CDS

Markit reporting that Greek Bund Spreads have suddenly exploded by 65 bps to 776, the highest since May 7, and inches away from the all time record of 900 bps, even as CDS blows out to over 900 bps. The reason quoted is that traders have cited forced index selling and the absence of central bank buying: have banks finally left Greece to dry? Or is it just that Greece is once again caught lying, pardon, having to issue a public retraction: apparently German Handelsblatt ran an interview with Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou, in which the Greek was "misquoted."According to Market News: "Some of the headlines issued earlier Wednesday on the basis of an interview Greek Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou gave to German business daily Handelsblatt were based on an erroneous version of the interview placed by the paper on its website. Papaconstantinou did not say in the latest interview with Handelsblatt that Greece would get its deficit-to-GDP ratio below 3% by mid-2012; that and some other headlines were based on an older interview the paper accidentally published. In the actual interview, according to the print version of the newspaper, Papaconstantinou said, "Of course not," when asked if he expects his fiscally troubled country to go bankrupt." The credibility-deficient minister also noted: "The country will “absolutely” endure the crisis without
restructuring its debt, he vowed, since such a step “would exclude Greece for a long time from the financial markets." The punchline was the conclusion that Spain and Portugal are “in a much better position” than Greece. Which bring us to our next point - Portugal's 5 year auction which came in at 4.657%, almost a full percentage point worse compared to the last auction on May 26, which closed at an average yield of 3.70%. Portugal may be better, but at this rate of collapse it means absolutely nothing.

According to DTCC, BP net notional CDS has hit another weekly record, coming in at $1.794 billion on 2,590 contracts as of June 18. This is a change from past week's $1.677 billion net notional outstanding, and 2,072 contracts: an increase of $117 million in net notional derisking as an increasing number of bets on BP's bankruptcy are made. Another very popular name, Anadarko, came in at $1.630 billion net with 3,051 contracts: the exact same notional as the prior week (which however saw 2,877 contracts outstanding). In other words, even as traders derisked in BP, they were flat in Anadarko, implying that a short risk BP - long risk APC trade was not being actively put on in the past week, contrary to media reports of this being a prevalent pair trade. Instead speculators took on unhedged short risk exclusively in BP. Alternatively, we could see accelerated derisking in APC soon as the long risk leg of a possible BP-APC pair trade catches up with FV.

According to DTCC, net notional outstanding in BP CDS as of June 11 was $1,676 million, based on 2,072 (great error-proofing there Reuters) contracts. This represents an increase of about 30% from the prior week, when net notional was $1,284 million and 1,718 contracts. Most notably, however, the increase is about 60% from $1,066 million and 1,399 contracts as of May 14. The 60% ramp up in CDS "hedging" is to be expected, now that PIMCO has gloriously entered the water. Of course, since nobody has used CDS to hedge positions since about 2002, this simply means that bets on a default in BP have surged. Observant readers will say this is the dumbest way to conclude this, when one can just look at the price of 5 Year CDS, which has exploded in the past month. These readers would be right.

For the first time in over 2 months, last week CDS traders ignored their ongoing derisking barrage in Great Britain CDS, and instead shifting their attention to the very heart of European darkness, the two countries that are in charge of it all - Germany and France. There was over 750 million worth of German CDS derisked, in 58 contracts, with France close behind at $728 million. Two other notable names rounding out the top five were Turkey and Spain. Quiet, little Finland was there for some reason. Other name filling out the list of top 10 were Brazil, Ukraine, Korea, Portugal and Japan: all names that have very valid reasons to be concerned about their future, and CDS traders agree. On the other end, rerisking was rampant in Mexico, Slovenia, Holland, Indonesia and Thailand. Most likely these are just hedge pairs as there is no reason why any of these names should be in play. Two names which we will focus on shortly, Romania and Bulgaria, were in no man's land. We expect they will slowly migrate toward the red part of the chart.

The BP Curve has really flipped (out). The 1 year point on the curve is now over 1,000 bps, a 400 bps move in one day. The point is also offerless (bidless in traditional cash jargon). Granted the DV01 so close to 0 is rather low, but this kind of ridiculous curve inversion is simply wreaking havoc on correlation desks. The 6 month point is now 0.5 pts upfront. Pretty soon BP will need to apply for the same ECB bailout that rescued all those banks who were risking a wipe out when Greek spreads were trading at comparable levels. The question now becomes: who sold the bulk of the BP protection? BofA's announcement yesterday that it is limiting counterparty risk exposure with BP to all contracts over 1 year could be a rather material clue as to the identity of at least one such entity.

“If you were to have faxed me this balance sheet and asked me to guess who it belonged to, I would have guessed, Citadel, Magnetar or even a proprietary trading desk at a bank.” So begins a story by Alexandra Harris of the Medill Journalism school at Northwestern, which, however, does not focus on some exotic product-specialized hedge fund, or some discount window (taxpayer capital) backed prop desk (hedge fund) at a TBTF bank, but instead at the 61% underfunded, $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System (TRS), which just happened to lose $4.4 billion in 2009 (a year when, courtesy of America's conversion from capitalism to socialism, the market rose 60%), and 5% in2008. Yet underperformance can be explained. What can not, is that the TRS has now become a shadow AIG. As Harris notes "TRS is largely on the risky side of the contracts, selling and writing OTC derivatives, including credit default swaps, insurance-like contracts that guarantee payment in the event of a default, that were blamed in part for the 2008 collapse of Lehman Bros. and bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc., or AIG." Demonstrating just how far the fund is willing to go in the "for broke" category, knowing full well that if it repeats AIG's implosion, the government will likely bail it out, is the disclosure that a stunning 81.5% of the fund's investments are considered risky - this means it is the fourth-riskiest investment portfolio for a pension fund in the U.S! All it will take is another Flash Crash-like event, or a liquidity crunch, and the 355,000 "full-time, part-time and substitute public school teachers and administrators working outside the city of Chicago" will likely end up with a big, fat donut in their retirement portfolios courtesy of some deranged lunatic, portfolio manager, situated externally at a bank like Goldman Sachs, who in taking a page straight out of Obama's bailout nation, has decided there is no such thing as risk. And to those naive enough to think the TRS is the only such fund which has now gone all-in on "no risk and infinite return", wait until such stories start emerging about every single massively underfunded pension and fully insolvent fund in the US.

In a stunning development, and what may be the biggest loss for the Federal Reserve's lobbying power in history, the FT reports that "Banks are likely to lose a key lobbying battle in the US over whether they will be forced to spin off their lucrative swaps desks, according to people familiar with financial reform negotiations in Congress. Defeat, which would be a further blow to Wall Street, has been made more likely by Paul Volcker, the influential former Federal Reserve chairman, softening his opposition to the provision." If this indeed happens, the fallout for the US financial system will be dramatic, as numerous Wall Street spin offs would have to occur immediately in order to preserve CDS trading, an event that would will also adversely impact valuation multiples. The biggest problem with the Blanche Lincoln proposal, however, is that it still appears nobody really knows just what its full implications are. And adding more fuel to the fire, is the latest whisper from Volcker, whom many thought had relented on toning down his Volcker proposal to prohibit prop trading by banks: "Some senators want to modify the Volcker Rule, which also prevents banks from owning or sponsoring hedge funds in the name of risk reduction, to allow banks to “organise” a hedge fund and make an investment in a small amount of capital alongside a customer. But Mr Volcker thought that would be the thin end of the wedge, adding “from my point of view, I’d like it pure”. Could Wall Street be finally losing its tentacular grip over Washington? We, for one, will not believe it until we see it: after all Chris Dodd and Barney Frank's unfettered access to lifelong indulgences from the Clearing House Association lies in the balance.

To all those who listened to Hugh Hendry's recommendation to panic a week ago, congratulations- you are well ahead of the market today. Hungary CDS is now offerless as investors are shocked, shocked, that the country (and continent) is actually really bankrupt, as opposed to just make believe. IMF's comments yesterday that it does not have the funds to rescue all of Europe are not helping. Hungary CDS is now essentially bidless last seen 120 bps wider, around 430/460 with the bid/ask spread at 30bps, and only dealers daring to take on any risk exposure as the risk off brigade has kicked the optimists out of the building. The one thing up today so far? Gold. NFP better be north of 100 million or else the stick save today will be a tad problematic.

Austria, the country most exposed to weakness in Central and Eastern Europe, is back on the radar. After having avoided skeptical investor scrutiny even as the bulk of Europe was collapsing all around it, the country is today's top CDS widener, yet still stunningly trades inside of France and Belgium. Look for this spread to blow out over the next week. Then again, the biggest CDS wideners are precisely the countries formerly seen safe: Austria, France, Germany and Belgium are all the top movers in CDS. So much for the whole North vs South division in Europe.

Retuers reports that the IMF mission chief Rosenberg is going to Budapest to hold informal talks with the new Hungarian government - is this a preamble to the latest admission of austerity failure in an IMF intermediation. Independent of this, Hungary CDS is now exploding wider, and was 60 bps at last check, however this name is now virtually bidless. In other news portofolio.hu reports that Hungary was forced to cut a bond auction today over subdued demand.

This is how the market responds to a day fully replete with good news, and even more volume participation: three days worth of trading undone in one hour. The 20-day daily average cumulative volume in ES is 3.15 million. We closed 2.17 million, or 31% lower. Lesson for the day: when the machines are in "distribution" mode, you get out of the way. Especially with Obama about to announce 1 million newly employed people despite 450k+ consistent initial weekly claims. After all what good is the upcoming 0.5 million Birth-Death adjustment for if you can't use it to top off the 0.5 million new census hiring. And another indication of market efficiency: APC stock up 5%, even as its CDS closed +116 wider. Add imminent threat of bankruptcy to the list of upside stock drivers.

Following yesterday's announcement that the US has asked a federal judge in Houston to reject a bid by Transocean Ltd. to cap its liability in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and resulting spill at $27 million, Transocean is literally falling apart. Its CDS level has surged by over 100 bps today, with a market so wide at 500/550 it may need a few HFT quants to narrow it. As we commented yesterday, RIG CDS trading points up front is likely hours away should the news flow not improve. The IG9 name has caught many correlation traders with their pants down and underhedged, and is causing some serious intrinsic rumblings. The same is true for HAL and APC which also are getting punished. BP has temporarily stabilized after a few conflicted sellside analysts had some soothing words for their clients, just so respective prop desks can offload existing inventory into a last minute attempt to prop up the stock price before yet another wipeout.

After taking a brief break last week, the UK is once again firmly in the top sovereign deriskers: a place it has held with pride for almost two months now. Summing up cumulative net notional exposure on the UK based on just the last several weeks results in a net short exposure of well over $3 billion. Someone has now amassed a huge short on the British Isles. Curiously, the country that was actually the top derisker in the past week, with $420 million in net notional change, was Brazil, the same Brazil which today decided to not lift any offers in its 2021 Fixed Coupon Bond auction. Is this the next hotbed of instability? Look for at least one more week of aggressive derisking before confirming this trend. Turkey completes the trio of top deriskers, with $172 billion in CDS. Surely with the prior week ending on May 28, there is no way anyone could have hedged for an Israeli incursion of Turkish ships ahead of time. On the other end, some of the names that have been making the news recently, have seen some material rerisking, probably based on short positional unwinds: the top five were the US, Japan, Austria, France and China. After tonight's news out of Tokyo, look for Japan to take its rightful place at the top of this table.

MarkIt reports Italian CDS has exploded by 50bps, from 200 on Monday to 250bps, a new record. The weakness is spreading globally now. A slightly delayed CMA report indicates that the biggest CDS movers are all sovereigns, and led by Korea and other Asian names. In the meantime eurodollar futures are pushing ever higher, even as Libor is still testing the temporary breaks at 0.53%. All fine and dandy, until you look at Euribor, where things are getting surreal. We will discuss this shortly.

Ambac CDS is quoted at 36,289.9, or up 19,827 bps for the day. Yes, yes we know this should be quoted in points up, but this is looks so much prettier this way. For those who want to see what rolling high beta worthless nameliquidations will look like, check out this chart from CMA: this is soon coming to pretty much every HY/distressed name that enjoyed the most spectacular bear market rally in history.