SPY

• LA port workers to return Wednesday (AP)
• Iran says extracts data from U.S. spy drone (Reuters)
• Obama to stress need to raise debt limit "without drama" (Reuters)
• Big Lots Chief Probed by SEC (WSJ)
• NATO missiles to be sent to Turkey, Syria clashes rage (Reuters)
• GOP Deficit Plan Irks Conservatives (WSJ)
• Japan Can End Deflation in Months, Shirakawa Professor Says (BBG) ... almost as good as Bernanke ending inflation in 15 minutes.
• Osborne Prepares to Breach Fiscal Rules Amid U.K. Growth Slump (BBG)
• Global Banking Under Siege as Regulators Guard National Interest (BBG)
• Freeport plans return to energy (FT)
• Serbian NATO envoy jumps to death at Brussels airport (Reuters)
• Tide Turns After a Flood of Chinese Listings (WSJ)
• Australian economy loses steam (FT)
• Euro Crisis Feeds Corruption as Greece Slides in Rankings (BBG)

With humans long gone from the trading arena and algorithms left solely in charge of the casino formerly known as "the stock market", in which price discovery is purely as a function of highly levered synthetic instruments such as ES and SPY or, worse, the EURUSD and not fundamentals, numerous valuation dislocations are bound to occur. Such as company equity value trading well below net cash (excluding total debt), or in other words, negative enterprise value, meaning one can buy the cash at a discount of par and assign zero value to all other corporate assets.  In other far more rare cases, some companies may trade with negative EV even if they have positive LTM free cash flow (EBITDA-CapEx). Usually these arbs are rather well hidden, and certainly not within the roster of the far more popular S&P500 companies. We did a quick CapIQ search of all Russell 2000 companies (avoiding microcaps) for whom Net Cash > Market Cap. There were a total of 10 companies among the universe of 2000 that fit these criteria. We then further subdivided the category into companies with negative (far less valuable) cash flow, and positive cash flow. There were just 4 companies in the last category. They are highlighted in the table below.

Today's "trading", in a repeat of what has become a daily routine, can be summarized as follows: flashing red headline about Fiscal Cliff hope/optimism/constructiveness out of a member of Congress who bought SPY calls in advance of statement: market soars; flashing red headlines about the inverse of Fiscal Cliff hope/optimism/constructiveness out a member of Congress who bought SPY puts in advance of statement: market plunges. Everything else is noise, as is said hope/expectations/constructiveness too since it is increasingly likely nothing will happen until the debt ceiling hike deadline in March, but stop hunts must take place in a market which nobody even pretends is driven by fundamental newsflow. Such as the bevy of PMIs released last night, the key of which was the China HSBC PMI as reported previously, which beat expectations by the smallest of possible increments, at 50.5, but rising to expansion territory and the highest in 13 months, which sent the EURUSD spiking and has kept it in the 1.3030 range for the duration of the overnight session. Sadly, those on the ground in China hardly felt the number was a bullish as EURUSD trading algos around the world, sending the Shanghai Composite to a fresh post-2008 low, closing down over 1% at 1,960. But let's just ignore this inconvenient datapoint shall we?

Anyone watching the close of the market last night will likely still be shaking off the hangover as we noted 'the most ridiculous' market movements occurred in the space of a few milliseconds. As ever, trusty investigator of all things ridiculous in equity markets, Nanex highlights a rather disturbing trend, now completed its third year, where volume compression simply breaks the market. On 11/30/11, quotes from Nasdaq suddenly stopped for about 20 seconds after another explosive close where multiple seconds worth of trading were jammed into the last second. However, trading at Nasdaq wasn't affected. This is yet another example of where direct feeds illegally give data to one group of subscribers ahead of the consolidated feed. Clearly, the NBBO was ignored. For the last 3 years (2009, 2010, and 2011), there has been unusually high trading activity in the final minutes of trading activity on the last trading day in November. We show one example stock in detail below (SPY). Human discounting of a known rebalancing event? No. Completely 'broken markets' that are driven by self-reinforcing and chaos-reverting algos? Yes.

With a late-day surge into the green for the S&P 500 futures on (as usual) absolutely no news at all (attributed to MSCI rebalancing) - that crossed the entire day's range in the space of 40 minutes, the Dow managed to just hold 13,000 and close green for the week. There was very significant volume and block size into the ramp as it pulled away from risk-assets as only a month-end move can magically achieve. In the same way as last Friday's close was just remarkably silly, today followed the same path - though we note that rates and credit were outperforming stocks most of the day and provided the target for the late-day surge. Once that target was closed, S&P 500 futures then melted-down around the close and after-hours. Utilities were the big winners on the week (+3.5%) as Financials and Energy lost around 0.7%. Silver crumbled to recouple with Gold (down around 2% on the week) while Copper gained 3%. Treasury yields steepened into the close with the 30Y pushing higher but ending -2bps (while the 10Y was -7bps). What a crazy stop-hunting, algo-driven, VWAP-reverting end to a week of political volatility.

Generally bullish, sitting back and enjoying the show while it lasts.

Early macro data that was mixed (retail sales, Kansas Fed, Claims, some GDP ugly) saw stocks limp a little off the overnight hope highs but once the day-session opened in the US we were off to the races with stop-runs galore triggered by Boehner (down), Reid (up and down), Schumer (up) as the fiscal cliff idiocy hangs Damocles-like over every algos trigger finger. Treasuries largely ignore the afternoon schizophrenia - trending lower in yields as once Europe closed the USD drifted lower and bonds and stocks were bought in a 'we-heart-USA' style. High-yield credit had outperformed in the mid-afternoon but stumbled a little - notably after news of the SVU PE deal failed to fund. Commodities had a good day in general though we note that Gold/Silver is at its lowest level in nearly nine months as Silver has significantly bounced off its spike lows this week. Gold and stocks continue to recouple with the latter more volatile but the anchoring on VWAP and spike-to-stop-run swings are making the intraday behavior of equity indices become a little more farcical by the day.

On November 16, and again today, one person boldly went where so many have gone before, and made sure that Nancy Pelosi's alleged SPY calls don't expire worthless, and by uttering a few words widely misinterpreted by the headline scanning, market-making algos both then, and today, preserved all confidence in the centrally-planned monetary policy farce formerly known as "the market." Who is this unmasked crusader against the evils of efficient markets, and for the unquestioned glory of authoritarian Economist PhD's in charge of the Fed's trading desk? This man:

We are in a “different moment” now than in the past several years and that is the point of my commentary today. Promises have come and gone, the central banks have supported the fiscal system as political decision making waned with indecision and the difficulties of the choices. Complacency took hold as a kind of “everything will be fine” mentality inundated the market places. Soon, in my opinion, everything will not be quite so fine as the politicians in America and Europe have to earn their salaries and the ramifications of many decisions are going to be unpleasant as they are released. If we regard America’s fiscal cliff or the pending decisions about Greece or the separatist movement in Spain or the lack of a budget for the European Union; it is all politically centered and the battlefields are rife with perhaps surprising decisions. In each of these four arenas the easy answers have now come and gone. The “can kicking” if you will is over.

S&P 500 futures saw the lowest non-holiday trading day volume of the year and the lowest average trade size of the year also but capped a four-day win streak (biggest in four months) with small gain. The overnight plunge in futures (on EUR weakness following the Greek #Fail) was entirely retraced - slowly but surely but once Europe closed, the US was dead. Treasury weakness and EUR strength (JPY weakness) were the correlated drivers of equity exuberance today, oil flip-flopped in its non-believing 'cease-fire' way (recoupling with gold on the week); Silver surged; and credit tended to track stocks but HY modestly outperformed (though HYG closed red). VIX traded with a 14 handle briefly but ended +0.3 vols at 15.4%. Stocks (especially the big bellwethers) tracked VWAP all afternoon as all but Johnny-5 had left the building. HP Bonds cracked, AAPL green, SPY green, HYG red, VXX green, volume negligible - that is all.

Back in the 1960s, a clever but financially disadvantaged fellow placed a small ad in a national magazine that read something like: Money needed. Please send $1 to the address below. Do it today! No specific need was given, and nothing was promised in return, so that fraud could not later be charged. Yet within a few months, thousands of dollars arrived in his mailbox, a considerable sum in those days. Or so the urban legend goes. A half-century later, many things have changed, but one thing remains unchanged: People still need money, and they have not ceased to innovate ways in which to get it. Clearly there are a lot of new and imaginative ways of moving money around that vie for our attention. Many of them would be considered crowdfunding. Crowdfunding, if thought of merely as the pooling of resources for a common cause, is as old as human groupings. But that isn't the way it's thought of nowadays. The current king of the hill, Kickstarter, launched in April of 2009, has been a great success. So, is crowdfunding the future capital source for every new venture under the sun? Well, probably not... although we can't say for sure, because it does sometimes seem that way as new and imaginative ways of moving money around vie for our attention.

Re-cementing their “strategic partnership” despite a resurgence of repressive, antidemocratic tendencies

The October Double Witch lit the match that precipitated the bulk of the 8.6% slide in the S&P 500 from its September highs.  Massive and unexplainable changes in open interest for the futures most of that week as well as an unusually large Market On Open imbalance for index expiration that morning hinted that the final days of the rally were artificial and susceptible for a sharp reversal. We have arrived at the third Friday in November licking our wounds after a precipitous drop in equities since the Election. Reminded of last month’s inflection point, traders, however, who have far better memories than given credit for, may expect something out of the ordinary especially with the curious drop in the VIX over the past several days albeit I chalk up this suppression of implied volatility to the selling of $6B in notional SPY puts centered on the 140-41 strikes.  On the other hand, one could easily argue that the critical 1350 level for S&P 500 options held up the market yesterday such that the removal of such a protective barrier could reengage the aggressive selling from the past two weeks.

Until recently, the only question traders had to ask themselves was "how much more to buy?" The last week or so has left traders across the market now suddenly plagued by numerous questions. Will an Obama speech continue to be the catalyst for selling pressure to resume? Why is VIX 'low' when all around is asunder? When do the BTFD crowd step back in? Where's the 'wall of money' flowing now? From new issue demand to Italy's ratings agency trials and from bounce-buyers waiting for Godot to VIX's complacency, FBN's Michael Naso and Mint's Blain cover some of the conundra.

Totally doomed, I tell ya.