Mean Reversion

While there are a plethora of Wall Street analysts calling for much higher levels for the S&P 500; most of these calls are based simply on the belief that the current trajectory must continue indefinitely.  While you certainly cannot "fight the Fed" the underlying fundamentals and economics that support the markets long term are not present for the party.  What is very important to understand, and can be clearly seen in the chart below, is that despite repeated calls for "ever rising" stock markets in the past eventually left investors devastated.  Markets do not, and cannot, continue indefinitely in one direction. Unfortunately, for most individuals, by the time they realize what is happening it will likely be far too late to act. Could the catalyst be 'language' changes from the FOMC as they see bubbles and froth in high-yield credit and margined stocks?

There is a mathematical term used to describe a time series' propensity to mean-revert or not. Autocorrelation measures the tendency for today's price direction to be in the same direction as yesterday's. In a period of negative autocorrelation (such as today) when the market sells off one day it is much more likely to rebound the next. As Artemis Capital's Chris Cole notes, the current level of negative auto-correlation (often associated with positive for 'buy-the-dip' strategies in an upward trending market) has never been higher. Mean reversion and negative autocorrelations are one reason why many pure 'portfolio insurance' strategies are struggling with losses. If you are constantly shorting volatility this trend toward powerful mean reversion is your best friend. However, empirically, this high mean reversion is unsustainable; the potential for mean reversion regimes to ‘shift’ is driven by increasing leverage and interconnectedness in the system.

There is a very explicit link between the volatility (or risk) associated with one of the world's lowest yield and supposedly risk-free sovereign bond complexes and the need for liquidity (or cash over gold or commodities). The last two weeks has seen JGB bond volatility drop and gold rally as the correlation (which appears to have strong causal links) continues; and suggests notably more upside for Gold (especially as CoT data shows net longs remain extremely low).

• Reinhart and Rogoff: Responding to Our Critics (NYT)
• Differences with centre-right delay Italy's Letta (Reuters)
• Italy's Letta moves forward to shape government (Reuters)
• China’s leaders warn on financial risks (FT)
• Norway oil fund makes big move from bonds to stocks (FT) - worked wonders for the Bank of Israel
• Smuggling milk is the new smuggling heroin in HK: Milk Smugglers Top Heroin Courier Arrests in Hong Kong (BBG)
• RenTec's mean reversion models fail on BOJ lunacy: Yen Bets Don't Add Up for a Fund Giant (WSJ)
• From 'Fabulous Fab' to Grad Student (WSJ)
• BOJ in credibility test as divisions emerge over inflation target (Reuters)
• Boston Bombing Suspect Moved from hospital to prison (WSJ)
• Provopoulos Says ECB May Never Need to Use Bond-Buying Program (BBG) which is good because, legally, it doesn't exist

First it was thousands of dead pigs floating in the Shanghai water supply (at last estimate over 16,000), then a thousand dead ducks were pulled from a river in the Sichuan province, and now, pushing the meme beyond even its most grotesque boundaries, we learn that five black swans were found floating lifeless on the pond of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, traditionally inhabited by a bevy of black swans. From Danwei: "The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made. How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage."

We cautioned readers in 2011 that in a broke world in which the ridiculously named "muddle-through" has miserably failed, a global wealth tax seeking to expropriate some 30% of all financial assets is coming. Few took it seriously, and why should they - after all the market has been blissfully rising before and ever since then, which implies everything was ok, right? Wrong, as those who are lining up right now in the Cyprus late of night not to buy a shiny new iTrinket, but to access a measly €300 of their own money would promptly admit. Naturally, if more of our Cypriot readers had paid attention, they would have far more of their own money at their disposal right now, instead of having to beg Merkel's emissaries for a €300 handout tomorrow. Now, a year and a half later, the realization that the global wealth tax is not only coming but is inevitable in practically every developed country, is finally sinking in, as this interview with Marc Faber confirms: "Until now, the bailouts in Europe and the U.S. were at the expense of the taxpayer. And from now onwards, in my view, the bailouts will also be at the expense of the asset holders, the well-to-do people. So if you have money I am sure the governments will one day take away 20-30% of my wealth."

He is correct, but probably optimstic.

"Equity prices in the US and Europe have been hovering at multi-year highs. To the extent that this reflects powerful policy easing, equity markets may have lost some of its ability to reflect economic trends in exchange for an important role in the policy fight to support spending." This is a statement from a Bank of America report overnight in which the bailed out bank confirms what has been said here since the launch of QE1 - there is no "market", there is no economic growth discounting mechanism, there is merely a monetary policy vehicle. To those, therefore, who can "forecast" what this vehicle does based on the whims of a few good central planners, we congratulate them. Because, explicitly, there is no actual forecasting involved. The only question is how long does the "career trade", in which everyone must be herded into the same trades or else risk loss of a bonus or job, go on for before mean reversion finally strikes. One thing that is clear is that since news is market positive, irrelevant of whether it is good or bad, virtually everything that has happened overnight, or will happen today, does not matter, and all stock watchers have to look forward to is another low volume grind higher, as has been the case for the past two weeks.

Before everyone gets too excited about the "great rotation" that still remains a ghost, keep in mind that the entire curve is still >1 standard deviation below its historical mean

Just when one thought the old overnight futures levitation on a surging EURUSD regime was over, and was replaced by some semblance of normalcy, here comes Europe, sending the EURUSD screeching higher by some 100 pips from a support threatening 1.3460 on no news, with absolutely nothing changed, and pushing US futures to virtually unchanged from yesterday morning wiping out the entire day's losses in 3 short hours of near-zero volume overnight trading.

As the S&P 500 pulls within a few percentage points of its nominal all-time highs, despite macro-uncertainty and micro-delusion, perhaps (as UBS' Peter Lee notes) a longer-term perspective is warranted. For over 80 years, the S&P 500 (or its proxy) has cyclically reverted to it its logarithmic trend-line growth. The last time the market pulled away from this bullish up-trend was in 1982 (and the previous period of cyclical reversion took 32 years from 1942 to 1974) and suggests the S&P 500 could well revert to around an 850 level within the next year or so. Perhaps Lee (the anti-thesis of JPM's Tom Lee) needs to read some Birinyi to really understand how to extrapolate? Still, an 80-plus year trend-line perhaps offers some color.

It is not often that early sentiment is defined by developments out of Asia but this is precisely what has happened overnight. The Alcoa "hope rally", which saw the company close red on the day of its earnings, but which sent the markets higher on the CEO's announcement that things in China may be improving, seem to be ending following last night's news out of China which saw December CPI jump to 2.5%, substantially more than expected, following a spike in food costs in part from the coldest weather in 28 years, implying any good news may have already been priced in. This renewed fears that speculation of PBOC easing was largely unjustified (it is) leading to the biggest drop in the Shanghai Composite in 2013, pushing it lower by 1.78%. The offset came out of Japan, where the government approved a JPY10.3 trillion ($116 billion) fiscal stimulus package. This together with expectations of a BOJ 2% inflation rate targeting,  are the reasons why the Dollar Yen soared to a fresh multi-year high of over 89.30, which has since regained some of the move. At this point virtually all the Japanese hope has been bought, and the actual BOJ announcement coming later this month will launch the "sell the news" mean reversion.

Gold’s recent move down is tracking our forecast.We saw an initial shock to gold as the pressure of higher rates moved through the system. What is perhaps lost on most market observers is the slowing pace of global liquidity flowing into the system. You could call the current situation a problem of velocity synchronicity.

Until recently, the only question traders had to ask themselves was "how much more to buy?" The last week or so has left traders across the market now suddenly plagued by numerous questions. Will an Obama speech continue to be the catalyst for selling pressure to resume? Why is VIX 'low' when all around is asunder? When do the BTFD crowd step back in? Where's the 'wall of money' flowing now? From new issue demand to Italy's ratings agency trials and from bounce-buyers waiting for Godot to VIX's complacency, FBN's Michael Naso and Mint's Blain cover some of the conundra.

Just in case anyone wanted to know what not to say to defend the absolute horrific mess of self-aware vacuum tubes and errant algos, formerly known as "the market", here is a great primer from Credit Suisse's trading strategist Phil Mackintosh.

After decimating equity and commodity markets, the HiFreqs have boldly gone and broken another market - FX. But that is not news: we reported over two years ago, that while HFT accounting for all of the churn - not liquidity - in stocks, bonds, and commodities, HFT had moved on to the final frontier, FX, where even the smallest moves now are catalysts for avalanche-like surges and plunges on the most meaningless of newslfow. What is news it that finally it has been caught in the act. From Reuters, which is also an involuntary accomplice in this latest HFT unmasking, courtesy of its institutional FX trading platform: "Thomson Reuters Corp is investigating whether one of its currency trading customers gained an unfair advantage when making high speed foreign exchange trades on its platform. Lucid Markets, a privately held electronic trading firm registered in Great Britain, may have benefited from trades using several connections on the Thomson Reuters Matching platform."