Volatility

It appears Chinese authorities want to be the monopoly manipulator of their stock markets. Just a week after BlackRock suggested (and Hillary spewed) plans for transaction taxes in US markets to effectively kill high-frequency-trading (and all its ills), China's Securities Regulator Commission (CSRC) has proposed limiting the use of automated trading programs in the stock market. Of course, just as we saw last nght in China futures, we assume CSRC only wants to ban "selling" algos and not "spoofers" pushing stocks higher.

We would argue the main reason for Blackrock’s attempt to persuade the exchanges to adopt its recommendations on trading halts is that Blackrock itself is inconvenienced by downside volatility. Presumably the company is no stranger to leverage (how else can it squeeze out large returns with a portfolio this large in a ZIRP world?) and is therefore forced to exercise stop loss orders itself when the market declines fast. Such attempts to “regulate” everything, even the price swings markets are allowed to make, are attempts to stem oneself against nature.

“Tis the part of the wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket” - Cervantes in Don Quixote in 1605

The key to successful long term investing is diversification and owning a range of different quality assets.

Gold has been shown to enhance returns and to reduce overall volatility over the long term. This was clearly seen during the financial crisis when gold was one of the very few assets to surge in value.

With the "adult supervision" of US markets gone today as bond markets are closed for Columbus day, and the USDJPY tractor beam also missing with Japan also offline for Health and Sports day, stocks took their cues from China where speculation was rife that in lieu of cutting RRR, the PBOC has unleashed even more incremental QE by expanding its Collateral Asset Refinancing Program (CAR). Specifically, the central bank said this weekend it will expand a program allowing lenders to use loan assets as collateral for borrowing from the central bank, opening it up to nine more cities from the program's test in Shandong province and Guangdong. The new areas for the program include Beijing and Shanghai. According to some estimates released several trillions in liquidity into the market, and not only sent government bond futures to new highs, but pushed the Shanghai Composite up over 3% overnight.

Oil price collapse: Have the central bankers painted themselves into a corner?

The Fed needs to extricate itself from manipulating the financial markets. It needs to end backstopping market liquidity. It must never again print Trillions of new “money” out of thin air. Because so long as the marketplace perceives that the markets are "too big to fail", there will be speculative excess, major securities markets mispricings and Bubble fragilities. No one – average investor or sophisticated financial operator – has a clue as to the degree Fed policies have distorted asset prices.

Correction continues, but it is only a correction.

Austerity: Also known as “sado-fiscalism”. A forlorn attempt to stave off government bankruptcy.

...

Keynesians: Economists “who hear voices in the air (and) are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” (John Maynard Keynes).

Even with the drop in oil prices, the $7 trillion invested in Sovereign Wealth Funds makes them important participants in global capital markets; what they do, even at the margin, matters.

"If only it was that easy to print our way out of a global crisis." 

Here is the chart exposing the "secret" behind biotech investing success: the more cash a biotech company burns, the higher the return it generates.

As the evidence, that the US economy is either in or near a recession, mounts (confirmed by a new cycle high in inventories-to-sales just today), it appears even the most ardent optimists are admitting the odds of a US recession are on the rise. As Bloomberg reports, for the first time in 14 months, economists year-ahead recession probability estimates rose (to their highest level in 2 years).

How do we know if the current signal is a “threshold crossing” into a better climate for stocks, or the lower bound of a new climate of elevated volatility? We cannot know for sure at this point if a volatility shift has occurred. We do have our reasons to be suspect of stocks in the longer-term, but not based on this data. Perhaps the best takeaway from this study is that a drop in the VIX below the 20 level is not an automatic all-clear sign for stocks. Similar moves have, on several occasions, marked the lower bound of a new high-volatility environment. In other words, stocks are not an automatic home run here. A year from now, it is entirely possible that stocks will have struck out.

When things are going especially poorly, sometimes all it takes is the slightest glimmer of hope to ignite a rally, and between a poor NFP report in the US (and yes, EM FX is clearly one place where bad news in the US economy is most definitely good news, as it forestalls an FOMC liftoff), “better” than expected trade data in Malaysia, a deceptively low read on capital outflows from China, and dovish FOMC minutes, this week has brought several such glimmers and so, everyone has apparently begun backing up the truck on Asia EM optimism.

News That Matters