Morgan Stanley

Friday’s confidence vote in the Greek parliament will be extremely important in our view and will likely set the pace of the anticipated EUR decline over the coming months. Greek Prime Minister Papandreou could now find it difficult to win a confidence vote (due Friday 10GMT) given the defections from the government leave only the slimmest of majorities (just 151 votes in the 300 parliament). If the Greek PM fails to win the confidence vote then the government will fall. There is the possibility for a new Government under a different PM or the formation of a unity government. But these outcomes seem unlikely given that the opposition is strongly in favour of new elections. While new elections will delay the vote on the new budget reform measures and potentially delay the next round of bailout funds from the EU, this is likely to be seen as one of the most positive (least bearish) outcomes for the EUR as it will avoid a referendum. There could even be an initial relief rebound for the EUR on any news that a referendum is being avoided, by the continued uncertainty and delays with regard the passing of the new budget measures and payment of EU bailout funds will likely keep the EUR under pressure over the medium term. Indeed, most of the options under discussion in the market are EUR negative in our view. A victory by Papandreou in the confidence vote on Friday is likely to be seen as the most bearish for the EUR, opening the door to a referendum and the potential rejection of the bailout package by the Greek population.

Wondering why the future for housing as an asset is so bleak, why median housing prices continue to tumble and recently saw their biggest three month drop ever, and why there is no bottom in sight? Simple: the American public appears to have woken up to the reality that homes are no longer a flippable asset, and in fact continue to drop in price, an observation that is obvious to virtually all now. So what happens next? Why renting of course. Here is Morgan Stanley explaining (granted in a pitchbook for REITs but the underlying data is quite useful) why the Housing 2.0 paradigm is all about renting.

As we present Morgan Stanley in the role of the biggest Netflix bull (or is that loser? We are not sure we can use that word without preclearing it with the Wall Street directorate of truth), we eagerly await the barrage from the media that has a "gag order" on the investment bank with massive French bank exposure, that will shoot the messenger for suggesting that in addition to being a European bank risk derivative, Gorman's bank is also one of the biggest finders and keepers of momo darlings. As for the UBS Global Asset Management and Lone Pine analysts who loaded up to the gills on NFLX stock in Q2, we are confident you will have more than enough time to sample the company's streaming product in your extended search for the next job.

There is just one piece of information one needs to see to realize just how big of a farce financial results reporting has become in America, with the accountants' and auditors' blessing. Morgan Stanley today reported income of $2.2 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share on an apples to unicorns basis, compared with income of $314 million, or $0.05 per diluted share, for the same period a year ago. Net revenues were $9.9 billion for the current quarter compared with $6.8 billion a year ago. Expectations were for revenue and EPS of $7.28 billion and $0.30. Both were massively missed because "results for the current quarter included positive revenue of $3.4 billion, or $1.12 per diluted share, compared with negative revenue of $731 million a year ago related to changes in Morgan Stanley’s debt-related credit spreads and other credit factors (Debt Valuation Adjustment, DVA)." As the DVA, or the benefit from corporate spread explosions, is a top and bottom line number, the real results were $6.5 billion and $0.02. But, no, why report reality when there are fudge factors that soften the blow when a company underperforms. And furthermore, as every bank will tell you, its CDS marks are meaningless: after all, the "CDS market is illiquid and controlled by maniacs" or whatever David Viniar said on the Goldman conference call yesterday (more later on this). As for what matters: Institutional Securities revenue would have been $3 billion net of the DVA compared to $5.2 billion in Q2 - said otherwise a complete business collapse in the quarter.

Remember when Morgan Stanley pulled out the kitchen sink two weeks ago in support of its surging CDS (which incidentally will be the sole reason for the bank's "surprising" EPS beat when the bank pulls a DV(D)A page right out of JPMorgan's playbook) by enlisting the support of Japanese JV Mistubishi UFG with promises that it would never let its bigger US brother down? Well, we now have the first indication of just "how" said plan will look like. As Reurters reports, the JV "is planning to cut 1,200 to 1,300 jobs, or about 20 percent of the total workforce, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. A spokesman at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley said his firm made a call for early retirements earlier this month but declined to say how many workers responded. A previous call for early retirements in February cut about 270 jobs. The company had about 6,600 employees at the end of March." And there you have it. With supporting JV partners such as these, who needs CDS vigilantes, or the difference between gross and net exposure when bilateral netting is discovered to be the biggest fraud ever?

Since one can not get a downgrade of a bank during market hours for fears of springing who knows what circuit breakers, Fitch had to wait until just after the market close to release its latest market surprise which consisted of a "watch negative" announcement on the following banks Barclays, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman, Morgan Stanley; others it just slashed some by multiple notches, among which: Landesbank Berlin IDR downgraded to A+ from AA-; Lloyds Banking Group IDR downgraded to A from AA-; RBS IDR downgraded to A from AA-; and most importantly UBS IDR downgraded to A from A+. The reason for the action: "the ongoing Eurozone crisis continues to feed intense market speculation regarding the potential or bank recapitalisation schemes. Therefore for the near term the agency is maintaining a 'single A' range support rating floors for banks in its highest rated Eurozone countries." The Euro is not liking this announcement one bit.

Update: For those curious to learn more about this phenomenon, here is ZeroHedge's first take on this paradox from April 2009!

Stocks added to their rally today when Gasparino leaked news that MS was going to have a "solid" quarter and they were going to beat GS. Morgan Stanley has $187 billion of public debt according to Bloomberg.  Just eyeballing it, the average maturity looks close to 4 years, but let's be conservative and assume it is 3 years. So MS 3 year bonds widened by over 300 bps during the quarter.  3 year MS CDS widened by 380 bps (from 113 to 493), so the move in bonds actually outperformed the move in CDS. Is MS planning on taking a massive gain on marking their own bonds?  There were stories of MS buying back their own bonds - a great move if they though they were cheap, but a critical move if they were planning on taking a gain and didn't want to have to give it back in the future if their credit spreads tightened. Goldman has slightly less debt at $178 billion, but the spread widened far less. Is this why the MS CEO is so confident they will have a good quarter and beat GS?  I honestly hope not.  If the CEO of MS is playing accounting games (totally legal, but stupid) on their own spreads and thinks the markets will respect that, than I am very nervous about what is going on there.

Remember how the market rally back in March 2009 started with Citi leaking its "great" numbers? Well, Morgan Stanley has just one upped them, not only "leaking" their own numbers, via Fox Business' Gasparino who a week ago was theatrically complaining that Morgan Stanley wanted him dead, but also somehow leaking Goldman's numbers. How Morgan Stanley got Goldman's Q3 numbers? We don't know. But all is fair in love and preserving the ponzi. Lastly, if the actual numbers of Mack The Knife's firm end up being far worse than expected (remember all that stuff about VaR being taken down in in Q3 after it soared in Q2), they can just blame Gasparino for not knowing the difference between Gross and Net EPS, net of European bank exposure.

• GASPARINO SAYS MS CEO TELLING INVESTORS EVERYTHING IS 'OK'
• GASPARINO SAYS MS CEO TELLING EXECS 3Q RESULTS TO BEAT GOLDMAN
• FOX'S GASPARINO SAYS MORGAN STANLEY CEO SAYING 3Q LOOKS 'SOLID'

Synopsis: Questions about MS's French bank exposure and level of derivatives exposure. While June results were good, MS' French bank exposure (all asset and off balance sheet classes except derivatives) is estimated at $39B (57% of equity of $68B and 150% of market cap of $26B) of which interbank placements is believed to be a small component. These exposures are significant and unusually large as a percentage of capital. Of equal concern is the estimated $1.78T in notional value of CDS' on MS' books although EJR does acknowledge the netting effect (the net estimated exposure is $457M). The US is likely to provide MS additional support if needed, despite wind-down procedures contained in Dodd Frank. We are downgrading with a neg outlook.

We must have missed the moment when Jim Cramer defended Morgan Stanley today, but judging by the company's CDS which is +30 to a ridonculous 610/650, he must have said something positive. In fact, the bank's "outperformance" is only matched by that of Waffled which as we have been saying since Friday is going to meet Dexia about halfway. Today it is +23 to 290/300, the worst performer of any country in the world.

Just because outright denials by Dick Bove, Alliance Bernstein, Credit Suisse, Jim Cramer and Wells Fargo were not enough to prevent a rout of Morgan Stanley stock after someone dared to point out one simple observation, here comes the 2008 deja vu when the Asians had to step up and protect their "strategic alliance" partners, also known as deeply underwater investments. We expect another Eureka moment from the Orkimedes Of Omaha (and grand tax vizier) shortly.

Minutes ago Jim Cramer, reverting to his traditional inverse bank psychic, whose track record needs just one word of reminder, and that is Bear Stearns, told everyone that Morgan Stanley is fine. It may well be. However, we doubt it, as does the market, which just sent out the firm's CDS up another 32bps to 528bps, the widest since 10/13/08 having only traded wider than this level from 9/16/08 to 10/13/08. Critically for those looking at CDS not being as bad as during the peak of the crisis and gaining comfort from that - CDS did not trade gently to those extremes - it gapped unmercifully wider with incredible day to day volatility. Furthermore, for those talking about how illiquid CDS are and easily manipulated, we remind them that it is bonds that cracked first (a much more broadly owned and traded set of instruments) and only very recently has CDS started to catch up to the wide/risky levels at which bonds trade.

The move in Morgan Stanley CDS has been grabbing some attention.  It has moved wider than any of the other banks.  Its exposure to French banks in particular has been part of the reason.  Potential hedging of counterparty exposure has also been listed as a reason. (Once again I can’t help but wonder why derivatives in general, and CDS in particular, didn’t get forced into clearing or exchanges after Lehman). I don’t know whether Morgan Stanley is rich or cheap at these levels, but I think there is more digging that needs to be done and it should focus on Asian exposures because that seems to correlate best to the recent moves.

We have been discussing US (and European) financial risk for some time (especially recently with regard MS exposure to French banks). Since we published that article, we have seen incredible shifts in MS CDS and bonds even as stocks appear to shrug of some of the reality of the situation. An excellent article on Bloomberg last evening pointed out that not only was MS CDS at rather extreme levels, it was quietly as risky (if not more so) than many of the European banks that are making the headlines. Not only is MS CDS its highest since its spike highs in Q4 2008, the curve is inverted with 1Y risk trading 500/550 against 5Y risk at 455/470 which strongly suggests jump risk (or counterparty risk) is being aggressively hedged. With over $4.5bn of debt maturing in Q4 (which we have been pointing out for months - TLGP issues) and the increasingly binary nature of any outcomes, it seems the only real buyer of any MS debt are basis traders as the difference between bond spreads and CDS has halved in the last few weeks.

The latest quarterly report from the Office Of the Currency Comptroller is out and as usual it presents in a crisp, clear and very much glaring format the fact that the top 4 banks in the US now account for a massively disproportionate amount of the derivative risk in the financial system. Specifically, of the $250 trillion in gross notional amount of derivative contracts outstanding (consisting of Interest Rate, FX, Equity Contracts, Commodity and CDS) among the Top 25 commercial banks (a number that swells to $333 trillion when looking at the Top 25 Bank Holding Companies), a mere 5 banks (and really 4) account for 95.9% of all derivative exposure (HSBC replaced Wells as the Top 5th bank, which at $3.9 trillion in derivative exposure is a distant place from #4 Goldman with $47.7 trillion). The top 4 banks: JPM with $78.1 trillion in exposure, Citi with $56 trillion, Bank of America with $53 trillion and Goldman with $48 trillion, account for 94.4% of total exposure. As historically has been the case, the bulk of consolidated exposure is in Interest Rate swaps ($204.6 trillion), followed by FX ($26.5TR), CDS ($15.2 trillion), and Equity and Commodity with $1.6 and $1.4 trillion, respectively. And that's your definition of Too Big To Fail right there: the biggest banks are not only getting bigger, but their risk exposure is now at a new all time high and up $5.3 trillion from Q1 as they have to risk ever more in the derivatives market to generate that incremental penny of return.