New Normal

While the infamous 'Gundlach' trade has done remarkably well since inception, our view on NatGas has become less vociferously bullish recently as the more constructive factors such as an under-appreciation of declining production and rising utility demand. While their remains upside potential to gas prices over the next 18 to 24 months, we tend to agree with Credit Suisse as they note five reasons why a near-term pause in pricing is likely. With unconventional supply more resilient than many had expected - covering the fall in conventional supply and absent an extremely cold winter (which NOAA is not expecting), a range-bound NatGas pricing market seems the new normal (for now).

Each and every day, a veritable smorgasbord of CEOs are trotted out before our very eyes to spew forth their company's vision and how it's all looking so rosy. Of course we hang on every word as gospel and react accordingly. Similarly, a rise in consumer sentiment is more ammunition for bulls to argue that animal spirits are here and we can go back to the old re-leveraging ways of spending-more-than-we-have (or ever will have). There's only one problem - when push comes to shove and real capital has to be put to work, its not happening! Expectations for capital expenditure (investment in growth and maintenance) has plunged in the last few months, while at the same time, consumer sentiment has surged (no doubt led by an ebullient equity market and inherent recency bias). As we wrote previously, in an environment of soaring liquidity and free money, the hurdle rate on new investments collapses, as does the requirement to invest in CapEx, both growth and maintenance. In fact, as we have shown over the past year, the age of the global asset base has hit a record high across the world, both in the developed and developing countries, leading to record low return on assets on record low assets (and record debt encumbrance, but that's a different story). And since companies are forced to dividend cash to shareholders at a record pace (in lieu of fixed income in a ZIRP environment), there is less and less cash left to support CapEx spending (or hiring!).

What can we say? All makes perfect sense: earnings dismal (worse than expected) means BTFD and if there is one lever to do that effectively given the massive over-exposure in every levered fund in the world, its AAPL. A 4% rally in AAPL - which perfectly topped out at Thursday's closing VWAP - was enough to drag stocks comfortably green by the close with a near-vertical ramp in S&P futures just to help things along. Seems like the standard pre-debate rally that we warned about last week - so let's not get too carried away by today's 'all-is-well' rally. Broadly speaking, risk-assets did not dip as hard as stocks and the ramp into the close (which as is typical) pulled stocks back up to 'fair' - but with the inevitable overshoot. While we leave up to our readers to divine the implications of such outlier moves on debate days, our only suggestion for those who have missed their opportunity to buy the central bank policy vehicle, formerly known as the S&P 500, with both hands and feet, is to wait until the next presidential debate and go all in. After all, "it's only fair" that the market will soar hours ahead of the two teleprompter-less candidates debating highly irrelevant stuff.

By now everyone knows, even the mainstream media, that in Europe if one is a member of the oligarchy, "when it becomes serious, you have to lie" as the unelected viceroy of neofeudal Europe Jean-Claude Juncker said once upon a time, back when Greece and Spain were still "fine." Everyone also knows that judging by politican commentary and statement, in Europe it has been very serious for the past 3 years, as the lies have not ended. In fact, the more insolvent a country, the more serious it got, and the more gruesome and unbelievable the lies emanating thereof were. The one place where lying was at least somewhat contained was Europe's paymaster, Germany, which now is actively vying to not only not cede banking supervision to the ECB, but is seeking to displace the central bank in the budget and FX central planning category with a push to be elected budget commissioner and FX tsar. Eventually it will get its wish, but more when we cross to that bridge. Which is why it is surprising that today, German financial magazine Spiegel calls out none other than German FinMin Wolfi Schauble for doing precisely what Juncker was caught doing 2 years ago. Lying.

Japan is the leading-edge of the crumbling model of advanced neoliberal capitalism: that consumerist excess creates wealth, prosperity and happiness. What consumerist excess actually creates is alienation, social atomization, narcissism, and a profound contradiction at the heart of the consumerist-dependent model of "growth": the narcissism that powers consumerist lust and identity is at odds with the demands of the workplace that generates the income needed to consume... The younger generation of workers raised in a consumerist "paradise" are facing an economic stagnation that reduces opportunities to earn the high income needed to fulfill the consumerist demands for status symbols. Given the hopelessness of earning enough to afford the consumerist lifestyle, they have abandoned traditional status symbols such as luxury autos and taken up fashion and media as expressions of consumerism. But the narcissism bred by consumerism has nurtured a kind of emotional isolation and immaturity, what might be called permanent adolescence, which leaves many young people without the tools needed to handle criticism, collaboration and the pressures of the workplace. Narcissism is the result of the consumerist society's relentless focus on the essential project of consumerism, which is "the only self that is real is the self that is purchased and projected.".. The ultimate contradiction in this debt-consumption version of capitalism is this: how can an economy have "endless expansion and growth" when pay and opportunities for secure, high-paying jobs are both relentlessly declining? It cannot. Financialization, consumerist narcissism and the end of growth are inextricably linked.

Although we showed these earlier, we believe the charts showing the trendlines in the two most critical components of US household purchasing power deserve to be shown again, without much if any commentary necessary. Just because.

After starting the overnight trading at its lows, the EURUSD has once again seen the now traditional overnight levitation, this time with absolutely no economic news, in the process raising equity futures across the Atlantic, even as unfounded Chinese optimism for more liquidity has waned leading to the SHCOMP closing down 0.3%. Perhaps the most notable event in the quiet trading session so far has been the surge in 10 year Greek debt whose yield has tumbled to post-restructuring lows, driven by more and more hedge funds piling in to piggyback on Dan Loeb's recent public GGB purchase announcement (strength into which he has long since sold), and hopes that Greece will somehow see an Official Sector Initiative (OSI) to make recovery prospects for Private Investors more attractive: a capital impairment the ECB has said would happen only over its dead body. But in the new normal, facts and rules are for chumps, and only exist to be broken. More on this amusing stupidity here. Amusingly, this comes just as Greece’s Staikouras says the economy’s downward spiral is not over yet. But, again, who cares about fundamentals.

This is just getting stupid. After expectations of a rebound in initial claims from 367K last week (naturally revised higher to 369K), to 370K (with the lowest of all sellside expectations at 355K), the past week mysteriously, yet so very unsurprisingly in the aftermath of the fudged BLS unemployment number, saw claims tumble to a number that is so ridiculous not even CNBC's Steve Liesman bothered defending it, or 339K. Ironically, not even the Labor Department is defending it: it said that "one large state didn't report some quarterly figures." Great, but what was reported was a headline grabbing number that is just stunning for reelection purposes. This was the lowest number since 2008. The only point to have this print? For 2-3 bulletin talking points at the Vice Presidential debate tonight. Everything else is now noise. It is also sad that the US "economy" has devolved to such trivial data fudging on a week by week basis, which makes even the Chinese Department of Truth appear amateurish by comparison. Needless to say, Not Seasonally Adjusted initial claims jumped by 26K to 327K in the past week but who's counting. Finally, what is the reason for ongoing QEternity if the employment situation is now back to normal. Finally, in completely ignored news, because who needs global trade when you have toner cartridge, and generally ink, the US trade deficit in August rose by 4.1% to $44.2 billion, on expectations of a deterioration to $44.0 billion. Then again nobody talks about the US trade deficit during presidential debates so all good here.

Nothing materially new here from David Rosenberg's latest letter, but it is useful to keep being reminded over and over how central planning has totally destroyed the primary function of capital markets: discounting, and replaced it with a dumb terminal which only responds to red flashing headlines reporting of neverending liquidity. "If the Fed really had its way, the economy would be booming. But it is sputtering. For all the talk of one month's employment report — look at the entire quarter for crying out loud. Looking at total labour input, aggregate hours worked, it eked out a tepid 0.8% annualized gain in Q3....That the stock market is up 16% this year (on track for the best year since 2009) with earnings contracting underscores the major success of Fed policy in 2012 — managing to deflect investor attention away from negative profit trends and towards its pregnant balance sheet. So welcome to the new normal: the Fed has managed to negotiate a divorce between the economy and equity market behaviour.

While the recent revelations of multi-year LIBOR manipulation (but, but how was that possible: it involved thousands of people, operating for years, manipulating numbers - all the traditional reasons presented against conspiracy theory crackpots alleging that manipulation may be going on here, or there, or at the BLS, or somewhere), which we had said had been happening for the past 3 years, confirmed that the entire rate-based derivative market was a giant scam, at least one market spared from cartel whistleblower, i.e., insider, humiliation, was the commodities market. No longer. As the FT first reported, a Swiss trading office of Total Oil Trading sent a response letter to IOSCO (the International Organization of Securities Commissions), alleging that the same kinds of market "pricing" shennanigans that have been now exposed to have taken place over bottles of Bollinger, may have been pervasive in the crude market as well.

If interest income as a percentage  of total personal income had remained at its 2008 level, the total would now be over $1.5 trillion. It is this $550 billion annual delta that the Fed has directly, though its policies, taken away from US consumers in terms of purchasing power. So while the Fed has taken away the bond market as a venue in which to generate current income, it is the structural failures of equities in a post-HFT world (stories of mini, amd maxi, Flash Crashes are now a daily occurrence) that prevent investors from having the same confidence about current income in a market in which terminal and fatal capital loss are all too real fears. And there are those who still wonder why the US consumer is withering away, and absent such crutches as soaring Federal non-revolving debt, used for anything but its designated purposes, would have less purchasing power now than before the crisis as a result of the Fed's failed policies.  As George Magnus so peotically summarizes it "What the left hand giveth, the right hand taketh away."

In the last few weeks much has been said about how the US economy, after nearly collapsing in the Lehman aftermath has staged a gradual, if painful and very slow improvement in the last 3 years. Sure enough, After jobs peaked at an all time high of 138 million in January 2008, they then tumbled to a depression low of 129.2 million in February 2010 and beginning in September 2010 have posted 24 consecutive months of growth, rising to 133.5 million last month: a 4.25 million trough to, so far peak.  Not bad. What, however, has received little discussion by either presidential candidate, primarily because it is largely a byproduct of both Republican and Democratic action, is what can be seen on the chart below courtesy of Diapason Securities, namely the New Normal angle of debt increase, which from merely steep, has mutated into beyond acute. What one can see is that the public cost of "normalization", aka the Trade Off of the new normal is an additional $4.25 trilion in debt over and above where the previous historic trendline would put total US debt, just under $12 trillion. Instead total debt is now $16.2 trillion. Oddly enough, this translates to precisely $1,000,000 per job gained or saved from the first (and certainly not last) post-crisis trough: yet another fact that will not be mentioned in either the mainstream press or any presidential debate, as sadly trading off record amounts of public debt for new jobs is the only game left in town for either party. 

Back in July, when the news of the French foray into the "fairness doctrine" hit, and we learned of Hollande's plan to tax all those making over €1 million at a 75% tax rate, we said that "we are rotating our secular long thesis away from Belgian caterers and into tax offshoring advisors, now that nobody in the 1% will pay any taxes ever again." We should have also added that we are buying all the available long-dated call options in French real estate firms, with the imminent surge in luxury real estate dumping, once the French "1%" decide they want nothing to do with a regime that is hell bent on confiscating 75% of their annual cash flow at first, and slowly moving toward pocketing the balance of their assets (remember what we said in September 2011: that 30% global tax on all financial assets in a New Normal insolvent, and wealth redistributive world, is inevitable, and it is coming). Sure enough, the wholesale dump of luxury properties has now begun. AFP writes: "A flood of top-end properties are hitting the market as businessmen seek to leave France before stiff tax hikes hit, real estate agents and financial advisors say. "It's nearly a general panic. Some 400 to 500 residences worth more than one million euros ($1.3 million) have come onto the Paris market," said managers at Daniel Feau, a real-estate broker that specialises in high-end property." But that would mean that in the New Normal real estate is once again merely a credit-bubble dependent, flippable asset: not a long-term housing investment, but merely one in which the pursuit of the greater fool is all that matters (not news to anyone here, but certainly news to all those who actually believe that 'housing has bottomed').

Back in October of 2010, when we first exposed Bank of America as massively underreserved for putback, Rep and Warrant and various other forms of litigation, we predicted that once the precedent is set for ever escalating litigation against transgressions banks committed in the Old Normal (the biggest of which was the worst M&A deal of all time: BofA buying Countrywide and with it hundreds of billions in contingent liabilities), very soon banks would be swamped with a tsunami of litigation. And after all, it's only "fair" - the banking industry would not exist if its wasn't for the Fed and government's bailout and backstop of tens of trillions in liabilities at the peak.  Now it's time for some "wealth redistribution" - only instead of said government-funded wealth tricking down to the common man, the only social group set to benefit are America's lawyers. Fast forward two years to October 2012, and what we predicted is precisely what has happened. As the chart below shows various "environment charges" aka charges related to mortgage put-backs, legal and foreclosure related issues, have soared to a record 16% of pre-provision earnings. As Goldman calculates, this is reducing EPS and returns by an average 17%! Where it this "profit" going? Mostly to various class cation suit organizing law firms and to pay for $800/hour legal retainers.

As a job-safe Big Bird might have said "one of these things is not like the other" as we look at the performance difference between financials and industrials in the new normal. While short-term newsflow keeps banks to'ing-and-fro'ing, the inevitable truth is that it appears it is different this time - and not in a good way.