Reality

We have been warning of the uncomfortable current similarities to last year's (and for that matter cycle after cycle) high-yield credit underperformance / lagging behavior 'canary-in-the-coalmine' relative to the exuberant equity market for a month now. Now, Bank of America provides - in two succinct charts - the fundamental underpinning of this grave concern as across the high-yield credit universe revenues are not catching up with costs - creating significant margin pressures - and at the end of the day, a market that cares more for cash flow sustainability than the latest headline or quarter EPS upgrade from some sell-side pen-pusher is waving a red-flag as margins are the lowest they have been since March 2009 and is falling at a much faster clip than in the fall of 2008 as the reality of money-printing comes home to roost. And just to add salt to this fundamental wound, technicals are starting to hurt as supply picks up and 'opportunistic' issuance turns notably heavy - perhaps helping to explain how the ongoing inflows have been unable to push prices further up in the US. Lastly European high yield is trading tick-for-tick with sovereign risk still - as it has since the middle of last year and so as LTRO-funded carry fades, we would expect it to underperform - especially as austerity slows growth.

Today’s Spanish auction results were, in a word, awful. Not just higher yields, but a terrible bid-to-cover and perhaps even worse; all of the funding could not be accomplished. The effects of the LTRO are rapidly diminishing as the money has now generally been utilized and the national banks of a nation can no longer support the funding needs of the countries in the periphery. We have reached the turn here and I predict much higher yields to come now for the troubled nations in Europe including Italy. What could be accomplished by liquidity has been accomplished but solvency problems cannot be cured by liquidity alone and that lesson is about to be re-learned again.

Everyone's favorite stock pitchman, Bob Pisani, who lately apparently has the capacity to learn just one line and just regurgitate it ad nauseam, was on CNBC earlier screaming how gold is down because the US is so much better than the world, when in reality gold is once again being sold to fund early margin calls (yes, institutionals are that levered right now). As for the US decoupling story, which time after time is dragged out, only to be shelved once the impact of trillions in liquidity fades, and which is never different this time, here is none other than Bank of America explaining to the likes of Pisani why "the US economy is likely to prove a faulty engine of global growth." Read - no decoupling, despite what the market may be trying to say. And yes, the market, and especially the Russell 2000 is never the economy.

In the last week, both European and US equity markets have valiantly attempted to extend their rally into the stratosphere while the credit market has summarily dismissed this exuberance as 'oh those silly algo-driven momo monkeys'. Yesterday and today we have seen equities in both regions retrace aggressively to the much more realistic, liquidity spigot-lacking margin-compressing growth-slowing reality that credit has been pricing in.

We have previewed the phasing out of the LTRO effect previously here on several occasions. Now, courtesy of Art Cashin, everyone is aware that the eye of the European hurricane has officially passed, especially in the aftermath of this morning's horrendous Spanish bond auction, which shows that reality is back with a bang.

Having been an onlooker of the recent tiff between Paul Krugman and Steve Keen, I was very eager to see what Mr. Keen had to say in tonight's LSE public lecture on "Banks Versus the Economy." Observing how Keen had quarreled with Krugman and effectively ate his lunch, I thought he would bring a lot to the table. I was wrong. Keen had raised the (very interesting) issue about how neoclassical economists and their models fail to recognize the role of banks in the economy.

Seasonal adjustments are not forever. 

Equities tumbled but Gold/Silver and Treasuries were the hardest hit as the potential reality of lower chance of more massive LSAPs was evident in the FOMC minutes. As we have argued for weeks now, the Fed is cornered and is unable to enact QE3 without a much more significant drop in markets and implicitly the economy. We assume now that the sell-side will refocus its efforts on telling us all just how bad the economic picture really is...

Anyone who hasn’t sensed a mood change in this country since the 2008 financial meltdown is either ignorant or in denial. Millions of Americans fall into one of these categories, but many people realize something has changed – and not for the better. The sense of pure financial panic that existed during September and October of 2008 had not been seen since the dark days of 1929. Our leaders used the initial terror and fear to ram through TARP and stimulus packages that rewarded the perpetrators of the financial collapse rather than helping the middle class who lost 8 million jobs, destroyed by Wall Street criminality. The stock market plunged by 57% from its 2007 high by March 2009. What has happened since September 2008 has set the stage for the next downward leg in this Crisis. The rich and powerful have pulled out all the stops and saved themselves at the expense of the many. Despite overwhelming proof of unabashed mortgage fraud, rating agency bribery, document forgery on a grand scale and insider trading based on non-public information, the brazen audacity of Wall Street oligarchs is reminiscent of the late stages of the Roman Empire.   

In simple terms, this time around, when Europe goes down (and it will) it’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. And this time around, the world Central Banks are already leveraged to the hilt having spent virtually all of their dry powder propping up the markets for the last four years. Again, this time it is different. I realize most people believe the Fed can just hit “print” and solve everything, but they’re wrong. The last time the Fed hit “print” food prices hit records and revolutions began spreading in emerging markets. If the Fed does it again, especially in a more aggressive manner as it would have to, we would indeed enter a dark period in the world and the capital markets.

It is no secret that when it comes to attention spans and 'deep thought', Americans would rather be at the movies. After all, for a country which prides itself on its distractability and sales of ADHD medications, the only thing that matters is the line up of entertainment. Perhaps one reason why last summer's debt ceiling fiasco ended up being such a popular thriller with the masses is that the movie lineup at the time was less than inspiring, leading to a 1.4% decline in summer theater attendance. Which begs the question: what is in store for this year? Because as we have noted, we already know that the US debt ceiling will likely be breached sometime in September, leading into the presidential election, and as a result Americans will demand distraction, or else there is an all too real possibility the same market crash as happened in August of 2011, may recur. So what are the distractions in store for the herd? Courtesy of BofA and the Hollywood Stock Exchange, here is the complete summer lineup, coupled with the HSX movie stock price (an indicator of expected revenues). Will it be enough to offset reality setting in with a thud? You decide.

As Europe's exuberance from the LTROs fades (with Italian banks now negative YTD, Sovereigns wider than LTRO2 levels, and financials desparately divided by the LTRO Stigma) Jefferies David Zervos uncovers the sad reality that faces peripheral creditors and Northern Europeans - as we noted a month ago here. The 'success' of the LTRO monetization scheme (as opposed to EFSF/ESM transfer dabacles) is what enabled the Greek restructuring, and as Zervos notes, the losses that the big boys (Spain and Italy) need to take will not be taken via a haircut but a monetization as the number 1 rule is we must always assume that losses will be taken in a way that protects the large northern banks, northern jobs and most importantly Northern politicians. If the loss realization is not managed correctly (and losses there will be), then the ugly truth will escape but the North's large-scale vendor-financing scheme with the periphery will have to continue - even in the knoweldge that the debt will never get paid back.

The income and savings of Northern workers must be ploughed (directly or indirectly) into the rest-of-Europe or the entire structure becomes insolvent and the breaking of that social contract (that they will be looked after when they are old) will inevitably lead to revolt and nasty nationalist political forces being unleashed. The hope to avoid this is the 'wealth illusion' as the workers of the north can never be allowed to realize they have only 50% of their worth in reality. Ireland will be next on the loss-realization-monetization path but as we move from relatively small and containable sovereigns to the big-boys, the idea that Spain and Italy will roll over and accept a decade of austerity in exchange for a haircut is pure folly. These countries hold too much clout in the Eurozone and their threat of exit is a material threat to the northern jobs and hence northern politicians. The only way the northern politicians will be able to save face when it comes to Spain and Italy is through massive monetary policy accommodation. Inflation will rebalance Europe; but let's hope that the process of restating northern wealth and wage rates does not lead to revolt in the northern streets. The politicians will need to carefully execute this trade.

As it now stands, the US economy faces a “fiscal cliff” in early 2013 – meaningful Government spending cuts AND tax increases at the household level. Nothing like a double whammy, now is there? Unquestionably this is one of the reasons why the Fed has pledged to leave short-term interest rates low for some time. So what happens if nothing is changed and both tax increases and spending cuts are allowed to materialize? Although it’s an approximation, the deadly combo could shave 1.5% plus from US GDP next year. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office are for a more meaningful contractionary impact. And that’s before the ultimate global economic fallout influence of Europe and China slowing. But there is a larger and very important issue beyond this, although the “cliff” is something investors will not ignore and could be very meaningful to forward economic and financial market outcomes, especially given the relative complacent market mood of the moment.

We all know there is no shortcut to anything worth having--mastery, security, wealth-- yet all we have in America is another useless, doomed shortcut. Insolvency is scale-invariant, meaning that being unable to live within your means leads to insolvency for households, towns, corporations, states and national governments. There is no shortcut to living within one's means. Expenses must align with revenues or the debt taken on to fill the gap will eventually bankrupt the entity--even an Empire. We know this, but all we have in America is the shortcut of borrowing more to fill the gap between revenues and expenses. The Federal government is borrowing a staggering 40% of its budget this year--and it has done so for the past three years. Despite all the fantastic predictions of future solvency, the cold reality is that no plausible level of "growth" will close the gap: either expenses must be cut by $1.5 trillion or tax revenues raised by $1.5 trillion or some combination of those realities.

The question of who was the marginal buyer of equities in mid February and into March appears to have been answered. It was Macro hedge funds whose correlation of returns to the S&P 500 went from a negative 0.58 on 2/15 to a very high positive 0.75. It would appear that macro funds, just as they did in Q1 of 2011, went all-in. However, just as occurred in Q1/Q2 2011, the ebbing macro backdrop of the last few weeks, as evidenced by the Citi Economic Surprise Index tumbling rapidly, appears to have stymied their risk appetite and, again just as in 2011, as the surprise index rolled over, so Macro funds started to exit the equity market very rapidly. In fact, in the last two weeks the 30-day correlation between the Macro hedge fund return index (HFRXM) and the S&P 500 (SPX) has crashed back from +0.75 to -0.55 currently as macro funds clearly shift to a negative stance of US equities in general - selling into the momentum strength of the last few weeks. As we pointed out a week ago, institutions were indeed all-in, but it seems the reality of recent macro data and European risk flares is perhaps rapidly darkening the rose-colored lens with macro-funds the first to flee.