Natural Gas

• China cuts 2012 growth target to 7.5 percent, stability key (Reuters)
• Freom the Fed scribe himsef - Fed Takes a Break to Weigh Outlook (WSJ)
• Greek bond swap deal rests on knife-edge (FT)
• Lenders Stress Over Test Results (WSJ)
• China to Curb Auto Production Capacity, Promote New-Energy Car Development (Bloomberg)
• China military spending to top $100 billion in 2012, alarming neighbours (WaPo)
• Warning: A New Who's Who of Awful Times to Invest (Hussman)
• EU to push quota for women directors (FT)
• Romney Advances As Obama Gains (WSJ)
• Saudi Aramco Raises Oil Premium for April Sales to Asia, U.S.; Cuts Europe (Bloomberg)

All you need to read.

When it comes to reporting the news, Reuters ability to get the scoop first may only be rivaled by its ability to "spin" analysis in a way that will make a normal thinking person's head spin.  Such as the following piece of unrivaled headscrathing titled "The good news behind oil prices" whose conclusion, as some may have already guessed, is that "the surge in crude oil is looking more like a harbinger of better days." Let's go through the arguments.

Picture a fireside, stone around the hearth, Christmas logs of sometime past, a blazing fire and embers glowing beneath them. Imagine a simple room, wood panels and the glow that is reflected from the light that danced upon their lacquered finish. There sat a man next to the fire who was not the Pastor of some church nor some litigator stirring the listeners for re-election but a man speaking to the country and for the betterment of the nation. This man was neither a saint nor a person enshrined with excessive humility and while an American, he stood for those higher principles upon which the foundation of this country rested. He had been elected and while it can honestly be said that he inherited the problems and was not their creator; he knew that the task at hand would be his greatest accomplishment or his worst failure. Yet he was not afraid; he hearkened to the task because he would give his hallowed spirit to overcome what must be defeated. He knew he would persevere because he must and that the demands of this nation’s forefathers had called him to the task at hand.

Natural gas prices are depressed and expected to remain so for the short to medium term, so investing in natural gas options or a natural gas exchange-traded fund is not likely to bring home the big bucks anytime soon. Domestic natural gas equities are an even riskier idea - most producers are scaling back production and selling assets as they hunker down in preparation for a tough few years. In this case, the way to profit is by understanding how natural gas' changing role is impacting North America's energy machine as a whole. Cheap natural gas is prompting utilities to switch from coal to gas where possible. The confluence of cheap natural gas and a risky global economy has droves of investors turning their backs on green energy, the sector that was such a market darling only a few years ago. Farther down the road, North Americans are debating - and in places implementing - a range of strategies to take advantage of the continent's newfound abundance of natural gas, from natural-gas-powered transport trucks to exportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Isaac Newton showed us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is why every downside force in the energy sector creates upside opportunities elsewhere. The challenge is finding them. It takes an understanding of the entire global energy machine to figure out what areas are benefitting from the changing landscape.

European indices are trading in minor positive territory ahead of the North American open with tentative risk appetite. This follows news that the EU leaders have signed off on the EU fiscal pact, with German Chancellor Merkel commenting that 25 out of 27 countries have signed the agreement. The effects of the ECB’s LTRO continue to trickle through as the ECB announce they received record overnight deposits of EUR 777bln from European Banks. Little in the way of data today, however UK construction PMI released earlier in the session recorded the highest rate of increase in new orders for 21 months. In the energy complex, Brent futures have come down below USD 125.00 from yesterday’s highs with WTI echoing the movements, following market reaction to the confirmation that there were no acts of sabotage on Saudi pipelines yesterday, according to Saudi officials. EUR-led currency pairs are trading down on the session, and USD/JPY continues to climb, hitting a 9 month high earlier today at 81.72.

All you need to read.

Silver as ever outperformed gold yesterday and traders attributed the surge to “massive fund buying” and to “panic” short covering. Some of the bullion banks with large concentrated short positions covered short positions after the technical level of $35.50/oz was breached easily. Massive liquidity injections and ultra loose monetary policies make silver increasingly attractive for hedge funds, institutions and investors. This time last year (February 28th 2011) silver was at $36.67/oz. Two months later on April 28th it had risen to $48.44/oz for a gain of 32% in 2 months. There then came a very sharp correction and a period of consolidation in recent months. Silver’s fundamentals remain as bullish as ever and the technicals look increasingly bullish with strong gains seen in January and February.

Stocks advanced as market participants looked forward to tomorrow’s 3yr LTRO by the ECB where the street expects EU banks to borrow around EUR 400-500bln. All ten sectors traded in positive territory for much of the session, however less than impressive demand for the latest Italian government paper saw equity indices lose some of the upside traction. Of note, the ECB allotted EUR 29.469bln in 7-day operation, as well as EUR 134bln for 1-day in bridge to 3yr loans. In other new, although Portugal's finance minister announced the country has passed its 3rd bailout review by the EU/IMF, this did not stop S&P's Kraemer saying that if there is a probability of default, it is higher in Portugal than in any other Euro-Zone country.

Last week we had the mispleasure of suffering a subdural hematoma or 7 after reading CA Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's formal response to the gas price shock, in which it became abundantly clear that the amount of heavy metals in the California water supply is directly proportional to the insolvency of said state. Yet the only thing better than the resulting cathartic post, which had over 57,000 reads, and hundreds of comments, is JPMorgan doing the very same to what some allege is the most corrupt and incompetent legislator in the history of the US Congress. Which, to our and our readers' utmost delight, is precisely what happened today, when JPM Private Bank CIO Michael Cembalest decided to clinically deconstruct her argument into its constituent utterly insane components. Below we present the carnage.

Large IPOs often mark tops within sectors and within stock markets as a whole. In June 2007, shortly after the s*** had begun to hit the fan in the financial stocks, the Blackstone Group (BX) was able to get a multi-billion dollar IPO in. About a year and a half later, BX was down about as much as the Dow Jones fell between its 1929 peak and its mid-1932 nadir--almost 90%. Major IPOs and runs of hot IPOs in a single sector do not happen in a vacuum. They are not the result of a philanthropic attitude amongst corporate insiders or the financial community. Last year, memories of the crash had finally faded enough that it became time for U.S. investors to become the quacking ducks that, as always, Wall Street had food for. And of course, tech was there as the most palatable food. If they wanted, Facebook could raise every penny it needs, and more, from private sources. So ...

As gold strengthens on the back of the extreme experimentation of the world's (now-sheep-like) central bankers' easing and printing protocols, it does no real harm to the world, but as John Burbank (of Passport Capital) notes, the painful unintended consequence of all this liquidity is energy costs skyrocketing - and it won't stop until the economy breaks. The negative feedback loop, that we pointed to yesterday as potentially the only thing to stall a magnanimously academic response to the insolvency we see around the world (and the need for deleveraging at this end of the debt super-cycle), of oil prices into the real economy will be devastating not just for US but for EM economies, though as the bearded-Burbank reminds us - Saudi benefits greatly (and suggests ways to trade this perspective). Flat consumer incomes while costs are rising is never a good thing and while we make new highs in oil in terms of EURs and GBPs, he warns we may soon in USDs also. Summing up, his perspective is rising tensions in the Middle East combined with central bank liquidity provision are a huge concern: "We're actually quite bearish. The only reason all this liquidity is coming into the market is because things are really bad. It's not because things are good. It's hard to know where things are going to go. The point is, just because they're putting liquidity in the market doesn't mean the economy is improving."

We have been saying it for weeks, and today even the WSJ jumped on the bandwagon: the sole reason why crude prices are surging (RIP European profit margins: with EUR Brent at a record, we can only assume the ECB will pull a 2011 and hike rates in 3-4 months even as it pumps trillions in PIIGS, banks bailout liquidity) - is because global liquidity has risen by $2 trillion in a few short months, on the most epic shadow liquidity tsunami launched in history in lieu of QE3 (discussed extensively here in our words, but here are JPM's). Luckily, the market is finally waking up to this, and just as world central banks were preparing to offset deflation, they will instead have to deal with spiking inflation, because the market may have a short memory, it can remember what happened just about this time in 2011. And the problem is that when it comes to the inflation trade, the market, unlike in most other instances, can be fast - blazing fast, at anticipating what the central planning collective's next step will be, after all there is only one. And if Bank of America is correct, that next step could well lead to the same unprecedented economic catastrophe that we saw back in 2008, only worse: $200 oil. Note - this is completely independent of what happens in Iran, and is 100% dependent on what happens in the 3rd subbasement of the Marriner Eccles building. Throw in an Iran war and all bets are off. Needless to say, an epic deflationary shock will need to follow immediately, just as in 2008, which means that, in keeping with the tradition of being 6-9 months ahead of the market, our question today is - which bank will be 2012's sacrificial Lehman to set off the latest and greatest deflationary collapse and send crude plunging to $30 just after it hits $200.

Warning: Not for the faint of heart.

There is a very clear relationship between economic growth and sufficient quantities of high quality energy. A crude measure of energy quality is its price. The lower the price for a unit of energy, the higher its quality (or net energy), but this is a very crude measure that can and often is heavily distorted by subsidies, market pressures, and other factors. As we squint at the world price for oil and note that Brent today is trading at $120 per barrel, it is clear that this high price is signaling that energy is now more expensive than it used to be. By adopting the belief that Peak Oil has been debunked, one runs the risk of missing the larger story that our current economic model is unsustainable. And that stocks and bonds and other traditional investments that derive a large portion of their current value from expectations of future growth simply may not perform anything like they have in the past. And worse, that recent and continuing efforts to revive the old economy by printing money risk the destruction of the money system itself. Given this all-too-human tendency to attempt to preserve the status quo, in this case by printing money, I must reiterate my advice to be sure that gold forms a significant portion of your core portfolio.