Volatility

"... the next 12-18 months will be divided into three periods corresponding to the three distinct regimes of market dynamics. They can be summarized by the following modes of the curve: short-term tactical bear flatteners on the back of a Fed liftoff story, followed by volatile bear steepeners of the “taper-tantrum” type around mid-year, and a bull-flattening finale as structural factors deem rate hikes to be a policy mistake."

2015 ends with the market cap of Amazon & Google exceeding that of every single Chinese company in the MSCI China index… the US stock market a mere 107 trading days away from becoming the 2nd longest bull market of all-time, with equity leadership driven by “growth” (longest duration of outperformance ever) & “quality” (at all-time relative high)… and $6trn of negatively-yielding government bonds, $17trn of bonds yielding <1%, and the Fed expected to raise the Fed funds rates for the 1st time since 2006.

As usual, S&P was late, but just over three months after our explicit warning, the rating agency finally came out with the catalyst we have been expecting when moments ago it said that it had "placed its 'BBB-' long-term corporate credit rating on Hong Kong-based supply-chain management service provider Noble Group Ltd. and the  'BBB-' issue rating on the company's senior unsecured notes on CreditWatch  with negative implications." In other words, Asia's Glencore is about to be junked.

Dominated by an 8.7% collapse in The West, existing home sales fell 3.4% in October MoM (worse than the 2.7% drop expected) to a 5.36mm SAAR. Year-over-year, existing home sales are up just 3.9% - the weakest since January. And finally, in a mind-numbing reality for The Fed's wealth creation plan, median home prices have now dropped for 4 months in a row.

As a result of the global commodity weakness, global stocks have fallen for the first time in six days as the sell-off in commodities continued, dragging both US equity futures and European stocks lower. However, putting this in context, last week the MSCI All Country World Index posted its biggest weekly gain in six weeks: alas, without a coincident rebound in commodity prices, it will be merely the latest dead cat bounce.

By now, everyone knows Brazil is stuck in a stagflationary nightmare that's made immeasurably worse by the country's seemingly intractable political crisis. But what about the rest of Latin America? Goldman takes a close look at the regional outlook for the next four years and finds a decidedly unfavorable growth-inflation mix. 

Liquidity in the junk (and all other markets) is evaporating, and according to Citi the spread between an illiquid and liquid junk bond portfolio just hit 100 bps, the most in the history of the series. Meanwhile according to Mohamed El-Erian "The market is comfortable that whenever we hit a hiccup, the Fed is going to come back in," he said. "It's very deeply embedded that central banks are our best friends forever."

There are seemingly always “good reasons” why troubles in a sector of the credit markets are supposed to be ignored – or so people are telling us, every single time. Some still recall how the developing problems in the sub-prime sector of the mortgage credit market were greeted by officials and countless market observers in the beginning in 2007. Meanwhile, the foundation of the economy continues to look rotten (the newest round of Fed surveys has begun with another bomb and other manufacturing-related data continue to disappoint as well). This isn’t going to end well, if history is any guide.

"The signals across asset classes are diverging incredibly," warns Macro Risk Advisors' Dean Curnutt, "and we should all be afraid." All of that commodity volatility is rolling back into corporate credit and that, inevitably will dramatically impact equity markets (explicitly through higher funding costs weighing on earnings or implicitly through lower buybacks and higher risk premia), "the illiquidity and implied defaults that we are seeing in credit markets are not at all priced into a 2060 S&P."

“Do not involve Sales in anyway [sic] whatsoever.  In fact avoid mentioning the existence of the whole BATS Last Look functionality.  If you get enquiries just obfuscate and stonewall.... for the future, sales absolutely 100% do not know about the existence of last look and it shouldn’t be a concern for them...  IF any client does call up about a rejected trade . . . it is important that you state in any communication ‘THE TRADE WAS REJECTED BECAUSE OF LATENCY.’ . . . DO NOT talk about P&L on trades."

Economists have been consistently over-estimating the strength of the economy this year. The magnitude of their misses is not particularly worrisome but volatility measures and the recent record number of consecutive negative readings are suggesting that economists’ models are losing their grasp on the state of the economy.

"Japan’s experience suggests that QE has its limits, and could bring a range of side effects. These include years of tepid growth, the reduction in secondary trading liquidity, an increase in asset ownership by central banks (the BoJ now owns half of the national ETF market), potential formation of asset bubbles and social problems like inequality."

In the last few months we have warned of the "perversions" in US money markets (here, here, and most recently here) adding that "to ignore them at your own peril." And now, as Bloomberg reports, it appears the mainstream is beginning to recognize that something very strange is going on in debt markets. Across developed markets, the conventional relationship between ('risk-free') government debt and other 'more risky' assets has been turned upside-down. "Everybody in the fixed-income market should care about this," warns a rates strategist and in fact, it’s hard to overstate how illogical it is when swap spreads are inverted, as JPM warns the moves in swap-spreads "should be viewed as symptomatic of deeper problems."

It's not just tourism and retail sales that might swoon--global sentiment might switch decisively from "risk-on" to "risk-off" with far-reaching consequences, a reversal that would quickly cascade through every asset class and every market--not just in the short-term, but in the long term.