Price Action

Marc Faber Contrarian Bet Against Market Consensus - US Treasuries

Special thanks to Dr. Marc Faber for giving us permission to publish excerpts from his May Gloom Boom & Doom Report.

As Barclays recently noted, there is a complete decoupling between futures and physical markets for crude oil and nowhere is that more evident than the high volume spike in crude that just happened after Saudi Arabia boosted crude production for a second month to the highest level in at least three decades, helping to raise OPEC output as U.S. growth showed signs of slowing.

For many reasons the answer to the question: “will the commodity price rally continue?” is particularly important at this juncture, and the answer from Barclays is 'no' - it will prove very tough to make further significant gains in commodity prices from here unless supply/demand conditions improve very fast indeed. There are a multitude of factors but what erks them the most is the huge disconnect between price action in physical markets where differentials are signalling oversupply and futures markets where all looks rosy. The risks for a reversal in recent commodity price trends are growing, and with fewer market makers to absorb the shocks, potentially, a period of high volatility could lie ahead.

With the big macro data out of the way, attention today and for the rest of the week will focus on the aftermath of the latest Chinese rate cut - its third in the past 6 months - which managed to boost the Shanghai Composite up by 3% overnight but not nearly enough to make up for losses in the past week; any resumption of the 6+ sigma volatility in the German Bund, which already has been jittery with the yield sliding to 0.52% only to spike to 0.62% shortly thereafter before retracing some of the losses; and finally Greece, which in a normal world would have concluded its negotiations during today's Eurogroup meeting and unlocked up to €7 billion in funds for the coming months. Instead, Greece may not only not make its €770 million IMF payment tomorrow but according to ever louder rumors, is contemplating a parallel currency on its way out of the Eurozone.

"The sharp rise in bond volatility over the past week or so is reminiscent of the VaR shocks of October 2014 in US rates and April 2013 in Japanese rates," JP Morgan says, before explaining how volatility induced selling (i.e. a VaR shock) is behind the rout in German Bunds. Predictably, QE has helped create the conditions which make such episodes possible.

BOND SELLOFF DEEPENS; GERMAN 10-YR YIELD JUMPS 17 BPS TO 0.76%
SPANISH 10-YEAR BOND YIELD CLIMBS TO 2%; HIGHEST SINCE NOV. 24
ITALIAN 10-YEAR BOND YIELD CLIMBS ABOVE 2%; 1ST TIME THIS YEAR
10Y TREASURY YIELD CLIMBS 6BPS TO 2.31%, HIGHEST SINCE DEC. 8
U.K. 10-YR BOND YIELD CLIMBS 8 BPS TO 2.06%; MOST SINCE NOV. 24
JAPAN 10Y YIELD UP 7.5 BPS, SET FOR BIGGEST RISE SINCE MAY 2013

As is almost always the case, the price of gold was leaned on at the standard PLAN A time in London when The Gold Cartel traders reported for work, but their nudge was thwarted pretty quickly. Gold took off again going into the Comex trading hours and managed to reach $1200 where it was stopped dead in its tracks. James Mc early this morning…

There is little advantage to be gained by being aggressively allocated during the summer months. However, in reality, there are few individuals that can maintain a strict discipline of only investing during seasonally strong periods consistently. Also, time frames of when you start and when you need your capital for retirement make HUGE differences in actual performance. However, a willful disregard of "risk" will inherently lead to the destruction of the two most precious and finite assets that all investors possess – capital and time.

If yesterday's laughable lack of volume (helped by the closure of Japan and the UK) coupled with hopes that the end of the buyback blackout period was enough to send stocks surging if only to end with a whimper below all time highs despite what is now looking like three consecutive quarters of Y/Y EPS declines according to Factset, today's ramp will be more difficult for the NY Fed and Citadel to engineer, not least of all due to the headwind of the overnight "incident" by China's stock bubble which saw the Shanghai Composite tumble by 4%, the most since January.

The best news for stocks is twofold: volumes continue to be lethargic with both the UK (May Day bank holiday) and Japan closed until Thursday (Golden Week), while the bulk of the S&P500 has now exited the stock buyback quiet period. As such, ignore record equity outflows - all the matters is that corporate CFOs, flush with brand news bond issuance cash, will tell their favorite Wall Street trading desk to buy stocks at just the right inflection point sending the market surging just as shorts once again test the downtrend and the 50 DMA.

The week that passed has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride for many nervous investors. And for some: a realization that the once hyped, hawked, and levered Billion dollar babies can indeed “come off the rails.” Turning the once joyride into something more in common with a free fall into the abyss. However, you’re told not too worry: For if you loved the ride when the prices were higher, then surely you should be ecstatic to “ride again” since the new ticket prices are clearly “on sale!”

"As the decline in yields that has followed the liquidity injections has made its way to intermediate maturities, the market has extrapolated that the Bundesbank would have to purchase a larger share of longer maturity bonds to fill its quota. This is a self-reinforcing expectations loop, where lower yields beget lower yields," Goldman notes, describing the dynamic driving Bunds. We would note that this type of feedback loop also operates in the other direction and could thus be rather dangerous in a market that is becoming structurally very thin.

The final and ultimate round of the Crisis that begin in 2008 will occur when faith is lost in the Central Banks.

Investors are clearly in a bit of a no-man’s land of market narrative, with the dollar weakening and U.S. corporate earnings slipping.  Market participants, like all pack animals, appreciate clear direction and leadership – and we don’t have much of either right now. When considering how they will react, we can compare the two competing frameworks for understanding market behavior: the "Random Walk hypothesis" and the "House money effect." The first states that markets move in random patterns, with prior activity having no bearing on future price action. The latter shows that individuals do actually consider prior gains and losses when making economic decisions. Let’s just hope investors hold to their belief that it’s the house’s money at work here, and that they don’t walk randomly out of the market.

If the DOJ and CFTC is going to be consistent, then they have to indict the entire financial community from the CME, Exchanges, Brokers, Institutions, Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, Management Funds and High Frequency Trading Firms.