Institutional Investors

"Balance-sheet wealth is sustainable only when it comes from earned success, not government fiat," is the ugly truth that former Fed governor Kevin Warsh (amazing what truths come out after their terms are up) and hedge fund billionaire Stan Druckenmiller deliver in the following WSJ Op-Ed. The aggregate wealth of U.S. households, including stocks and real-estate holdings, just hit a new high of $81.8 trillion. No wonder most on Wall Street applaud the Fed's unrelenting balance-sheet recovery strategy.The Fed's extraordinary tools are far more potent in goosing balance-sheet wealth than spurring real income growth. Corporate chieftains rationally choose financial engineering - debt-financed share buybacks, for example - over capital investment in property, plants and equipment. The country needs an exit from the 2% growth trap. There are no short-cuts through Fed-engineered balance-sheet wealth creation. The sooner and more predictably the Fed exits its extraordinary monetary accommodation, the sooner businesses can get back to business and labor can get back to work.

In what we are sure will be a reassuring hearing full of confirmation that markets are unrigged, safe for investors, and why retail has never had it better, the Permanent Subcommitte on Investigations will start by hearing from IEX's Brad Katusyama who will, as he did before, put them straight on the real actions of the high frequency trading community... Remember the last time HFTs tried to defend themselves... they lied.

The great mystery of the endlessly levitating market continues to confound everyone, even Goldman Sachs. Because while the market soared in May (and has continue to surge in June) contrary to the sell in May mantra, when peeking beneath the market's covers, Goldman has found that most investor groups did just as they are supposed to do for this time of the year: they sold!

Back in March we asked "what happens when this chart goes to zero" with regard the exuberant lack of bears in the AAII survey. The last 3 months have seen that sentiment morph into actual positioning as institutional investors have been net sellers of US equities since April leaving assets in bear funds at record lows.

After the crisis, many expected that the blameworthy would be punished or at the least be required to return their ill-gotten gains—but they weren’t, and they didn’t. Many thought that those who were injured would be made whole, but most weren’t. And many hoped that there would be a restoration of the financial safety rules to ensure that industry leaders could no longer gamble the equity of their firms to the point of ruin. This didn’t happen, but it’s not too late. It is useful, then, to identify the persistent myths about the causes of the financial crisis and the resulting Dodd-Frank reform legislation and related implementation...."Plenty of people saw it coming, and said so. The problem wasn’t seeing, it was listening."

• Eric Holder proves he is no US banker puppet by smashing another foreign bank: BNP Falls as U.S. Probe Said to Cost More Than $5 Billion (BBG)
• Fuld Was Top CEO When Fed Last Raised as New Neutral Era Beckons (BBG)
• Tymoshenko loses her magic in Ukraine presidential race (Reuters)
• GOP Sees Primaries Taming the Tea Party (WSJ)
• Heard that one before: Russian troops preparing to leave Ukraine border area (Reuters)
• Vietnam riots land another blow on the global supply chain (FT)
• Heard that one before too: Bank of England minutes show some members closer to voting for rate rise (Reuters)
• BOJ Refrains From Easing With Signs Japan Weathering Tax Rise (BBG)
• Miner Freeport Pressured by Water Costs as Copper Prices Slide (WSJ)
• Talks to end Thai crisis inconclusive, new round called (Reuters)
• Japan Court Blocks Reactor Restarts (WSJ)

Dispassionate discussion of the investment climate.  

A look at the technical condition of the foreign exchange market.

Confirming and continuing a trend we first described a year ago, overnight RealtyTrac reported, as part of its Q1 institutional investor and cash sales report, that the percentage of all-cash buyers has soared in the past year with "42.7% of all U.S. residential property sales in the first quarter were all-cash purchases, up from 37.8% in the previous quarter and up from 19.1% in the first quarter of 2013 to the highest level since RealtyTrac began tracking all-cash purchases in the first quarter of 2011."

Based on Markets revenue results to date, which reflect a continued challenging environment and lower client activity levels, expect 2Q14 Markets revenue to be down approximately 20%+/- versus 2Q13.
Higher levels of mortgage interest rates are expected to continue to have a negative impact on volumes
Expect pretax production loss of approximately $100–$150 million in 2Q14 and pretax margins to be negative in 2H14
Expect net servicing revenue of $600–$650 million in 2Q14 and declining by approximately 10% (not annualized) per quarter for 2H14

Journalism and investment research have a lot in common, notes ConvergEx's Nick Colas; after all, both essentially ask the customer to freely part with three scarce resources: time, attention and money. It’s been a tough decade or two for both the newsroom and the research department in that effort, but at least one prominent venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, thinks there is a future for the news business, however, due to a rising middle class in emerging markets and mobile Internet distribution. While this audience may not (yet/ever) be hankering to read Buy-Sell-Hold reports on their smartphones, Andreessen’s recently published 8-fold strategy for journalism has lessons for investment research as well. The big takeaway: sell-side research needs to change a lot – and quickly - to survive as anything more than an advertising vehicle for brokerage firms.

With the repeated caveat that prudent investors should invest exclusively or nearly exclusively on a multi-year value forecast, my guesses are:

1. That this year should continue to be difficult with the February 1 to October 1 period being just as likely to be down as up, perhaps a little more so.
2. But after October 1, the market is likely to be strong, especially through April and by then or in the following 18 months up to the next election (or, horrible possibility, even longer) will have rallied past 2,250, perhaps by a decent margin.
3. And then around the election or soon after, the market bubble will burst, as bubbles always do, and will revert to its trend value, around half of its peak or worse, depending on what new ammunition the Fed can dig up.

While it will come as a surprise to exactly nobody, certainly nobody who understand that the US financial system is no better financial shape than just before the Lehman crash as nothing has been fixed and everything that is broken has been merely swept under the rug (for details see Paul Singer's explanation posted last night) of epic-er leverage, the news that when (not if) the US economy succumbs to a severe economic downturn Fannie and Freddie would require another taxpayer funded bailout, one of $190 billion or even more than the first $187.5 billion-funded nationalization of the GSEs, can only bring a smile to one's face.

While institutional investors and money managers have a very specific list of worries when it comes to their "financial concerns" such as Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), monthly/quarterly performance and redemption requests, losing top traders, what the year end bonus will be, order fill slippage, being frontrun by HFT algos, what the Fed chairwoman may say any given day, whether it is 3:30pm or if it is a Tuesday, ordinary Americans have a far simpler list of concerns. According to a recent Gallup poll, the one thing that has most Americans very/moderately worried is "whether or not they have enough money for retirement."

On the subject of High Frequency Trading, our respondents are thus far unimpressed with the argument that HFT helps U.S. equity market participants.  Fully half answered that it is “Harmful” or “Very Harmful”.  Only 19% said it was “Helpful” or “Very Helpful” to participants. ... In short, the survey seems to tell a very clear story. Most professional investors and institutional brokers do not feel that markets treat all participants fairly. They worry about how fragile markets might become during periods of abnormally high volume. At the same time, they are cautiously picking their way through the minefield in which they find themselves and are unsure what role regulators should play. How the landscape will change as a result of their unease is still unclear. What is certain is that change is coming.