Janet Yellen

Everywhere you look, Americans appear to be extremely obsessed with wealth and money. As a society we love money, and we are not ashamed to admit it. In fact, there are times we absolutely revel in it. For example, Time Magazine published an article this year entitled "Science Proves It: Greed Is Good" and hardly anyone even raised an eyebrow. But where will America's sick obsession with wealth and money end? Could it end up destroying us?

With The Fed tapering proceeding as scheduled and complacency having reached 11 on the Spinal Tap amplifier of over-confidence, Janet Yellen and her fellow PhDs have one last best hope... a second-half pick up to magically confirm escape velocity and 'prove' monetary policy is not simply the enrich-the-rich scheme we all know it is. For that reason, we suspect Yellen, Lew, Obama, and every bull out there will be screaming "move yr arse" to California Chrome in The Belmont on Saturday...During years when there is a Triple Crown winner, the U.S. economy has averaged 4.85% growth in real GDP.

Another quarter, and another confirmation that in the New Normal only the rich get richer, pardon: richest.

Borrowing heavily from Albert Edwards "Ice Age" analogy of our new normal, PIMCO's Bill Gross, after explaining why he does not have a cell phone, discusses the "frigidly low" levels of "The New Neutral" in this week's letter. Confirming Ben Bernanke's "not in my lifetime" promise for low rates and a lack of normalization, Gross explains that the "the new neutral" real policy rate will be close to 0% as opposed to 2-3% (just as in Japan) leaving an increasingly small incremental rise in rates as potentially responsible for popping the bubble. Gross concludes, "if 'The New Neutral' rates stay low, it supports current prices of financial assets. They would appear to be less bubbly," clearly defending the valuation of bonds knowing that he can't expose stocks as 'bubbly' without exposing his firm to more outflows.

Month after month, they came up with new excuses. Now they’ve used up all the good ones, but sales are still tanking.

“I say to all those who bet against Greece and against Europe: you lost and Greece won. You lost and Europe won.” - Jean-Claude Juncker...

[Spoiler Alert: No, it's not over yet]

It is very apparent the Fed literally are making policy up as they go along and Wall Street doesn`t realize that the Fed has no exit strategy.  The learning curve is going to be painful as always for Bond Holders.

With much hotter CPI & PPI reports the last two months, we anticipate the May reports before Fed's June meeting to be on the high side, and that the Fed will probably have to address these new inflation pressures....

It was just last Friday when we updated our list of the most hated, i.e., most shorted, stocks which are so critical in the New Normal because as we have reported constantly since 2012, going long the most shorted names remains the best alpha-generating strategy, outperforming the broader market by orders of magnitude. Today, it is Bloomberg's turn to recap just how broken the market is with an article that highlights the "balance sheet bombs" rallying by 94%. The lede: "In the U.S. equity market, the worse a company’s finances, the better it’s doing." Because there is nothing like rewarding failure and capital misallocation to promote economic growth and employment recovery.

When does the market break? When will the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence fail? Implicit (and sometimes explicit) in these questions is the belief that this – whatever this is – simply can’t go on much longer, that there is some natural law being violated in today’s markets that in the not-so-distant future will visit some terrible retribution on those who continue to flout it. There has never been a more unloved bull market or a more mistrusted stock market high. Public markets today are essentially hollow, as what passes for volume and liquidity is primarily machines talking to other machines for portfolio “positioning” or ephemeral arbitrage rather than the human expression of a desire to own a fractional ownership share of a real-world company. We believe that today’s public market price levels primarily reflect the greatest monetary policy accommodation in human history rather than the real-world prospects of real-world companies. We believe that the political risks to both capital market structure and international trade (which are the twin engines of global growth, period, end of story) have not been this great since the 1930’s. Simply put, we believe we are being played like fiddles.

• McDonald’s Workers Arrested at Protest Near Headquarters (BBG)
• U.S. Sends Troops to Chad to Hunt for Abducted Nigeria Girls (BBG)
• BofA Scrapping Market-Making Unit Amid Trading Scrutiny (BBG)
• Biggest attack in years kills 31 in China's troubled Xinjiang (Reuters)
• Intense Fighting Flares in Eastern Ukraine (WSJ)
• Fed Officials Tussle Over Labor Market Slack (Hilsenrath)
• Ikea Economics Lure Central Bankers Seeking New Tools (BBG)
• When Putin ordered up new hospitals, his associates botched the operation (Reuters)
• Norway’s $33 Billion Man Steps Up Search in Asia Real Estate Bet (BBG)

While everyone tries very hard to read between the lines of the Fed minutes with the consensus conclusion being that suddenly (as opposed to previously?) the Fed is confused about what the best exit strategy is, with words such as reverse repos thrown around for dramatic impact even though this topic has been around for nearly a year, the reality is that there was absolutely nothing market moving or material in today's report (which furthermore reduced the use of the word "weather" from 15 instances in March to just 8 in April although no mentions of El Nino just yet). Here is Goldman's FOMC minutes post-mortem confirming just this. "BOTTOM LINE: The April FOMC minutes contained no major surprises. There was no news on the likely date of the first funds rate hike or the pace of subsequent hikes, and participants' views on the economic outlook were unchanged. Participants discussed the exit strategy and were in favor of further testing of policy tools, but no new policy decisions were made."

The bells are ringing for the markets, but few are noticing.

The days of Bernanke's "non-Giffen good" speech circuit may come to an end far sooner than the ex-Chairsatan wishes: "UBS and Goldman Sachs considered his fees too high." Others were quick to point out the obvious:"You can spend $250,000 for Bernanke’s time at a private dinner, or you could just sit down and read what people like Janet Yellen and Mark Carney have to say," David Rosenberg said"... Indeed, this is one deflation which we are confident the Fed Chairman wishes he was 100% certain he could stop in 15 minutes. Sadly, like in the case of everything else relating to Bernanke, when paying for smoke and mirrors it is only a matter of time before everyone, even the uber-richer poseurs, realize that the product they are buying is nothing but a cheap commodity.

Another right of perfectly round number supports: while the Shanghai Composite once again dipped below 2000 overnight to as low as 1991 only to close modestly higher, and the Nikkei followed suit, also sliding below the psychological support level of 14,000 to an intraday low of 13,964 only to close just above 14,000 if in the red, it was the USDJPY that has suffered the most technical pain when shortly after 2:30 am eastern time, the USDJPY dropped by nearly 40 pips, hours after the BOJ indicated that not only is it happy with where in the QE process it stands, but hinted there may well be no more QE, and certainly nothing imminent . In the process, the USDJPY fully smashed the 200 DMA, with the next key parallel support being the 200DMA in the EURJPY at 138.08 (which was at 138.34 last). When that too gives way, it is a straight line to double digits in the USDJPY, and the countdown to the end of the Abe regime begins in earnest.