Sovereign CDS

What does Illinois have in common with Bear Stearns, Ambac Financial, LTCM and Greece? Come on fellas, let's roll the dice. I've got some pension money in case I come up snake eyes...

A look at the key economic events in the relatively quiet week ahead from the perspective (and benchmarks) of Goldman Sachs.

One of the classic comedy themes of the year has been Goldman's series of failed recommendations on the EURUSD, where the hedge fund has had about a 1 out of 10 "success" rating (for its clients). Today, the Markets Strategist Mark Tan recaps the firm's 3, 6 and 12 month forecast on the EURUSD, which are, conveniently, 1.22, 1.35 and 1.38. That's like saying the S&P will be in a range of 950 to 1500. At least the firm is sure to "hit" its projected range.... And be sure to watch that major inflection point some time in December which send the dollar sharply lower: is Goldman implicitly saying the "real deal" QE will now come around New Year's, just after the elections and just before the government has to raise the debt ceiling regardless? One thing we agree with, as we have long claimed: look for strikes and other expressions of non-appreciation to spike once everyone is back from vacation. As Goldman says: "One of the main reasons we incorporated downside risks to our EUR/$ forecast (1.22 in 3-months) is to reflect the potential for rising political tension again. This could potentially occur as Europe returns from its summer lull and is confronted with the reality of unpopular austerity measures." What are the InTrade odds on CNBC broadcasting the next storming of the Greek parliament?

Now that sovereign CDS (and ratings) are back in vogue with everyone finally expecting the world to relapse into a double dip, Zero Hedge has compiled Moody's sovereign ratings and spread these alongside the CDS levels in any given bucket to propose several trade ideas taking advantage of Moody's market lagging inefficiency.

The big news out of Europe this morning, and the reason for the drag on the euro is an article in Der Spiegel, "Merkel's rules for bankruptcy" according to which Germany is now actively (and very secretly) pushing for a plan outlining a set of insolvency rules, which would require that private investors bear a portion of the rescue burden, and much more importantly, would see at least a partial give up in state sovereignty, where a new insolvency trustee (the "Berlin Club", which we fail to see at least for now, how it differs from the Paris Club) would take implicit control over and override a default nation's treasury, in essence pushing the bankrupt country into a form of Feudal vassal state-cum-reparations subservience. Welcome to financial warfare in the post-globalization period.

Update: ok, the 10,000 people that just hit the server didn't help.

We apologize for the extended downtime. European server hosts responsible for the crash will be promptly punished when their sovereign CDS shortly catch up with BP's defaults risk (+108 now to 368bps, 27% implied default probability for 5 Y). We are comforted by the fact that Ben Bernanke sees no future crash for Zero Hedge servers, ever again.

The week's biggest (sovereign) CDS movers have been released, and we have some new entrants in the most endangered species list. While by now nobody will be surprised that the UK is a consistent top 2 player (coming in this week with $319 million in net notional derisking, this making it the 8th week or so the country has made the top 3), only behind Italy and its $452 million in net notional, and just in front of last week's #1 Brazil, the presence of the United States at #4 should be a little unsettling. It has been months since the US appeared in the top 5. And just like in the long gold case, the same types of existential questions once again arise when the interest in US CDS picks up: who gets to pay off your contracts in the case of an event of default? Elsewhere, the presence of Korea and Turkey (or Australia) in the top 10 should not come as too surprising. On the other end, short covering was violent in CDS of Spain, Hungary and Portugal - Europe's newest lepers. Is the CDS community concerned the EU can actually pull out a rabbit out of the hat that actually works for once? Hardly. The top 10 reriskers also saw the inclusion of France and long-forgotten insolvent Greece.

After taking a brief break last week, the UK is once again firmly in the top sovereign deriskers: a place it has held with pride for almost two months now. Summing up cumulative net notional exposure on the UK based on just the last several weeks results in a net short exposure of well over $3 billion. Someone has now amassed a huge short on the British Isles. Curiously, the country that was actually the top derisker in the past week, with $420 million in net notional change, was Brazil, the same Brazil which today decided to not lift any offers in its 2021 Fixed Coupon Bond auction. Is this the next hotbed of instability? Look for at least one more week of aggressive derisking before confirming this trend. Turkey completes the trio of top deriskers, with $172 billion in CDS. Surely with the prior week ending on May 28, there is no way anyone could have hedged for an Israeli incursion of Turkish ships ahead of time. On the other end, some of the names that have been making the news recently, have seen some material rerisking, probably based on short positional unwinds: the top five were the US, Japan, Austria, France and China. After tonight's news out of Tokyo, look for Japan to take its rightful place at the top of this table.

Certainly the market was eager after a long weekend! I am not too sure what prompted EURUSD and the Dax to take off vertically at 9.30AM for US equities' open: was it the excitement about the German president's resignation, a 50bps widening in Italy's sovereign CDS in early trading, follow through rejoicing at Spain's latest downgrade Friday afternoon, or the excellent news out of the Middle East on Monday? There was a piece in Barron's this weekend entitled "time to buy" (I am eagerly waiting for the day they will print something entitled "time to sell") so maybe institutionals were waiting for US equities to open to start gunning. It doesn't make much sense in my opinion. The move came out of Europe most certainly given what we observed, but nobody confirmed our suspicion that it was central bank related. - Nic Lenoir

When all of Europe rushed into its rescue package two weeks ago (first half a trillion, market red, then a full trillion, market green), the one thing that struck us as odd was the conflicting data on the conditionality of the package, with various sources both confirming and denying that the "package" was revocable. It did seem somewhat shortsighted of the Germans, whose political leadership would soon be on the verge of a series of electoral routs, to tie its fate without even one exit hatch, to a country that is a financial toxic spiral. Sure enough, the Telegraph's Evans-Pritchard has uncovered what may be the two loopholes in the European bailout agreement. While the first one is not surprising, the second one explains why the biggest sellers of European government debt (and/or buyers of Euro sovereign CDS), are likely the governments of the distressed, and core, countries themselves.

The market’s immediate response to the ban announcement was to sell the Euro. Such a response makes sense as when faced with the inability to manage risk in debt, stock or CDS markets, participants sell what they can. And that means the Euro. But by having inadvertently further undermined the Euro, today’s actions increase the risk of failure in the entirety of the liquidity support program as the Achilles heal of the European intervention is its potential to undermine the currency. Unlike the US policy response, massive liquidity support from the ECB can create the perception (if not the reality) of a debt monetization scheme. While the US explicitly monetized the debt, it benefited from a flight to quality and worlds reserve currency status, neither of which the Euro enjoys. A precipitous decline in the Euro remains the risk to the outlook, and on display today as the Euro declines led the selloff in broad risk markets. - Jeffrey Rosenberg

The whole world is still stunned from what just happened today. In essence, Germany has taken a major step to not only declaring it is the master of the European continent and all those who don't like it can just focus on their own bankrupt banks (Sarkozy), but is breaking ranks with the US, as the surprising nature of today's move was aimed not so much at European "speculators" but at Wall Street. Furthermore, knowing full well it may soon lose access to US capital markets, Germany is likely preparing to abandon the EU and EMU (to which "good riddance" is likely all it has to say). But the key implication from today is that Bernanke must now move with urgency to find a way to keep the pressure on the dollar as he is now solidly losing the currency devaluation race. The impact of this on major multinationals and on the "must do" reflation experiment could be cataclysmic. Additionally, without gobs of new domestic liquidity to prop it up, the US market will now likely collapse, further forcing Bernanke to act against the interests of the US Middle class and America's savers. We can not wait to see what he pulls out of his sleeve. With ZIRP ravaging the nation, and negative interest rates still illegal, he may just find his hands very much tied.

In the meantime, here are some preliminary shocked observations on today's events from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

There are 4 hours until midnight in Germany. There are trillions in gross sovereign CDS notional. Germany alone had $71.4 billion in Gross CDS notional and $13.3 billion in net according to DTCC. Add up all of Europe and you get half a trillion. How on earth will the German market unwind these with all European traders already long gone. We also make the generous assumption that US CDS traders are still around: most of the BSDs tend to leave for the nearest Marriott Garden Inn by 1pm. So with naked CDS positions now verboten, who will be allowed to sell CDS? For a symmetric hedged transaction, anyone selling CDS (long credit), would have to be short cash govvies to be permitted to sell CDS. And who in their right mind would disclose that they are short anything. This is the most ill-thought out regulatory plan in the history of capital markets, and that, shockingly, includes the Frankenstein monster created by our own lame duck coruptus in extremis senator.

With Merkel also about to announce a transaction tax, America is about to see its population of HFT scalpers, front runners, predatory algos and other binary mutants explode as all the German math Ph.D.'s come to New York. In the meantime, if you listened to Goldman earlier today and covered you lost, as usual. Santelli now sees EURUSD going to 1.20 promptly. Additionally, with tens of billions in sovereign CDS scrambling to unwind overnight with no prior warning, you will see some seismic moves via arb desks. When Lehman blew up, CDS traders at least got a heads up that Sunday. This crisis is rapidly becoming worse than Lehman.

I would like to make clear how dangerous this bailout game is for those in the confines of the EMU. Suppose…. Just suppose, as with the Greek Bailout(s) announced just weeks ago, the markets call the bailers’ bluff? Exactly what ammunition will be left to move forward? The ECB/EU had better hope that this rally will hold up (and recent history shows that it will probably have an ever decreasing half-life), for if it doesn’t the member countries are in a world of hurt.