Dow Jones Industrial Average

Life imitates math.

Of the current stack of 30 'Blue-Chip' stocks that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Alcoa has managed to do the worst over the past 25 years - gaining a cumulative 63% in the last 25 years (or 2.2% annually). The Dow itself, based on Bloomberg's Chart of the Day, has risen 627% since the crash in 1987 (or 8.6% annually) - almost 10x that of Alcoa; while McDonald's (perhaps perfectly summarizing what America is all about) has risen on average 12.8% per year for a 1620% gain since Black Monday. But who has impacted the Dow the most since its highs in October of 2007? (Hint: they disappointed this week!)

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?

The EU assembly just voted affirmatively to impose a spate of rules to control 'high-frequency-trading that, as the WSJ reports, was advanced by Germany following their concerns that speedy traders have brought instability to markets. It is somehow reassuring that three-years after we first brought HFT to the mainstream's agenda, at least one nation is taking it seriously, doing something about it, instead of being filibustered into the 'liquidity-providing' meme. The rules will initially require registration, collect fees on excessive use of HFT methods, and install circuit breakers with the goals to "limit the risks associated with high-frequency trading" per a senior German FinMin; but the more stringent rules to come will have the greatest impact as they intend to include requirements for orders to rest on the exchange book for at least half-a-second, and potentially order-to-trade ratio caps. Not surprisingly, the HFTs believe a "one-size-fits-all approach would be very harmful." Indeed - to their profits.

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?"

UPDATE: Answers Provided

A century apart and a continent apart. With Bernanke's fingers now glued on CTRL-C, perhaps the reality of these two charts suggests it's really not different this time at all...

To the vast majority of the US citizenry, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is an odd number that flashes on the new 42" plasma-screen during dinner; wedged between a news story about a panda sneezing and some well-endowed weather-girl saying "hot, damn hot". This is why the behavior of Ben Bernanke this week might go unnoticed by most of the great unwashed. That is, of course, if they do not drive or eat food. For those that do eat or use vehicles; for the first time in history, national average gas prices for the 2nd week of September were over $4.00. Of course, this is mere transitory market speculators - and is not real money leaving their EBT card.

Gold has been consolidating the nearly 100% gains that took place over the prior 2.5 year period from 2009 to mid-2011.

In a nutshell, charting this ratio demonstrates the 'real' return on stocks adjusted for inflation or currency debasement.  As we all know, the Zimbabwe stock market essentially went up to infinity during their hyperinflation but did anyone get rich from that?  Of course not, the shares were denominated in a currency that was on its way to worthlessness. The key thing with the Dow/Gold chart is that it perfectly mimics the various social moods and massive secular trends that exist in the economy over very long periods of time.  It is just as effective in periods of deflation as in inflation in telling you the true story. In both of the prior two periods (one deflationary and one inflationary) the DOW/GOLD ratio got down to about 1:1.  It has been our contention for many years that we will see that same ratio once again.  That would imply another roughly 75% drop in stocks to gold and Mike Krieger expects that this next leg is beginning now.

We have said it over and over, we'll say it again. For all those who for one reason or another would like to boycott the broken markets, yet trade gold in paper form, please understand that all the invested capital is at risk of total loss and can and will be lost, commingled and rehypothecated, not necessarily in that order, with little to zero recourse and the residual claim on liquidating assets pushed to the very end of the queue. Because if Lehman, MF Global, Peregrine, and countless other examples were not enough, here comes Amber Gold: a gold-based investment ponzi scheme out of Poland, in which it is likely needless to say that the gullible investors never had actual possession of the gold. And when they tried, it was gone. All gone.

Back in 2009 when the world wasn't filled with HFT 'experts', we deconstructed the topic of High Frequency Trading on a daily basis, and predicted not only the flash crash, not only debacles such as the Knight trading fiasco, not only the death of capital markets as a fund raising vehicle for companies who wish to go public (i.e. the FaceBook IPO fiasco), but much more (all of which has yet to pass before the stock market, as it was once known, is no more). The reason why little if anything can and will be done to fix the persistent threat to capital markets that is HFT is two fold: i) none of the current regulators understand anything about modern market topology, and ii) HFT is so embedded in markets that unrooting it would result in a complete reboot of "fair" stock valuation: imagine what would happen to stock prices if Knight and its "buy everything" algos were no longer present. Mass hysteria as the realization that vacauum tubes are now TBTF. That said it is always amusing to observe as more and more people get in on the scam that is the "equity market", now completely dominated by robots which do nothing but accelerate and perpetuate momentum moves - after all it is all they can do in lieu of being able to read financials, or anticipate events. Remember: it is always the market that makes the news, never the other way around. So it was entertaining and informative to read the latest recap of all events HFT-related as narrated by Wired's Jerry Adler, whose write up "Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading" does an admirable job of showing how not only nothing has changed since those days in 2009 full of warning, but how in fact things are moving ever faster to what will one day be a trading singularity, limited strictly by the speed of light (and maybe even surpassing that). Of all the things in the article, the one we found most curious is that since 2009, the round trip from the biggest quant trading hub in Chicago to the exchange hubs in NY and NJ, has been cut by over 50%, or from over 13 milliseconds to just about 9 milliseconds, courtesy of Microwaves.

The first is a long-term chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). The recent price history has traced out a pattern that looks remarkably similar to the one that presaged the crash of 2008, with one difference: massive quantitative easing and Eurozone bailouts pushed the B leg into an overextension. If this pattern is valid, the C leg down could be a real doozy.

The decoupling between revenues and earnings (that we discussed here) continues and while we have seen analyst reduce estimates, Nic Colas of ConvergEX notes that the estimates for the upcoming quarters of 2012 and into next year have taken a disturbing turn for the worse. On average, the Street expects the 30 companies of the Dow to post only 1.0-1.5% year-over-year top line growth for Q3 2012, down from the 3.0-3.7% expectations it had baked into its financial models just 60 days ago.  Also, these analysts now peg Q4 2012 at 3.9% growth, but those numbers are falling quickly as companies report their earnings this month.  Also worrisome: analysts are reducing their revenue expectations across the board – only 3 of the Dow 30 companies saw increased expectations for Q3 2012 revenues in the past 30 days, with a similarly dismal count for Q4 2012 expectations.  If this is the best these large, well-capitalized companies can muster in terms of sales growth, can a U.S. recession be far behind? And expectations for further monetary policy easing as the last-and-best explanation for the recent rally in U.S. stocks.

Stepping back from the trees to survey the forest (from the Moon perhaps) often provides some clarifying picture-paints-a-thousand-words view of the world. This is exactly what Citi's Rick Lorusso has done and while he called for a correction back in March which was followed by a 10.9% drop in the Dow, he was disappointed and is looking for a far greater adjustment - no matter how many times he hears about negative sentiment and QE and soft-landings. Starting from a truly long-term yearly chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Lorusso conjures wave patterns, Fibonnacci, and cycles as he rotates down to monthly and daily charts to conclude that his charts "suggest the potential for a very significant high this year," in the July/August period, summarizing that Citi is "anticipating that the market will form a terminal high." - even more so on a rally from here as he warns "beware of new highs" so bulls be careful what you wish for.

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