Fund Flows

The cross asset whiplash events, coming at a furious pace unseen since 2009, continue, and while the late September surge driven by a historic short squeeze served to massively boost equities, other risk assets were also impacted. Case in point: junk bonds, which after becoming one of the most unloved asset classes in 2015 due to their exposure to energy assets, took advantage of the latest vicious squeeze in crude, and notched their biggest inflow in 8 months, even as gold just saw its biggest "QE-on" buying in the past 7 weeks.

Several days ago, when pointing out the record NYSE short-interest, we noted this move may simply mean the following: "a central bank intervenes, or a massive forced buy-in event occurs, and unleashes the mother of all short squeezes, sending the S&P500 to new all time highs." Today, we have confirmation that the rally has been precisely that: a massive short-covering squeeze, when Bank of America's Mike Hartnett looked at the latest weekly fund flow data and noted a "monster $53bn MMF inflows vs redemptions from equity ($4.3bn) & fixed income funds ($2.4bn)...rising cash levels indicate big risk rally (from intraday lows last week SPX +7.7%, EEM +13.5%, HYG +4.2%) driven primarily by short-covering rather than fresh risk-on."

With China markets closed for holiday until the middle of next week, and little in terms of global macro data overnight (the only notable central banker comment overnight came from Mario Draghi who confidently proclaimed that "economic growth is returning" which on its own is bad for risk assets), it was all about the USDJPY which has seen the usual no-volume levitation overnight, dragging both the Nikkei higher with it, and US equity futures, which as of this moment were at session highs, up 7 points. The calm may be broken, though, as soon as two hours from now when the September "most important ever until the next" payrolls report is released.

With the SEC moving to head off the risk of a bond market meltdown triggered by a dangerous combination of illiquidity and bond fund proliferation, WSJ decided to see which fund providers are the most at risk in a crisis. The list may surprise you...

During Monday's flurry of tripped circuit breakers and flash crashing mayhem, ETF investors learned the hard way that Howard Marks was precisely correct when he warned that ETFs "can't be more liquid than the underlying and we know the underlying can become highly illiquid." The question now, is whether subsequent flash crashes will trigger even more spectacular divergences between fair value and ETF unit prices on the way to proving, once and for all, that ETFs may indeed be the new financial weapons of mass destruction.

Every Federal Reserve Chair since 1979 has faced a notable challenge in the first 12-20 months of their tenure – something akin to capital markets “Bullies” hazing the new kid at school. Paul Volcker had the 1979-1980 Iranian oil shock/recession, Alan Greenspan the 1987 Stock Market Crash, and Ben Bernanke the 2007 Financial Crisis. Their responses shaped market perceptions about Federal Reserve priorities and set the stage for the remainder of their tenures, from Inflation-Fighting Volcker to Save-the-World Bernanke. Now, it is Chair Yellen’s turn...

Follow the plunge protection.

"In the past 12 months investors traded $18.2 trillion worth of ETF shares. For perspective, that means the amount of dollars exchanging hands through ETFs is now more than the U.S. gross domestic product, which stands at $17.4 trillion," Bloomberg reports. Or, put differently, the financial apocalypse draws near. 

In a note by BofA's Michael Hartnett, the bank looks at the latest EPFR fund flows and concludes that the wave of commodity "capitulation" revulsion selling has finally arrived.

"The selling pressure so far has mainly come from stock-related borrowings via various unofficial channels where the leverage is much higher," BofAML says of the dramatic sell-off in Chinese equities. On Wednesday, the country's securities regulator moved to reassure markets as the unwind of hundreds of billions in leveraged trades threatens to collapse China's world-beating stock bubble.

What if Berlin and Frankfurt do not budge? What if they tell Athens to ‘go jump of the tallest cliff’? I have good cause to hope that Berlin will prefer to accommodate the Greek government and to look with a great deal more ‘kindness’ the ‘request’ for a debt relief conference. And if it does not, and wishes to bring the Eurozone down with it, let it do its worst, I say.

Every quarter ConvergEx's Nick Colas reviews a raft of unusual and less examined datasets with an eye to refining and adding perspective to the more traditional macroeconomic analyses. This quarter’s assessment of everything from large pickup truck and firearms sales to Google search autofills for “I want to buy/sell” shows a U.S. economy that is reasonably strong but growing only very slowly. The chief areas of concern: Food Stamp participation is still very high at 45.6 million Americans (14% of the total population) and indicators like used car prices and large pickup sales are flat.

That an ETF can satisfy redemption with underlying bonds or shares, only raises the nightmare possibility of a disillusioned and uninformed public throwing in the towel once again after they receive thousands of individual odd lot pieces under such circumstances.

Anyone trading the Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF should take a cue from Howard Marks and ask themselves the following question: can an ETF be more liquid than the assets it references?