High Yield

It is hard to believe that the end of the year is fast approaching.  This weekend's list of things to ponder covers a range of issues that caught our attention this week. Will the economy continue to grow, are stocks under owned, what about Fed - rising credit risk (and collapsing credit risk premia) and the question of "when or if to taper?"  These are all important questions that all investors must answer as the new year rapidly approaches.

The following Top Ten Market Themes, represent the broad list of macro themes from Goldman Sachs' economic outlook that they think will dominate markets in 2014.

1. Showtime for the US/DM Recovery
2. Forward guidance harder in an above-trend world
3. Earn the DM equity risk premium, hedge the risk
4. Good carry, bad carry
5. The race to the exit kicks off
6. Decision time for the ‘high-flyers’
7. Still not your older brother’s EM...
8. ...but EM differentiation to continue
9. Commodity downside risks grow
10. Stable China may be good enough

They summarize their positive growth expectations: if and when the period of stability will give way to bigger directional moves largely depends on how re-accelerating growth forces the hands of central banks to move ahead of everybody else. And, in practice, that boils down to the question of whether the Fed will be able to prevent the short end from selling off; i.e. it's all about the Fed.

Treasuries rallied 4-6bps on the day (with the POMO-driven belly outperforming). The USD dumped back its knee-jerk gains on Europeans trying desparately to talk down the EUR early on. High yield credit banged higher into the close. VIX was man-handled back under 12.5% (despite being bid early). Oh - and every US equity market malted up in an insane intrday swing which seems to be pinned on the back of expctations Yellen will open her shirt tomorrow showing a big red "S" on it. So while every flow-driven market banged higher in a mad scramble of un-tapery goodnesss, gold went sideways and silver was monkey-hammered (-4.5% on the week). The last 3 days have seen "most shorted" names double the market's performance. Nasdaq's swing from low to high is the largest positive intraday move for the index in 5 months!

While on the surface today's bond auction of "only" $32 billion in 2 Year paper (last month and previously it was $33 billion or more, which is now declining alongside the dropping US deficit and net funding needs, if not the absolutely flat amount of debt monetized by the Fed), was uninspiring, there was some stirring beneath the surface. Specifically, the high yield of 0.323% was through the When Issued of 0.328%, while the Bid To Cover of 3.32 was above last month's 3.09, and was the highest since the 3.63 in April. Has the trend of declining Bids to Cover finally ended? Looking at the internals shows a return to some recent normalcy, namely that the Directs took down a substantial 30.97%, the highest since February, Indirects had a modest 29.02% allocation leaving just 40% to the Dealers, which was also the lowest Primary Dealer take down since October of last year. Perhaps most importantly, the flatline in the yield which has been in the 0.3% range since August 2011 indicates that absolutely nobody belives the Fed will hike rates any time before 2016.

This week marked what we suspect will become an important inflection point when the world looks back at this debacle of a bubble. The Fed, having already warned in January of 'froth' in credit markets (and ths the fuel for 'hope' in stocks) proposed tougher underwriting standards for leveraged loans. Credit markets have underperformed since; but as Diapason Commodities' Sean Corrigan notes, the baleful impact of the central banks is still everywhere to be seen in the credit markets. From junk issuance to the rapid regrowth of the CDO business to the 'record' high multiples now being exchanged for LBOs; Central Banker's monomaniacal fixation on zero interest rates and artificial bond pricing is setting us up for the next, great disaster of misallocated capital and malinvested resources.

"We see upside surprise risks on gold and silver in the years ahead," is how UBS commodity strategy team begins a deep dive into a multi-factor valuation perspective of the precious metals. The key to their expectation, intriguingly, that new regulation will put substantial pressure on banks to deleverage – raising the onus on the Fed to reflate much harder in 2014 than markets are pricing in. In this view UBS commodity team is also more cautious on US macro...

All of these things are not like the other... except one!

Despite stock (not bond) euphoria yesterday that a DC debt ceiling deal was sealed leading to the second largest risk ramp of 2013, last night was spent diffusing the excitement as one after another politician talked back the success of a "non-deal" that Obama rejected, at least according to the NYT. As a result, with both retail sales data and the PPI not being released (and the only data of note the always leaked UMichigan consumer confidence) markets will again be at the behest of developments on Capitol Hill, with some talk from Republicans suggesting a deal as early as today could be possible in an effort to reopen government on Monday. It is entirely possible that talks could continue over the weekend though, which would ensure a gappy open to Asian markets on Monday.

For all expectations of a big jump in US futures overnight on the largely priced in Janet Yellen nomination announcement which is due at 3 pm today, the move so far has been very much contained, as expected, with a modest 90 minute halflife, as the markets' prevailing concern continues to be whether the debt ceiling negotiation will be concluded by the October 17 deadline or if it would stretch further forcing the government to prioritize payments. There is however some hope with Bloomberg reporting that some possible paths out of the debt impasse are starting to emerge with less than a week before U.S. borrowing authority lapses after Obama said he could accept a short-term debt-limit increase without policy conditions that set the terms for future talks. Whether this materializes or just leads to more empty posturing and televized press conferences is unclear, although as Politico reports, the stakes for republicans are getting increasingly nebulous with some saying they are "losing" the fight, while the core GDP constituency is actually liking the government shutdown.

Following today's explosive 4 Week Bill auction which priced at the highest yield since October 2008, the subsequent $30 billion 3 Year auction was rather anticlimatic. While the WI had been rising modestly all day, the final high yield of 0.71% was through the When Issued 0.719%, which was also the lowest since August, following the pre-Taper fears blow out in short-term yields in September when it priced at 0.913%. Still, the Bid To Cover was hardly anything to write home about, which at 3.048 was the lowest since June and higher only than the 2.946 from June, going back all the way late 2010. The ongoing decline in Bids to Cover is very obvious in the chart below. The internals indicated a modest increase in Indirect Bidders, which took down 34.4% of the auction, compared to the 28% TTM average, leaving 19.7% to the Directs, in line with the trailing twelve month average, and 45.8% to Dealers, below the 52.7% TTM average. Overall, the fear in the bond market continues to be confined to the ultra-short term bonds, where fears of a technical default in the next month is all focused on the next month, but for now is confined solely there.

Another signal for investors around the world to buckle their seatbelts.

If yesterday's 5 Year auction was largely unremarkable, today's issuance of $29 billion in 7 Year paper was downright weak. Of note: the high yield of 2.058% tailing well above, or nearly 1 basis point wider, compared to the When Issued which was trading at 2.049%. This was the largest tail since June 2012 according to SMRA calculation. Additionally while the 2.46 Bid To Cover was not a new four year low, it was the second lowest since May 2009, and only better compared to last month's 2.43 BTC in the August revulsion of an auction. The internals were less exciting with Directs taking down 17.8%, Indirects 42%, and the balance, or 40.21% going to Dealers. Over all, a very weak auction and the Bid to Cover rate is most certainly continuing its downward trajectory now that the future of Fed TSY backstops in perpetuity is in question.

Frequent readers will recall that in the past, on several occasions, we expected that MBIA would rise due to two key catalysts: a massive short interest and the expectation that a BAC settlement would provide the company with much needed liquidity. That thesis played out earlier this year resulting in a stock price surge that also happened to be the company's 52 week high. However, now that we have moved away from the technicals and litigation catalysts, and looking purely at the fundamentals, it appears that MBIA has a new problem. One involving Zombies. These freshly-surfacing problems stem from a particular pair of Zombie CLO’s – Zombie-I and Zombie-II (along with Zombie-III, illiquid/black box middle-market CLO’s).  While information is  difficult to gather, we have heard that MBIA would be lucky to recover much more than $400 million from the underlying insured Zombie assets over the next three years, which would leave them with a nearly $600 million loss on their $1 billion of exposure which would materially and adversely impact the company's liquidity.  And as it may take them a while to liquidate assets in a sure-to-be contentious intercreditor fight – their very own World War Z – MBIA may well have to part with the vast majority of the $1 billion in cash, before gathering some of the potential recovery.

The best summary of what has (not) been going on in the downward drifting equity markets comes from DB's Jim Reid, quoting: "Markets are in non-panicky limbo at the moment ahead of the upcoming US budget debate. US equities fell for the 5th day in row (S&P 500 -0.27%) and although this is the worst run since the Christmas/New Year’s Eve period of 2012 (due to the fiscal cliff debacle), the cumulative fall is only -1.9% over this decline. Meanwhile Treasuries hit a 7-week low in yield as they recorded their 12th decline in the last 14 days." As has been the case over the past week, stocks in Asia have generally traded lower with the exception of the Nikkei225 which day after day continues to do its insane penny stock thing, first dropping -1.5% only to close up 1.2% on absolutely no news, but some chatter the Abe administration would raise the sales tax on October 1, only to offset the fiscal benefit by lowering corporate tax.  How this has any net impact is beyond us. Proceeding to Europe, stocks failed to sustain the initial higher open and moved into negative territory, with Italian asset classes underperforming, as market participants digested reports citing Italian MP Gasparri saying that PdL lawmakers are ready to quit if Berlusconi is ousted. This in turn saw a number of Italian banking stocks come under intense selling pressure, with the Italian/German yield spread widening in spite of supportive reinvestment flows that are due this week.

It has been a quiet start to Quadruple Witching Friday (expiration of stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures) but expect that to change, as erratic price action is a recurring hallmark of Quad Witches, especially with persistent low volume and markets that tend to shut down for no reason. So far stocks have traded steady in Europe this morning, credit spreads widened and Bunds traded in positive territory as market participants positioned for the much-anticipated German elections which are to be held on Sunday, with exit polls to be made available after the close of polling stations at 6pm local time. Ahead of that, and as reported here previously, Germany’s AfD Eurosceptic party could win enough support in the general election on Sunday to gain seats in the German Bundestag, an opinion poll published for a leading newspaper has forecast for the first time. Basic materials and utilities underperformed in Europe, with RWE trading sharply lower in Germany after the company announced plans to cut its dividend by half (and with the Adidas fiasco yesterday, one wonders just how bad things in Europe really are).