Hugh Hendry

At The Milken Institute conference yesterday, Hugh Hendry delivered his usual eloquent and critical insights on the state of Europe. Beginning with the statement that "All of Europe has defaulted", the canny-wee-fella (translation: shrewd and cautious young chap) explained that "The political economy in Europe is such that the politicians chose to default on their spending obligations to their citizens in order to honor the pact with their financial creditors and so as time goes on, the politicians are being rejected." Between France's election of Mr. Hollande and Luxembourg's 'when times get tough you have to lie' Juncker, Hendry says the only inspiration for Europe is fiction as "you just can't make up how bad it is" as he goes on to discuss the precedent for a way forward, the grotesque distortions of fixed exchange rate regimes, why Wiemar happened, why the transfer union will never happen, Ayn Rand's reality, and fear politicians are feeling - ending with his view that "we are single-digit years away from the most profound market clearing moment".

Hugh Hendry is back with a bang after a two year hiatus with what so many have been clamoring for, for so long - another must read letter from one of the true (if completely unsung) visionary investors of our time: "I have not written to you at any great length since the winter of 2010. This is largely because not much has happened to change our views. We still see the global economy as grotesquely distorted by the presence of fixed exchange rates, the unraveling of which is creating financial anarchy, just as it did in the 1920s and 1930s. Back then the relevant fixes were around the gold standard. Today it is the dual fixed pricing regimes of the euro countries and of the dollar/renminbi peg."

Unlike some of the more noteworthy fund managers who appear on our TV screens all too often, Hugh Hendry seems to have been head-down hard at work. The appropriately named Eclectica fund that he manages has had a stupendous year as The FT reports his 'China Short' fund is up over 52% for the year. We discussed his already-solid performance back in September, when he was up a mere 40% YTD following an exceptional month in September. Given the difficulties of shorting Chinese firms directly, the deeply contrarian manager who makes no apologies for his view of a 1920's Japan-like crash in China is clearly doing something right. His positions in Japanese entities with large Chinese exposures makes great sense and the fact that he has kept outperforming this quarter even as Japanese credit has rallied back quite impressively, from spike wides in September and October, seems testament to our TV-Appearance-to-Performance anti-correlation thesis.

Prior to 2008 it was generally understood that the profession hardly merited its claims of its own predictive utility. So the failure to assign enough risk to such a crisis as befell the developed world in 2008 was, frankly, no surprise. But in the aftermath of the crisis, economics, in its professional form, has revealed itself to be damagingly disconnected from observable reality. A glaring example of this is how it cannot come to any agreement as to how the debt crisis occurred, and accordingly remains quite confused in its proffered solutions. Mostly the profession remains curiously naive about the nature of debt, an understanding of which is more critical than ever as the developed world enters a 'slow' to 'no-growth' phase of its history. Indeed, many of the papers, interviews, and op-eds from central bankers and economists in the face of our present-day sovereign debt crisis are little more than an eerie restatement of the discussions which took place about private-sector debt from 2006-2008.

The ECB may soon have to change its policy of keeping a 1.00% rate floor if JPM is correct.In a note just released by JPM's Greg Fuzesi, the JPM analysts says that "with the Euro area economy entering a potentially deep recession, we now think that the ECB will cut its main policy interest rate to just 0.5% by mid-2012. We expect the interest rate corridor to be narrowed to +/-25bp, so that the deposit facility rate will be 0.25%. We recognise that the ECB did not cut rates below 1% during the 2008/9 recession. It never fully explained why it did not, but we think that the two most likely reasons will be less important this time." And when the ECB does cut which it will have no choice considering Germany's stern reluctance to allow it to print outright, Hugh Hendry will make some serious cash. As a reminder, 'He’s made bets that he says will deliver a 40-to-1 return if the ECB cuts rates below 1% next year." Lastly, and as fully expected, the EURUSD is tumbling on the news.

Rosenberg's note today mentioned the global bull market in agriculture.  Which,as I recall, was becoming an issue pre-lehman.  Inflation is just about the only thing stopping food prices from levitating once again.  Trade balances, supply constraints, changing weather patterns, and emerging market demand continue to support a structural bull market.

What was that Hugh Hendry quote that everyone loves?

You know the old drill – China and Asia produce, the US consumes.  They cycle their greenbacks back over this way, finance our debt, we buy more of their stuff, and the beat goes on. This model officially stopped with the launch of QE2, Hendry says, as the US officially started rejecting the globalization that had made the global economy hum (perhaps largely at the expense of US employment and manufacturing).  With QE2, dollars were printed and exported – along with inflation – to Asia. This led to the countries in Asia – and Europe, too – raising rates to combat inflation.  The result, he says, is that global economic growth has essentially ground to a halt. So what’s next? A crash, of course. All this and much more, but probably most notably, we learn that Hendry's has made bets that he says will deliver a 40-to-1 return if the ECB cuts rates below 1% next year. More inside.

After today's ridiculous move in the market, which brings back memories of either August 2007, March 2008, the reaction after the Tarp vote (the successful one), August 2011, when the market gyrated by 400 points on a daily basis, and many more bear market rallies, we hope to restores some semblance of normalcy by presenting the following series of clips all from Hugh Hendry speechs at the LSE's Alternative Investments Conference earlier this year. Must watch, because when everyone loses their mind, listening to some common sense is the best remedy.

The man who singlehandedly took "I would recommend you panic" and made it into one of the catch phrases of the year (if not decade), and who has recently been in a self-imposed media blackout, had a rare media appearance when late last week he appeared on the BBC show The Bottom Line Evan together with Guy Berruyer, chief executive of global business software supplier Sage Group; and internet entrepreneur Brent Hoberman, founder of online interior decoration business mydeco.com. Obviously we were mostly interested in what Hugh would say, and luckily he did say quite a lot, if nothing too shocking for those familiar with his generally cheery outlook on the world.  Among the snazzy soundbites was his explanation that the UK is not in a recession, but a depression, something Zero Hedge has been saying about the entire, never mind England, for the past 2.5 years, and the proceeds to give the rational breakdown of the Greek situation, which as everyone knows is that it is purely due to political power grabbing and banker greed and financial innovation allowing the masking of reality. As for the outcome, we all know it: Greece defaults, creditors take major haircuts, speculators get blamed, etc.

It has been a while since we heard anything about everyone's favorite contrarian and most outspoken hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, and probably for a good reason. As everyone else was complaining about their performance (and P&L) collapsing, blaming it on everything from the weather, to Bernanke's diet, to fundmanetals and technicals, Hugh Hendry was raking it in and is now up 38.65% YTD, with a stunning +22.5% in August alone (or pretty much mirroring the collapse at Paulson & Co) and another 11% in September! As the FT reports, Hugh Hendry's Eclectica fund has "has soared in value over the past two months as global markets have plummeted and industry peers have suffered damaging losses." Hendry's opinion on China is no secret, with an indicative snippet being that he anticipates a 1920's Japan-like crash in China. And as was reported previously, based on his recent trade of buying up lost of Japan CDS of companies exposed to China, his outperformance is no suprise. Expect to hear much more about Hendry as the media gets tired of paraphrasing sob stories and actually focuses on the (very few) winners from the most recent market blow out, confirming that contrarian, non-lemming approaches to investing still do pay off.

Tomorrow's NFP number will be one of the most critical releases from the BLS: if on one hand the number is far greater than expected, it will effectively mean that QE3 will not begin immediately after the end of QE2, just like QE1 ended on March 31, 2010 only to see QE Lite implemented 4 months later. That the Fed is not willing to take a political gamble and send oil to $150 is conceivable, which is what would happen should Jon Hilsenrath start leaking QE3 rumors. On the other hand, the economy is once again turning lower as recent diffusion data (not to mention housing) has been indicating. Should the Fed implicitly tighten, by not loosening, the economic contraction will accelerate drastically, and capital markets will follow suit. And since as Hugh Hendry noted earlier, there is no China to pick up the slack, the stakes on the all in gamble in this bet that the virtuous cycle has picked up, will likely cost Bernanke his job if he ends up wrong and QE3 is needed anyway. Of course, as many believe, and as Bernanke himself has said, manipulating the market and stimulating inflation is and continues to be the Fed's only objective. Obviously, the waterfall effects in either direction here are huge. Which is why if tomorrow's NFP number is a beat and not just any beat but a massive one (read well over 250,000), it will be an attempt by the administration to cement the idea that the economy is now recovering. Anything at or below consensus will merely push the decision one month forward, however it will be too late to prepare the political landscape for QE3 in May, just two months ahead of the end of QE2. So tomorrow is likely D-Day on QE3 (or at least a direct continuation of POMO past the June 30 expiration date).

Hugh Hendry proposes a very simple thought experiment to all those (apparently the Fed) who believe that QE2 can end: who will drive global growth if the suddenly marginal economy, that would be the US for some ungodly reason, contracts, which it already is, and will do so even more once rates start rising. Sorry, but unlike last time China is not here to pick up the slack. And it appears that China will not be stepping in to fill the growth void, read inflation, (read Jasmine revolution) which can only lead to more social unrest.

Of course, what sucks for the American worker is great for our Multi-National Corporate Masters and we all love a good puppet show, so they bought out the President to say "U.S. companies shouldn't worry about inflation if they're planning on expanding their business."

Last year's Russia Forum was one of the must see events of the year, pitting such high powered independent thinkers as Marc Faber, Hugh Hendry, Nassim Taleb in a free for all. While the cliffhanger back then was the suggestion by Hendry that he had recreated the Paulson ABX trade with "1.5% downside and 75% upside" (which has since not been fully revealed aside from some occasional snippets in the periodic letters that it is a synthetic China short trade), the true brilliance was in the debate between the Treasury skeptics and the fan (Hendry). That said, with the entire curve surging wider, we hope Hendry took profits on his short as we are now virtually exactly where we were a year ago. This year's forum was just as entertaining, and while it didn't have quite a distinguished audience, it did feature Marc Faber and Nassim Taleb in a discussion of whether Russia is the best or worst BRIC. That said, trust both Faber and Taleb not to stick to the script and go off on wild tangents. Sure enough, the line of the night as usual belonged to Faber: "We have a big debate in the world whether we will have a deflationary collapse or an inflationary boom...usually after a period of very heavy money printing war follows." That is the philosophical gist of it. As for Faber's recommendation, it is precisely the asset which has become a short-seller's nightmare in the current geopolitically fragile environment: oil. "Whether you are very bullish or very bearish you should invest in oil."