fixed

As usual the market remains on tenterhooks for its next fix of Central Bank largesse and the following 11 days provide some rather large potholes for those addicted to the sweet nectar of freshly printed extreme monetary policy. Citi's Steven Englander provides some much-needed reality checking on what the market is expecting and what the FOMC/ECB might deliver, and all importantly, what the implications for risk-assets in general will be. The possibility of misunderstood language at the FOMC meetings seems very high even as the announcement of additional measures remains unlikely and perhaps more notably the Euro has sold off sharply when the ECB does not present a policy response to rapidly deteriorating market conditions - especially in light of the implicit tightening we have seen in Euro-zone aggregate rates. Rock meet hard-place.

No wonder one third of Americans are obese. The crap we are shoveling into our bodies is on par with the misinformation, propaganda and lies that are being programmed into our minds by government bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, corporate media gurus, and central banker puppets. Chief Clinton propaganda mouthpiece, James Carville, famously remarked during the 1992 presidential campaign that, “It’s the economy, stupid”. Clinton was able to successfully convince the American voters that George Bush’s handling of the economy caused the 1991 recession. In retrospect, it was revealed the economy had been recovering for months prior to the election. No one could ever accuse the American people of being perceptive, realistic or critical thinking when it comes to economics, math, history or distinguishing between truth or lies. Our government controlled public school system has successfully dumbed down the populace to a level where they enjoy their slavery and prefer conscious ignorance to critical thought.

Two months ago, we warned that while the world had decided to blissfully move on from last year's topic #1, the MENA revolutions, and specifically the massive power vacuum left in their wake, things in the region were far from fixed. Quite the contrary, and as we added back then "it is very likely that the Mediterranean region, flanked on one side by the broke European countries of Greece, Italy, Spain (and implicitly Portugal), and on the other by the unstable powder keg of post-revolutionary Libya and Egypt, will likely become quite active yet again. Only this time, in addition to social and economic upheavals, a religious flavor may also be added to the mix". Yet nobody cared as after a year of daily videos showing Molotov Cocktails dropping like flies, people had simply gotten habituated and needed some other source of excitement. Nobody cared also when a week ago Art Cashin warned that the hidden geopolitcal risk is not Spain but Egypt. Today, Egypt just reminded at least one country why perhaps caution about the instability caused by having a military in charge of the most populous Arabic country and the one boasting "the Canal", should have been heeded after Egypt just announced that it is cutting off its natural gas supplies to Israel, which just so happens relies on Egypt for 40% of its energy needs.

At first we were going to comment on this "response" by the high priest of Keynesian shamanic tautology to Mark Spitznagel's latest WSJ opinion piece, but then we just started laughing, and kept on laughing, and kept on laughing...

Another political bump in the road?

Maybe it is the activity in Europe that made the markets feel more volatile than the weekly changes show. Or maybe it was that the futures traded in an almost 3% range – from 1,359 to 1,390 with several 0.5% swings during the course of most days. Market darling Apple isn’t helping calm the market either. That can reverse on a moment’s notice, or a great earnings release, but the momentum that was dragging more and more hedge funds into the trade, is now working in reverse as stop losses are being triggered. So often lately, the bulls are able to point to a decent tape in face of weak data and no stimulus, and this week ended with the opposite. Bulls will be nervous that decent earnings and a mega-plan from the IMF failed to provide strength to the market. So, it was a strange week that was more volatile than the weekly changes show, and where some real cracks are being exposed.

Four time Fed Chairman Marriner Eccles: "As long as the Federal Reserve is required to buy government securities at the will of the market for the purpose of defending a fixed pattern of interest rates established by the Treasury, it must stand ready to create new bank reserves in unlimited amount. This policy makes the entire banking system, through the action of the Federal Reserve System, an engine of inflation. (U.S. Congress 1951, p. 158)... [We are making] it possible for the public to convert Government securities into money to expand the money supply....We are almost solely responsible for this inflation. It is not deficit financing that is responsible because there has been surplus in the Treasury right along; the whole question of having rationing and price controls is due to the fact that we have this monetary inflation, and this committee is the only agency in existence that can curb and stop the growth of money.. . . [W]e should tell the Treasury, the President, and the Congress these facts, and do something about it....We have not only the power but the responsibility....If Congress does not like what we are doing, then they can change the rules. (FOMC Minutes, 2/6/51, pp. 50–51)"

In what may be the gray swan indication that all hell is about to break loose, we read that one of the world's largest hedge funds, British Man Group with $58 billion in AUM, is about to launch High Frequency Trading - the same high volume churning, sub-pennying, liquidity extracting, stub quoting and quote stuffing parasite that crashes the equity, and as of recently the FX and commodity markets, into that most sacred of markets: US Treasurys. The official spin: "The Man Systematic Fixed Income fund, yet to be launched, will try to identify and profit from dislocations in liquid government bond markets." What this really means is that the final frontier of market rationality is about to be invaded by artificial momentum generating algorithms, who couldn't care less about fundamentals, and whose propensity to crash and burn at the worst of times, may end up costing the Fed all those tens of trillions it has spent to keep the Treasury market calm, cool, collected, and largely devoid of any volatility and MOVEment. But all that is about to change: "The unit is run by Sandy Rattray, who co-developed the VIX. VIX volatility index, also known as the "fear index", widely used to measure investors' perception of risk." As a reminder, the VIX index is only relevant when there are surges in volatility, something which we are confident Mr. Rattray will no doubt bring to Treasury trading momentarily. 

Keeping it simple, Europe was a sloppy mess today. In an almost perfect copy of last week's sovereign, corporate, and financial credit market movements, today saw all of these assets plunge back near post-Non-Farm-Payroll lows. Equity markets, which had miraculously managed to regain those pre-NFP levels this morning after the Spanish auction knee-jerk, rapidly retraced and aside from some stick-save efforts from US markets and Lagarde, keeps the chaos-ball rolling with yet another multiple-sigma flip-flop. Ugly all around as it seems the reality check we discussed on the Spanish auction overnight was better received than the spin the Euro-Elite tried to put on it as we reinforce our view of the instability as the LTRO Stigma widens further to post LTRO1 wides as 10Y Spain approaches 6% yield and 425bps spread and Italian CDS over 440bps as 10Y yields break back above 5.5%.

Maybe we can call today bad loan day: earlier today the Bank of Spain announced that Spanish bank loans, already rising in a rather disturbing diagonal fashion, have surpassed 8% of total for the first time since 1994. Now it is Italy's turn, where we find courtesy of ABI, that gross non-performing loans, aka bad-debt, has just reached €107.6 billion, or 6.3% of total, and the highest since 2000, not to mention a doubling of the 3.0% in June 2008. It gets worse: as Reuters reports, while domestic deposits in February rose by a heartening 1.6% in February, it is foreign deposits that confirm that not all is well with the country's financial system, declining a whopping 16% in February y/y, and the 8th consecutive monthly decline, a chart which resembles that of Greek deposit outflows. The reason why Italy, like all the other peripherals, is now a ward of the ECB? Simple: "Net funding from abroad stood at 182 billion euros, down 32.5 percent year-on-year." And if there is no external money, the Central Bank will need to save.

One of the great existential debates about U.S. equities is essentially demographic in nature.  Nic Colas, of ConvergEx, asks the question, will retiring Baby Boomers cash out of stocks in the coming years, leaving lower valuations in their wake?  At least one recent Fed paper pointed to an 8x earnings multiple for stocks – down from 14x currently – in 2025, all due to the changing face (and age) of the typical investor.  But all this doom and gloom only fits if every generation has a similar risk tolerance.  If younger cohorts – dubbed Generation X and “Next” – have higher risk thresholds, they may actually buy more equities than their parents, alleviating the demographic time bomb behind that dire Fed prediction.  Getting a fix on how these nascent investors will evaluate the risk-return tradeoff is tough; they still don’t have much money to put to work.  Still, some signs exist.  Believe it or not, a third of young Americans have tattoos, an acknowledged sign of risk-loving behavior.  And if you think that is just bad decision-making, consider the business rock-stars of the under-30 set.  This latest wave of billionaires are all outsized risk takers, and role models to their generation.  Stocks may not be dead just yet.

Ten more years of low returns in the stock market.  If you are one of the millions of baby boomers headed into retirement - start saving more and spending less because the stock market won't bail you out.  Now that I have your attention I will explain why this is the likely future ahead for investors. In this past weekend's newsletter I wrote that “If you put all of your money into cash today and don’t look at the market for another decade – you will be better off..."  I realize that this statement is equivalent to heresy where Wall Street is concerned but there is one simple reason behind my apparent madness - the power of "reversion". This is not a new concept by any means as witnessed by Bob Farrell's rule #1 - "Markets tend to return to the mean over time."  However, the reality of what "reversion" means is grossly misunderstood by Wall Street, and the mainstream media, as witnessed by the many valuation calls that "stocks are now cheap because the market is now trading in line with its long term average."

Goldman's earnings are out and at revenues of $9.95 billion and EPS of $3.92 (compared to expectations of $9.41 billion and EPS $3.55), coupled with an increase in the dividend from $0.35 to $0.46 per share (exp. $0.40), the company appears to have done solidly better than expected. And yet, not all was sunny skies.  As expected, declining secular markets continue to impact the company, whose ongoing secular decline is shown on the chart below. The reason - volume, which continues to slide for reasons already discussed extensively. To wit: "Net revenues in Investment Banking were $1.15 billion, 9% lower than the first quarter of 2011 and 35% higher than the fourth quarter of 2011....Net revenues in equity underwriting were significantly lower than the first quarter of 2011, primarily reflecting a decline in industry-wide activity. Net revenues in debt underwriting were lower compared with a strong first quarter of 2011, primarily reflecting a decline in leveraged finance activity." Thank god for CDS (aka derivatives): "Net revenues in Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Client Execution were $3.46 billion, 20% lower than a solid first quarter of 2011, as higher net revenues in interest rate products were more than offset by lower net revenues in the other major businesses....Net revenues in Equities were $2.25 billion, 3% lower than the first quarter of 2011, as higher net revenues in equities client execution, reflecting an increase in derivatives, were more than offset by lower commissions and fees, consistent with lower market volumes." DVA loss for Q1 was $225 million. Finally, on the revenue side, hurray for Goldman Prop, aka the Asymmetric Information Initiative, aka "Investing and Lending" which generated $1.911 billion in revenues in Q1, the highest since Q1 2011. Still, the 22% top-line decline from Q1 2010 appears relentless. As for the only thing that matters to Goldman employees, implied full year comp dropped to $350,864 per average employee, the lowest in two years, even as the firm cut headcount from 33,300 to 32,400 in the quarter, the lowest number of employees since Q4 2009.

As traders walk in this morning, there are only two numbers they care about: 522 bps and 6.15% - these are the Spanish 5 year CDS and 10 Year yields, respectively, the first of which is at a record, while the second is rapidly approaching all time wides from last November. Needless to say Europe is no longer fixed. And yet despite a selloff across Asia, Europe is so far hanging in, as are the futures courtesy of a persistent BIS bid in the EURUSD just above 1.30 to keep the risk bottom from falling off. It remains to be seen if they will be successful as wrong-way positioned US traders walk in this morning.

LOLWUT