Puerto Rico

The market just hit a fresh all time high today which means another major default must be just around the horizon. Sure enough, the FT reported moments ago that a Puerto Rico default "appears increasingly likely" and is why creditors are meeting with lawyers and bankruptcy specialists (supposedly Jone Day, which means where Corinne Ball is Ken Buckfire, fresh from its recent league table success with the Detroit bankruptcy, can't be far behind) on Thursday in New York.  The FT cited a restructuring advisor, supposedly desperate to sign the engagement letter with creditors and to force the bankruptcy, who said that "the numbers are untenable" and "to issue new debt the yield would have to rise and where they can’t raise new money they will have to stop paying."

It is a well-known fact that when it comes to ownership of rental properties in the US, Wall Street, and particularly Blackstone, has become the single largest landlord in the country. But what about undeveloped land? As summarized by Vizual-statistix, according to The Land Report published by Fay Ranches, the top 100 owners of US land collectively have 33 million acres in their private holdings.  This equates to about 1.5% of all USA land – that may seem like a small percentage, but it’s actually a massive area.  The chart below lays out the top 10 largest private landowners with the areas of Puerto Rico, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. included for scale. As can be seen, all of the top 10 own a piece of the USA that is bigger than Rhode Island, and five have a piece that is at least as big as Delaware. John Malone, who is the largest land owner in the country with 2.2 million acres, owns private property the size of Puerto Rico.

"Bond King" Bill Gross may not have had a good year following over $40 billion in redemptions from his $250 billion Total Return Fund, but another aspirational Bond King, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach, had an even worse year on an relative basis, when his Total Return Bond Fund saw $6 billion in redemptions ending the year at $30.9 billion in AUM following seven consecutive months of withdrawals. So in his attempt to start the new year on better footing, here is his first webcast (as usual open to the public), titled "Let the Race Begin! 2014 Markets: Year of the Horse", in which as usual Jeff will discuss the economy, the markets and his outlook for the best investment strategiest of 2014. Let's hope that for bond fund manager, that 2014 is not just another "year of the donkey", as was the case in the past year which everyone managing duration would rather forget.

• Yellen’s Record-Low Senate Support Reflects Fed’s Politicization (BBG)
• Euro-Zone Inflation Rate Falls in December, even further below ECB's target (WSJ)
• Zambia politician charged for calling president a potato (AFP)
• Blame gold: India Savings Deposit Scam Collapse Leaves Thousands Penniless (BBG)
• Hedge Funds Raise Gold Wagers as Yamada Sees $1,000 (BBG)
• George Osborne limits cuts options with pensions promise (FT)
• Vietnam Raises Foreign Bank Ownership Caps to Aid System (BBG)
• But they said buy a year ago... Goldman to JPMorgan Say Sell Emerging Markets After Slide (BBG)
• SAC Trial Seen by Probe Convict as Latest Abusive Tactic (BBG)

Malodorous taper emanations and bankruptcies are a toxic mix for munis

That greatest of all American traditions - the Black Friday Thursday stampede, this year accompanied with a stabbing and a shooting, is back. A quick review of all readers may have missed by not lining up in droves outside of stores that were selling products at just above cost instead of the usual massive pre-Thanksgiving markup. So what did it all look like? The answer: like this...

• Top China Banks Triple Debt Write-Offs as Defaults Loom (BBG)
• PBOC suspends open market operations again (Global Times)
• Eurozone bank shares fall after ECB outlines health check plan (FT)
• O-Care falling behind (The Hill)
• Key House Republican presses tech companies on Obamacare glitches (Reuters)
• J.P. Morgan Faces Another Potential Huge Payouta (WSJ)
• Yankees Among 10 MLB Teams Valued at More Than $1 Billion (BBG)
• Free our reporter, begs newspaper as China cracks down on journalists (Reuters)
• Peugeot Reviews Cost-Saving Alliance With GM (WSJ)

One of the great ironies of the Obama presidency is that it has been a disaster for the young people who form the core of his political coalition. High unemployment is paired with exploding debt that they will have to finance whenever they eventually find jobs, and as Stan Druckenmiller explains in his WSJ interview, the "rat through the python theory," (that fiscal disaster will only be temporary while the baby-boom generation moves through the benefit pipeline and then entitlement costs will become bearable) is simply wrong; since, by then Druck exclaims, "you have so much debt on the books that it's too late." Unfortunately for taxpayers, "the debt accumulates while the rat's going through the python." The hedge fund billionaire adds that he "did not think it would be nutty to tie entitlements to the debt ceiling because there's a massive long-term problem. And this president, despite what he says, has shown time and time again that he needs a gun at his head to negotiate in good faith." The interview goes much, much further...

It’s become almost cliche these days to point out how many governments are broke beyond belief. The theater playing out in the US right now is irrelevant. America’s debt challenge is not a political problem. It’s an arithmetic problem. Same in Japan and most of Europe. However, most of these ‘rich’ western nations aren’t doing anything about it. It’s business as usual, and their debts are only getting bigger. Poorer countries don’t have this luxury of kicking the can down the road and delaying the inevitable. They must face their financial reckoning now... and they are finding increasingly unique ways to encourage 'revenues'.

If one looks at various sovereign states, it seemingly doesn't matter that their public debts continue to rise at a hefty clip. The largest ones are considered to have economies that are big and resilient enough to be able to support the growing debt load. Part of the calculus is no doubt the notion that they contain enough accumulated wealth to allow their governments to confiscate even more of their citizens property and income in order to make good on their debts. Then there are the small and mid-sized states in the EU that are getting bailed out by their larger brethren, or rather, the tax payers of their larger brethren. However, things are different when the territories or municipalities concerned are considered too small and have no such back-up. Detroit was a recent case in point, and it seems that the US territory of Puerto Rico is the next domino to fall.

"If the politicians lead us into a 'prioritization of payments' situation for Treasury Secretary Lew or an actual missed payment, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from that!" are the ominous words that Kyle Bass uses to describe the farce that is rapidly approaching (and for now being ignored by stocks). Bass went on to pull no punches in his "disappointment" in JCPenney's performance (and dilution) coming as close as he can to saying "sell." But his piece de resistance was a dismal destruction of any silver lining for Puerto Rico and the significant implications that will have on Muni bonds in general.

• Hilsenrath: Tense Negotiations Inside the Fed Produced Muddled Signals to Markets (WSJ)
• Biggest US Foreign Creditors Show Concern on Default Risk (BBG)
• Shutdown Costs at $1.6 Billion With $160 Million Each Day (BBG)
• What default? Republicans downplay impact of U.S. debt limit (Reuters)
• Top Bankers Warn on U.S. Debt Proposal (WSJ)
• India to stick with austerity despite looming election (Reuters)
• Japan's Current-Account Surplus Plunges (WSJ)
• Amazon Wins Ruling for $600 Million CIA Cloud Contract (BBG)
• German Factory Orders Unexpectedly Fall on Weak Recovery (BBG)
• Britain's Higgs, Belgium's Englert win 2013 physics Nobel prize (Reuters)
• Supreme Owner Made a Billionaire Feeding U.S. War Machine (BBG)

UPDATE: AAPL +5.7% on revised guidance

Despite concerns about supply (and 'change') the lines we saw on Friday and the disappointments in the UK have been dismissed by the latest Apple press release as opening weekend iPhone sales top their record at 9 million sales (compared with the 5 million sold at iPhone 5 launch and 6-7mm units expectations).

APPLE SAYS OVER 200M IOS DEVICES RUNNING IOS 7
APPLE 9M NEW IPHONE 5S AND IPHONE 5C MODELS SOLD IN 3 DAYS
APPLE SAYS OVER 11M UNIQUE LISTENERS USED ITUNES RADIO
APPLE SEES 4Q REV. NEAR HIGH END OF $34B-$37B, EST. $36.11B

The share price was up over 4.5% from Friday's sub-50DMA close in pre-market trading; but is fading back now.

To say that bonds are under pressure would be an understatement. Over the last few months, sentiment about fixed income has flipped dramatically: from a favored investment destination that is deemed to benefit from exceptional support from central banks, to an asset class experiencing large outflows, negative returns and reduced standing as an anchor of a well-diversified asset allocation. Similar to prior periods, history will regard the ongoing phase of dislocations in the bond market as a transitional period of adjustment triggered by changing expectations about policy, the economy and asset preferences – all of which have been significantly turbocharged by a set of temporary and ultimately reversible technical factors. By contrast, history is unlikely to record a change in the important role that fixed income plays over time in prudent asset allocations and diversified investment portfolios – in generating returns, reducing volatility and lowering the risk of severe capital loss. Understanding well what created this change is critical to how investors may think about the future.

"It's getting concerning," notes one fixed-income banker, Puerto Rico muni bond yields "never got near 10% [yields] even in the crisis." Some of the 27-year maturity Puerto Rico bonds just traded at a dismal 67 cents on the dollar (10.082% yield) and the most recently issued 2036 Electric Power bonds have collapsed from par a month ago to just above 82 cents on the dollar today. As the WSJ reports, the fall in prices also is a sign of investor risk aversion in the wake of Detroit's record municipal-bankruptcy filing in July; but it seems the anxiety and outflows from ETFs is having just as big an impact as Puerto Rico bonds now trade cheaper than Detroit's. "It's out of whack," one analysts warns, though the island's double-digit unemployment and recent weakness in economic indicators somewhat support the concerns - and while the "yields are attractive" it is possible that the island's borrowing costs could go higher as supply is extremely heavy in coming months. With 77% of managers holding Puerto Rico bonds, this is a problem...