Reality

While the idea of a futuristic tale of the resurgence of Greece and how Germany shot itself in the foot could well be the work of the horror-writer, HSBC's Chief Economist Stephen King opines on what could well be with a moral for those who want Athens out of the Euro. "The idea that Greece can leave and that the rest of the eurozone will then live happily ever after – a view that is quickly becoming the conventional wisdom – is surely wrong. Departure might eventually be an answer to Greece's difficulties but it only asks questions of everybody else." And the fantastic journey King lays out is rooted in a sad reality that he sums up thusly: "Germany's gamble had failed. In the attempt to punish Greece, it had ended up with an impossible choice: creating a fiscal union or huge currency upheaval. Berlin had taken aim at Greece but shot itself in the foot."

With the record first quarter in the books we perform a quick postmortem and find some stunning things, the first of which is that the 12% YTD growth in the S&P YTD has been entirely due to multiple expansion: consensus 2012 EPS has declined by 2% since the start of 2012. Why multiple expansion? Because as Goldman (this would be "bad" Goldman in the face of David Kostin, not "good" Goldman ala Peter Oppenheimer who top ticked the market two weeks ago by telling everyone to get out of bonds and into stocks) which still has a 1250 year end price target says "the ECB reduced “tail risk” via the LTRO." Which means that as of today, the market is officially overvalued: "Since December the forward P/E multiple has expanded by 10% from 12.1x to 13.2x, above its 35-year average of 12.9x" even as EPS estimates have actually declined by 2% since the beginning of the year! It gets funnier when one accounts for the outsized impact of just one company. Apple. "Apple continues to have a significant impact on sector- and index-level results. Info Tech contributed 399 bp of the S&P 500 12% YTD return, but AAPL alone accounted for 179 bp or 15% of the rise in S&P 500 during 1Q. The company constitutes 22% of the Info  Tech sector’s market cap and generates 22% of its earnings. Consensus expects year/year EPS growth in 1Q 2012 of 6% for S&P 500 and 12% for Info Tech, but excluding AAPL these expectations fall to 4% for both Tech and the index. While Information Technology was the only sector to see margin growth in 4Q 2011, margins declined without Apple. In 1Q 2012, Tech margins are expected to grow by 16 bp YoY in total, but fall 33 bp without AAPL." Finally as the chart below shows, 2012 forward EPS have been declining ever since July, when they peaked just short of 114, and are now down to just about 105. In other words: without Apple and the margin boosting impact of the LTRO, the quarter (and really last two quarters) would have been a disaster. As noted earlier (and to Spain's detriment) the LTRO effect has now phased out. How long until the Apple mania meets the same fate?

The only sector of the S&P 500 that was not red today (and for that matter the week) is Tech as AAPL managed another wonderful 1.45% rally today (up 5.6% on the week - it's best performance in 3 weeks and notably AAPL hasn't had a down week since 1/13 -0.6%). As SNL might say, "we need more parabola". Volume was average (for equities and futures) today but bigger blocks came through to sell into the close ahead of the long weekend and tomorrow's early excitement. Financials once again struggled and along with Energy are the worst of the week but it is the majors (in particular Morgan Stanley) that has been hammered this week as MS is -8.2% from Europe's close on Monday with the rest of the TBTFs down around 6% - finally catching up to credit's weakness. Equities closed down marginally but sold off in futures after the close - back below VWAP - having dropped all the way to reconnect with IG and HY credit's less ebullient perspective this week (before credit extended its losses to its widest in three months!). Treasuries managed to entirely recover their post-FOMC spike closing near the low yields of the day/week with the 7Y belly outperforming on the week down around 5bps (with 30Y -1bps on the week). Commodities halted their descent (much to the chagrin of media commentators it seems) as Oil outperformed on the day (and into the green for the week) over $103. Gold and Silver are still underperforming the USD's gains on the week (up 1.4%) led by EUR and CHF weakness. FX chatter was dominated by the spike-save in EURCHF (taking out Goldman's stops) and the mirror CAD strength JPY weakness relative to the USD. It seems EURUSD has become relevant again as it heads back towards 1.30 the figure (3 months lows). VIX went briefly red around the European close and broke 17% before closing marginally higher on the day as the term structure steepened a little more once again.

What we need to understand is that we are in one of the most dangerous phases of this crisis at the moment. The priests of fiat are being attacked from all sides. People have awoken to the Fed and how criminal and deceitful this organization is and the existential threat it poses to economic freedom and hence human liberty. The arguments against the Fed are blistering and the only rebuttal the Fed has is to spout the same old nonsense like “we saved the world” or some trite derivative of this fallacy. The only thing they saved are untalented speculators from their bad bets. What the Fed has systematically done is literally transfer all of the bad debts and bets from the banks to the taxpayer. We are living this reality to this day. This fact is becoming increasingly understood throughout society, hence the emergence of the tea party and then last year’s Occupy Wall Street movement. So the thing I want my readers to really internalize is that the Fed and indeed TPTB generally are getting slaughtered in the intellectual arena and they know it. As a result, they feel cornered and will thus act increasingly aggressive to prove they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Report: China Surpassed U.S. in 2010

Much has been made, and rightly so, of the echoing crisis that is evolving in Spanish bank and sovereign credit (and equity) markets in the last few weeks. The impact of the LTRO on the optics of Spain's problems hid the fact that things remain rather ugly under the surface still and with the fading of that cashflow and reach-around demand from the Spanish banking system, the smaller base of sovereign bond investors has shied away. Stephane Deo, of UBS, notes that while the Spanish budget is a positive step (with its labor market reforms), Spain's economy remains weak and will face a severe recession this year followed by still significant contraction next year. However, he fears the measures announced may not be enough to calm investor angst as he doubts the size of fiscal receipts numbers and the ability to half the deficits of local authorities. Furthermore, the measures will have a large impact on corporate earnings - implicitly exaggerating the dismal unemployment numbers (which is increasingly polarizing young against old) with expectations that the aggregate unemployment rate could well top 26% and youth well over 50%. This will only drag further on the housing market, which while it has suffered notably already, is expected to drop another 25% before bottoming and credit is contracting rapidly (compared to a modest rise overall in Europe). Spanish banks remain opaque in general from the perspective of the size and quality of collateral and provisioning and Deo believes they are still deep in the midst of the provisioning cycle and tough macro conditions will force restructuring and deleveraging. Spain scores 5 out of 5 on our crisis-prone indicator and markets, absent intervention, are starting to reflect that aggressively.

If you spend your day listening to mainstream financial media you could be forgiven for believing that things have never been better for corporate balance sheets - exceptionally high levels of cash and fortress-like conservatism for example. However, in the trenches of reality, from a high-yield and investment grade credit market perspective (and perhaps this is why credit markets are expressing considerably more concern than equities still) there are three trends that point to deterioration and far-from-Nirvana cash-flow protection that should be paid close attention to.

Today's initial claims number printed at 357K, on expectations of 355K, a number which next week will be revised higher once again, likely to 362K. The game here is simple - just show a decline in claims, as what happened to last week's number, also revised higher, this time from 359K to 363K, just so it can show a 6K decline and allow the idiot media to blow such headline as "Weekly US unemployment benefit applications fall to 357,000, lowest in 4 years" from AP and "Jobless Claims in U.S. Decrease to Lowest Level in Four Years" from Bloomberg. In reality, this is the third consecutive miss of consensus in a row. Give us a break - funny then when one considers that last week's consensus was 350K, which has since been revised to 363K. Or what about that 348K print the week prior which ended up being a more realistic 364K. In other words, the headlines were 348K, 359K, 357K, and somehow this is indicative of anything more than outright and endless data manipulation. Needless to say, when next week the number is revised to a far greater miss, nobody will care as the embargoed headlines will once again say "Jobless Claims in U.S. Decrease to Lowest Level in Four Years" and the sheep will keep on buying it over and over and over. What is also notable, is that just like yesterday's ADP number, today's claims data gives no hint what to expect from tomorrow's market holiday NFP.

The Fed moved to defense. A tactical disavantage.

In what appears to be surprising news for some, Reuters has an article titled "Americans brace for next foreclosure wave" whose key premise is that "a painful part two of the [housing] slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures." Thank the robosettlement, where in exchange for a few wrist slaps, contract law was thoroughly trampled by America's attorneys general, but far more importantly to the country's crony capitalist system, the foreclosure pipeline was once again unclogged, and whether one does or does not have a legal title on a given house, the banks are now fully in their right to foreclose on it. What this means also is that America's record shadow housing inventory, which is far greater than any fabricated number the NAR reports on a monthly basis, is about to get unleashed on buyers, shifting the supply curve much further to the right, as up to 9 million new properties slowly but surely appear on the market. And while many will no longer be able to live mortgage free, forcing them to go out and rent (and no longer be able to afford incremental iGizmos), it also means that the prevalent price of homes is about to take another major tumble, making buffoons out of all those who, once again, called for a housing bottom in early 2012. Here's the simply math: there will be no housing bottom until the 9 million excess homes clear. Period. Until then it is a buyer's market, even if said buyer is unable to obtain bank financing, as ultimately it will be the seller who is forced to monetize (or vacate if underwater) their home in a world of ever diminishing cashflows. The fear of the supply onslaught will only make the dumpage that much faster.

Treasury yields retraced more than 60% of their rise post-FOMC yesterday leaving them only marginally higher on the week as, despite another late afternoon light volume surge to VWAP, stocks closed with their second biggest daily loss of the year. Three days in a row now, ES (the S&P 500 e-mini futures contract) has closed at its VWAP - suggesting institutional blocks continue to look for opportune/efficient selling levels (as opposed to buying the dips which we are so used to). After Spain's auction debacle and the ISM Services miss, it seems that with no Fed standing guard that good is good but bad is not better anymore as the S&P 500 cash lost over 1% (down 2% from Monday's peak to today's trough). Financials underperformed and the majors (which we noted on Monday sagging after Europe's close) have been really hurt with Citi, BofA, and MS down 6 to 7% since then. Equity markets in the US and Europe played catch up once again to credit's more realistic assessment of the world as HYG (the high-yield bond ETF) is back at one-month lows, down 2.7% from its end-Feb highs (or five months worth of yield, oops). Investment grade credit (which remains rich to its fair-value) was not helped as Treasuries were the place of refuge for the day as 30Y yields dropped their most in 2012. Commodities suffered significant damage as Silver tumbled to meet Gold's loss for the week, both down 3% Copper and Oil also dropped notably and are now back in sync with the USD for the week -1% or so. Most major FX remained USD positive except for JPY which retraced its snap lower from yesterday as carry trades were generally exited (with EUR and AUD weakness mirroring JPY strength post-FOMC) leaving DXY near 3-week highs. Who-/What-ever was doing the buying in the afternoon clearly levered the position (using AAPL or options) as VIX dumped once again out of nowhere intraday - closing near its lows of the day. However, VIX did close up near one-month highs as it catches up to Europe's VIX flare. Given the drop in implied correlation (and in-line VIX-S&P move) we suspect the covered-call strategy of the year was coming undone a little at the seams as single-name vol underperformed.

It’s important to put yourself in the minds of OECD policy makers. They are largely managing a retirement class that is moving out of the workforce and looking to draw upon its savings -- savings that are (mostly) in real estate, bonds, and equities. Given this demographic reality, growth in nominal terms is undoubtedly the new policy of the West. While a 'nominal GDP targeting' approach has been officially rejected (so far), don't believe it. Reflationary policy aimed at sustaining asset prices at high levels will continue to be the policy going forward.  While it’s unclear how long a post-credit bubble world can sustain such period of forced growth, what is perfectly clear is that oil is no longer available to fund such growth. For the seventh year since 2005, global oil production in 2011 failed to surpass 74 mbpd (million barrels per day) on an annual basis. But while the West is set to dote upon its retirement class for many years to come, the five billion people in the developing world are ready to undertake the next leg of their industrial growth. They are already using oil at the margin as their populations urbanize. But as the developing world comes on board as new users of petroleum, they still need growing resources of other energy to fund the new growth which now lies ahead of them. This unchangeable fact sets the world on an inexorable path: a competitive race for BTU.

Confused by stock bubbles and furious episodes of manic market euphoria? SocGen's Dylan Grice explains it in one brief sentence: "we’re hardwired to overvalue excitement and undervalue boredom."

It ain't that bullish.

Who will buy our debt in the coming months and years? Europe is saturated with debt and doesn’t have the means to purchase our debt. Japan is a train wreck waiting to happen. China’s customers aren’t buying their crap, so their economic miracle is about to go in reverse. The Federal Reserve cannot buy $1 trillion of Treasury bonds per year forever without creating more speculative bubbles and raging inflation in the things people need to live. The Minsky Moment will be the point when the U.S. Treasury begins having funding problems due to the spiraling debt incurred in financing perpetual government deficits. At this point no buyer will be found to bid at 2% to 3% yields for U.S. Treasuries; consequently, a major sell-off will ensue leading to a sudden and precipitous collapse in market clearing asset prices and a sharp drop in market liquidity. In layman terms that means – the shit will hit the fan. The Federal Reserve and Treasury will be caught in their own web of lies. The only way to attract buyers will be to dramatically increase interest rates. Doing this in a country up to its eyeballs in debt will be suicide. We will abruptly know how it feels to be Greek....The entire financial world is hopelessly entangled by the $700 trillion of derivatives that ensure mass destruction if one of the dominoes falls. This is the reason an otherwise inconsequential country like Greece had to be “saved”.