Carry Trade

After Friday's surge fest on weaker than expected news - perhaps expecting a tapering of the taper despite everyone screaming from the rooftops the Fed will never adjust monetary policy based on snowfall levels - overnight the carry trade drifted lower and pulled the correlated US equity markets down with it. Why? Who knows - after Friday's choreographed performance it is once again clear there is no connection between newsflow, fundamentals and what various algos decide to do.  So (lack of) reasons aside, following a mainly positive close in Asia which was simply catching up to the US exuberance from Friday, European equities have followed suit and traded higher from the get-go with the consumer goods sector leading the way after being boosted by Nestle and L'Oreal shares who were seen higher after reports that Nestle is looking at ways to reduce its USD 30bln stake in L'Oreal. The tech sector is also seeing outperformance following reports that Nokia and HTC have signed a patent and technology pact; all patent litigation between companies is dismissed. Elsewhere, the utilities sector is being put under pressure after reports that UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey urged industry watchdog Ofgem to examine the profits being made by  the big six energy companies through supplying gas, saying that Centrica's British Gas arm is too profitable.

Over the last year, investors have been lulled to sleep wrapped in the warmth of complacency as the Federal Reserve stoked the fires of the market with $85 billion a month in liquidity injections.  I have written many times in the past that investors were likely to be rudely awakened by an unexpected event of which was likely not even on the majority of mainstream analysts radars.  That occurred this past week as a revulsion in emerging markets sent the "carry trade" running in reverse. What we will need to ponder this weekend is whether the current correction is simply just a dip within an ongoing uptrend OR have the "bears" finally awakened from their winter hibernation?

Yesterday we reported a warning by BNP that "The Run On Ukrainian Deposits May Have Already Started." Obviously, while the real implications for the country's financial system should a full-blown bank run emerge would be dire , they would take some time to manifest themselves, especially since as Interfax reported, the country's central bank still has $17.8 billion in reserves as of today (if sliding at an alarming pace). To be expected, overnight the same central bank reiterated its support for the currency, knowing that the last thing it can afford is an evaporation in confidence. However, judging by the surge in Ukraine CDS ealier today, which soared by 89bps to 1,089bps today, highest since Dec. 10 on closing basis, i.e., before the Russian bailout (which may or may not be concluded), investors are hardly convinced by the local developments. And the final confirmation that very soon it will be all up to a Russian bailout to fix the situation, was news from minutes ago that the Ukraine just had a failed bond auction. Then again, Russia itself had a failed bond auction just days ago, so perhaps it has bigger fish to fry than pre-funding the Ukraine rescue package.

Draghi did nothing; data provided no impetus; and earnings have destroyed many "narratives". So why are stocks soaring? Simple: in lieu of the ECB actually doing anything, it appears that the head of the ECB just announced the BOJ is launching more QE.

"The slump in the recent ISM data may be the ?straw in the wind? of what is to come. Certainly the three-month change of the leading indicator has now turned down sharply ? even before the recent ISM data has been incorporated. We watch the unfolding EM crisis with increasing trepidation because we know how this story ends. We have been here before. And even if the Fed resumes massive QE at some point as the world melts down, and markets desperately attempt their return to the dream trance, they will instead find themselves locked into a Freddie Kruger-like nightmare in which phase 3 of this secular bear market takes equity valuations down to levels not seen for a generation." - Albert Edwards

It's snowing in New York so the market must be down. Just kidding - everyone know the only thing that matters for the state of global risk is the level of USDJPY and it is this that nearly caused a bump in the night after pushing the Nikkei as low as 13,995, before the Japanese PPT intervened and rammed the carry trade higher, and thus the Japanese index higher by 1.23% before the close of Japan trading. However, since then the USDJPY has failed to levitate as it usually does overnight and at last check was fluctuating within dangerous territory of 101.000, below which there be tigers. The earlier report of European retail sales tumbling by 1.6% on expectations of a modest 0.6% drop from a downward revised 0.9% only confirmed that the last traces of last year's illusionary European recovery have long gone. Then again, it's all the cold weather's fault. In Europe, not in the US that is.

In the years since the Financial Crisis, major Central Banks have been engaged in incredible easing programs that included the injection of massive amounts of liquidity into the financial system. That liquidity, Citi notes, had to go somewhere, and in a search for yield, much of it went indiscriminately into Local Markets. So far, the exodus of money from Local Markets has been “tame” compared to previous EM crises and it has also been selective since countries with weaker economies and foreign reserves have been the ones taking the largest hits. However, as Citi warns, our bias is that this is just the beginning.

The Nasdaq plunged by the most in over 8 months today and broke all the way back to unchanged from the December taper decision of the Fed. All major US equity indices are now negative from the time the Fed decided to slow its flow of free money. The Dow closed below its 200DMA for the first time since December 2012. The S&P 500 closed the furthest below its 100DMA since QE3 started. USDJPY was in charge and everything was higher or lower beta off of that as it broke 102 early then 101 later in the day (with the Nikkei -700 points from the day's highs). Treasuries rallied around 5bps to fresh 7-month low yields for 30Y. Gold and Silver surged, adding 1% on the day as the USD lost 0.25% on the day (led by the 1% strength in the JPY). VIX smashed to 14 month highs over 21%. Credit deteriorated but stocks are catching down.

As Rick Santelli just noted, the JPY carry trade is the only thing that matters. It is the only fun-durr-mental factor that matters (implicitly or explicitly encouraged by the varying velocities of BoJ and Fed balance sheet flows). To that end, this morning has seen the crucial Abenomics make-it-or-break-it 102 level for USDJPY tested once again... and then instantly ramped (by Nomura we suspect by all market chatter accounts). We will wait for Europe's close to see reality.

The problem, though, is that once you embrace the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence to "explain" recent events, you can't compartmentalize it there. If the pattern of post-crisis Emerging Market growth rates is largely explained by US monetary accommodation or lack thereof ... well, the same must be true for pre-crisis Emerging Market growth rates. The inexorable conclusion is that Emerging Market growth rates are a function of Developed Market central bank liquidity measures and monetary policy, and that all Emerging Markets are, to one degree or another, Greece-like in their creation of unsustainable growth rates on the back of 20 years of The Great Moderation (as Bernanke referred to the decline in macroeconomic volatility from accommodative monetary policy) and the last 4 years of ZIRP. It was Barzini all along!

• March 1997: In a seemingly “innocuous” move the Fed “tinkers” by raising rates 25 basis points.
• April 1997: Japan raises its consumption tax as USDJPY has rallied from a post Kobe Earthquake low of 79.7 to 127.50 . USDJPY collapse to 111 by June
• June 1997-Jan 1998: Severe reaction in Asian currencies as “hot money flees”
• August-October 1998: Russia defaults, Long term capital folds and the Fed eases aggressively as the Equity market drops 22% (S&P)

Backdrops conductive to crises can drag on for so long – sometimes seemingly forever - as if they’re moving in ultra-slow motion. Invariably, they lull most to sleep. Better yet, such environments even work to embolden the optimists. This is especially the case when policy measures are aggressively employed along the way, repeatedly holding the forces of crisis at bay. In the face of mounting risk, heightened risk-taking and leveraging often work only to exacerbate underlying fragilities. But eventually a critical juncture arrives where newfound momentum has things unwinding at a more frenetic pace. It is the nature of such things that most everyone gets caught totally unprepared. Now, Bubbles are faltering right and left - and fearful “money” is heading for the (closing?) exits. And, as the global pool of speculative finance reverses course, the scale of economic maladjustment and financial system impairment begins to come into clearer focus. It’s time for the marketplace to remove the beer goggles.

"What will drive this "strength"? More of the same I suspect – any weakness in earnings will be ignored (virtually all of last year's equity market gains were NOT earnings or revenue growth driven, but were rather virtually all multiple expansion driven), any bad economic data will be ignored – the weather provides a great cover,  and instead markets will I think see (one last?) reason to cheer the Fed and/or the BOJ and/or the ECB and/or the PBoC.... The only real "success" of these current policies is to create significant investment distortions and misallocations of capital, at the expense of the broad real economy, leading to excessive speculation and financial engineering. If I am right about the final outcome over 2014 and into 2015, the non-systemic three-year bear market of early 2000 to early 2003 may well be a better "template". Of course the S&P lost virtually the same amount peak-to-trough in both bear markets, and in real (as opposed to nominal) terms actually lost more in the 2000/03 sell-off than in the 2007/09 crash." -Bob Janjuah

Yes, financial markets are built and intended to fail at times, once they are no longer allowed to fail, they become state tools for policy outcome. 

USDJPY's medium-term trend has turned from bullish to bearish. BofAML's Macneil Curry warns that the break of the old May highs suggest weakness should extend further with the 200-day moving avarege at 99.71 as a minimum downside target. Given the JPY's weighting in the USD Index basket, this does not have specific bearish USD implications but does have significant effect on equities as the JPY carry trade comes under pressure.