Volatility

Particularly light on hard data, take away from this week’s action was reduced volatility in the EGB world (unlike rather more jumpy and eventually depressed equities).

After rainy weeks, better weeks, we pretty much had a rather sleepy week.

As we have painstakingly pointed out, rising equity markets in 2012 have mostly been a function of rising multiples applied to relatively stagnant earnings. While JPMorgan's CIO Michael Cembalest would have given odds no better than 1 in 4 of a 17% advance in the S&P this year, he does note that forecasting annual equity returns is an entirely treacherous (and we add foolish) exercise as real return variation has completely swamped industry expectations for the last 60 years. The traditional Graham-Dodd/Shiller valuation model makes equities look expensive currently, but Cembalest notes, valuations might not be the driving factor at this point. The debasement of money by the Fed has altered the calculus of investing for many participants, and not necessarily for the better. Of course, by driving interest rates down and promising to keep them there, a 7% nominal equity earnings yield (i.e., a 14 P/E) is transformed into a more compelling investment - but critically (especially for social and political reasons) the 'value' of this adjusted earnings yield is questionable given the earnings boom is derived from extraordinarily weak labor compensation and potentially unsustainable demand from Europe/China.

We have been very active in our discussions of the impact of the pending rise in food prices around the world (from central bank largesse to weather-related chaos). As Goldman notes, food inflation has been one of the most significant sources of headline inflation variation in emerging markets (EM) over the past few years. Since June, international prices for agricultural commodities have risen almost 30%, increasing the risk of fresh, food-related increases to EM headline inflation. We, like Goldman, expect EM headline inflation to start to reflect the relevant pressures more broadly in the October prints at the latest. While the effects, for now, are expected to be less extreme than the 2010-2011 episode, the timing as the US enters its fiscal-cliff-prone malaise, could mean a further round of easing will reignite this critical inflationary concern.

Eerily quiet after yesterday’s post-ECOFIN cacophony…

No real take-away today: sometimes you need a breather and everyone agrees.

There should be three objectives for a well-functioning monetary system: i) internal balance, ii) allocative efficiency and iii) financial stability. The international financial and monetary system (IFMS) has functioned under a number of different regimes over the past 150 years and each has placed different weights on these three objectives. Overall, this recent Bank of England paper finds that today’s 'fiat' system has performed poorly against each of its three objectives, at least compared with the Bretton Woods System, with the key failure being the system’s inability to maintain financial stability and minimize the incidence of disruptive sudden changes in global capital flows. There is little consensus in the academic literature, or among policymakers, on what are the underlying problems in the global economy which allow excessive imbalances to build in today’s IMFS and/or which impede the IMFS from adjusting smoothly to counteract these imbalances. Critically though, while the fiat money system we are currently does indeed exhibit lower GDP growth volatility (by design), it has dramatically more incidents of banking and currency crises than under a Gold Standard.

Hate to say it but I think stocks can keep going up...

The other day the Huffington Post ran an article by a Bonnie Kavoussi called “11 Lies About the Federal Reserve.” And you’ll never guess: these aren’t lies or myths spread in the financial press by Fed apologists. These are “lies” being told by you and me, opponents of the Fed. Bonnie Kavoussi calls us “Fed-haters.” So she, a Fed-lover, is at pains to correct these alleged misconceptions. She must stop us stupid ingrates from poisoning our countrymen’s minds against this benevolent array of experts innocently pursuing economic stability. Here are the 11 so-called lies (she calls them “myths” in the actual rendering), and Tom Woods and Bob Murphy's responses.

While the recent revelations of multi-year LIBOR manipulation (but, but how was that possible: it involved thousands of people, operating for years, manipulating numbers - all the traditional reasons presented against conspiracy theory crackpots alleging that manipulation may be going on here, or there, or at the BLS, or somewhere), which we had said had been happening for the past 3 years, confirmed that the entire rate-based derivative market was a giant scam, at least one market spared from cartel whistleblower, i.e., insider, humiliation, was the commodities market. No longer. As the FT first reported, a Swiss trading office of Total Oil Trading sent a response letter to IOSCO (the International Organization of Securities Commissions), alleging that the same kinds of market "pricing" shennanigans that have been now exposed to have taken place over bottles of Bollinger, may have been pervasive in the crude market as well.

With bond-traders amiss - no doubt all celebrating the indigenous people of our great nation - volumes were dismal and so was any evidence of a BTFD mentality in risk. AAPL, amid the biggest three-day slide in almost six-months, saw pullbacks to VWAP sold immediately (signaling more institutional biased selling) ending very close to a 10% correction from its highs. This weighed on Tech (obviously) which was the worst performing sector and dragged Nasdaq (and the S&P) lower. In general equities stayed in sync with risk-assets on the day (we note that TLT's move implies around a 4-5bps compression in yields at the long-end of the Treasury curve) though the lack of liquidity made the relationships noisy. Low volumes, low range, a premature ramp in the last hour that gathered no momentum left S&P futures having retraced 50% of their low-to-high swing of last week. Gold and Oil decoupled early then recoupled late, ending the day down but outperforming the implied weakness from USD strength (EUR weakness balanced JPY and AUD strength on the day). Copper and Silver ended the day down 1.4%. VIX 'outperformed' equity weakness and pushed a notable 0.8 vols higher back over 15%.

Since the end of the Second World War, the major powers of the world have lived in relative peace. While there have been wars and conflicts  — Vietnam, Afghanistan (twice), Iraq (twice), the Congo, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, the Iran-Iraq war, the Mexican and Colombian drug wars, the Lebanese civil war — these have been localised and at a much smaller scale than the violence that ripped the world apart during the Second World War. Hopefully, the threat of mutually assured destruction and the promise of commerce will continue to be an effective deterrent, and prevent any kind of global war from breaking out. Nothing would be more wonderful than the continuing spread of peace. Yet we must be guarded against complacency. Sixty years of relative peace is not the end of history.

Given the Fed's ZIRP impact on expected returns, PIMCO notes that those approaching retirement have three choices: a) save more, b) work longer, or c) tighten their belts in retirement. If everyone saves more, we consume less, and therefore GDP growth slows down. Anemic growth leads to a Fed on hold for a prolonged period - and even further lowered return expectations in an ugly paradox-of-thrift-like feedback loop. PIMCO has found a concerning empirical link between lower rates and longer periods in the workforce as a higher fraction of older Americans remain employed. This has the structurally dismal impact of reducing (implicitly) the level of 'prime working age' employment and has 'convexity' - in other words, the lower rates go, the greater the inertia of the elderly to stay in the workforce. Intuitively, low rates leading to longer work lives just makes sense – especially in an era where fewer retirees will draw defined benefit pensions. This is why some of us are wondering if the Fed is spinning its wheels by sticking to the old model of trying to stimulate growth. So expect lower-rates and longer working years or go all-in on HY CCC debt with 20% of your savings.

We all know shorting volatility is dangerous. We learned our lessons from the financial crisis. We all meticulously read “The Black Swan” and then watched the scary movie adaption of the book starring Natalie Portman. We all know that this method produces a steady stream of smooth returns making people think you are a genius until the inevitable disaster forces you to pawn off your Nobel Prize. We all know that shorting volatility will cause you to go insane with a twisted psycho-sexual obsession to master the art of ballet. It’s picking up pennies in front of a convexity steamroller. Knowing these facts we would like to pose a question...Which is riskier right now? Shorting a collateralized far out-of-the-money S&P 500 index put or buying a “risk-free” US treasury bond? Hint: Now the market for safety has an efficient frontier on par with the penny in front of the steamroller trade? If you don’t find that scary then you’re not paying attention.

A common theme among many of our insights is the reality that lurks behind the proposed perception of many of our economic, financial, and political leaders' projections. From Spain not needing a bailout to Juncker's lies, from Bernanke's transitory inflation to Dimon's not needing TARP, the list is endless. Artemis Capital, whose insights we have discussed here and here, use the metaphor of the impossible object (e.g. Penrose Triangle or Necker's Cube) to explore the role of perception in modern markets, monetary policy, and risk. In a world where global central banks manipulate the cost of risk, the mechanics of price discovery have disengaged from reality resulting in paradoxical expressions of value that should not exist according to efficient market theory. Fear and safety are now interchangeable in a speculative and high stakes game of perception. The market is no longer an expression of the economy... it is the economy; and common sense says do not trust your common sense.

Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is broken. That is how we interpret Niels Jensen's (Absolute Return Partners) latest missive as he draws a concerning line between the number of managers who rely sheep-like on the diversifying 'artifacts' of MPT in a new normal world of undiversifiable systemic risks. The shifts in intra- and inter-asset class correlations (both long- and short-term) have been incredible both in terms of direction change and magnitude - for example (as Nielsen notes) - In the 2000-03 bear market commodities were an excellent diversifier against equity market risk with the two asset classes being virtually uncorrelated (+0.05). Nowadays, the two are highly correlated (+0.69). This shift to a risk-on / risk-off world, fed by central bankers, makes the empirical Sharpe ratios of olde and track records of your favorite balanced-fund manager entirely useless for any investor seeking protection from not just volatility risk but ultimate risk - the permanent loss of capital.

On ECB Q&A: Yawn! Can’t always be a rainmaker and light fireworks every month.