Goldman Sachs

Call it an example of an abbreviated public lifecycle. After IPOing at $22.50 just last March and then promptly tumbling, Candy Crush maker King Digital was stuck in no man's land: demand for its products was promptly waning and the organic growth its underwriters had promised was nowhere to be found. The fundamentally savvy hedge funds sniffed this out and promptly jumped on board what seemed like a royal flush slam dunk to zero. And then, overnight, out of nowhere Activision decided to crush the Candy Crush shorts, who had built up a short stake amounting to 25% of the float, when it announced it would acquire the company for $5.9 billion or $18/share, a 16% premium to the previous day closing price... and also a 20% discount to the IPO price.

Having watched the credit markets grow more and more weary of the major US financials, it should not be total surprise that ratings agency S&P just put all the majors on watch for a rating downgrade:JPMORGAN, BANK OF AMERICA, WELLS FARGO, CITIGROUP, GOLDMAN SACHS, STATE STREET CORP, MORGAN STANLEY MAY BE CUT BY S&P. Despite all the talking heads proclamations on higher rates and net interest margins and 'strongest balance sheets' ever, S&P obviously sees something more worrisome looming. S&P blames The Fed's new resolution regime for its shift, implying "extraordinary support" no longer factored in. This comes just hours after Moody's put Bank of Nova Scotia on review also (blaming the move on concerns over increased risk appetite).

Financial engineering scams like Tyco and Valeant would never happen in an honest free market. Short sellers would shut them down long before they reach egregious levels of over-valuation; and the cost of honest downside market insurance (i.e. S&P 500 puts) and market driven carry cost would dramatically reduce the profitability of speculation and the amount of punters and capital in the casino. In today’s broken markets and corrupt regime of central bank driven crony capitalism, however, bubbles inflate in individual securities, as well as in broad sectors and the market as a whole, until they reach egregious, self-correcting extremes. Then they violently implode, creating immense waves of collateral damage in the process. Perhaps then the American people will learn that Yellen & Co have actually been in the un-wealth effects business for way too long.

While there are certainly reasons to be "hopeful" that stocks will continue to rise into the future, "hope" has rarely been a fruitful investment strategy longer term. Therefore, let's analyze each of the optimist's arguments from both perspectives to eliminate "confirmation bias." 

The Federal Reserve was supposed to serve the nation, however as even Bloomberg observes today, ended up "steamrolling" Main Street. One reason why: directors such as this one. Presenting former Morgan Stanley CEO, James Gorman, whose former employer got a $107 billion loan from the Federal Reserve to avoid implosion.

A bigger problem for Valeant, however, emerged today when none other than Warren Buffett's right hand man Charlie Munger in an interview with Bloomberg "tore anew into the besieged drug company, calling its practice of acquiring rights to treatments and boosting prices legal but “deeply immoral” and “similar to the worst abuses in for-profit education.”  And to prove just how much clout Munger does indeed have, moments ago the most important Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs, downgraded Valeant to Neutral from Buy, cutting its share price target from $180 to $122.

A few days ago we warned, confirming Goldman Sachs' earlier analysis that the world was running out of space to store crude distillate products, that China was running out of storage space for crude oil as it dramatically ramped up its Strategic Petroleum Reserve 'buy low' plan. While the brightest indicator at the time was "about 4 million barrels of crude oil stranded in two tankers off an eastern port for nearly two months," this week, the dial went to 11 on the oil-demand-fear-o-meter, as Bloomberg reports supertankers sailing to Chinese ports plunged to its lowest in 13 months, sending the daily rate for shipping crashing. The marginal demand-er of last resort just left the market.

While the Valeant soap opera has had constant, heart-pounding drama for weeks and following yesterday's report that it allegedly fabricated prescriptions, even an element of career-ending (and prison-time launching) criminality, so far one thing had been missing: an antagonist tied to Goldman Sachs. We are delighted to reveal the "missing link", one which ties everything together. Its name is Howard Schiller.

Back in September we explained why, contrary to both conventional wisdom and the BOJ's endless protests to the contrary, neither the BOJ nor the ECB have any interest in boosting QE at this - or any other point - simply because with every incremental bond they buy, the time when the two central banks run out of monetizable debt comes closer. Since then the ECB has jawboned that it may boost QE (but it has not done so), and overnight as reported previously, the BOJ likewise did not expand QE despite many, including Goldman Sachs, expecting it would do just that.

On Wednesday morning a new national poll revealed that 54% of Americans rate the economy as 'poor', but instead of focusing oin that, Becky Quick quizzed Marco Rubio about his 'lack of bookkeeping skills,' Carl Quintanilla posed questions about homosexuality and fantasy football, and the astonishingly incompetent John Harwood expressed doubt about Donald Trump's 'moral authority.' The interaction between the candidates and the CNBC moderators revealed the yawning gap between the bubble world at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street and the hard scrabble reality of economic stagnation and political alienation on main street America.

"... judging from market-based implied measures of longer-term inflation expectations, the effectiveness of the ECB’s announcements has proved limited so far."

- Goldman Sachs

It appears even Goldman Sachs was surprised by the recent rally in US equities - especially in light of the explicit hawkishness of The Fed yesterday. In a trading note this morning, the bank says that market risks are real and rising (but are not overwhelming) as it explains, we assume with no intent at humor or sarcasm, that they "prefer to think of the recent equity rally as 'macro-free' rather than 'low quality'," reiterating their view of the cycle and of markets as "fundamentally upbeat." They do, however, admit over the last month, the likelihood of a drawdown in the US equity market further increased, and remains at mildly elevated levels.

It's that time again. From 'jolted' Jeb to 'cool' Carly and from 'calm' Carson to 'turmoiling' Trump, for some of the GOP presidential nominee candidates, tonight could be the last hoorah in a campaign that has seen apolitical entrants dominate the mainstream Washington muppets. Moderated by John "I never met a Republican I didn't like" Harwood, we are sure there will be some tension as the "general health of the economy" planned focus may morph into any and everything as the debate pushes beyond two hours. Please watch responsibly...

No, Ben S. Bernanke will be someday remembered as the world’s most destructive battleship admiral. Not only was he fighting the last war, but his whole multi-trillion money printing campaign after September 15, 2008 was aimed at avoiding an historical Fed mistake that had never even happened!