Market Share

RDF=Realith Distortion Field. I must have a NFG (Null Field Generator). How is it that when I look at numbers I see X & analysts & press sees Y?

When will the U.S. labor market start to accelerate?  That is the single most critical question for global capital markets, for it speaks directly to both economic growth and Federal Reserve monetary policy.  But, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, just as important, however, is the question "Where do people actually want to work?" Nick's key conclusions: there is no evidence of any faster pace of hiring, and the trend of hiring part time labor over full time is both strong (a 3:1 ratio) and accelerating.

Apple announces after the market close today. For my subscribers, I believe true valuation hovers around my base case scenario from the last Apple update.

So are you going to be among the few, the proud, the surprised Sell Side analysts?

• House GOP banking on Plan C (Politico)
• Pimco shook hands with the Fed - and made a killing (Reuters)
• BlackBerry's Torsten Heins has a $55 Million golden parachute (Reuters)
• JPMorgan Urged to Pay More in Mortgage Deal (NYT)
• Soros Adviser Turned Lawmaker Sees Crisis by 2020 (BBG)
• U.N. Members Agree on Syria Disarmament (WSJ)
• U.N. Says Humans Are 'Extremely Likely' Behind Global Warming (WSJ)
• The non-falsifiable threats emerge: Shutdown Would Shave Fourth-Quarter U.S. Growth as Much as 1.4% (BBG)
• Swaps Rules Worry Industry: Coming Regulations Have Market Players Concerned About Possible Disruption (WSJ)

With the entire Fairfax Financial LBO 'offer' premium now disappeared and then some, it seems the news for BlackBerry is going from bad to worse. As Reuters reports, in an announcement that highlighted the faded relevance of the company, T-Mobile US Inc said it was no longer efficient to keep BlackBerry devices in its stores. The 4th largest US wireless provider said it will ship them if people want them but they will no longer be stocked in stores.

• JPMorgan eyes $4bn ‘pay for peace’ deal (FT)
• Prosecutors Pursue Big SAC Settlement (WSJ) - in the US if you are rich enough, no crime is bad enough
• Cruz's Defiant Stand Is Also a Lonely One (WSJ); Texas senator speaks for more than 14 hours (FT)
• Iran Applies Brakes to U.S. Mideast Plans (WSJ)
• Americans in Poll Doubt Economy Rebound in Defiance of Forecasts (BBG)
• Big Banks Cut Basel III Shortfall by $112 Billion at End of 2012 (BBG) - the equivalent of 10 bridges to the Kalahari desert
• Obama’s Jabs at Russia on Syria Shows Diplomacy Tensions (BBG)
• ICAP Staff Face Criminal Charges Tied to Libor  (WSJ)
• Alibaba Is Said to Shift Target for I.P.O. to U.S. From Hong Kong (NYT)
• Home gold rush is over (Reuters)
• Conoco in landmark Alaska drone flight (FT)

Many well-meaning commentators look back on the era of strong private-sector unions and robust U.S. trade surpluses with longing. The trade surpluses vanished for two reasons: global competition and to protect the dollar as the world's reserve currency. It is impossible for the U.S. to maintain the reserve currency and run trade surpluses. It's Hobson's Choice: if you run trade surpluses, you cannot supply the global economy with the currency flows it needs for trade, reserves, payment of debt denominated in the reserve currency and credit expansion. If you don't possess the reserve currency, you can't print money and have it accepted as payment. In other words, the U.S. must "export" U.S. dollars by running a trade deficit to supply the world with dollars to hold as reserves and to use to pay debt denominated in dollars. Other nations need U.S. dollars in reserve to back their own credit creation.

Even if they could've hit their revenue targets (whcih they couldn't) or matched Android's tech innovations (which they didn't) they would've been eaten alive by margin compression. Ask Apple, Samsung, Nokia and HTC!

Whether we want to admit it or not, we find ourselves in pre-revolutionary times at the moment. This doesn’t mean we predict violent upheavals everywhere followed by chaos and bloodshed, it means that the current paradigm is no longer sustainable because it is not longer working. More and more people now recognize this. In case you needed anymore insight into the complete and total insanity of the “elite” Central Planners driving the U.S. economy off a cliff, we have decided to highlight a couple of articles explaining the rapid reflation of two important subprime markets: Homes and Autos. Clearly the only lesson learned from the 2008 crisis was that connected oligarchs can steal all they want with total impunity. There’s only one way this ends. With a complete and total collapse and then a massive paradigm shift. We're quite hopeful our next system can be far better than this one.

European recovery propaganda may be humming (for the latest proof see today's German ZEW sentiment index which soared from 42.0 to 49.0 matching the all time high in the Dax), but when it comes to the actual economy - that place where commerce is conducted and where supply and demand curves intersect, the situation has never been worse. And not only unemployment which is at a persistently record high for the Eurozone, but actual transactions, in this case in the form of car sales. As AP reports, for the first eight months of the year, passenger car sales in the European Union were off 5.2% to 7.84 million compared with the same period last year, the European Auto Manufacturers' Association said Tuesday. That's the lowest January-August figure since the group started keeping track in 1990.

The number whispered on Wall Street is $10 billion (or $14-$15 if you ask The Saudis), but potential investors in the micro-blogger’s IPO will need more to go on than simple valuation math and guided judgment.  As ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, Tech firms are particularly dependent on innovation and human capital for their viability. So while Twitter may come out with a double-digit billion dollar IPO, Colas points out the most important question – Is it actually worth buying there?  The bottom line to the success of thriving tech companies (historically names such as Amazon, Google and Apple) is that they consistently and reliably build products that people want to purchase and use.  Colas explores multiple avenues to determine whether Twitter has the engine to do this, or whether it could emerge more “Groupon” than “Google” in the public company tech arena – and the answer lies in how you weigh the pros and cons of our top 10 points related to the social network’s IPO.

We have discussed RINs a number of times in the past year - pointing out the surge in the price of these ethanol credit-related derivatives and how they are the gas-market's four-letter word. As we explain below, the NY Times notes that the recent surge in the price of this little-known financial instrument - which was in large part responsible for the rise in the price of gas at the pump - could have been manipulated by JPMorgan's alleged stockpiling. As they note, the market in ethanol credits is exactly the kind Wall Street loves: opaque, lightly regulated and potentially very lucrative; and the ability for a major player to build a stockpile of these credits (effectively cornering the market) is relatively straightforward given the lack of detailed regulation. As Senator Thomas A. Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, notes "When you see something change as rapidly as this, somebody’s hoarding them, somebody’s buying them, somebody’s making big bucks."

Much to the amazement of doom-and-gloomers, everything's been fixed and as a result, everything's great. The list is impressive: China: fixed. Japan: fixed. Europe: fixed. U.S. healthcare: fixed. Africa: fixed. Mideast: well, not fixed, but no worse than a month ago, and that qualifies as fixed. Doom and gloomers have been wrong, just like Paul Krugman said. The solution to every problem is at hand: create more money and credit, in ever larger sums, until a tsunami of cash washes away all difficulties. Let's scroll through a brief summary of everything that's been fixed.

Dominance means leaders and employees alike lose the ability to experience risk. Lost amidst the week's geopolitical and propaganda dramas was a signal event in the long history of dominance leading directly to collapse: Microsoft bought Nokia's mobile phone business for $7.2 billion (5.44 euros). Considering that this business was valued at 260 billion euros ($340 billion) not that long ago, that is a rather precipitous decline from tech-dominance grace. Dominance in any space breeds complacency and enables the luxuries of political squabbling, sclerosis and loss of focus. Competence becomes incompetence, and the infrastructure that fosters creativity and flexibility- that is, a keen appreciation of risk and spontaneity- is slowly dismantled. That applies not just to corporations but to governments, nations and empires.