High Yield

The reason the market is up today? Jefferies' Peter Misek hikes his price target on Apple from $800 tio $900 (the same AAPL which is now supposed to grow almost exclusively in China, and where as Apple Insider just reported "China's second-largest carrier may end contract sales of Apple's iPhone"). Yes, middle market, $100-$200MM high yield bond issuer Jefferies has an equity research group. And yes, after working at JPmorgan, Scotia, Orion, Alpcap, and Canaccord in the past decade, Misek finally has found a place he can call home (for more than 2 years), or at least until the next bonus renegotiation-cum-upgrade option time. And yes, Jefferies actually is moving the volumeless market for the first and only time ever courtesy of 1.000 implied correlation between the NASDAPPLEURUSD. Which is great. Maybe Misek will be right here.,, Unlike his calls on DragonWave for example, where he was buying all the way from $7 until $2, in the interim moving his Price Target from $9.00 to $3.50 to $10.00 to $3.00. Peter likes even numbers. He keeps it simple, except for his $699 PT on AAPL back in March- why $699? "It's one iPad." Sometimes he likes it complicated.

Today was the lowest volume in S&P 500 e-mini futures (for a non-holiday trading day) in, well, bloody years (and NYSE volume was as dire as Monday's). Today's ES range, under 9 points, was the lowest in the last eight days of low ranges and in fact the eight-day range has only been this low a few times in the last few years and all but one of those marked a significant top. The S&P wavered around unch for most of the day with a US day-session-open ramp, post weak-data that signaled bad-is-good buying in Gold and stocks. Treasuries kept on leaking higher in yield, now up 12-16bps on the week as the USD meandered around unch on the week - with EUR weakness pulling it also back to unch on the week. VIX limped lower by 0.25 vols to 14.6 (after touching unch) but we do note that VVIX (the implied vol of VIX) has been diverging higher in the last two days but it's getting kinda crazy when we are looking at compound options for any signal. HY credit underperformed once again - with a quite ugly flush into the close (on heavy volume).

VIX has only rarely traded below 15% during 'new normal' times. The period from 2004 to early 2007, the so-called 'Great Moderation', saw VIX average 13.6% - at the time stunningly low (and notably where VIX closed yesterday). While looking at VIX alone can be misleading (with regard to the term structure differences and realized vol premia), it is nevertheless a gauge of market's expectations of return volatility in the short-term - however contemporaneous that is. Following the two times that VIX first closed below 15%, the S&P 500 has suffered from a 5.25% and 7.75% plunge in the following two months - and each time saw a quick post-VIX-plunge pop in stocks that provided better entry levels for shorts. High Yield credit also stumbled hard widening 80 and 150bps respectively.

Yes, there are call constraints. Yes, there are 'beta' differences. But, given the strong technicals (fund flows) and empirically high correlations between the much-more-like-stocks-than-bonds high-yield credit market and the equity market, the current divergence between equity ebullience and credit curmudgeon-ness is all-too-reminiscent of the post-LTRO2 sanity check that credit 'imposed' on equities. Not only are high-yield bonds underperforming stocks (as we warned last week), but the HYG ETF is now trading at a significant discount to intrinsic value which (back in March) was the start of a more pronounced downturn as cash bonds were force-sold into an illiquid market backdrop.

A few things have been going on in the world of high yield credit recently. While the 'beta' to recent interest rate weakness is low (spread duration reduces any empirical sensitivity here), the relative weakness on high-yield bonds in the last few days has been quite notable for the oh-so-high-beta 'safety' of high-yield credit. And while technicals (flows) dominate, the illiquidity in the cash bond market remains dire for any size and the massive 530k block sale at VWAP last night makes us nervous.

For the last four days, HYG (the high-yield bond ETF) has seen a significant underperformance in the latter part of the day. As we noted yesterday, high yield bonds (and investment grade) are seeing the advance-decline line rolling over. Stocks stand notably expensive relative to high-yield credit once again and VIX smashed over 1 vol lower from its gap up open at 16.5% to end at near 5 month lows under 15.25% - its most discounted/complacent to realized vol in over six months. A weak 10Y auction spurred Treasuries to underperform - which helped pull S&P 500 e-mini futures (ES) risk higher (along with oil strength) but in general stocks and gold tracked one another loosely higher while the USD pushed conversely higher - ending the week so far unch. Cross-asset-class correlations drifted lower all day - with credit and carry FX listless while stocks/oil/Treasuries did their risk-thang (though oil tapered back to lows of the day by the close as Gold/Copper/Silver trod water. Three days of terrible volume, even worse average trade size, and the lowest range in five months suggests anyone serious has left the building and perhaps explains why stocks aren't following credit lower.

The financial press is far behind in what the public would like or needs as evidenced by the outflow of money from equities and equity funds and into bonds and bond funds. The financial TV press is still fixated on stocks, addressing day traders that are a much smaller group of people than in times past and many shows treat investments as if they were some kind of casino enterprise. In other words, there is a lot of coverage that is directed towards speculators and not nearly enough directed toward investors. The bond markets are multiples of the size of the equity markets and coverage here is close to nil as retail and institutions alike concentrate much more on investing in bonds rather than putting their core money in equities. There is an old saying on Wall Street that to be successful one must “follow the money” and it is quite statistically evident that the money has flowed into fixed-income investments and that the financial press has not followed it. The investment world has changed and we encourage the media to grasp it and to change as a result.

So we have two weeks of sport to take our minds off the global financial malaise. The EU commissars have all gone on holiday, but not before Mario Draghi (ECB Chairman) announced that he will do whatever it takes to save the euro. Really? His statement did knock the Spanish 10 year bond yield back below 7%, but this had become a one way and illiquid trade that was due for break. We have seen it all before with Greece. Denial, denial, denial all the way until days before default restructuring. Talking of which, the Greeks think they are in line for a further handout. Those whirring sounds you can hear in the distance are printing presses knocking out “new” drachma.

While in principle central banks around the world can talk up the market to infinity or until the last short has covered without ever committing to any action (obviously at some point long before that reality will take over and the fact that revenues and earnings are collapsing as stock prices are soaring will finally be grasped by every marginal buyer, but that is irrelevant for this thought experiment) the reality is that absent more unsterilized reserves entering the cash starved banking system, whose earnings absent such accounting gimmicks as loan loss reserve release and DVA, are the worst they have been in years, the banks will wither and die. Recall that the $1.6 trillion or so in excess reserves are currently used by banks mostly as window dressing to cover up capital deficiencies masked in the form of asset purchases, subsequently repoed out. Which is why central banks would certainly prefer to just talk the talk (ref: Draghi et al), private banks demand that they actually walk the walk, and the sooner the better. One such bank, which has the largest legacy liabilities and non-performing loans courtesy of its idiotic purchase of that epic housing scam factory Countrywide, is Bank of America. Which is why it is not at all surprising that just that bank has come out with a report titled "Shipwrecked" in which it says that not only will (or maybe should is the right word) launch QE3 immediately, but the QE will be bigger than expected, but as warned elsewhere, will be "much less effective than QE1/QE2, both in terms of boosting risky assets and stimulating the economy."

Given the anticipation that is now built-in for next week's ECB meeting, we hope that Draghi has a little more up his sleeve than reviving the Treaty-testing, bondholder-subordinating SMP. Presented with little comment is the market's reaction during the last two periods of buying as it seems that Italian and Spanish bondholders are more than happy to know that there will always be a buyer no matter how much they keep selling their exposure down.

Yes, it's happened again. One of these markets is not like the other ones.

Anyone expecting fireworks in today's 30 Year bond auction, and hoping a repeat of yesterday's WTF 10 Year bond auction which saw the High Yield 6 bps inside the When Issued, will be disappointed. Yes, the auction priced at a record low yield of 2.58% (that said, only 40.64% was allotted at the high with a 2.436% low yield), and yes, this was again well through the When Issued 2.594%, but that's about as far as it goes: the Bid to Cover was 2.70, in line with the TTM average 2.64, Primary Dealers were stuck with 43.1% of the auction, below the average take down of just over half, while the key Directs took down 20.1% of the issue, which again was high, but nowhere near yesterday's soaring Direct activity, which led many to speculate that there could either be a collateral squeeze, or a rapid reallocation from the ECB's ZIRP cash into US paper (coupled with even more EURUSD repatriation as BAC has also figured out now, only one year after ZH). Bottom line a snooze, and next we look forward to two weeks from today, when the next trio of 2, 5, 7 year auctions is on deck, which just may send total US debt to $16 trillion.

Because I pay attention to these things; I have the sense that there has been a lot of praying recently. Prayers for QE3, prayers for Quantitative Easing mortgage bond buying, “Please SIR;” and for words to the effect in each and every FOMC minutes that “Money will be printed forever and ever Amen.”

“Now I know I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!”

                          -Homer Simpson

Now I hate to do this to you and I feel like the bad boy with the pin about to prick someone’s bubble but these prayers have gone unanswered as you know and are not likely to be answered any day soon unless Europe goes up in pixie dust which, while certainly possible, will be far more serious for the markets and will more than offset the Fed dragging out their printing presses and plugging them in once again.

Only one word to explain the just completed 10 year reopening auction. WTF!!! While the 10 year When Issued was trading at 1.516% at 1pm, when the release hit of the final High Yield on the bond, jaws dropped, as it came at a shocking 1.459%, nearly 6 bps inside of the WI, a record, a yield which also was a record, a Bid To Cover of 3.61 which was the second highest ever, second only to the 3.72 in April 2010, but it was the internals that were the most jarring of all. Unlike all recent auctions in the past 4 years, the Primary Dealer take down was only 14% a record low in recent years, and a hit rate of 6.8%, another record low. The offset: Directs, which took down a whopping 45.4%, another record, after tendering a record $16.9 billion in bids. All in all there was no definitive reason to explain why this auction was so very, very off the charts, and so mispriced by the secondary market, suffice to say WTF, and that this is what happens when there continues to be just one game in town: frontrun the Fed! Three possibilities: i) either someone was caught massively wrong-footed going into the auction and covered a massive short into the primary market, ii) capital reallocation from European money market funds which as we explained last week are now all dead, or iii) some "Direct" entity somewhere, has a gaping need for good collateral and would literally pay anything for US paper ahead of an even bigger margin call. The reason we say this is that only 51.7% of the auction priced at the high yield (remember: Dutch Auction): and the low yield was 1.36% - someone, supposedly a Direct Bidder, was in a furious rush to get any paper, at any price. If the latter, we will find out very soon.

We believe that we are in the early stages of what will happen with LIBOR.  As we wrote yesterday, we believe there are two distinct phases the pre-crisis phase which saw potential manipulation of small amounts in both directions, and the crisis phase where LIBOR was allegedly much lower than the rate at which banks would realistically lend to each other.  Much of this is supported by the FSA case against Barclays. If lawsuits start, banks have a few hopes, including "The 'central bank' made me do it" but banks will have to do everything they can to prevent being sued by 3rd parties.  If they cannot prevent that, this could get very ugly in a hurry for some banks.