Apple

• China cuts 2012 growth target to 7.5 percent, stability key (Reuters)
• Freom the Fed scribe himsef - Fed Takes a Break to Weigh Outlook (WSJ)
• Greek bond swap deal rests on knife-edge (FT)
• Lenders Stress Over Test Results (WSJ)
• China to Curb Auto Production Capacity, Promote New-Energy Car Development (Bloomberg)
• China military spending to top $100 billion in 2012, alarming neighbours (WaPo)
• Warning: A New Who's Who of Awful Times to Invest (Hussman)
• EU to push quota for women directors (FT)
• Romney Advances As Obama Gains (WSJ)
• Saudi Aramco Raises Oil Premium for April Sales to Asia, U.S.; Cuts Europe (Bloomberg)

All you need to read.

Think Apple is the only thing allowed to hit new records every month? Think again: presenting iFoodstamps - the number of Americans living in poverty (or at least doing a damn good job of fooling the government in pretending they do). As of December, per SNAP this number just hit another record high of 46.5 million, an increase of 384,000 in one month (and ending the trend of declines from October and November), 2.4 million in 2011 (about as many as have dropped out of the Labor force, hmmmm), and 14.3 million since Obama took office.

There is one name one won't find on Third Point latest 13F. Curiously, it is the same name that is now Third Point's fifth largest position as of February 29, 2012. As we said: every hedge fund is now in it. More importantly, we wonder, when will Apple, which is effectively an Alphaclone of itself, start charging its shareholders 2 and 20 for the privilege of owning its stock?

We were speechless when we read this from Bloomberg...

The problem for the Fed is that interest rates are already zero, and playing around with bonds and buying more mortgages (the Fed already owns $1 trillion) is ultimately pushing on a string: the Fed can't force all the free money into productive investments, nor can it force banks to lend or consumers to spend. The cliche is "don't fight the Fed;" there is no need to "fight the Fed" because they're busy self-destructing, and all we have to do is watch. Maybe the market will follow Apple in a trajectory to the moon here. If it doesn't, a variety of other models suggests the wheels may fall off the "growth and rising profits forever" story and the market will decline to test recent lows or even hit new lows.

• China’s Holdings of Treasuries Dropped in ’11 (BusinessWeek)
• Bundesbank at Odds With ECB Over Loans (FT)
• Euro zone puts Greece's efforts under microscope (Reuters)
• Bank of America Considers a Revamp That Would Affect Millions of Customers (WSJ)
• In Days Leading Up to MF Global's Collapse, $165 Million Transfer OK'd in a Flash (WSJ)
• Greece Approves Welfare Cuts for 2nd Bailout (Bloomberg)
• Irish Minister Pushes to Cut Bail-Out Cost (FT)
• China to Support Tech Sectors (China Daily)
• Spanish Bond Yields Fall in Debt Auction After ECB (Reuters)
• China to Expand Cross-Border RMB Businesses (China Daily)

There are those who voraciously, and blindly, read any and all hedge fund reports, allowing the already useless information to enter one brain hemisphere and exit the other, just so they can brag that they read such and such's monthly or year end letter. Frankly, we pity them, especially when in their attempt to ape success they confuse luck (which is responsible for 99% of hedge fund outliers) for skill, and in doing so constrain their minds even more. At least hopefully they don't spend money on self-improvement books. As for trading recommendations, by the time an idea is in writing, the time to implement it is long gone. Anyway, for precisely this subet of people we provide the Paulson 2011 year end letter. Which is 102 pages. It is amazing how when one is printing money, one can get away with two paragraphs of year end ruminations and the LPs will be delighted. When, however one has brought AUM from $32 billion to under $20 billion net of redemptions, much more reading material is required to justify the 2 and 20, especially if the proceeds are used to invest in AAPL (and speaking of Apple, we wonder how long before the company starts charging a fee of 2 and 20 from all of its shareholders). We won't spend much time dissecting the letter of a fund which blindly invested nearly half a billion in a company that two kids with an office exposed as fraud, suffice to copy and paste the following gem: "We believe this outperformance demonstrates our superior security analysis and selection due to our research edge." Yup, mmmhmmm. All this and much more in the enclosed paperweight.

For the first time since the end of January (and for only the 4th day this year) AAPL is trading higher with the S&P trading down... the S&P has surged after each previous event, will it this time or has it lost its QE mojo?

Earlier today, when forecasting the Chicago PMI, we warned to "expect another massive beat courtesy of consumers confident that they can have Apple apps, if not so much food, since they still don't pay their mortgages." Sure enough, the economic data is now straight out of China, with the Chicago PMI not only trouncing expectations, printing at 64, on consensus of 61 (the highest since last April when the peak of the liquidity bubble popped and the stock market rolled over), but, wait for it, the Employment index came at 64.2, up from 54.7, which was the highest employment print since April 1984! At this point it is no longer worth commenting on economic data, as between this, the NAR, the consumer confidence, it was all become farce of a blur. we now expect February unemployment to print negative as the labor participation rate slides to 50%, and seasonal adjustments and birth/date fixtures account for 5 million "additions" to jobs. One thing that is sure. There will be no more easing for a looooooooong time. Kiss any hope of more trillions in central bank liquidity goodbye.

On this leap day, we have a busy schedule which includes the second Q4 GDP revision, Chicago PMI (expect another massive beat courtesy of consumers confident that they can have Apple apps, if not so much food, since they still don't pay their mortgages), various Fed speakers, of which most important will be Ben Bernanke who takes the podium in Congress at 10 am for his semi-annual monetary policy report.

• Euro-Area Banks Tap ECB for Record Amount of Three-Year Cash (Bloomberg)
• Papademos Gets Backing for $4.3B of Cuts (Bloomberg)
• China February Bank Lending Remains Weak (Reuters)
• Romney Regains Momentum (WSJ)
• Shanghai Raises Minimum Wage 13% as China Seeks to Boost Demand (Bloomberg)
• Fiscal Stability Key To Economic Competitiveness - SNB's Jordan (WSJ)
• Bank's Tucker Says Cannot Relax Bank Requirements (Reuters)
• Life as a Landlord (NYT)

After 22 crosses yesterday, and 12 more today, the Dow managed to close above 13000. Transports were lower but less so on Oil's modest retracement (though the Brent-WTI spread remained around $15). While stocks closed modestly higher, volatility and correlation markets remained considerably higher than would be expected and along with quite considerable relative weakness in HYG (the high yield bond ETF) into the close as well as a clear up-in-quality rotation was evident as investment grade credit outperformed notably (not exactly a high-beta risk-on shift). Apple's meteoric rise helped drag Tech to first place overall today and also YTD followed closely (YTD) by financials both up around 14%. The last week or so of slow bleed higher in stocks has notably not been led by a short-squeeze in general - based on our index of most shorted names - but as is becoming more and more clear, divergences (and canaries) are appearing all over the place but we suspect can be traced back to Apple in many cases for its over-weighting impact. Treasuries slid lower (higher in yield) after Europe's close but remain better on the week and modestly flatter across the curve. Aside from a hiccup around the macro data this morning, EUR pushed higher all day against the USD shifting into the green by the US close as JPY stabilized. The USD weakness helped Copper and Gold leak higher but Silver was the massive winner, now up an impressive 4.3% since Friday and 30% YTD as WTI lost $107 and is now down over 3% on the week. The IG rotation coupled with vol decompression makes some (nervous) sense heading into the LTRO results but it seems the new safe-haven trade is Apple (whose option prices are now the most complacent since early 2009).

Since everyone is buying everything that is not nailed down, preferably with both hands, on massive margin if possible, and since the global reflation trade is on full bore following trillions in cheap money dumped by central banks to prevent another re-recession within the broader Depressionary downtrend (offset for the time being only courtesy of $7 trillion in consolidated central bank funny money), it only makes sense that following record January gasoline prices, that February would see an all time high in gas as well (a detailed breakdown can be found at the AAA's website). But fear not: as the laws of supply and demand have also been usurped by the Fed, as has common sense and basic economics, both these data points indicate that Q1 GDP will also come at an all time high, because the entire economy is now purely a reflection of Apple, which as noted previously is almost bigger than the entire retail sector by market cap, and today hit an all time high as well. In fact, we are now seeing a record in new all time highs across the spectrum (if not volume - shhhh about volume), it means that even as IBM just laid off another 1,000 North American employees, that the economy has never been better either.

This is simply stunning: one company, which has two flagship products, has a bigger market cap than the entire Semiconductor space, and is just shy of the entire S&P Retail sector.