Fund Flows

There was some hope that today's European summit would provide some more clarity for something else than just the local caterer's 2012 tax payment. It wont. Per Reuters: "Germany does not believe that jointly issued euro zone bonds offer a solution to the bloc's debt crisis and will not change its stance despite calls from France and other countries to consider such a step, a senior German official said on Tuesday. "That's a firm conviction which will not change in June," the official said at a German government briefing before an informal summit of EU leaders on Wednesday. A second summit will be held at the end of June. The official, requesting anonymity, also said he saw no need for leaders to discuss a loosening of deficit goals for struggling euro zone countries like Greece or Spain, nor to explore new ways for recapitalise vulnerable banks at Wednesday's meeting." In other words absolutely the same as in August 2011 when Europe came, saw, and did nothing. Yes, yes, deja vu. Bottom line: just as Citi predicted, until the bottom falls out of the market, nothing will change. They were right. As for the summit, just recycle the Einhorn chart from below. Elsewhere, the OECD slashed world growth forecasts and now officially sees Europe contracting, something everyone else has known for months. "In its twice-yearly economic outlook, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecast that global growth would ease to 3.4 percent this year from 3.6 percent in 2011, before accelerating to 4.2 percent in 2013, in line with its last estimates from late November... The OECD forecast that the 17-member euro zone economy would shrink 0.1 percent this year before posting growth of 0.9 percent in 2013, though regional powerhouse Germany would chalk up growth of 1.2 percent in 2012 and 2.0 percent in 2013." Concluding the overnight news was a meaningless auction of €2.5 billion in 3 and 6 month bills (recall, Bill issuance in LTRO Europe is completely meaningless) in which borrowing rates rose, and a very meaningful downgrade of Japan to A+ from AA, outlook negative, by Fitch which lowered Japan's long-term foreign currency rating to A plus from AA, the local currency rating to A plus from AA minus, and to the country ceiling rating to AA+ from AAA. Yes, Kyle Bass is right. Just a matter of time. Just like with subprime.

What's important is that good markets are for selling and bad markets are for buying; it's counterintuitive. Your perception of how events will play out in the future is determined mostly by your experience in the immediate past; and if the last three investment decisions that you've made have rewarded you – if you feel good about your precepts – you begin to do something natural, which is confuse a bull market with brains, and you begin to become very aggressive. If your last three decisions – irrespective of whether they were well thought out – haven't played out so well, you become cautious. What you need to do is teach your brain to overwhelm or overrule your heart and understand that cheaper is better and more expensive is less good. It's difficult, but it must be done. Many things that are rewarding are difficult.

We are unsure what is more notable in this week's most recent fund flow update: that in the week ended May 2, investors pulled out another whopping $6.6 billion out of domestic equity mutual funds, the 11th consecutive, and a total of $42 billion in 2012 (compared to $10 billion over the same period in 2011), or that as the chart below shows, the two identical S&P overlay arrows (identical in their length and angle) demonstrate just how comparable the effect of QE2 and Operation Twist, or QE3, have been. the two arrows also demonstrate without a doubt, that, as Goldman admitted last month, the "flow" effect at the long-end of the curve (thank you Chubby Checker) is what it was all about, which means that sterilized QE is bunk, and all that matters is of the Fed to be actively monetizing something, anything, in order for stocks to go higher. Regardless, the only question left now is not whether the same drift back lower by 200 S&P point that stocks experienced after the end of QE2 will happen, but when and how rapidly it will take place, just in time for QE4 (NOT Operation Twist-er) to be announced in June. And finally, for those wondering how it is possible that every month US investors can pull cash out of mutual funds without them running out of cash, we say: observe the distinct pattern in Chart 2, which shows that as of March mutual funds held a record low 3.3% in liquid assets on their books.

Every quarter as part of its refunding announcement, the Office of Debt Management together with the all important Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which as noted previously is basically Wall Street's conduit telling the Treasury what to do, releases its Fiscal Quarterly Report which is for all intents and purposes the most important presentation of any 3 month period, containing not only 70 slides worth of critical charts about the fiscal status of the country, America's debt issuance, its funding needs, the structure of the Treasury portfolio, but more importantly what future debt supply and demand needs look like, as well as various sundry topics which will shape the debate between Wall Street and Treasury execs for the next 3 months: some of the fascinating topics touched upon are fixed income ETFs, algo trading in Treasurys, and finally the implications of High Frequency trading - a topic which has finally made it to the highest levels of executive discussion. It is presented in its entirety below (in a non-click bait fashion as we respect readers' intelligence), although we find the following statement absolutely priceless: "Anticipation of central bank behavior has become a significant driver of market sentiment." This is coming from the banks and Treasury. Q.E.D.

Stock World Weekly visits w/ Mark Hanna, Washington's Blog, Allan Trends, Lee Adler and Pharmboy. 

The week ended April 11th is when equities finally rolled over. Which is why those curious how retail fund flows did in the past week will not be very surprised: if individual investors avoided stocks like Bernie Madoff Asset Management on the way up, there is no reason why they should change their mind on the way down. Sure enough, in the past week, $1.5 billion was withdrawn from domestic equities. Instead, cash, solely with the aim of capital preservation enter taxable bond funds, as it has for the past 3 years now. With the latest redemption, total 2012 flows to date are over $25 billion, or more than double the comparable amount in 2011. It appears that retail has seen right through the once in a lifetime opportunity, and is withdrawing money from stocks at the fastest pace ever, irrelevant of what the myth formerly known as the "market" actually does.

What a quarter! The Dow up 8% and enjoying a record quarter in terms of points — 994 of them to be exact and in percent terms, now just 7% off attaining a new all-time high. The S&P 500 surged 12% (and 3.1% for March; 28% from the October 2011 lows), which was the best performance since 1998. It seems so strange to draw comparisons to 1998, which was the infancy of the Internet revolution; a period of fiscal stability, 5% risk-free rates, sustained 4% real growth in the economy, strong housing markets, political stability, sub-5% unemployment, a stable and predictable central bank. And look at the composition of the rally. Apple soared 48% and accounted for nearly 20% of the appreciation in the S&P 500. But outside of Apple, what led the rally were the low-quality names that got so beat up last year, such as Bank of America bouncing 72% (it was the Dow's worst performer in 2011; financials in aggregate rose 22%). Sears Holdings have skyrocketed 108% this year even though the company doesn't expect to make money this year or next. What does that tell you? What it says is that this bull run was really more about pricing out a possible financial disaster coming out of Europe than anything that could really be described as positive on the global macroeconomic front. What is most fascinating is how the private client sector simply refuses to drink from the Fed liquidity spiked punch bowl, having been burnt by two central bank-induced bubbles separated less than a decade apart leaving David Rosenberg, of Gluskin Sheff, still rightly focused on benefiting from his long-term 3-D view of deleveraging, demographics, and deflation - as he notes US data is on notably shaky ground. This appears to have been very much a trader's rally as he reminds us that liquidity is not an antidote for fundamentals.

With the first quarter of 2012 just about in the books, Nic Colas (of ConvergEx) looks at how the Exchange Traded Fund 'Class of 2012' has done in terms of asset raising to date. There have been 82 new ETFs listed thus far for the year and they have collectively gathered $1.1 billion in new assets through Wednesday’s close of business. While 63% of those funds have been equity-focused, fully 67% of the asset growth for the year has flowed into fixed income products. Just over half the total money invested in these new funds has had two destinations: the iShares Barclays U.S. Treasury Bond Fund (symbol GOVT, with $297 million in flows) and Pimco’s Total Return ETF (symbol TRXT, with $267 million in flows). The standout new equity funds of 2012 in terms of flows are all iShares products – Global Gold Miners (symbol: RING), India Index (symbol: INDA) and World Index (symbol: URTH). Bottom line: even with the continuous innovations of the ETF space, investors are still targeting international and fixed income exposure, a continuation of last year’s risk-averse trends and while 'ETFs destabilize markets' might be the prevailing group-think, this quarter’s money flows into newly launched exchange traded products reveals a strong 'Risk Off' investment bias. Interestingly, the correlation between inception-to-date performance and money flows is essentially zero.

Much has been made of the lack of retail participation in the casino equity market rally of the last few months (and few years for that matter). Whether it is a signal of the individual investor's overly anxious nature and only the pros 'get it' or more likely this is the end of the baby-boomer-driven secular savings and investment bonanza is perhaps more likely as a nation of soon-to-be-retirees rotate from massive-drawdown-inducing stocks (no matter how diversified your group of trees, when the tornado hits the forest, they all fall down) to the relative (low-drawdown) safety (and steady income) of fixed income. Nowhere is this 'its different this time' secular shift more evident than in cumulative fund flows.

Spain, Europe, China - The Generational Opportunity to get hit head on by a Black Swan

Short term, the bulls will probably remain in control. 

BarCap said it expects precious metals to be one of the commodity price leaders in the second quarter, citing the "resumption of the kind of currency debasement/inflation concerns that have been the big driver of gold and silver prices over the past 12 months". It recommended that investors take a long position in December 2012 palladium, saying lower Russian exports should push the market into a supply deficit and bring prices "significantly above current levels" by later this year. BarCap put a second-quarter price of $745 per ounce for palladium futures on the London Metal Exchange, versus the past four weeks' average of $701. Spot palladium on the LME hit a session bottom below $645 on Thursday.

We hear a lot of the impending flood of money on the sidelines that will avalanche into the equity market to take us to Dow 20000 as retail sells low and buys high. Besides the arguments over the generally nonsensical argument of where the money comes from, who sold so you could buy stocks and who bought your 'safe' vehicle so that you could use that cash for 'risky' instruments, we note three interesting charts from Nomura today on recent fund flows and technicals that suggest perhaps we should not all be holding our breath for the proverbial money-flow (especially as we see outflows in the last week or so from some of the real high-beta darlings of the rally such as high-yield bond ETFs).

Without a doubt, retail has fallen in love with corporate bonds.  Fund flows were originally into mutual funds, and have shifted more and more into the ETF’s.  The ETF’s are gaining a greater institutional following as well – their daily trading volumes cannot be ignored, and for the high yield space, many hedgers believe it mimics their portfolio far better than the CDS indices. The investment grade market looks extremely dangerous right now as the rationale for investing in corporate bonds – spreads are cheap – and the investment vehicles – yield based products. With corporate bonds spreads (investment grade and high yield) already reflecting a lot of the move in equities, it will be critical to see how well they can withstand the pressure from the treasury markets.

ETF fund flows have been a uniformly positive source of capital into U.S. risk markets in 2012. Looking a little deeper at the decidedly 'risk-on' flows, Nic Colas (of Convergex Group) notes perhaps their most provocative feature has been their high degree of net concentration.  When you look at the entire “ETF Ecosystem” of listed funds, just 6 funds represent all the net gains in assets over the past month ($5.4 billion in net inflows) – LQD, HYG and JNK in fixed income, VWO in emerging markets, VXX in risk, and GLD in commodities. With 1,433 different ETFs listed on U.S. markets now, Colas likens the comprehension of the $1.2 trillion in AUM across these ETFs to how well you know your spouse as we know ETF flows are important (just like a wedding anniversary date or what day the trash is picked up at home) but with their still-evolving proliferation it seems a daunting task to keep tabs on them. All in all, this brief analysis points to more of a pause in investor sentiment rather than the opening for a more full-blown correction in the coming weeks.