Italy

The Wizard predicts it will be Greece, Portugal and Ireland all back at the trough in 2012 and Spain lining up for its first feeding. Italy remains a question mark but with a real debt to GDP ratio of 200% the structural issues will not be overcome by anything that Mr. Monti has proposed to date. As we all focus on the sovereigns in the last few days I point out that the European banks are down around 2%-4.5% in Germany, Italy and Spain today while the largest bank in Portugal has seen its share price drop 15% this morning.  You may ignore the ugliness and the markets may ignore it for this or that day but the European ugliness is not going away and I would be a seller on any pop in equities or risk assets because the European landscape is a quite Bleak House.

Further confirmation of gold’s continuing but gradual renaissance as a safe haven asset was given by the IMF yesterday who warned that a “growing shortage of safe assets” poses a threat to “global financial stability.”  The IMF identified $74.4 trillion of potentially safe assets today, including gold, investment grade government and corporate debt, and covered bonds. Sovereign debt crises are reducing the number of governments that investors trust to issue "risk-free" bonds just as new financial regulations are increasing demand for safe securities from banks. Importantly, the IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report’s introduction finds that  "In the future there will be rising demand for safe assets, but fewer of them will be available, increasing the price for safety in global markets.” “Both the lack of political will to reshape fiscal policies at times of rising concern over debt sustainability and an overly rapid reduction of fiscal deficits limit governments’ capacity to produce assets with low credit risk.” The IMF has warned regarding illiquidity in “safe haven” markets. Gold remains one of the most liquid markets in the world and the illiquidity in bond markets would see increased safe haven demand for gold.  The IMF is warning regarding deteriorating public finances. As many governments see themselves being downgraded - safe haven bonds may become less safe.

Heading into the US open, European stock markets are experiencing a mixed session with particular underperformance noted once again in the peripheral IBEX and FTSE MIB indices. The Portuguese banking sector specifically is taking heavy hits following overnight news from Banco Espirito di Santo that they are to issue a large quantity of new shares, prompting fears that further banks may have to recapitalize. The financials sector is also being weighed upon by a downbeat research note published by a major Japanese bank on the Spanish banking sector. Elsewhere, the Italian BTP auction was released in a fragmented fashion showing softer bid/covers and the highest yield since mid-January in the only on-the-run line sold today. Similarly to yesterday’s auction, the sale was not quite as poor as some as feared. Italy sold to the top of the range and as such, the Italian/German 10-yr yield spread is now tighter by 13BPS, currently at 361BPS. From the UK, the DMO sold 20-year gilts with a lower bid/cover ratio and a large yield tail, prompting gilt futures to fall by around 10 ticks after the release. Later in the session, participants will be looking out for US PPI data and the weekly jobless numbers.

Now that every morning the US market is once again in full on European debt issuance stress mode, it makes sense to see just when the real stress will hit the tape, or in other words, how long until the LTRO money fully runs out. Remember that the latest contraption in the European ponzi, the LTRO, took worthless collateral from European banks, and flooded them with fresh money good cash so they could use this cash to buy their own sovereign debt, and specifically to prefund the hundreds of billions in 2012 issuance net of debt maturities. So how does the math work out? Deutsche Bank summarizes the unpleasant picture.

All eyes were on Europe again today, where Italy sold debt for the second day in a row, only this time instead of 1 year and lower Bills, the Tesoro came to market with On and Off the run issuance maturing in 3 through 11 years. And as was to be expected, with a substantial portion of the debt maturing after the LTRO 3 year window, the auction was mixed, far weaker than yesterday's LTRO-covered Bill issuance, and the maximum target of €5 billion was not met, instead a total of €4.884 billion was sold. Furthermore yields surged compared to previous auctions. "The funding environment is getting tougher for the periphery. Overall we believe the spreads are biased towards further widening although we still prefer Italian debt over Spanish," said Michael Leister, a strategist at DZ Bank.What is most worrying is that the funding picture is again deteriorating rapidly, although not as fast as in Spain, even as LTRO cash is still sloshing around European banks. What happens when it runs out?

The European debt struggle may have just entered a new phase. Don’t blink. Like any classy magician’s trick the idea is to get you looking one place while the real action is going on somewhere else. And that has been the recipe over the past week or so. While everyone has been watching the Spanish and Portuguese debt auctions, the real damage was done in Germany where the German government’s bid-cover ratio on a ten-year bund auction came in less than ‘one.’  

What makes this time different? Several items:

1. The Crisis coming from Europe will be far, far larger in scope than anything the Fed has dealt with before.
2. The Fed is now politically toxic and cannot engage in aggressive monetary policy without experiencing severe political backlash (this is an election year).
3. The Fed’s resources are spent to the point that the only thing the Fed could do would be to announce an ENORMOUS monetary program which would cause a Crisis in of itself.

As North America comes to market, there is a lot to digest. European equity markets are trading higher, with the FTSE MIB in particular outperforming after a volatile morning’s session, with bargain-hunting the active theme among investors. The first major risk event came and went with the Italian T-Bill auction. Participants were looking for a poor auction due to the ongoing Eurozone woes, and although bid/covers fell short and yields did increase, the auction was not as poorly received as many had feared.  As such, Italian and Spanish 10-yr spreads have tightened with the German Bund, with the Spanish spread closing in on 400BPS, with talk of domestic buying in the periphery and profit-taking from the last few sessions adding to the tightening effect.  A flashpoint of the day was the German Bund auction; results came in showing the auction to be technically uncovered, failing to sell the expected EUR 5bln. Analysts have pinned the poor auction on the Bund having record low yields providing a disincentive to buy the German security. Following the minutes after the auction, around 25,000 contracts went through on the Bund, spiking lower around 20ticks.

If yesterday was risk off on concerns Europe is sinking following last week's disastrous Spanish long-term auction, today is risk on after Italy managed to successfully place 91 and 361-Day bills, in line with expected amounts, if at much higher yields, and lower Bid To Covers. Specifically, Italy sold €3 billion in 91 day bills. The yield soared from 0.492% on March 13 to 1.249%, while the Bid to Cover plunged from 2.23 to 1.81. Same for the 361-Day Bill auction, where €8 billion in Bills (in line with target) were sold at 2.840%, double the yield of 1.405% from a month ago, and a Bid To Cover just modestly better: from 1.38 to 1.52. As usual the market continues to blatantly ignore the thin white line of bond issuance: every Bill and Bond auction that matures within the maturity (3 Years) of the LTRO will succeed: period. It is the ones maturity longer than 3 years - such as Spain's last week - that are the test. Comparing one to another is apples and oranges. But risk on don't care, and as a result futures are surging disproportionately, even as Spanish and Italian bonds are just modestly tighter following the bond results. But we will once again meander whack-a-mole style from auction to auction until the market is reminded of this little nuance. In other news, Iran just announced it is following its cut in Greek and Spanish exports, by halting exports to Germany next, while continuing the theme of 2011 Deja Vu, Indonesia's Aceh was struck two hours ago with a massive 8.7 Earthquake, with an 8.8 aftershock off Sumatra, coupled with a tsunami warning. Luckily, there are no initial reports of casualties or major damage.

Yesterday we predicted it was imminent, and sure enough, adding insult to injury for any muppet who rode the "once in a lifetime" opportunity to buy stocks and sell bonds, Goldman just hit the stop loss on its 10 Year Treasury short, after getting stopped out in its Russell 2000 long two days prior.

But anyway, the big thing is liquidity right now, not whether or not you have a job. 

Those hoping for a quick and painless resolution to the Iranian question may have just seen their hopes dashed, following the breaking news from Iranian Press TV, according to which not only is Iran not seeking to appease its Western counterparts, but is, in fact escalating. From Press TV: "Tehran has cut oil supply to Spain after stopping crude export to Greece as part of its countersanctions, unnamed sources confirmed on Tuesday. Tehran also mulls cutting oil supply to Germany and Italy." "Countersactions" - lovely: another Swiss watch plan by the insolvent developed world. Said otherwise, one can hardly threaten to do something to a country, which is already doing so voluntarily, in the process hurting Europe's already crippled economies even more by removing the cheapest source of energy for both. Which however begs the question: just how much more Iranian crude are China and India importing despite promises to the contrary, and open warnings from the US not to do so?

US data this week is relatively sparse (as usual in a post payroll week) leaving little evidence over the next few days to progress the seasonality debate but after a long weekend of derisking in mind and now in reality, Europe is front-and-center once again. Spain (and less so Italy) has decompressed to its worst levels of the year (5.96% yield and 425bps spread on 10Y) has now lost all of the LTRO gains as the curves of these liquidity-fueled optical illusions of recovery bear-flatten (as front-running Sarkozy traders unwind into the sad reality - most specifically for Spain - that we described in glorious must read detail here). Divergence and decoupling remain sidelined also as Deutsche Banks' Jim Reid notes the 4-week rolling beat:miss ratio in the US macro data has fallen to 24%: 73% (3% in line) from a recent peak at a string 70%:30% on February 29th. His view is still that in a post crisis world, especially as severe as the one we've just been through, Western growth is going to continue to be well below trend for many years and with more regular cycles. With Spain teetering on the verge of a 6% yield once again, we are still off the record wides from late November but not by much as the vicious cycle of sovereign-stress-to-banking-stress-to-banking-stress re-emerges in style. The European situation is still incredibly political and while we'd expect much more intervention down the line, expect the discussions and rhetoric to be fairly tough. The ECB last week indicated that they felt the recent widening in Sovereign spreads was more due to sluggishness in the pace of reforms. They are therefore unlikely to intervene in a hurry. So if Europe does need further intervention it is likely to need to get far worse again first.

So far futures are broadly unchanged, following the release of a Chinese trade report which while showing a resumption in the trade surplus, on expectations of further trade deficit in March, showed it was primarily due to a slide in imports, not so much a rise up in exports, a fact which impacted the Aussie dollar subsequently. We already noted that in conjunction with the BOJ, this means that Asia's central banks will likely hold off on further easing, and defer to the Chairman, especially with food inflation in China still prevalent. Aside from that the traditional European weakness is back, where April Sentic Investors Confidence slid to -14.7 on expectations of -9.1: to be expected from a meaningless market-coincident indicator. Keep a close eye on PIIGS bonds where whack a mole is now firmly back as the LTRO benefit is long forgotten, 3 month half life and all that.

There is no free-lunch - especially if that lunch is liquidity-fueled - is how Gluskin-Sheff's David Rosenberg reminds us of the reality facing US markets this year and next. As (former Fed governor) Kevin Warsh noted in the WSJ "The 'fiscal cliff' in early 2013 - when government stimulus spending and tax relief are set to fall - is not misfortune. It is the inevitable result of policies that kick the can down the road." Between the jobs data and three months in a row of declining ISM orders/inventories it seems the key manufacturing sector of support for the economy may be quaking and add to that the deleveraging that is now recurring (consumer credit) and Rosenberg sees six rather sizable stumbling-blocks facing markets as we move forward. On this basis, the market as a whole is overpriced by more than 20%.