What a roundtrip! After starting off November with a bang, and after nearly retracing all October losses in the aftermath of the NFP headfake in less than 2 trading sessions, the S&P futures literally imploded, and dropped 23 points from the intraday high, the same distance traveled as it crossed yesterday, only to the downside and on very strong volume for the second day in a row. While the 1400 support in ES is once again in play (ES closed literally on the lows of the session at 1405.5), as we suggested earlier, the far more ominous news is that the AAPL bubble appears to have popped (but, but, it is so cheap on forward multiple basis: guess what - forward multiples are based on forward earnings, which may very well never materialize! and thanks to the dividend, not even AAPL's cash hoard is the bastion it one was) and is now close to entering bear market territory, down just shy of 20% from its all time highs of $705.07 hit on September 12. Now with the 200 DMA taken out, the next support is the 20% retracement from the high which is at $564. After that it is freefall for a long time as a very deep gap needs filling. It is unclear just how much of the selling was there to cause max pain for Dick Bove and Rochdale, for whom every tick lower in the stock means a bigger margin call.Finally, news hitting literally seconds ago that MSFT may be launching its own phone if its partner strategy falters, means there go even more margins.

With the election right around the corner, the chickens are going to come home to roost.  Our ability to print our own currency and buy all the commodities we want with it is the exorbitant privilege that allowed us to export most of the problems within the monetary system elsewhere first.  As Nixon’s Treasury Secretary John Connelly said when confronted by a group of European Finance Ministers: “it’s our currency, but your problem.”  At the time he was correct, as we were at the very beginning of the fiat dollar standard.  41 years later the system is in its final days and our currency is about to become our problem as well. There were always going to be massive consequences to keeping this ponzi alive. The main point here is one I was hammering on in my last piece The Global Spring.  You can only push people so far into hardship before things snap.  They snapped in North Africa.  They snapped in Southern Europe.  They snapped in China.  They are about to snap here.  Oh, and one last thing.  What do you think all of this signals for corporate margins?

Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is broken. That is how we interpret Niels Jensen's (Absolute Return Partners) latest missive as he draws a concerning line between the number of managers who rely sheep-like on the diversifying 'artifacts' of MPT in a new normal world of undiversifiable systemic risks. The shifts in intra- and inter-asset class correlations (both long- and short-term) have been incredible both in terms of direction change and magnitude - for example (as Nielsen notes) - In the 2000-03 bear market commodities were an excellent diversifier against equity market risk with the two asset classes being virtually uncorrelated (+0.05). Nowadays, the two are highly correlated (+0.69). This shift to a risk-on / risk-off world, fed by central bankers, makes the empirical Sharpe ratios of olde and track records of your favorite balanced-fund manager entirely useless for any investor seeking protection from not just volatility risk but ultimate risk - the permanent loss of capital.

Market indexes and recessions are two very different data series...

~ Doug Short

There has been a lot of ink spilled about how the stock market performs during Presidential election years generally leaning to why investors should be fully invested to the hilt.  The current election year, with just three months remaining, has certainly played out to historical norms with the markets advancing on expectations of continued government interventions even as economic and fundamentals deteriorate.  To wit Bespoke Investment Group wrote back in July: "We have highlighted the similarities between this year and prior Presidential Election years numerous times. Most recently, in early July we noted the fact that based on the historical pattern, the S&P 500 could see a modest pullback in mid-July coinciding with the kick-off of earnings season. Sure enough, the market saw some choppiness about a week and a half ago and subsequently rebounded in the middle of last week. Holding to the historical pattern, that rebound came right at the same time that the market historically sees its summer low.  If the pattern continues, the S&P 500 could be set up for a nice rally to end the Summer. Will it hold? Only time will tell, but if the historical pattern has worked so far, what's to stop it from continuing?"

It is always amazing to observe how people become less risk averse after risk has markedly increased and more risk averse after it has markedly decreased. The stock market is held to be 'safe' after it has risen for many weeks or months, while it is considered 'risky' after it has declined. The bigger the rally, the safer the waters are deemed to be, and the opposite holds for declines. One term that is associated in peoples' minds with rising prices is 'certainty'. For some reason, rising prices are held to indicate a more 'certain' future, which one can look forward to with more 'confidence'. 'Uncertainty' by contrast is associated with downside volatility in stocks. In reality, the future is always uncertain. Most people seem to regard accidental participation in a bull market cycle with as a kind of guarantee of a bright future, when all that really happened is that they got temporarily lucky. Perma-bullish analysts like Laszlo Birinyi or Abby Joseph Cohen can be sure that they will be right 66% of the time by simply staying bullish no matter what happens. This utter disregard of the risk-reward equation can occasionally lead to costly experiences for their followers when the markets decline.

While Nomura's Bob Janjuah remains 100% correct in his diagnosis and prognosis of the current 'grossest misallocation and mispricing of capital in the history of mankind', his tactical short was stopped out last week. The modest loss on the position though provided clarity on the importance of the 1450 level for the S&P 500 and he remains confident that on a multi-month timeframe he expects 800 to be hit with only a muted 10% possible upside in global equities due to underlying growth, debt and policy-maker concerns. Critically, he suggests it is premature to go aggressively short risk at this precise moment, urges traders to stay nimble, and warns "...risk assets are in a bubble which of course can extend, but which can reverse sharply and suddenly. Up here, 'valuation metrics' are not going to help much... this bubble could extend for maybe a few months and by up to 10%, ...but that we could see global equity markets 10/15% lower in virtually a 'heartbeat'."

If you wanted to sum up the just-concluded Casey Research/Sprott Inc. Summit titled Navigating the Politicized Economy, you could say "The situation is hopeless but not serious." More than 20 speakers – many of them world-renowned financial experts and best-selling authors – gathered in Carlsbad, CA, from September 7 to 9 to ascertain exactly how hopeless, and what investors can do to protect themselves.

It is often said a picture paints a thousand words; in the case of this chart, it paints more. Day in and day out, there is one inimitable indicator that if looked at will tell you everything you need to know about the day's market performance - volume. The last few weeks - post-Draghi, Post-Knight, stunned many with just how low volume can get; and implicitly just how much the battle-bots remain in charge. Clarifying this picture of low volume strength and high volume weakness, John Lohman has created the following chart - summarized thus: YTD, low volume days have seen the S&P 500 rise around 15% in aggregate, while high volume days have seen the S&P lose around 5% in aggregate. The linear nature of the low-volume move is simply remarkable - perhaps September will bring some real volume back, and now we know what that means for market direction.

Russia continues to accumulate gold in its large foreign exchange reserves. The reserves include monetary gold, special drawing rights, reserve position at the IMF and foreign exchange. Russia’s central bank increased its gold holdings to 30.1 million troy ounces as of August  1st, from 29.5 million troy ounces a month earlier, according to a statement published on its website today. The gold reserves were valued at $48.7 billion at the end of last month, Bank of Russia said in a statement. Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves rose to $510.0 billion in the week to August 10 from $507.4 billion a week earlier, central bank data showed last Thursday.  Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves were $498.6 billion at the end of 2011. This means that Russia now nearly has some 10% of its foreign exchange reserves in gold bullion.