Barclays

With the plethora of mounting event risks, from the end of Operation Twist to numerous elections, the possibility of QE3, the US fiscal situation, the ECB/Bundesbank battle, and China's on-again-off-again economy, it seems finding a low cost long volatility 'bet' is the best way to gather some macro protection (aside from total liquidation that is). Earlier, we noted how expensive S&P 500 implied volatility had become relative to its realized vol - suggesting that being long S&P vol is not a low-cost option. However, as Barclays points out, GLD (and slightly less so SLV) is among the cheapest (defined based on percentiles of implied vol over realized vol) volatilities available. SPY vol is trading at a 60% premium to its realized vol while GLD is trading at a 20% discount. While the main risk to being long GLD volatility is a continued drift lower in realized vol, the current realized volatility is near the lower-end of its empirical range and there appear to be a number of catalysts, as we noted above, for gold (or hard assets in general) to break from its range-bound YTD performance in price and volatility (either up - more likely in our view - or down).

All you need to read and some more.

• Current account surplus recycling goes global: BRICS demand bigger IMF role before giving it cash (Reuters)
• Obama oil margin plan could increase price swings (Reuters)
• Britons Abandoning Pensions Amid ‘Outdated’ Rules (Bloomberg)
• Hedge-Fund Assets Rise to Record Level (WSJ)
• Way to restore confidence: SEC considers case against Egan-Jones (FT)
• Qatari wealth fund adds 5% Tiffany stake  (FT)
• "Do we file?" Dewey Pitches Plan for Rescue (WSJ)
• French president slips further behind Socialist challenger Hollande (ANI)
• Nine U.S. Banks Said to be Examined on Overdraft Fees (Bloomberg)
• Capital Rotation: Investors fret on emerging markets and look to U.S. (Reuters)
• Verizon's Answer to iPhone: Windows (WSJ)

All you need to know.

Update 2: SPAIN SEES FIRMS' INTERESTS AS NATIONAL INTEREST, OFFICIAL SAYS; SPAIN ANALYZING RESPONSE TO ARGENTINA OVER YPF, OFFICIAL SAYS. Oops.

Update: TRADING HALT: YPF (NYSE)-NEWS DISSEMINATION. Translation: YPF shareholders - you have been Corzined. The money has vaporized. Jon Corzine has been appointed to the newly formed Argentina based Board of Dictators. Have a nice day

There are those who naively believe that any time the tables turn against a government, that government will quietly sit in the corner and play by the rules as its power erodes to zero. Probably the best example of just this is Executive Order 6102 when FDR, in a country that supposedly honors contract laws, issued Executive Order 6102, which effectively nationalized all private gold, no questions asked. And while we may not be there just yet, we are getting close, as demonstrated by the most recent developments in Argentina, where president Cristina Kirchner asked Congress to "expropriate" oil and gas producer YPF (which is majority owned by Repsol YPF) thereby "allowing the government to share ownership of the company with oil-producing provinces, a spokeswoman for Ms. Kirchner said Monday." What is the pretext for this move formerly associated almost exclusively with lawless, "communist" third world banana republics? Why "hydrocarbon self-sufficiency" of course. How soon until any and every government follows suit in a world in which excess liquidity sloshing around makes expropriation of vital energy producing assets a key prerogative? And how long until the resultant (accelerating) collapse in faith of the monetary system, leads government to declare "monetary self-sufficiency" and confiscate everything that is not nailed down. In exchange for worthless pieces of paper of course. Just to make it "fair". And just to return the favor, the market just sent Argentina CDS up by 60 bps, to just shy of 1000 bps. You know, because it's only "fair."

At the start of April, ECB's Draghi noted, "let's keep in mind that it [the LTRO] is not capital", adding that "if a bank does not have capital, it would be better to raise it now". Given the rapidly fading glow of LTRO's liquidity flush, the seemingly 'wasted' ammunition that Spanish and Italian banks have fired at the sovereign bond bears and the complete and utter lack of capital raising that has occurred, perhaps it is no wonder that credit spreads on the major European financials have exploded back to near their wides once again (LTRO-encumbrance aside). As Barclays notes today, the major financials alone look set to need over EUR120 billion in capital to bring their credit risks down to acceptable levels to be able to openly access capital markets once again. This means a median 30% of current equity market capitalization has to be raised. Just as we pointed out again and again, not only is the LTRO an encumbrance of bank balance sheets (and therefore increasingly subordinates all existing bond-holders implicitly reducing recoveries in a worst case scenario) but it delayed much-needed decision-making by giving the banks an 'out' for a few months.

• Subprime bubble is back: Lenders Again Dealing Credit to Risky Clients (NYT)
• Housing bubble is also back: AIG Is Planning a Return to U.S. Property Investing (WSJ)
• Spain and EU Reject Talk of Bailout (FT)
• Coeure Suggests ECB Could Restart Bond Purchases for Spain (Bloomberg)
• IMF Set to Recognise Shrinking Chinese Surplus (FT)
• Government to Propose New Mortgage Servicing Rules (AP)
• Japan Currency Chief Warns Against Delay Over Finances (Bloomberg)
• The 'Michael Corleone' of Libya (Reuters)
• North Korea Says Fuel Being Injected Into Rocket (Reuters)
• SNB Reaffirms Vow to Cap Swiss Franc (FT)

Chesapeake Energy took the road less traveled by entering 2012 "naked" with none of its gas volumes hedged.

For all those who have long been curious what the precious metals "queen" thinks about allegations involving her and her fimr in gold and silver manipulation, how JPMorgan is positioned in the precious metals market, and how she views the fringe elements of media, as well as JPMorgan's ethical limitations to engaging in 'wrong' behavior, the answers are all here.

Last week Mario Monti, like a good (ex) Goldmanite, did his best to buy what Goldman is selling, namely telling anyone gullible enough to believe that the "European crisis is almost over." Funny then that we learn that just as this was happening, Ben Bernanke held a secret meeting with the entire banker caretel, in which discussed was not American jobs (seasonally adjusted or otherwise), nor $5 gas, but... helping European with its debt crisis. But, but... Mario said. In the meantime, European spreads are back to late 2011 levels.

It’s important to put yourself in the minds of OECD policy makers. They are largely managing a retirement class that is moving out of the workforce and looking to draw upon its savings -- savings that are (mostly) in real estate, bonds, and equities. Given this demographic reality, growth in nominal terms is undoubtedly the new policy of the West. While a 'nominal GDP targeting' approach has been officially rejected (so far), don't believe it. Reflationary policy aimed at sustaining asset prices at high levels will continue to be the policy going forward.  While it’s unclear how long a post-credit bubble world can sustain such period of forced growth, what is perfectly clear is that oil is no longer available to fund such growth. For the seventh year since 2005, global oil production in 2011 failed to surpass 74 mbpd (million barrels per day) on an annual basis. But while the West is set to dote upon its retirement class for many years to come, the five billion people in the developing world are ready to undertake the next leg of their industrial growth. They are already using oil at the margin as their populations urbanize. But as the developing world comes on board as new users of petroleum, they still need growing resources of other energy to fund the new growth which now lies ahead of them. This unchangeable fact sets the world on an inexorable path: a competitive race for BTU.

While the LTROs were supposed to bring European banks back from the edge of insolvency with a warming blast of liquidity, the sad truth, now that the exuberance of fresh money-printing has faded, is that the unintended consequence has crammed down the senior unsecured bank debt holders to the lowest of the low. This realization, that we have discussed a number of times - most recently here - that nothing has been solved - as the LTRO Stigma unintended consequence, is starting to leak back into broader risk premia as now the contagion risks are back on the table and even non-LTRO-facing banks are seeing spreads increase as expectations of either broader forced cram-downs or interconnected vicious cycles rear their ugly head once again among European banks - and implicitly back onto European Sovereign balance sheets. Citigroup's Hans Lorenzen highlights four key reasons for the increasingly binary bifurcation that senior unsecured bank debt has become.

Presented with little comment except to note that the next time someone uses the phrase "...but the data is coming in strong..." please show this chart as US and European macro data prints have consistently missed expectations for well over a month now...

With the first quarter of 2012 just about in the books, Nic Colas (of ConvergEx) looks at how the Exchange Traded Fund 'Class of 2012' has done in terms of asset raising to date. There have been 82 new ETFs listed thus far for the year and they have collectively gathered $1.1 billion in new assets through Wednesday’s close of business. While 63% of those funds have been equity-focused, fully 67% of the asset growth for the year has flowed into fixed income products. Just over half the total money invested in these new funds has had two destinations: the iShares Barclays U.S. Treasury Bond Fund (symbol GOVT, with $297 million in flows) and Pimco’s Total Return ETF (symbol TRXT, with $267 million in flows). The standout new equity funds of 2012 in terms of flows are all iShares products – Global Gold Miners (symbol: RING), India Index (symbol: INDA) and World Index (symbol: URTH). Bottom line: even with the continuous innovations of the ETF space, investors are still targeting international and fixed income exposure, a continuation of last year’s risk-averse trends and while 'ETFs destabilize markets' might be the prevailing group-think, this quarter’s money flows into newly launched exchange traded products reveals a strong 'Risk Off' investment bias. Interestingly, the correlation between inception-to-date performance and money flows is essentially zero.

All you need to read and more.