High Yield

We can certainly "hope" that the markets will continue to march endlessly higher. However, "hope" has never been an effective portfolio management strategy. Considering that the decline in oil prices is supposed to good for the consumer, even though personal spending declined in the most recently reported period, the decline in dividends will certainly have a negative effect on those depending on those dividends. The current detachment between spending and the stock market will likely be corrected rather harshly at some point.

Hillary Clinton isn’t a lock for the 2016 Elections: Google searches for US Senator Elizabeth Warren surpassed the former US Secretary of State just last month with a ratio of 6 to 5. Interest in bowling (+85% since October) is growing faster than Facebook (-4%) and Youtube (-2%), and there is a lot more interest in smoking marijuana than tobacco (58 vs. 19 on average). Those are just three of the surprising findings from ConvergEx's latest survey of social engagement using Google Trends.

After the delayed 5 Year auction took place 90 minutes ago, and priced strongly well through the When Issued, it was the turn of the last for this week auction of $29 billion in  7 Year paper, which just concluded and, somewhat surprisingly, was the worst of all auctions this week: not only did it tail modestly, pricing at 1.59%, a 0.4 bps tail wider than the 1.586% WI, but the Bid To Cover also was just modestly anove last month's 2.388, at 2.499, below the TTM average of 2.56. To be sure, a key factor for this superficial weakness was that the high yield of 1.59% was the lowest since May of 2013, as a result all those who have booked major profits in last month's auction pricing at 2.13 likely had far less of an incentive to get involved here.

As we previously noted, yesterday's 2 Year auction was an absolute blockbuster and accurately guessed the general direction of the bond market following yesterday's FOMC announcement. Moments ago, the US Treasury sold $35 billion in 5 Year paper, the first of two Note auctions, with the 7 Year due at 1pm today, and like yesterday it too was a very strong auction, with the High Yield tumbling from 1.739% last month, when most were assuming a rate hike is imminent to just 1.288%, stopping through the 1.295% When Issued, and suggesting that the relentless collateral shortage of the past 2 years simply refuses to go away. This was also the lowest closing yield of a 5 Year auction since May 2013.

If anyone is seeing a rate hike announcement on the imminent horizon, it sure isn't the exuberant buyers of today's 2 Year auction.

This time the global slowdown has fewer places to hide. Perhaps we can “thank” monetary policy for that, highlighting deficiency wherever “extraordinary” policies have been proclaimed as highly “necessary.” In other words, the very fact that a central bank has “had” to institute something as disruptive as QE is not much of a solution but rather a marker of everything wrong. Nowhere is this reality more evident than in the evolution of at least credit market thinking on the subject, viewing the decrepit state of the actual economy now more appropriately; moving in the “wrong” direction. There is, again, perhaps something to that sharp bearish turn in December.

"I think equity markets will get devastated," warns famed $12bn AUM hedge fund manager Crispin Odey in his latest letter to investors. Having been one of the biggest bulls of this particular central bank artificial-bull cycle, his dramatic bearish tilt (as we discussed what he thinks are the biggest risks underpriced by the market previously), is notable. Finally, Odey fears major economies are entering a recession that will be "remembered in a hundred years," adding that the "bearish opportunity" to short stocks looks as great as it was in 2007-2009.

Remaining fully invested in the financial markets without a thorough understanding of your "risk exposure" will likely not have the desirable end result you have been promised. All five of the charts below have linkages to each other, and when one goes, they will all go. So pay attention to the details.

We still have a LONG way to go to catch up with Oil, Copper, and Junk Bonds.

We are observing the emergence of a new phase in The Golden Age of the Central Banker – the cult phase – to use the sociological lingo. Joseph Heller’s brilliant book provides the starting point, not only by calling attention to the prevalence and power of Catch-22’s in the investment world today, but also in the creation of a self-regulated, faith-based system of social behavior. A Catch-22 world is not a happy world, but it is a very stable world, at least on its own terms. Change is very unlikely to come from within, and internal market risk indicators are all quite benign. But external market risk indicators are all screaming red, as the global environment has rarely been this worrisome for political shocks, trade/forex shocks, and supply shocks with the scope and power to challenge the Central Banking gods.

Why does one believe the word “catastrophe” was used by The Fed's Charlie Evans? Hmmmmm? After all, the very articulated and polished minutes of what members expressed to one another as to set the current policy was just made public. We thought the verbiage of choice was now “patient.” Unless... You know you’ve either lost, or in the process, of losing control of the markets ear. In our opinion, this is an unveiled showing of possible outright panic developing behind the proverbial curtain.

While the trading world, or at least the kneejerk reaction algos, is focused on today's US nonfarm payrolls due out in just 2 hours (consensus expects 240K, with unemployment declining from 5.8% to 5.7%) the key event overnight came out of China, (where inflation printed at just 1.5% while PPI has imploded from -1.8% in September to -2.2% in October to -2.7% in November to a whopping -3.3% in December because as per BofA "soft domestic demand over-capacity issue have kept inflation pressures low") and Europe, after a Bloomberg report that as recently as Wednesday, ECB staff "presented policy makers with models for buying as much as 500 billion euros ($591 billion) of investment-grade assets... options included buying only AAA-rated debt or bonds rated at least BBB-, the euro-area central bank official said. Governors took no decision on the design or implementation of any package after the presentation." In other words less than two weeks before the fateful ECB meeting and Mario Draghi not only still hasn't decided on which of three public QE version he will adopt, but the ECB has reverted back to a private QE plan. Not surprisingly the EURUSD jumped back over 1.18 on the news (and USDJPY and stock markets dropped) on the news that Europe still is completely unsure how to proceed with QE despite the endless jawboning.

For those hoping that the recent brief dip in Brent crude below $50 - most notably Venezuela's intrepid socialist leader Nicolas Maduro whose numbered days get shorter with every day Brent closes red, and countless bondholders of junk- debt capitalized shale companies - would mean that Saudi Arabia's vendetta against OPEC would finally be put on hiatus, we have bad news: the vendetta just wen nuclear because as Reuters reports, there is "no chance of OPEC output cut."

After subdued trading in the overnight session until a little after 8pm Eastern, algos went into overdrive just around the time the Fed's 2015 voting member and uberdove Charlie Evans told reporters that "raising rates would be a catastrophe", hinting that the first rate hike would likely be - as usual - pushed back from market expectations of a mid-2015 liftoff cycle into 2016 or beyond (but don't blame the US, it is the "international situation's" fault), in the process punking the latest generation of Eurodollar traders yet again. Whatever the thinking, S&P futures soared on the comments and were higher by just under 20 points at last check even as Crude has failed to pick up and the 10Y is barely changed at 2.00%.