Netherlands

While illiquid short-dated Spanish bond yields plunge and short-sale-banned Spanish stocks (IBEX) surge back above their 200DMA the most in 16 months, one could be forgiven for falling into the age-old CNBC-trap of "well the market is up so it must be good" belief. Rick Santelli and Mark Grant, in a brief few minutes attempt to get below the surface of the actual words and perception of today's Draghi statement and explain just how the conditionality and size/roll constraints make this supposed unlimited "we'll fix it all" scenario rather ridiculous in that "The ECB is never going to be allowed to do anything." Perhaps just as IBEX fell 17% in 3 weeks after rallying 5.6% on EUR Summit-day hope, we will see some sense of reality sink back in to the circularity of this support.

So, ok, yes, there’s a huge conditional bazooka out there, but who wants to really use it?

 Seems like a huge defibrillator. Good to have, but beware of not shocking the patient too much. 

One of the primary purposes of a government, any government, is to sustain itself. In its final hours it will do almost anything possible for its self-preservation. While everyone stares at Frankfurt and the last ditch effort of Mr. Draghi there have been other events which are part of this play and merit your attention. Austria has come out and stated quite succinctly that no more Austrian money will be used for other countries; any other countries. Yesterday the Netherlands stated in absolute terms that no more of their money will be used for Greece. If the condition of any ECB funding is to be the approval of the EU and the use of their Stabilization Funds then what Mario Draghi is proposing may never come to pass, may never happen and may just be a rhetorical exercise in wand waving. To us, the world seems askew at present. China is in serious decline, Europe is in a virtual recession as Eurostat releases the numbers today and points to a -0.2% contraction of the EU-17. The markets rally based upon the supposed three Saviors of the world, the central banks of the United States, Europe and China and so the worse that it gets the larger the rally as the central banks will ease and ease again until some kind of wall is hit.

Monetary Outright Transactions - MOT

Moths??? Like those burning up on light bulbs??? Or like in “to mothball”, buy and store?

With one day to go until the European soap opera hits its peak, and with the ECB doing all it can to spread disinformation and sow discord and disunity between Germany and everyone else on both the ECB governing council and everywhere else, Germany has decided to again make it clear just where it stands on the topic of hyperinflation and other printing matters. The punchline:

• ECB'S DRAGHI DOESN'T HAVE 'TOO MUCH' SUPPORT FROM MERKEL, MERKEL BACKS WEIDMANN
  
• ECB CAN ONLY BUY BONDS ATTACHED TO CONDITIONALITY

But wait, there is much more. Readers may recall that yesterday that one of the articles we pointed out came from Dutch Dagblad which suggested that it was Weidmann who was isolated on the ECB governing council, and that the Dutch member of the ECB council Klass Knot as well as all other members was "for buying government bonds of Southern European countries." Well, prepare to be shocked, because what kind of soap opera would it be if it wasn't for unexpected narrative plot lines. Today, Frankfurt-based Market News reported precisely the opposite, and not only is Knot on the same side as the Germans, but so are virtually all the other "virtuous" European countries, aka the non-beggars.

This morning, Germany attempted to sell €5 billion in 1.5% 10 Year bonds. It sold just €3.61 billion directly to investors (who had submitted a less than auction clearing €3.91 billion in bids), forcing the German Treasury to retain 27.8% of the auction, €1.39 billion: the highest retained amount since November 2011 when it was 39%. For one reason or another: the yield was too low at 1.42% (compared to the 1.634 average), there was much more supply elsewhere, fears of what the ECB will do tomorrow, or who knows - the real bid to cover was a paltry 0.79 (all in BTC 1.09 including government retention) compared to 1.57 at the last auction and a 1.31 average at the past 4 auctions. In other words the auction was for all technical reasons, a failure, and only the second such "failure" of 2012. The immediate reaction was Bund futures down 22 ticks at 143.28 vs 143.70 before auction as the market digested the surprising disappointment, with the German 10-year government bond yield up 2.4 basis points at 1.41 percent vs 1.37 percent before auction. In summary, if the Germans needed any more reasons that funding the insolvent Eurozone at all costs up to an including debt monetizations, which may result in failed bond auctions for German itself, are not in their best interest, they just got one. The good news: in an email sent out immediately by the German Finance agency, the bond sale was "not a risk to the budget." Wouldn't want a failed bond auction to jeopardize the budget now.

There is still some compression margin, but where to put the credit spread, real or “perceived”, from a (real) default possibility point of view or even from the shunned convertibility point of view?

If the leaks from the European Parliament are to be believed then the lines are being drawn in the sand for quite a fight. The rumor is that Mr. Draghi is going to propose a plan to buy short sovereign debt (0-3 years) without limit if a nation fills out the requisite form and officially asks for aid with conditionality. This once again proves that the rules and regulations in Europe, the very stipulations that we rely upon, can be changed, modified or distorted with the blink of an eye and the wave of a hand. It seems that nothing is set in concrete, nothing is firm and that everything is moveable upon a moment’s notice. the amount of upfront debt, which would constantly have to be rolled, would present a series of dangers including the inability to finance it as it comes due along with a balance sheet at the ECB that could swell well past the $4 trillion mark where it is now or 45% larger than the current balance sheet at the Fed. The world does not receive funding from alien worlds and there are consequences that append from having a ledger that expands without boundaries.

Gold’s seasonality is seen in the above charts which show how March, June and October are gold’s weakest months with actual losses being incurred on average in these months. Buying gold during the so-called summer doldrums has been a winning trade for most of the last 34 years. This is especially the case in the last eight years as gold averaged a gain of nearly 14% in just six months after the summer low. We tend to advise a buy and hold strategy for the majority of clients. For those who have a bit more of a risk appetite, an interesting strategy would be to buy at the start of September, sell at end of September and then buy back in on  October 31st. 

Yesterday we dedicated significant space to the most recent piece of perfectly ludicrous propaganda out of the ECB, namely that monetizing debt with a maturity up to three years is not really monetization but is instead within the arena of "money market management" (images of Todd Akin defining when something is 'legitimate' and when it isn't swimming our heads). The implication of course is that debt under 3 years is not really debt, but some mystical piece of paper that nobody should be held accountable for. Hopefully all those consumers who have short-maturity credit card debt which nonetheless yields 29.95% APR are made aware of this distinction and decide to follow through with Mario Draghi's logic, which is about to take the war of words between Germany and the ECB to the next level. Sure enough, this is precisely the news item that is dominating bond risk markets this morning, if not so much futures, and sending Spanish and Italian 2s10s spreads to record wides on hopes Draghi will definitely announce some sub 3 year monetization program for the PIIGS. Bloomberg summarized this best last night when it commented on the move in the EURUSD, since retraced, that we now have speculation Draghi's move will bolster confidence.  In other words: the market is now hoping there is hope. Sure enough, even if Draghi follows through, for the ECB to monetize Spanish bonds, Spain still has to demand a bailout, which however is now absolutely out of the question as mere jawboning has moved the entire highly illiquid curve so steep Rajoy (and Monti) have absolutely no reason to hand over their resignations (i.e., request a bailout). And so we go back to square one. But logic no longer matters in these markets.

Not entirely surprising following the outlook changes for Germany, France, UK, and Holland but still an intriguing move right before Draghi's big unveiling: Moodys maintains AAA rating but shifts to outlook negative.

Moody's believes that it is reasonable to assume that the EU's creditworthiness should move in line with the creditworthiness of its strongest key member states considering  the significant linkages between member states and the EU, and the likelihood that the large Aaa-rated member states would likely not  prioritize their commitment to backstop the EU debt obligations over servicing their own debt obligations.

Interestingly they also note that a further cut could occur due to: changes to the EU's  fiscal framework that led to less conservative budget management...

Europe took August off. Today, it is America's turn, as the country celebrates Labor day, although judging by recent trends in the new 'Part-time" normal, a phenomenon we have been writing about for years, and which even the NYT has finally latched on to, it would appear the holiday should really be Labor Half-Day. After today the time for doing nothing is over, and with less than one month left in the quarter, and trading volumes running 30% below normal which would guarantee bank earnings in Q3 are absolutely abysmal, the financial system is in dire need of volume, i.e. volatility. Luckily, things are finally heating up as the newsflow (sorry but rumors, insinuations, innuendo, and empty promises will no longer cut it) out of various central banks soars, coupled with key elections first in the Netherlands and then of course, in the US, not to mention the whole debt-ceiling/ fiscal cliff 'thing' to follow before 2012 is over. So for those who still care about events and news, here is the most comprehensive summary of the key catalysts over the next week and month, which are merely an appetizer for even more volatile newsflow in October and into the end of the year.

“Believe me, it will be enough!” will request some massive outside-the-box thinking…

Upcoming calls from Ben and Mario to the governments?

Get your act together, there’s just so much that can be done.

Odd and contradictory ROn / ROff close

Even in the unlikely case of a fiscal union, the conflict “Draghi against Weidmann”, between the ECB and the Bundesbank will continue for years. The ECB mandate and many european inflation figures do not allow for excessive ECB rate cuts or for state financing via the printing press, but Draghi wants to help his struggling home country.