RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 13/08/10

Easily the most feared technical pattern in all of chartism (for the bullishly inclined) is the dreaded Hindenburg Omen. Those who know what it is, tend to have an atavistic reaction to its mere mention. Those who do not, can catch up on its implications courtesy of Wikipedia, but in a nutshell: "The Hindenburg Omen is a technical analysis that attempts to predict a forthcoming stock market crash. It is named after the Hindenburg disaster of May 6th 1937, during which the German zeppelin was destroyed in a sudden conflagration." Granted, the Hindenburg Omen is not a guarantee of a crash, and the five criteria that must be met for a Hindenburg trigger typically need to reoccur within 36 days for reconfirmation. Yet the statistics are startling: "Looking back at historical data, the probability of a move greater than 5% to the downside after a confirmed Hindenburg Omen was 77%, and
usually takes place within the next forty-days." The last Hindenburg Omen occurred during the lows of 2009. Today, we just had another (unconfirmed) Hindenburg Omen. It is time to batten down the hatches - something big is coming.

Ideally, reforming the government-controlled mortgage financing
behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would achieve three goals:

1) Minimize the government’s balance sheet risk from a future collapse in home prices.

2) Promote a more constructive pricing of risk that isn’t distorted by government guarantees.

3) Avoid an increase in borrowing costs that could come as the
government’s role is redefined. (Well, this goal might not be ideal:
There is something to be said for a world of lower home prices and
higher market-based credit costs, but any idea that produces that
result seems a political non-starter.)

John Carney's New York Times op-ed piece is a tour de force, a paean to nonsensical thinking. In, "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Too Big Not to Fail," Carney ignores the Fannie and Freddie of the real world. Instead, he goes after the Fannie and Freddie that exist only in his imagination.

Apparently what is good enough for Greenlight, SAC, Citadel and Goldman, is not quite up to snuff for Och-Ziff. The 7 West 57th-based, $25.6 billion AUM, hedge fund believes that it should be exempt from responding in an ongoing investigation by the bankrupt Lehman estate, which is probing the abovementioned hedge funds whether they engaged in rumormongering that may have brought down Lehman Brothers. And Lehman is unhappy: in a filing from the Lehman bankruptcy docket, the state claims that "Och-Ziff, one of the world's largest hedge funds, was involved with, or has information that pertains to, the "short-and distort" efforts." If this is indeed true, it is not very surprising that "Och-Ziff has already begun stonewalling to attempt to prevent this information from seeing the light of day by interposing frivolous and dilatory objections to the Debtors' Rule 2004 Subpoena." As the Lehman examination has already proven to be a gold mine for illegal practices conducted by Wall Street, we would not be surprised if the most recent 2004 investigation uncovers some new and even more shocking results. To be sure, Zero Hedge has never been a fan of the "short selling raid" theory - fair value can and always will find a way to creep up to the surface, unless of course it doesn't exist in the first place, like in Lehman's case. Additionally, funds would have to be extra stupid to keep written evidence of this kind of complicit and illegal activity. Which is why Och-Ziff's response is perplexing. And if the estate had credible reason to pursue Och-Ziff, we can only imagine the same must be true about Greenlight, SAC, Citadel and Goldman. Suddenly the Lehman bankruptcy case became interesting all over again.

Today's main winning asset class was gold, with ongoing weakness across most other assets, except for bonds of course, which continues to price in concerns about deflation. The divergence we noted so frequently last week, between stocks and bonds is now a thing of the past, and has been replaced by that between gold and bonds. Yet gold rise is hardly driven on expectations of inflation as oil, another much more inflation sensitive commodity tanked. In other words, the QE lite thesis is playing out as predicted, although Goldman's prediction yesterday about a surge in gold likely also put the idiot mutual fund money in the spot bid. Technically, gold is parked at resistance at the highest level over the past 40 days. All those who have been frothing about an imminent liquidation-induced plunge like that experienced on July 16, have been silenced. Should the 1,220 resistance be breached tomorrow, the next level to keep track of will be the record highs from June.