Mean Reversion

And just like that things are going bump in the night once more. First, as previously reported, the $100+ WTI surge continues on fears over how the Egyptian coup will unfold, now that Mursi has a few short hours left until his army-given ultimatum runs out. But it is Europe where things are crashing fast and furious, with the EURUSD tumbling to under 1.2925 overnight and stocks sliding on renewed political risk, with particular underperformance observed over in Portugal, closely followed by its Iberian neighbor Spain, amid concerns that developments in Portugal, where according to some media reports all CDS-PP ministers will resign forcing early elections, will undermine country's ability to continue implementing the agreed bailout measures. As a result, Portuguese bond yields have spiked higher and the 10y bond yield spread are wider by over a whopping 100bps as austerity's "poster child" has rapidly become Europe's forgotten "dunce." The portu-litical crisis has finally arrived.

"The biggest problem currently is that there is virtually no expectation, or analysis that incorporates the impact, of an average economic recession ever occurring again."

This a fairly broad topic, and any "rules" would be vague at best, so i'll use recent trading activity as an example.  Often markets (and traders) are described as schizophrenic...and perhaps that should even be part of the job description....here's an example why...

Has Abenomics failed? Impossible, Abe's fans will say: he has barely had a chance to explore his policies. That maybe true, but one major problem with Japanese society is that it is very impatient when it comes to its politicians. In fact, the median tenure in office of each of its last 10 prime ministers is precisely 419 days, or just over 1 year. And Abe is already six months into his term (his second term, of course: let's not forget he quit his first stint as PM after exactly 365 days due to diarrhea). What is worse is that the key variable that has kept his approval rating high has been the stock market: worse, because the stock market is now in freefall, and with few favorable things Abe can point to in the economy (recall that his entire policy is based on a stock-market driven wealth effect - no Nikkei ramp, no wealth effect, no inflation), he suddenly finds himself in a support vacuum.

As the markets elevate higher on the back of the global central bank interventions it is important to keep in context the historical tendencies of the markets over time. Here we are once again with markets, driven by inflows of liquidity from Central Banks, hitting all-time highs. Of course, the chorus of justifications have come to the forefront as to why "this time is different." The current level of overbought conditions, combined with extreme complacency, in the market leave unwitting investors in danger of a more severe correction than currently anticipated. There is virtually no “bullish” argument that will withstand real scrutiny. Yield analysis is flawed because of the artificial interest rate suppression. It is the same for equity risk premium analysis. However, because the optimistic analysis supports the underlying psychological greed - all real scrutiny that would reveal evidence to contrary is dismissed. However, it is "willful blindness" that eventually leads to a dislocation in the markets. In this regard let's review the three most common arguments used to support the current market exuberance.

While there are a plethora of Wall Street analysts calling for much higher levels for the S&P 500; most of these calls are based simply on the belief that the current trajectory must continue indefinitely.  While you certainly cannot "fight the Fed" the underlying fundamentals and economics that support the markets long term are not present for the party.  What is very important to understand, and can be clearly seen in the chart below, is that despite repeated calls for "ever rising" stock markets in the past eventually left investors devastated.  Markets do not, and cannot, continue indefinitely in one direction. Unfortunately, for most individuals, by the time they realize what is happening it will likely be far too late to act. Could the catalyst be 'language' changes from the FOMC as they see bubbles and froth in high-yield credit and margined stocks?

There is a mathematical term used to describe a time series' propensity to mean-revert or not. Autocorrelation measures the tendency for today's price direction to be in the same direction as yesterday's. In a period of negative autocorrelation (such as today) when the market sells off one day it is much more likely to rebound the next. As Artemis Capital's Chris Cole notes, the current level of negative auto-correlation (often associated with positive for 'buy-the-dip' strategies in an upward trending market) has never been higher. Mean reversion and negative autocorrelations are one reason why many pure 'portfolio insurance' strategies are struggling with losses. If you are constantly shorting volatility this trend toward powerful mean reversion is your best friend. However, empirically, this high mean reversion is unsustainable; the potential for mean reversion regimes to ‘shift’ is driven by increasing leverage and interconnectedness in the system.

There is a very explicit link between the volatility (or risk) associated with one of the world's lowest yield and supposedly risk-free sovereign bond complexes and the need for liquidity (or cash over gold or commodities). The last two weeks has seen JGB bond volatility drop and gold rally as the correlation (which appears to have strong causal links) continues; and suggests notably more upside for Gold (especially as CoT data shows net longs remain extremely low).

• Reinhart and Rogoff: Responding to Our Critics (NYT)
• Differences with centre-right delay Italy's Letta (Reuters)
• Italy's Letta moves forward to shape government (Reuters)
• China’s leaders warn on financial risks (FT)
• Norway oil fund makes big move from bonds to stocks (FT) - worked wonders for the Bank of Israel
• Smuggling milk is the new smuggling heroin in HK: Milk Smugglers Top Heroin Courier Arrests in Hong Kong (BBG)
• RenTec's mean reversion models fail on BOJ lunacy: Yen Bets Don't Add Up for a Fund Giant (WSJ)
• From 'Fabulous Fab' to Grad Student (WSJ)
• BOJ in credibility test as divisions emerge over inflation target (Reuters)
• Boston Bombing Suspect Moved from hospital to prison (WSJ)
• Provopoulos Says ECB May Never Need to Use Bond-Buying Program (BBG) which is good because, legally, it doesn't exist

First it was thousands of dead pigs floating in the Shanghai water supply (at last estimate over 16,000), then a thousand dead ducks were pulled from a river in the Sichuan province, and now, pushing the meme beyond even its most grotesque boundaries, we learn that five black swans were found floating lifeless on the pond of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, traditionally inhabited by a bevy of black swans. From Danwei: "The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made. How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage."

We cautioned readers in 2011 that in a broke world in which the ridiculously named "muddle-through" has miserably failed, a global wealth tax seeking to expropriate some 30% of all financial assets is coming. Few took it seriously, and why should they - after all the market has been blissfully rising before and ever since then, which implies everything was ok, right? Wrong, as those who are lining up right now in the Cyprus late of night not to buy a shiny new iTrinket, but to access a measly €300 of their own money would promptly admit. Naturally, if more of our Cypriot readers had paid attention, they would have far more of their own money at their disposal right now, instead of having to beg Merkel's emissaries for a €300 handout tomorrow. Now, a year and a half later, the realization that the global wealth tax is not only coming but is inevitable in practically every developed country, is finally sinking in, as this interview with Marc Faber confirms: "Until now, the bailouts in Europe and the U.S. were at the expense of the taxpayer. And from now onwards, in my view, the bailouts will also be at the expense of the asset holders, the well-to-do people. So if you have money I am sure the governments will one day take away 20-30% of my wealth."

He is correct, but probably optimstic.

"Equity prices in the US and Europe have been hovering at multi-year highs. To the extent that this reflects powerful policy easing, equity markets may have lost some of its ability to reflect economic trends in exchange for an important role in the policy fight to support spending." This is a statement from a Bank of America report overnight in which the bailed out bank confirms what has been said here since the launch of QE1 - there is no "market", there is no economic growth discounting mechanism, there is merely a monetary policy vehicle. To those, therefore, who can "forecast" what this vehicle does based on the whims of a few good central planners, we congratulate them. Because, explicitly, there is no actual forecasting involved. The only question is how long does the "career trade", in which everyone must be herded into the same trades or else risk loss of a bonus or job, go on for before mean reversion finally strikes. One thing that is clear is that since news is market positive, irrelevant of whether it is good or bad, virtually everything that has happened overnight, or will happen today, does not matter, and all stock watchers have to look forward to is another low volume grind higher, as has been the case for the past two weeks.

Before everyone gets too excited about the "great rotation" that still remains a ghost, keep in mind that the entire curve is still >1 standard deviation below its historical mean

Just when one thought the old overnight futures levitation on a surging EURUSD regime was over, and was replaced by some semblance of normalcy, here comes Europe, sending the EURUSD screeching higher by some 100 pips from a support threatening 1.3460 on no news, with absolutely nothing changed, and pushing US futures to virtually unchanged from yesterday morning wiping out the entire day's losses in 3 short hours of near-zero volume overnight trading.

As the S&P 500 pulls within a few percentage points of its nominal all-time highs, despite macro-uncertainty and micro-delusion, perhaps (as UBS' Peter Lee notes) a longer-term perspective is warranted. For over 80 years, the S&P 500 (or its proxy) has cyclically reverted to it its logarithmic trend-line growth. The last time the market pulled away from this bullish up-trend was in 1982 (and the previous period of cyclical reversion took 32 years from 1942 to 1974) and suggests the S&P 500 could well revert to around an 850 level within the next year or so. Perhaps Lee (the anti-thesis of JPM's Tom Lee) needs to read some Birinyi to really understand how to extrapolate? Still, an 80-plus year trend-line perhaps offers some color.