New Normal

Ultimately, we should not be doing business with businesses that are repeat offenders; it's kind of like Stockholm syndrome. We keep on allowing ourselves to be abused and even protect our abuser. Unless and until the business changes their ways and assists in the prosecution of White collar criminals, we're going to keep on having problems in how our society functions. Why our local governments continue to do business with the big Wall Street banks is beyond me. In many cases, it appears that the management decided to incorporate fraud into their business models. No reasonable person would knowingly do business with the Mob, but we continue to do business with these banks which have been run just like organized crime. We can either live by the rule of law or the law of the jungle. I prefer the former.

Whitney Tilson may have met his match. Canadian commodities hedge fund Salida Capital is no stranger to media notoriety: last October none other than Zero Hedge wrote that "Fund Blamed For Gold Sell Off, Salida Capital, Tumbles 37% In September, 49% YTD" after the fund's infamously timed bet on more easing by the Fed backfired and resulted in losses so severe it was enough to warrant liquidation rumors across all commodity classes, which in turn set off follow on liquidations worries in a self reinforcing feedback loop. In retrospect, anyone who read the caveats about the Toronto-based asset manager would have been wise to get the hell out of dodge, because the firm that simply had used massive amount of leverage to generate ridiculous returns such as +35.84%, -66.50%, +188.55%, 44.88%, and -53.39%, is now down 75% in the last 12 months, meaning anyone who invested $100 with the fund, is down to just $25 (and realistically less when management fees are accounted for). It also means that the fund's Sharpe ratio is borderline negative. Finally, it is precisely such fantastically leveraged contraptions on coin toss-based outcomes that even further undermine what little credibility and standing the last vestiges of real, alpha not beta-focused, asset managers remain in this New Normal of ubiquitous central planning.

In a few moments we will post a critical analysis by David Korowicz, titled Trade-Off: Financial System Supply-Chain Cross- Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse, arguably one of the best big picture overviews of the New Normal in systemic complexity, which considers the "relationship between a global systemic banking, monetary and solvency crisis and its implications for the real-time flow of goods and services in the globalised economy" and specifically looks at how various "what if" scenarios can propagate through a Just In Time world in which virtually everything is connected, and in which even a modest breakdown in one daisy-chain can lead to uncontrolled systemic collapse via the trade pathways more than ever reliant on solvency, sound money and bank intermediation.To wit: "For example, when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York commissioned a study of the structure of the inter-bank payment flows within the US Fedwire system they found remarkable levels of concentration. Looking at 7,000 transfers between 5,000 banks on an average day, they found 75% of payment flows involved less than 0.1% of the banks and 0.3% of linkages."

Last week the S&P erased 6 days of consecutive losses in 30 minutes of trading on the back of news that JPMorgan lost at least 25% of its average annual Net Income in one epic trade, and stands to make far fewer profits in the future, even as the regulators are about to fire a whole lot of traders for mismarking hundreds of billions in CDS. This was somehow considered "good news." This being the "new normal" market, where nothing makes sense, and where EUR repatriation as a result of wholesale asset sales by European banks drives stocks higher, we were not too surprised. Sadly, even in the new normal, things eventually have to get back to normal. And that normal will come as corporate earnings are disclosed over not so much over the next 3 weeks, when 77% of the companies in the S&P report Q2 results, but in the 3rd quarter. Why the third quarter? Simple: as Goldman's David Kostin explains, "consensus now expects year/year EPS growth to accelerate from 0% in 2Q, to 3% in 3Q to 17% in 4Q." Sorry, but this is not going to happen...

This is how a completely news-less FX move looks like under the new normal, at precisely the moment when market opens. Did we say no news? Yes. 80 pips move in minutes on absolutely nothing, but an avalanche of very specific stop limit triggers. And since the EURUSD is the highest levered fulcrum security, and since shorts have piled in aggressively in the last few days, ramping the pair to the stratosphere is why risk is soaring, once again on no positive news. And now that the market move has happened, the news to explain it will come fast and furious. One wonders if all of the now unwound CIO capital has moved into JPM's most recent prop trading addition: the CFXO.

Those hoping that the recent short squeeze which took the market to just why of its 2012 highs will repeat itself may be disappointed, because according to the NYSE, Short Interest as of June 29 plunged to 14.2 billion shares, from well over 14.7 billion two weeks prior, a drop of over half a billion shares, or the most since January, when the combination of LTRO 1, Twist and renewed hope that the economy was "improving" forced 783K shares to cover into the big October-March ramp. The current short interest level of 14.2 billion shares is the third highest of 2012, and was last seen back in November 2011 when the market needed a global coordinated intervention and the ECB's LTRO announcement to prevent i from taking out 2012 lows.

For many months, if not years, we have been beating the drum on what we believe is the most hushed, but significant story in the metamorphosis of the US labor pool under the New Normal, one which has nothing to with quantity considerations, which can easily be fudged using seasonal and birth death adjustments, and other statistical "smoothing" but with quality of jobs: namely America's transformation to a part-time worker society. Today, one of the very few economists we respect, David Rosenberg, pick up on this theme when he says in his daily letter that "the use of temps is outpacing outright new hirings by a 10-to-1 ratio." And unlike in the old normal, or even as recently as 2011, temp hires are no longer a full-time gateway position: "Moreover, according to a Manpower survey, 30% of temporary staffing this year has led to permanent jobs, down from 45% in 2011.... In today's world, the reliance on temp agencies is akin to "just in time" employment strategies." Everyone's skillset is now a la carte in the form of self-employed mini S-Corps, for reason that Charles Hugh Smith explained perfectly well in "Dear Person Seeking a Job: Why I Can't Hire You." Sadly, that statistic summarizes about everything there is to know about the three years of "recovery" since the recession "ended" some time in 2009.

Josh Barro of Bloomberg has an interesting theory.  According to him, conservatives in modern day America have become so infatuated with the school of Austrian economics that they no longer listen to reason.  It is because of this diehard obsession that they reject all empirical evidence and refuse to change their favorable views of laissez faire capitalism following the financial crisis.  Basically, because the conservative movement is so smitten with the works of Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, they see no need to pose any intellectual challenge to the idea that the economy desperately needs to be guided along by an “always knows best” government; much like a parent to a child.  CNN and Newsweek contributor David Frum has jumped on board with Barro and levels the same critique of conservatives while complaining that not enough of them follow Milton Friedman anymore.

To put this as nicely as possible, Barro and Frum aren’t just incorrect; they have put their embarrassingly ignorant understandings of Austrian economics on full display for all to see.

When that canned remarks by Fed Doves is all that is left as a hope-based upside "risk catalyst", as was just defined by Citi's Steven Englander, things are really sad for those who have to justify their excess testosterone by trading every uptick (Econ Ph.D. dissertation on the topic most certainly in progress).

The last few days have seen some rather concerning central-planning actions by Argentina. Fresh from their nationalization of Spain's YPF, not only did they "forbid individuals from buying dollars for savings" issuing a statement allowing dollars to be used for "travel, mortgages, and to send family members traveling abroad if they they run out of money"; but now we hear of the forced action on Argentina's banks to lend out 5% of deposits at rates well below inflation estimates in the next six months (or else). As Reuters notes, "The move... marks an escalation in [President Christina Fernandez] war on private enterprise which may spread further." It should be noted just how far central banks are willing to go (strong-arming banks into subsidized loans to businesses) and it would absolutely not surprise us if this is precisely where the US is heading as command economies become the new normal globally.

Every government entity that reckoned it was moated from the market economy will be snapped back to "discover" risk and consequence. Let's lay out the dynamic:

1. Every government can only spend what its economy generates in surplus.
2. Every government transfers risk and consequence from itself, its employees and its favored vested interests to the citizenry and taxpayers.
3. Every government collects and distributes the surplus of its private sector to its employees, favored constituencies and vested interests.
4. Since the government (State) promises guaranteed salaries, benefits and entitlements to its employees and favored constituencies, these individuals believe they are living in a risk-free Wonderland that is completely protected from the market economy.
5. Risk cannot be repealed or eliminated, it can only be masked or transferred to others.

... continued

The broad theme of buying stocks because they are cheap - as evidenced by the dividend yield's premium to US Treasury yields - seems to fall apart a little once one look at a long-run history of the behavior of these two apples-to-unicorns yield indications. Forget the risky vs risk-free comparisons, forget the huge mismatch in mark-to-market volatility, and forget the huge differences in max draw-downs that we have discussed in the past; prior to WWII, the average S&P 500 dividend yield was 136bps over the 10Y Treasury yield and while today's 'equity valuation' is its 'cheapest' since the 1950s relative to Bernanke's ZIRP-driven bond market; the 'old' normal suggests that this time is no different at all and merely a reversion to more conservative times - leaving stocks far from cheap.

While Belgian caterers are delighted that Europe's increasingly more unelected leaders quarrel endlessly over who gets to foot the bill to keep the market fooled for one more week that things are fixed, Europe is burning. The just released MarkIt PMI data showed that while Spanish bonds may be up 50 bps one day, down 75 bps the next, "the downturn in the Eurozone manufacturing sector extended to an eleventh successive month. Production and new orders suffered further severe contractions, leading to the steepest job losses since January 2010." And here is where Germany, which as noted earlier, is becoming isolated in its European bailout ambitions, should pay attention: "The rate of decline in Germany was the steepest for three years, and marked a fourth successive monthly decline in the region’s largest economy." This metric is only going to get worse, only in the future it will be coupled with increasingly more direct and contingent debt all around. And further confirming that there is no easy way out for Europe was the May Eurozone unemployment number which at 11.1% rose to a new record

In a detailed discussion with Bloomberg TV's Tom Keene, Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg addresses everything from Europe's "inability to grow its way out of the problem" amid its 'existential moment', Asian 'trade shock' and commodity contagion, and US housing, saving, and fiscal uncertainty. He believes we are far from a bottom in housing, despite all the rapacious calls for it from everyone, as the over-supply overhang remains far too high. "The last six quarters of US GDP growth are running below two percent" he notes that given the past sixty years of experience this is stall speed, and inevitably you slip into recession". He is back to his new normal of 'frugality' and bearishness on the possibilities of any solution for Europe but, most disconcertingly he advises Keene that "when you model fiscal uncertainty into any sort of economic scenario in the U.S., what it means is that businesses raise their liquidity ratios and households build up their savings rates. This comes out of spending growth. And that's the problem - you've got the fiscal uncertainty coupled with a US export 'trade shock'."

Another economic data point, another preview of the coming NEW QE (and if Goldman is right, the perpetual NEW "Flowing" QE). Initial claims print at 386K, a number which will be revised to 390K next week, a swing and a miss to expectations of 375K, and not even the mainstream media will be able to come up with tits token idiotic headline that claims decline because they did not, even relative to last week's revised 380K from 377K. This is the 22nd expectations miss in the last 25 reports. Continuing claims also miss expectations of 3270K, printing at 3278K. But the biggest surprise to some (not ZH readers who were warned that 700,000 Are About To Lose Their Extended Jobless Claims Benefits), a massive 135K people fell off the Extended and EUC claims as the 99 week cliff hits more and more. Recall that last week 105K dropped of extended claims. This means that in the past two weeks alone 240,000 people no longer collect the last possible form government unemployment benefits, the most in a two week period since December 2010!. We can only hope they are fat enough to collect the new normal stimulus check: disability.