New Normal

Whatever one thinks of the New Normal economy, one sure can't say there is a shortage of flipping opportunities.

It seems not a day goes by when the mainstream media (or your local friendly asset gatherer) proclaims the drop in gas prices from a Middle-East-turmoiling Summer as "great news" and very positive and an implicit tax cut... as they try to juice hopes and dreams of a better-than-expected holiday spending season. The sad truth - something unusual in this new normal - is that regular gas prices (at $3.258) have never been higher on Christmas Eve. It seems context does matter...

While central bank intervention in the foreign exchange markets is nothing new, the last 4 years have seen unprecedented use of direct and indirect (jawboning) manipulation of exchange rates. As Goldman Sachs notes non-cooperative exchange-rate mechanics (i.e. currency wars) remains the new normal dynamic in world markets; and while some of the moves are generally consistent with cyclical (or structural conditions), efforts by central banks to 'manage' developed market rates in a low volatility range may come under further pressure with the Fed "tapering" as emerging market nations face money flow crises.

The rich continue to grow richer, and as David McWilliams (of Punk Economics) so eloquently explains in this brief clip, this has pushed the Fed into a corner. As the Federal Reserve gets a new chair and decides what to do next, whether to print $85 billion a month more or not, McWilliams examines the heist that is the new normal financialized economy - who gets all the loot and why today's kidnappers wear Prada. "Wake up," he blasts, explaining the uncomfortable reality of what happens when financial kidnappers dress up as loyal patriots and extort money in the name of the common good.

Q. "How does it feel to be back in the "New Normal" USSR?"

A. "Horosho"

Back in November 2011, when the ECB failed to fully sterilize its weekly outstanding amount of bond purchases under its now defunct SMP program (replaced with the even more impotent OMT non-existent "bond buying" program), it caused a plunge in the Euro and sent European stocks reeling over fears what this may mean for European bank liquidity. This happened just as Europe was "turmoiling" and the ECB announced the flooding of the European banking system with hundreds of billions in excess liquidity via the collateral-soaking LTRO 1 and 2. A few hours ago, the very same thing happened after the ECB found only 109 bidders for today's weekly attempt to sterilize €184 billion in outstanding SMP holdings, and instead got bids for only €152.3 billion of the total leading to a €32 billion shortfall. This happened just a month after another failed ECB sterilization on November 26. The market barely noticed.

When all else fails...

"If secular stagnation concerns are relevant to our current economic situation, there are obviously profound policy implications... Some have suggested that a belief in secular stagnation implies the desirability of bubbles to support demand. This idea confuses prediction with recommendation. It is, of course, better to support demand by supporting productive investment or highly valued consumption than by artificially inflating bubbles. On the other hand, it is only rational to recognize that low interest rates raise asset values and drive investors to take greater risks, making bubbles more likely. So the risk of financial instability provides yet another reason why preempting structural stagnation is so profoundly important."

Despite the ongoing declarations by Wall Street's strategists and Washington's leaders that recovery is here (or just around the corner), record numbers of Americans in poverty and government handouts suggest otherwise. However, the insidious chipping away at the possibility of the American Dream has been replaced by an IPO-chasing, zero-interest-income-earning, yield-reaching, insider-trading, 'dance-while-the-music-is-playing', beggars can be choosers, get-rich-quick-scheme nation of takers (and entitled-ers)...

Two phrases sum up the 'new normal' farce that is the world's equity markets in 2013... "Don't fight the Fed (or BoJ, or PBoC, or BoE)" and "Climbing the wall of worry"... one wonders, of course, what happens to 'climber' once the central bank's 'belay' is taken away (but that's just silly talk because it's all priced in, right?)...

While it is arguable whether two instances of the same event are sufficient to indicate a pattern, when it comes to Europe under the New (feudal) Normal we are willing to make a generalizing extrapolation. Recall a week ago when we reported that hours after unleashing a campaign to hire 400 employees for its brand new megastore in the Mediterranean city Valencia, Ikea's servers in Spain promptly crashed after the company got at least 20,000 applicants (and possibly many more that would have registered had the system not experienced its Obamacare moment). The punchline here, of course, is not the dilapidated server infrastructure of Ikea - in a world in which nobody spends any growth CapEx any more that is to be expected - but that there were 20,000 applicants for what were effectively 400 minimum wage jobs, or, said otherwise: 50 candidates for each job. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the mythical recovery that Spain's premier Rajoy fabulates in people's minds on a daily basis. Needless to say, the 2% "success rate" of applicants means it is three times harder to get a minimum wage job in this European country than to get into Harvard. Today, we find the same 2% number in action once again, as if by magic, only this time relating to minimum wage job applicants in that other European basket case - Greece.

Over the course of the last few years we have vociferously exposed the growing inequalities and divergences between various elements of the status quo society. With even the President now seemingly inciting class warfare (which as we discussed here and here is becoming an increasingly  new normal "age warfare" issues); we roll out the wayback machine for 150 seconds of clarity from Doug Casey. With roughly half the American people net recipients of government support in some way (and work punished), Casey explains what happens when the entitled elect themselves (as Michael Burry so aptly noted "the party accelerates, and the brutal hangover is inevitable,") and the social and political consequences.

The $2.5 trillion hedge-fund industry is headed for its worst annual performance relative to U.S. stocks since at least 2005. As Bloomberg Brief reports, the funds returned 7.1% in 2013 through November; that’s 22 percentage points less than the 29.1% return of the S&P 500, with reinvested dividends, as markets rallied to records. Hedge funds are underperforming the benchmark U.S. index for the fifth year in a row as the Fed's inexorable liquidity pushes equity markets higher (and the only way to outperform is throw every risk model out the window). Hedge funds (in aggregate) have underperformed the S&P 500 by 97 percentage points since the end of 2008.

While the good times are about to end for the Japanese Bond Market (as shown in yesterday in Counting Down To Japan's D-Day In Two Charts), the reality is that anyone who bet on an surge in Japanese bond yields in the past few years has been carted out feet first. Which is also why shorting the Japanese bond market has been widely known as the "Widowmaker" trade in the investing community. However, according to Charles Gave, another "Widowmaker" has emerged in the past year: "It looks like the euro is competing to grab title for itself. Many traders have been shorting the currency, with poor results so far."

We’ve recently been treated to two mutually exclusive forecasts: that the Great Bull Market will run until 2016 or 2018, so no worries; and that markets are exhibiting bubble-like characteristics that presage another crash. So which forecast is more likely the correct one? Though it is unsatisfyingly imprecise, the “new normal” phase strongly implies that future declines will be as dramatic as the advances and that the five-year clock is ticking on the current Bull market. Forecasting an advance that lasts years beyond this five-year pattern is equivalent to forecasting that the “new normal” phase is now ending and a new phase of much longer Bull advances is beginning. That is a bold claim, and there is little historical data to give it much weight.  Stripped of complexity, the charts suggest that the current run will top out within the next few months and retrace most of the advance from 2009; i.e., a crash of significant amplitude.