Equity Markets

A 'successful' Spanish auction and Draghi's reassuring anti-currency war chatter had little to no effect on Europe's equity markets but FX and bond markets moved quite significantly. A mix of small gains (CAC, DAX) and small losses (Italy, Switzerland) in stocks but Italian and Spanish bond spreads dropped 10-15bps further (down 30bps on the week) - back well below the pre-Italian election levels and Portugal goes from strength to strength on the small ratings upgrade last night (-50bps on the week). EURUSD was the story (and EURJPY) as a lack of concern over Euro potential strength by Draghi drove it to run stops above recent highs and end the day at 1.3100 (up around 130 pips on the day). EURJPY is now back to pre-Italian election levels.

Despite the improvements in equity markets, Credit Suisse's global risk appetite indices are flashing warning signals. Their equity risk model points to weakness (most notably - Emerging Market underperformance relative to Developed Markets) and their credit risk appetite model maintains its 'sell' signal (which is what we are seeing in the broad credit markets). Finally, their bond risk model suggests a confirming signal getting long US duration.

A small note on the frankly hilarious news that the Dow Jones Industrial Average smashed through to all-time-highs. First of all, while stock prices are soaring household income and household confidence are slumping to all-time lows. Employment remains depressed, energy remains expensive, housing remains depressed, wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP keep falling, and the economy remains in a deleveraging cycle. Essentially, these are not the conditions for strong organic business growth, for a sustainable boom. We’re going through a structural economic adjustment, and suffering the consequences of a huge 40-year debt-fuelled boom. While the fundamentals remain weak, it can only be expected that equity markets should remain weak. But that is patently not what has happened. With every day that the DJIA climbs to new all-time highs, more suckers will be drawn into the market. But it won’t last. Insiders have already gone aggressively bearish. This time isn’t different.

If Friday and yesterday it was Europe's reporting of ugly and below expectation economic data that pushed US stock futures ultimately higher, today it will be Europe's modest economic data beats that will send futures, where else, higher, and result in the Dow Jones breaking its nominal all time highs at the open or shortly thereafter. Following the Chinese economic update in its State of the Union address, which as we reported earlier, saw China set more moderate growth targets for itself resulting in the SHCOMP nearly wiping out Monday's losses, it was Europe's turn to shine which it did following the report of various Service PMI, which unlike last week's horrible manufacturing PMI data, were better than expected with the natural exception of Spain which printed at 44.7, well below the January 47.0, the first drop since September driven by the sharpest job losses since March of 2009, and Italy which dropped from 43.9 to 43.6, same as expected. The core countries' Services PMI beat: France coming at 43.7, on expectation of an unchanged print from last month's 42.7, and Germany printing at 54.7 vs also an expectation of an unchanged 54.1. Not very surprisingly, however, it was not the EURUSD which benefited the most from this data, which has lost nearly 50 pips from its overnight highs following the better economic news, but the various equity futures which have one centrally-planned goal: to take out all time DJIA highs or else, and unless something changes in the next three hours, precisely this will happen.

Europe's VIX limped sideways and broadly speaking European stock markets also did the same on a relatively slow day. Intriguingly Spain's equity market was the best performer today (some high beta grab?) as Italy's was the worst -0.75% as the disconnect between the two grows in CDS markets also. Italian bond spreads pushed 8bps wider to 346bps over Bunds - a new three-month high. Credit and equity markets are moving in lockstep but chatter is that activity is quite mutes ahead of the EC meetings and their streams of useless anecdote due anytime. EURUSD is holding its lows as Europe closes - back under 1.2990.

Overview of the drivers of the fx market, a discussion of the price action and a review of the latest Commitment of Traders report from the futures market.  Contrary to ideas that QE3+ is the dominant force and dollar negative, the net speculative position is now long dollars against all the major currency futures but the Australian dollar and Mexican peso.  The dollar's gains though appear to be a function of events outside the US.  

Chris Martenson is issuing an official warning of a major stock market correction within the next few months. He's only done this once before (in 2008). He's seeing a convergence of both technical and fundamental data that are flashing oversized risks to the downside for asset prices, despite the Federal Reserve's money printing mania (which is showing signs of hitting diminishing returns). He expects the fall in equity prices to happen within the May-September window. This downdraft will be characterized by lots of volatility, formed by market routs and Fed-inspired rescues, alternating until some form of bottom is reached. Along the way there will likely be a flight for "safety" into the dollar and Treasury paper, but only during the first stage of this crisis. Once a bottom is reached - he expects anywhere from 40% to 60% lower than the current ~1500 level on the S&P 500 - the process will begin to be dominated by rising government borrowing which will cause interest rates to begin to rise. When that happens, expect capital to flee the paper market for hard assets. In particular, that's when the upwards price revolution in the gold and silver markets will kick into high gear.

Stocks surged their most in 2013 today on slightly above-average volume as the Dow pushed towards its all-time closing highs and Transports went vertical (up 3.5% in Feb). While it no longer matters, it is worth noting that Treasuries and FX markets were not partaking as a broad basket of risk-assets suggests the S&P going out 20 points rich to reality. Materials are stil -1.5% on the month and Staples are leading +2.4%. In the last hour, the S&P even left behind its main driver - VIX - as the 'fear' index could not break below 14.5%. Of most notice today was the fact that equities have retraced all of their losses from the Italian election headlines and recoupled with gold on the week. The high-yield bond ETF HYG rose along with stocks but also notably the underlying HY bond market actually saw selling pressure as HYG's intrinsic value dropped markedly. Late on, trade size rose notably as S&P futures touched the under-side of the 3-month up-trend channel.

And yay verily there was much rejoicing that Italy managed to sell a few billion euros worth of its sovereign debt to its banking system (albeit at the highest accepted yield since October 2012). However, the rejoicing was hardly effusive as bonds and stocks gained only marginally, buoyed by catch-up from yesterday's US equity markets. Swiss 2Y rates remain at zero and EUR-USD basis swaps came back a little but overall this bounce is nothing to celebrate with Italian 10Y spreads still 47bps wider on the week and Spain 23bps wider. Italian stocks outperformed credit, now down 2.6% on the week as Europe's VIX followed US down but remains above Monday's close at 22%. EURUSD ran up to test the 1.3130 stops and faded back to its comfort zone around 1.3100. As a reminder, European bank spreads are holding at their widest in 3 months and point to notably weaker prices in European financial stocks (were of course they allowed to trade in a free non-short-sale-banned market).

The underlying question in Bill Gross' latest monthly letter, built around Jeremy Stein's (in)famous speech earlier this month, is the following: "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" He then proceeds to provide a very politically correct answer, which is to be expected for the manager of the world's largest bond fund. Our answer is simpler: We know there is an irrational exuberance asset bubble, because the Fed is still in existence. Far simpler.

Equities dead-cat-bounced today on minimal upside volume (and low average trade size) to get the S&P back to unchanged for the month. Broadly speaking risk-assets stayed well correlated with stocks though bonds and the USD looked somewhat dead trading in a very small range given recent shenanigans. Gold and Silver had their best day of the year so far as the former broke back over $1600 (and has now seen the best 4-day jump in 6 months). It seems Bernanke's relative dovishness is losing its equity appeal (as gap prices continue to rise) but precious metals (post China new year) have rediscovered some central bank balance sheet reality. Homebuilders, buoyed by the craziest seasonal adjustments ever to sales, swung from worst-to-first on the week. Equities tracked spot VIX most of the day but even VIX did not fully partake of the exuberance in the last hour or so. AAPL's rumor-driven tom-foolery pushed it handily up to yesterday's closing VWAP +1.4% and supported the broad equity market (just as HD did in the Dow). Despite the best efforts of the media, putting lipstick on this pig day after yesterday is a push in our view.

Equity markets relatively collapsed intraday yesterday given the recent lack of volatility with the range around four times larger than the three-month average and volume at its highest in that period. While that is significant of itself, as the S&P broke its uptrend, Nanex has found a much more serious shift in the market structure that occurred yesterday. Soon after the open on the US day session, market-making HFTs surged their quote-stuffing efforts to the highest level in months. Whether this was intended to artificially inflate orders to enable institutional sell-orders to be crossed with falsely hopeful retail orders is unclear but given the order flow and direction of trade, it seems something significant changed yesterday.

Italy is driving the markets. Japanese developments means the market is closer to give Abenomics its first test. Bernanke to set the record straight after many gave the regional non-voting Fed presidents too much weight in understanding trajectory of Fed policy.

For most portfolio managers, investable assets can be thought of as sitting somewhere on the risk-return curve. If we look at the risk-return curve today it is obvious that 75% of global financial assets are now locking in real losses, unless of course, inflation collapses and deflation takes hold in the major economies. If we are spared a massive deflationary wave the assets at the bottom left of the curve will lose 1.5% real per year for the next five years. This means that, for global assets to stay roughly in the same place, equities will need to provide a real return of 4.5% per year for five years. However, it is important to note that such returns will only serve to compensate for the capital destruction taking place in the fixed income market. Real returns on equities of 4.5% will not leave us any richer compared to our starting level. This means that investors will have spent five years on a treadmill running to stand still. When you consider that no asset growth was registered in the previous five years, we are facing a whole decade devoid of capital accumulation. Given the world’s aging population, isn’t this bound to be problematic?