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Goodbye Bond Vigilantes, Hello Brent Vigilantes
The flood of Central Bank liquidity into the world's asset markets has worked wonders for the optics of 'wealth' in the last few years. While correlation is not causation, the divergence from any sense of fundamental reality (and sheer miracle expectations of the future) simply reflect back to the leaking of that central bank liquidity into risk markets everywhere. However, there appears to be a limiter - or self-governor - that comes along every few months to tap the world's 'belief in economic miracles' on the shoulder. That 'self-regulator" is almost beyond the control of the central banks - it is simply, the cost of energy.
Time and again in the last few years, even as central bank balance sheets have risen inexorably, we get corrections in equity markets that bring them back to a fundamental reality, however briefly. The catalyst for those 'corrections' is hard to pin-point but a step back and we see that the flood of new money also spills out to anything that can't be printed (gold, silver, oil) and it is the latter that has a natural drag on the global economy. So, while the 'wealth' transmission mechanism is now the only policy tool left for central banks, it is the price of Oil that caps that upside thanks to its impact at the margin of a fragile global economy.
Nowhere is this more clear than in Europe, where each time Brent crosses above $120 (helped by central bank largesse), macro-economic surprises start to deteriorate rapidly and markets fade. We are close to $120 (Brent) once again now... With government bonds in US and Europe 'managed' so well, the vigilantes have left the building - and moved to the Crude oil pits...
The same is evident in the US - with $100 WTI apparently the trigger...
which makes one wonder what is driving the Brent-WTI spread divergence (aside from fundamentals which we discussed previously) as it seems $100 is desperately defended in WTI and Brent left to wonder. But judging by today's move - they are starting to lose the battle...
The Brent VigilantesTM are back in charge...
(h/t SocGen)
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EROEI meets absolute destruction of the fiat currency system, bitchez.
EROEI is interesting but has issues:
http://connectrandomdots.blogspot.com/2012/07/test-post.html
I love the concept of negative entropy use!
Also these boundary issues are often not addressed. Good post; <TY!
Yes, works great until the sun runs out of nuclear fuel. And then there is that issue of the flux required to feed and maintain a certain standard of living for 7+ billion people. The long and short of it all is to invest resources wisely, period.
Since 2000, each incremental dollar (euro, yen or other currency) produces less crude than the dollar before. That is, today’s dollar produces less crude than yesterday’s dollar, tomorrow’s dollar will produce less crude than today’s. What is important is the relationship between the real cost of gaining fuel relative to the ability of the customers to meet this cost. This relationship is driven by the need of the driller to spend more in order to return less: this is net energy, it is currently declining, at some point net energy will become negative, that is, the use of energy will not provide returns, in the form of credit, sufficient to bring new energy supplies to the market.
http://www.economic-undertow.com/2013/01/23/net-energy-end-game-theory/
However dire you think the situation is, your thinking is not dire enough.
burning wood bitchez $190 a cord.. same as last year.
FUCK YOU BERNANKE!
We are witnessing the death of the petro dollar. If you think oil is a bitch now just wait until war gets fully priced in.
Oh yeah? Well, well, well...uhm....you can't eat oil!!!
Thankfully this is all excluded from Core Inflation. Whew!
war is "priced" in immigration
Well if motherfucker A bought WTI contracts at $90 he definitely wants the price to hit $100 or more to maximize the value of the contracts he bought. Fundamentals and consumers be damned. The motherfucker has to feed his motherfucking kids right? After he buys a new house in the Hamptons and a new Bentley, but the kids have to eat. I mean if the contracts go to $80 he might have to settle for Porsche Cayman, and a 4500 sq ft home, how will the kids play in less than 5000 sq ft? The kids might have to settle for *gasp* Princeton!!!!
adr you make a good point but you completely miss the balls in the face factor. As crude crosses over higher and higher benchmarks the economy falls apart. As it becomes impossible to hide the crumbling macro picture, when asked why the market continually goes higher in the face of that, the MSM pundits lose the ability to bullshit fake data and resort to pulling their pants down and yelling "HOW U LIKE MY BALLS IN YOUR FACE!"
It is not until after the massive balls in your face rally that we can look for the appropriate 2-4% correction and better entry point.
Well if motherfucker A bought WTI @ $90 and it went to $80 then motherfucker A would lose money dumbass. Anyway, you remind me of my brother and his family. They live in the sticks (nothing wrong with that) I live in a large city. He constantly complains about the price "he" has to pay for gas because of the evil speculators (me - No mention of the EFD actions). He owns 4 trucks, 4 4-wheeler's, and several boats and every little gas guzzling toy on the planet. I rarely, if ever, drive a car (public trans) and I own a bike. He (his family) uses more gas in a month than I'll use all fucking year.
And I'm the 'evil one? Blow me - you're an idiot and I make money using your ignorance in my favor.
Fill that fucker up - I want $115 WTI.
anyone who owns 4 trucks and several boats etc. sounds like a real dumb fuck for complaining about the price of anything.
That is my point.
You don't want $115 WTI, that means $135 Brent with the wheels coming off the economies, everywhere. Afterward is -$70 WTI.
You don't want $70 WTI either b/c it shuts in Bakken and deepwater along with tar sands and a lot of new plays in places like Russia and Brazil. There are shortages that don't push the price but cause job losses and bankruptcies instead. This causes the WTI price to fall further. This shuts in more crude, causes more shortages, triggers more bankruptcies ... in a vicious cycle. It is the analog to Irving Fisher's 'debt deflation' ... 'fuel deflation'.
Even if you don't want $70 WTI yr going to get it anyway. A lot of folks are going to own large, hollow metal paperweights.
WTI Oil monthly shows retracement still completing.
http://bullandbearmash.com/chart/wti-oil-monthly-completing-wave-2/
As the economy slows, so too will consumption - one part of the equation. The other is anyone's guess - who will game the system and shut down production?
Thx a lot Zerohedge.
It's been few months already I've been trying to get this conclusion across. Crude oil price controls everything, PERIOD.
Thx a million.
I would even say that any dollar of Brent crude price above $80, is where the economy goes excrement.
ekm, yes.
Think energy wars.
Its where reality bisects fantasy.
Fully agree.
Don’t forget the wild cards.
Obama… SPR… Empty tankers waiting to store JPM crude
Maybe it does not have anything to do with inventories or demand if they don’t want it to..
at least for a while.
Economy has literally stalled. Nothing moves. Oil is in tankers.
Bush at least was gentleman enough to make a great gift to Obama: Give the order to flood the market with oil from JPM tankers and SPR.
That's why oil went down to $35.
I've been saying it and I will say it again: WTI will go as low as $15 temporarily, after Obama gives the order to unload the tankers, very, very, very soon. There's no way around it. Economy is dead, literally.
Sept Baltic dry index crashed to 89' levels, it has not recovered.
The pipeline of raw materials to be used to create real value (products) stands at a trickle.
Industrial production has plummeted for all the big players.
This is reality, various permutations of CB easing do not create value, it creates an illusion.
Look to actual energy use for truth.
The truth is...
Our financial world has crashed, and living on make believe life support.
Brilliant, simply brilliant.
Life support is a bad example. No offense. It's like watching he loud drunk guy at the bar knowing of he does one more shot he is gonna barf and drop dead of alcohol poisioning....Yet the damn guy keeps doing another shot.
And you know what his advice is about the best way to get rid of his hangover: "bro, i get up the next morning and I just rip another shot, hangover gone!"
Hey fonz lemme ask you something, whats the best book on investing youve read, every investor has a bible in one way or another, whats yours?
I have a 3yr old so my reading and free time has substantially fallen off. But I read the shit out of everything when i was younger. I don't really have an investing bible because I have ebbed and flowed over the years with my philosohies. So I never really ended up anchoring myself to one particular book or author.
I will tell you what my favorite book is overall though. "For whom the bell tolls". I can pick that book up any day. You?
Read MARGIN OF SAFETY by Seth Klarman and you'd have no need to read anything else.
Just google it.
I know you have mentioned it a few times ekm. I do plan on reading that.
Download it before it disappears.
funny I vaguely remember reading it cost like a grand or something.
For me its the opposite, I couldnt possibly name a single favorite book, but I consider the best (academic) book on investing ive ever read to be Expected Returns by Antti Ilmanen, a true financial genius who used to run Norways sovereign wealth fund
http://www.amazon.com/Expected-Returns-Investors-Harvesting-Rewards/dp/1...
(dont let all the 'establishment' praise fool you, it is fucking brilliant this book)
To be honest (with both you and ekm)....5 years ago I would have went right out and purchased both books and had them read by next week. You know what I find to be the most successful investment method to investing is now? The monkey method. I have a set of companies that tend to consistently miss earnings. They get creamed. I wait a few days and then I grab them. A few weeks later they have drifted higher and I'm out. I'd like to tell you that I have got quite good at it, but then I remember that a handicapped monkey could do it too. So I try not to let it go to my head.
In all seriousness I make sure I stay sharp. But I am trying to chill and enjoy the little things a bit more now that the Bernak has everything on cruise control. I have some life vests just in case though.
Thats interesting because Ilmanen (who was also portfolio manager for the central bank of Finland) analyzes basically every single investment strategy over the past 100 years and the concludes what works and what doesnt. What you describe, momentum/trend is one of the clear winners over time. Value also works. The interesting thing is he also notes people tend to overpay for both high and low volatility. They also tend to almost always overpay for growth which is why its surprisingly a poor performer on the long term. One of the very best things about it is the analysis of how to judge risk premia for illiquid assets.
check out this small interview or maybe read the first few pages on amazon if you have a free minute.
http://www.multifactorworld.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=44
U picked one hell of a time to get involved on here and throw around heavy investing information. I've been on here for a while. I am seeing the threads on here almost all begin with FK YOU.....(insert politician/Bernanke etc)
I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a thread of people trading actionable information on the stock market. Slaughterer seems like he has moved on. This site seems to be gaining in popularity and yet it is less about the market or investing everyday. It actually freaks me out a bit to realize I have not seen an investment thread on here in so long I can't remember.
lol, yeah thats what i was thinking that the other day... it really surprised me after I jumped in, because I didnt recall this site always being like this. I seem to remember there were useful and profound posts on here from time to time, but I have already in my short time here been rewarded with an automatic target for downvoting distinction so i guess thats speaks volumes about the current level of discourse here.
We all get serial junkers from time to time. The gold threads especially.going to watch that flick now.
you know what is interesting about Ilmanen's trend conclusions- The intuition behind the simple trend following approach is that while current market price is certainly the most relevant data point it is less certain whether the most appropriate comparison is the price a week ago or a month or a year ago.
So the use ofvarious technical rules beyond the very shortest time period (say, 50-100 days) is actually empirically established to give superior performance compared to long only investing
sick man, I cannot wait to get your take dude. That closing scene is a masterpiece
Taleb calls this the 'turkey method'.
Turkeys stand proud until...thanksgiving day. The collapse will be swift. If you're caught with all your money in, you're screwed.
Klarman writes as to how not to be a prey to predators.
yea i know the black swan, ilmanen discusses this also in terms of the liquidity preference which can be seen as the obverse of the lottery-ticket tendency: investors overpay for both low-volatility and high-volatility assets.
Take the carry trade, the carry trade is a bit of a puzzle since it seems too simple to work. You would expect currency investors to demand a higher yield as compensation for the risk of depreciation. Countries with high interest rates are normally those with high inflation rates and you would think such currencies would lose value over time.
But the carry trade has been persistently profitable for around 30 years. On average, investors have pocketed the higher yield without suffering any effects from depreciation.
Why has it worked? Ilmanen argues that a carry-trade strategy is akin to the actions of the seller, rather than the buyer, of lottery tickets. In most circumstances, the strategy appears to be profitable but then, on a few occasions, the numbers turn out badly.
As a result, a carry trade tends to go wrong at the moment when most other risky assets (equities, high-yield corporate bonds) are also suffering. It thus has the opposite characteristics to the short-term Treasury bill. As a result, Ilmanen conjectures, investors demand a higher return as compensation for the risk they are taking on.
Also: "Volatility selling and carry trading are often characterized as “picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.” Even more important than the asymmetric payoff is the terrible timing of the rare losses. Because the steamroller tends to arrive at the worst times (financial crises, sharp bear markets), these strategies resemble selling financial catastrophe insurance. Based on the key insights of modern financial theory, investments whose losses tend to coincide with bad times warrant particularly high required risk premia. These two premia are closely related to equity market directional risk, especially in sharp downmoves, yet they are sufficiently different that they should be considered distinct return sources."
Hey ekm, ive also thought of downloading klarmans book but never got around to it (also heard mixed reviews in the vein of: you can save a lot of time and read benjamin graham) but id like to check it out for myself. Is it easy to find or can you post a link where to find it? Thanks
just gogle it
More importantly, do they hungrily sniff the Pope's fresh poop like the Chinese Servants did for Pu Yi?
This is the fate of asset inflation: deflation. But only,of course, once the economy on the ground has been so decimated that you are talking about a complete collapse in demand.
Funny how that economy on the ground, keeps dragging you down!!!
Where are the long gold vigilantes? or the mining vigilantes? let's try something different for a change.
Oh ho, me Bucko, don't you and I both think that would be just peachy
the gold-oil convergence will be a bitch for goldbugz bitchez
A number of countries are already using gold in petroleum transactions. The west doesn't appreciate that much. Dismissing it as "tradition" and a "barbarous relic" isn't quite working anymore. Pretty soon owning gold will make you an America-hating terrorist.
i have no argument against using gold as a medium of exchange but rather with the current exchange rate of 17 bbls oil/oz gold. It should be closer to 12X imo. How we get there is open for debate but that we will get there is quite probable.
Big Perm, gold vigilantes are hiding under the bed and mining vigilantes are considering suicide ( the ones that are left,that is) while the CEO's of said, are busy sucking on Bens manboob.
Ben, use your bond hoard as collateral to short oil futures.
Poor Bernanke, he forgot one of his most basic economic lessons, "The Tragedy of the Commons". Sooner or later someone was bound to get greedy and break ranks. After all the Russel was getting so expensive and oil looks so cheap. He thought that they trusted him with their money but really they were just on board until it got shakey.
Soon it will be profitable again to kill whales for oil!
WHO WANTS TO GO HUNTING WITH ME!!??!!??
Get your JGBs, backed by radioactive blubber
Whatever it takes to get the DeLorean to 88mph so I can go have a coke binge in 1984...
I know a good whaling song........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0JrV86EKCs&list=AL94UKMTqg-9AvXJjoVTLDKVu0vlXAo0bN
Absolutly correct article,the each time the brent oil touches 95$ level Goldy Sachen takes its hair hand into it and we see like today jump by 1-2 $ up,this kind of clounade soon will show to us how money given by FED to institutions which ruined game by derivatives now had blown derivativ markets even more,look all those ETFs around each index which deliver into pockets of Bank institutions issied it and no into economy,75% ot its money investors and Pention funds giving to nowhere,but support same crooks.Visit us and share your thoughts about our new page:
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It seems every week there is a new "crush the monkey" going on in some stock, Fiat, or commodity...
Whenever I see the word "vigilante" on my screen I'm reminded of a comic book that fed my childoood : the Ox bow incident.
I guess it was fed by the Nazi totalitarian rage of that age, and a resultant knee jerk of the "liberal" US community to this Nazi treatment, in name of good ole Americanism...
Anyways, I don't like that type of person, like the Templars and Jihadists, they rub me up the wrong way as prejudiced people who can't entertain that as humans "doubt" is their first duty; to not kill innocents; worst crime in name of justice.
I need a drink after that to feel groovy...ZEN!
L'étrange incident (1943) - IMDb
I know that there is an untapped iron mine sitting on under my land :)
As I said,
The Financial Collapse will knock Western Civ. to the Floor
But Peak Oil will KEEP it on the mat.
This article is the vindication of the second half of that.
I sometimes wonder how TPTB can cap gold and silver so effectively but not oil.
It just dawned on me for whatever reason TPTB do not want oil capped.....
Maybe to use as leverage to push for more drilling in the arctic? Line pockets of oil execs that grease the politicians?
For whatever reason TPTB are content to watch oil rise.............
You have it wrong.
Oil is bought at the refinery. Not the NYMEX. The refinery doesn't care what NYMEX says.
In general, the value of everything EXCEPT oil is imaginary -- money, gold, silver . . . none existed in the garden of eden.
Oil's value is 5.6 million BTUs/barrel, and that existed before the garden of eden.
So TPTB can not control the price of oil.........that makes as much sense as they dont want to and probably even more sense..........thank you !!
Nod.
Consider this carefully when trying to "figure out when this shit ends" or "what's going to take it down".
They can do all kinds of things by decree -- abolish debt, tax gold transactions at 60%, redefine currencies.
What they cannot do is dictate there to be more than 5.6 million BTUs in a barrel. Want a real education? Go back through the 20th century and look at oil's production around times of economic hardship or booms.
The Great Depression that started in 1929 was right after a US dip in oil output -- even though civilization was not yet entirely dependent on it (partially so then). Reagan's boom years of the 1980s just happened to arrive when Alaskan oil did.
Economics is bullshit. It's just a shroud of delusion draped around physics.
The Fed has become the entire asset market's vigilante. The Fed is telling the world economy....buy equities...in fact they have been telling everyone this for sometime.
Seems like the Chinese would rather buy gold or real estate in the western world, however.
Peak Oil bitchez.
Forget stacking PM's Bitchez....stack Horses!
The brent vigilantes have always started it. Same was true in the 70's as was in the millenium. Brent crude started going through the roof in 2002. Interest rates had to start spiking in 2004. We know the mess this combo made in 2007.
Oil needs to stop its latest zigzag and start testing the 2008 highs, then there will be no denying the inflation.
Will we get there?
I thinks da bernank gots to be thinkin dat if da price of black gold be spikin, he be sendin da sign for his homeys to start takin profits like a mother, sendin da market down 5 po-cent in a hizzy.
I would love to see a legal challenge against the Fed, huge class action of millions of humans. That money printing feeds directly into oil inflation/hedge trades. Bring up all the books of the London futures on Brent every time CB's, more so the Fed printing, traders load up on Brent futures, crowd the market and make a killing. Nice huh?
Now that we are a c-hair away from a war between Japan and China (energy wars i.e for the Nat gas)...
Over to you HFTs.
We also be walkin a razors edge with war between the european isrealites and da Iran Imams