Yes, Virginia, There Is A "Santa Rally"

Authord by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Yes, Virgina, There Is A Santa Claus

Every year, at this time, I republish the story of 8-year Virginia O’Hanlon who asked the most important of questions. I encourage you to read it as it reminds us of the importance, meaning and the “Spirit” of the Christmas season. 

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Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps

THE EDITORIAL

DEAR EDITOR:

I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

“VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible to their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

 

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus? It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

 

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

 

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

Merry Christmas, and may this new year bring you joy, laughter, and prosperity.

From all of us at Real Investment Advice, Real Investment News, and Clarity Financial.

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Santa Rally?

With the market now back to overbought conditions, it is now or never for the traditional “Santa Rally” between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

If we go back to 1990, the month of December has had average returns of 2.02% with positive returns 81% of the time. Over the past 100 years, those numbers fall slightly to a 1.39% average return with positive returns 73% of the time.

For the month of December, so far, the market has risen 1.33% which is in-line with the historical norm.

As discussed over the last couple of weeks, this is not to be unexpected as portfolio managers and hedge funds “Stuff Their Stockings” of highly visible positions to have them reflected in year-end statements. 

However, come January, it is potentially a different story. As I have been laying out over the last several weeks, the “tax cut” rally may well come to an end as portfolio managers, being reluctant to sell before year-end which would put them under the 2017 tax code, will likely sell in January to lock in gains under the new tax code when they pay taxes in 2019.

While “this time” is never exactly like the “last time,” there is a reasonable precedent that a sell-off in January is a likelihood. With the outside gains this past year, and now extreme overbought conditions as discussed last week, the odds of a correction are high.

This next week, as close to the end of the year as possible, we will likely be adding two positions to portfolios to hedge against a potential “tax gain” related sell off.  The first position will be a short-S&P 500 index combined with an intermediate-duration bond position.

Given that IF a sell-off occurs money will rotate from “risk” to “safety.” In this case, the S&P 500 should fall while bond prices rise as rates head lower. As shown below, with the stock-bond ratio at extremes, this trade is fairly low risk.

(The current stock/bond ratio is at the highest level in history. Also, note that the correlation “broke” in 2013 with QE 3. That gap will likely be filled at some point.)

If I am wrong, and the markets continue to rise, our existing long-positions, which outweigh the hedges by a large percentage, will continue to advance with the hedge only slightly inhibiting performance. If a sell-off does occur, the hedges will mitigate some of the downside risk while we evaluate our next potential moves.

We will keep you apprised of our actions next week.

Dot Com 2.0

by Michael Lebowitz, CFA

On May 20, 1999, eToys.com became a publically traded stock, offering shares to the public at a price of $20 per share. Lurching to $76 per share on the first day of trading and then over $80 a share by mid-August of that same year, investors were blindly optimistic about the prospects for this internet retailer. In early January 2001, after a weaker than expected holiday season, the company laid off half of its staff. By late February, eToys.com stock traded at meager 0.09 cents per share and filed for bankruptcy in March. The bubble had burst on eToys.com and hundreds of other tech companies selling investors on the promise of a new economic paradigm and internet fantasies.

By late 1999, when eToys.com was flourishing, the NASDAQ stock market was in the midst of a ten-year run in which it gained over 2,700%. Valuations, especially those in the tech sector but also in the broader-based markets, rose well above every prior instance. Caution and conservatism were thrown out the window in place of greed and rampant speculation. A decade of impressive market gains resulted in a high level of complacency.

We are now 18 years beyond the tech bubble, and we find ourselves in similar shoes. Most measures of equity valuation are currently higher than just about every other equity market peak including even some from 1999. The market has produced a constant stream of winners seemingly coming in waves over the last few years. Among the more popular is the FANG stocks and their valuations that assume perfection in perpetuity.

Further reminding us of the late 90’s tech bubble and the eToys.com era are Bitcoin and blockchain related stocks. Longfin Corp. (LFIN) for instance, just completed an initial public offering (IPO) at $5 per share on December 13th. On December 18th LFIN announced the purchase of Ziddu Coin a business lender dealing in crypto-currency loans. Following the announcement, the stock rose as high as $136 a share producing a 2620% gain for those investors that sold at the highs. As we pen this note, the stock trades at $41.

Instead of using “dot com,” companies like LFIN, Overstock, Riot Blockchain and other companies are seizing on investor greed by telling a grand story of Bitcoin and blockchain riches. It is, to be sure, the new-new paradigm.

Another recent example is Long Island Iced Tea Corp. which was a purveyor of bottled drinks with a stock price languishing around the $2 range. Well, that is until the company changed its name to Long “Blockchain” Corp. which sent investors into a buying frenzy running the stock price up nearly 500% in one day.

The instances where anything related to Bitcoin and blockchain is instantly deserving of massive valuations is a mirage; here today and gone tomorrow. The current era serves as a gentle reminder of the greed and wild speculation of the latest bubble. In early 2000, the markets topped with no-name (and no-profit) companies capturing the wild hopes of investors. The NASDAQ took over 16 years to re-capture the prior high water mark representing precious years that investors lost.

Whether LFIN and the like are signaling that we are in the bottom of the ninth of the latest bubble or still have a few innings to go is up for debate. What is important, however, is to retell yourself the story of the tech bubble and how investors ignored the glaring signals. Does today’s price action sound familiar? If so we recommend that you continue to remain cognizant of the patterns of prior market bubble episodes and proceed accordingly.

Rules For The Road

If you are long equities in the current market, we continue to recommend following some basic rules of portfolio management.

“It is through following these basic rules that, with the markets overbought, underlying fundamentals stretched, we continue to suggest some portfolio actions be taken to reduce, not eliminate, overall risk.

1. Tighten up stop-loss levels to current support levels for each position.


2. Hedge portfolios against major market declines.


3. Take profits in positions that have been big winners


4. Sell laggards and losers


5. Raise cash and rebalance portfolios to target weightings.

Notice, nothing in there says “sell everything and go to cash.”

As I noted in last week’s missive on the current bubble, our job as investors is pretty simple – protect our investment capital from short-term destruction so we can play the long-term investment game.

In case you missed it, let me repeat for you the most important lines:

Our job as investors is actually quite simple. We must focus on:

• Capital preservation


• A rate of return sufficient to keep pace with the rate of inflation.


• Expectations based on realistic objectives.  (The market does not compound at 8%, 6% or 4%)


• Higher rates of return require an exponential increase in the underlying risk profile.  This tends to not work out well.


• You can replace lost capital – but you can’t replace lost time.  Time is a precious commodity that you cannot afford to waste.


• Portfolios are time-frame specific. If you have a 5-years to retirement but build a portfolio with a 20-year time horizon (taking on more risk) the results will likely be disastrous.

With forward returns likely to be lower and more volatile than what was witnessed in the 80-90’s, the need for a more conservative approach is rising. Controlling risk, reducing emotional investment mistakes and limiting the destruction of investment capital will likely be the real formula for investment success in the decade ahead.

This brings up some very important investment guidelines that I have learned over the last 30 years.

• Investing is not a competition. There are no prizes for winning but there are severe penalties for losing.


• Emotions have no place in investing.You are generally better off doing the opposite of what you “feel” you should be doing.


• The ONLY investments that you can “buy and hold” are those that provide an income stream with a return of principal function.


• Market valuations (except at extremes) are very poor market timing devices.


• Fundamentals and Economics drive long-term investment decisions – “Greed and Fear” drive short-term trading. Knowing what type of investor you are determines the basis of your strategy.


• “Market timing” is impossible– managing exposure to risk is both logical and possible.


• Investment is about discipline and patience. Lacking either one can be destructive to your investment goals.


• There is no value in daily media commentary– turn off the television and save yourself the mental capital.


• Investing is no different than gambling– both are “guesses” about future outcomes based on probabilities.  The winner is the one who knows when to “fold” and when to go “all in”.


• No investment strategy works all the time. The trick is knowing the difference between a bad investment strategy and one that is temporarily out of favor.

As an investment manager, I am neither bullish or bearish. I simply view the world through the lens of statistics and probabilities. My job is to manage the inherent risk to investment capital. If I protect the investment capital in the short term – the long-term capital appreciation will take of itself.

Novogratz Delays Crypto Hedge Fund Launch, Warns Of Drop To $8,000 But "Bull Market" Isn"t Over

Last week, Mike Novogratz surprised more than a few market participants by telling CNBC"s Fast Money that he was bringing forward the launch date of his crypto hedge fund; today he killed those plans.

On December 12th, Novogratz said he thinks bitcoin could hit $40,000 in 2-3 months. The Galaxy Fund was supposed to launch of December 15th.

The man who called the bitcoin rally sees this for litecoin from CNBC.

Today, Novogratz has shelved plans to laucnh his fund, warning that "we didn"t like market conditions."

 

Novogratz tweeted...

Looks to me like a short term top is in. My hunch is we consolidate between 10-16k for a while. Extreme would be 8k. Bull market isn’t over. Just pausing.

— Michael Novogratz (@novogratz) December 22, 2017

Adding that...

When insiders sell it always is important. @SatoshiLite

— Michael Novogratz (@novogratz) December 22, 2017

Warning traders that Bitcoin may drop as low as $8,000 in the near-term.

A Gift From The Oldies

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

I bumped into a friendly bloke at my local gym last week. Jim is his name.

Jim tells me he just started because, and I quote, "my doctor says I"m going to die unless I do something".

Now, I assure you it doesn"t take a doctor to figure this out.

One glance in Jim"s direction and you can tell that underneath all that weight there"s a big struggling heart in there... just ready to explode. He was surprisingly frank and tells me it"s so bad that he can only do little bits of exercise because if he pushes it too hard, there is a very serious risk that his ticker just says, "You know what... f*ck it," and gives up.

Jim"s 52, which is really a ripe old age and about normal life expectancy — if we lived in the 1700"s. But we don"t.

I feel for Jim, told him so, and naturally we all hope that he can bring himself back from the brink. But the fact is many people aren"t like Jim. As mentioned in a previous article on pensions, they"re living longer and stronger.

Years ago it seemed that when you hit 65 you’d retire, receive a gold watch, and proceed to spend your pension money on a rocking chair and pot plants. Ten years later you’d be in a box and, since pot plants are cheap, the cost of keeping you alive wasn’t prohibitive.

 

Not anymore. Today things are different. My wife belongs to a running club and there are a bunch of octogenarians there who put us both to shame. Nope, today you retire and spend your pension on kickboxing classes and second wives, with no plan of dying anytime soon.

Now, this second group (our kickboxing oldies) pose a grave problem.

You see, unlike Jim, these folks, who’ve spent their life exercising, go on and on and on.

70 is spring chicken young for them, and many make it well into their 80"s and 90"s when inevitably they need nappies, nursing care, accommodation, and mushy food to eat. And then finally machines on wheels need to be wheeled in and they end up with tubes in their noses. Don"t laugh. We"re all going to get there, unless we"re fortunate enough to just drop dead quick and fast. The point is this all costs a boatload of money.

Now, I"m aware that this topic isn"t rosy Friday red or shampoo advert fresh and clean, but there are some serious implications that I think you"ll thank me for so hear me out.

Demographics and Pensions

Demographics is an elephant in the room we shouldn"t ignore. It"s stomped around, defecated in the corner, and is now proceeding to knock over all the furniture. Ignore it at your peril. Rather, there are a number of ways to invest.

Let"s explore a few...

Old people (Mabel and Bob) pay for their retirements with pensions, and those pensions are held in pooled accounts at the DTC and managed by folks with pointy shoes and Tom Ford suits.

And because old Mabel and Bob are closer to the box than younger folks, the pointy shoed gents are extremely risk averse (as they should be), and this is where it gets exciting because you know what?

They"re presently engaged in the worst possible leveraged speculation you can think of.

Nope, it"s not Bitcoin.

First, to understand the insanity we have to take a step back and examine how these pointy shoed gents think.

They like fixed income because it"s far less volatile and ostensibly less risky than equities.

They hate small caps and frankly can"t invest in them due to their size, and they have a disdain for commodity markets. That volatility thing again...

In fact, volatility is like a barometer in their world by which everything else is measured.

The problem is with central banks shatbit crazy interest rate policies none of them have been able to make any money in a yield starved world and so they"re, wait for it, selling volatility.

Either through tailor made products from the investment banks or by buying any number of the low volatility ETPs out there.

Volatility isn"t even an asset.

In fact, the VIX is an index of volatility on 1 month to expiry ATM puts and calls on stocks in the S&P 500.

But now the geniuses on Wall Street have figured that they can actually package this animal, which as you can see, is a derivative of a derivative, and treat it like a bond. Fun, heh?

In all fairness, hats off to the asset managers who"ve had the balls to do this. They believed in the central banks" liquidity machine, and they backed their belief and for that they deserve to be paid. I sure wouldn"t have been able to do it.

Now, I"m not some miserable jealous git here to tell you that armageddon is coming and I"ve the answers.

God knows there"s enough of that nonsense in the financial publishing blogosphere for you to get your fill elsewhere. What we do know, however, is that this entire game: the selling of vol, the passive indexing — all of it is predicated on one thing. The central banks keeping rates low and pumping liquidity into the market. It"s why BTFD has become a meme.

The problem that I have with it, other than the distortions made, is that when so many are on one side of the boat like right now and that boat has many moving pieces, then I begin to wonder.

I"m reminded that markets change at the margin, where the slightest hiccup can act like a spark to light the fire of volatility, and these poor suckers who"ve managed to earn steady incomes selling puts find out what "unlimited risk" actually looks like as they"re forced to cover in a market that"s gapping the other way.

I"ve thought about this a lot and, in fact, we recently published how we are going "long vol" for members. And no, it"s not buying puts on VIX because that is, in my humble opinion... how do I say this politely, like begging to be stabbed in the eyes. repeatedly.

In any event that"s just one angle to this market. Here"s another.

Redemptions

I would be remiss in mentioning that as retirees retire, these pension funds will be drawn down.

It"s what Mabel and Bob do to pay for their mushy food, viagra, and bingo nights.

Now, I"m sure you"re all sharp enough to figure out what can happen to the assets these guys have been buying when they have to go from flat out full throttle, to stall, to reverse.

How big is this problem?

Well, for some context global institutional pension fund assets in 22 major markets stood at US$36.4 trillion at year end 2016, amounting to 62% of global GDP.

That is a staggeringly large amount of money.

Pension funds are big cumbersome dumb money. And they"re all allocated in equally dumb indexes, passive strategies, and bonds. So what happens when pensioners draw down on their funds?

You tell me...

Talking of staggeringly large amounts of money, the passive bubble grows bigger as I write this because this beast is fuelled not just by our pointy shoed friends but by Joe Sixpack himself.

Bloomberg just ran a piece:

BlackRock and Vanguard Are Less Than a Decade Away From Managing $20 Trillion

Two towers of power are dominating the future of investing.

Dominating indeed. Here"s how come the pointy shoed crowd can afford Tom Ford suits.

The article goes on to say:

Investors from individuals to large institutions such as pension and hedge funds have flocked to this duo, won over in part by their low-cost funds and breadth of offerings. The proliferation of exchange-traded funds is also supercharging these firms and will likely continue to do so.

Sometimes when everyone is zigging and you zag, you just get run over. But think about it...

We don"t need to go the other way. All we need to do is look where others are no longer.

These behemoths don"t do battle in the little unloved sectors or with stocks that don"t make it into an index. They can"t because they"re too big.

This means that there are a lot of orphans out there and here"s the good news. If it"s not in an index, passives aren"t buying it. And if passives aren"t buying it, it"s only active money that"s even looking at it.

Which brings me to the double helping of good news.

Here"s your competition in active with the accompanying passive.

Right now, it"s a mosh pit food fight to grab and create the next index or ETF so that more capital can be attracted, earning more fees, buying more suits.

This is all well and good.

Markets do what markets do, and I"m not here to grumble about it. I"m here to make money. And indeed if I was in the passive business, I"d be enjoying the steady stream of fees and hoping like hell the market keeps going up.

QE more? Yes, please.

But I"m not.

I"m a humble squirrel searching for nuts in the forest. And gosh, with all this moshing going on it"s wonderful how few other squirrels there are about. The same Bloomberg article makes a good point on this.

While bigger may be better for the fund giants, passive funds may be blurring the inherent value of securities, implied in a company’s earnings or cash flow.

Nah. You think?

Stocks in the index funds no longer trade on fundamentals but rather on asset flows, which sucks the oxygen out of the small guys who don"t make it into the indexes where brain dead passive money is playing.

It means we can gladly play in a sandpit with all the toys and there are very few we have to share them with.

The Cracks Have Already Appeared

Nothing lasts forever, and as I argued when discussing the impact of the incoming strong men on the global economy, there are 3 critical points worth thinking about:

1. Political cohesion and stability can no longer be relied upon as politics becomes inward looking with everything from trade deals to central bank swap lines being renegotiated or cancelled altogether.


2. Global coordinated central bank action. The era of global coordinated monetary policy which we’ve been experiencing since the GFC, especially with the three largest players (ECB, FED and BOJ), will be looked back upon with nostalgia by the current clutch of central bankers who muddy the halls of power. Policy will increasingly be driven with greater sensitivity to nationalist rather than international concerns, which brings me to…


3. Liquidity in the financial system which has stemmed from easing monetary policy is already contracting. In a world where derivatives traverse borders, connecting financial systems like never before, a liquidity crisis presents enormous tail risk in a leveraged world.

Invest accordingly, and thank you for reading.

- Chris

“If you can’t take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses.” — Ed Seykota

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Liked this article? Then you"ll probably like my other missives on

this topic as well. Go here to access them (free, of course).

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"I Love You; Focus On The Future": Paul Tudor Jones Humiliated After Weinstein Support Email Revealed

Late last night the New York Times published a comprehensive article delving into the powerful support network of Harvey Weinstein, a network on which he apparently relied to help cover up decades of sexual assaults.  Among the allies discussed in the article was none other than legendary hedge fund investor, and former Weinstein & Co. board member, Paul Tudor Jones. 

But, unlike other Weinstein enablers who jumped ship when the tales of his monstrous behavior went public, Jones instead decided to pen an email expressing his support of the disgraced Hollywood executive saying "the good news is, this will go away sooner than you think and it will be forgotten!" just before signing "I love you."

Privately, at least one expressed loyalty. On Oct. 7, the day before he was ousted from his own company, Mr. Weinstein received an email from the investor Paul Tudor Jones.

 

“I love you,” he wrote, while detailing the steps Mr. Weinstein should take to rehabilitate his image. Mr. Jones told The Times that he condemned Mr. Weinstein’s alleged misconduct and wanted to encourage him to get help. “Focus on the future as America loves a great comeback story,” he wrote to the movie producer.

 

He finished: “The good news is, this will go away sooner than you think and it will be forgotten!”

Alas, in hindsight, Jones has seemingly now come to the conclusion that offering up his unwavering support for a man who has been exposed as an horrific sexual assaulter might have been a bad idea...though only after some backlash from the folks who work for him.  Here"s more from the Wall Street Journal:

Hedge-fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones took the unusual step of explaining his relationship with Harvey Weinstein, after a report indicated that Mr. Jones supported the disgraced Hollywood mogul as sexual harassment allegations unfolded earlier this year.

 

In a letter to employees Wednesday, Mr. Jones wrote: “Please also understand that I first learned about the revelations about Harvey only as they began to be reported in the media. They were 100% a surprise to me.”

 

Mr. Jones, 63 years old, referred to Mr. Weinstein’s actions as “horribly wrong” and described the entertainment executive as “a friend I believed too long and defended too long,” according to the letter, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

 

“Perhaps in your own life you have faced a similar dilemma—how to react to a friend who is revealed to be someone other than the person you believed him or her to be,” Mr. Jones wrote.

As you may recall, back in October Jones was the only Weinstein & Co. board member, aside from Harvey himself, who refused to sign a statement that ordered an independent investigation into allegations made against the firm"s co-founder.  Per Deadline:

A statement released by the TWC board earlier today said that the company has ordered an independent investigation into the allegations against its co-founder and co-chairman. While the members endorsed Weinstein’s “already-announced decision to take an indefinite leave of absence,” they stopped short of terminating the controversial co-chairman.

 

The statement was signed by four of the nine board members, “constituting a majority of the Board,” per the company — Bob Weinstein, Tarak Ben Ammar, Lance Maerov and Richard Koenigsberg. Of the other five, three have resigned. One of the remaining two, Paul Tudor Jones, opted not to sign the statement; the other is Harvey Weinstein.

Of course, Jones" argument that he was "100% surprised" by the allegations against Harvey would seem unlikely given that it has since been revealed that his transgressions were well known across Hollywood.  Moreover, as a board member it would only seem logical that Jones would have had some knowledge of all the legal settlements his firm was constantly paying out to protect it"s co-chairman. All of which begs the logical question of what dirt, if any, Harvey had on Jones that demanded such steadfast loyalty?

Judge Protects Billionaire Pedophile, Won’t Allow Damning Evidence in Child Rape Trial

A judge has warned that he will limit the "graphic, sexual questions" in a case against convicted sex offender and child predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Jim Grant Interviews Alan Fournier: "Pension Funds Are So Desperate For Yield, They"re Systemically Selling Vol..."

In the latest installment of RealVision"s interview series featuring Jim Grant, longtime publisher of Grant"s Interest-Rate Observer, the newsletter publisher sits down with Alan Fournier, the billionaire founder of Pennant Capital, to discuss one of the most widely discussed topics across modern asset markets: Volatility - or rather, the systemic risks posed by not only the paucity of volatility in modern markets, but how risk parity and low-vol targeting strategies have created imbalances that could lead to massive dislocations should volatility spike.

In the beginning of the talk, Fournier and Grant discuss how volatility has been artificially suppressed for so long that it"s essentially become an asset class unto itself. Investors have devised all these new volatility targeting strategies - like risk parity, for example, that have generated outsize returns since the financial crisis. But many don"t recognize the underlying risks. With so much money piled into the short-volatility trade, a large enough spike could trigger extremely painful selloffs in both bond and equity markets.

JG: And one would expect that if interest rates are going to turn, it might be kind of a noisy and dramatic turn.

 

Are you plugging in the interest rate aspect to this as well the bond market side of things?

 

AF: Well the thing that concerns me the most about this sort of overall technical setup, if you will, is that the reason people own bonds is they don"t correlate with stocks. So if something bad happens in the stock markets, bonds rally, right? So risk parity, some stocks in a levered bond fund, it"s been fabulous because that"s been what we"ve seen for the last 15 or 20 years. Well if we get a turn, which is just driven by a normal business cycle and that correlation comes apart, who knows what happens? But there"s a lot of money that"s been dedicated to these kinds of strategies, whether they"re vol targeting, risk parity. We"re in sort of a spooky time.

 

JG: You use the phrase the setup, which I think is a wonderful way of expressing the notion of an overall context of things, how the forces are aligned or misaligned. And so many of those forces in this particular cyclical moment seem to be unusual if not unprecedented. Certainly the level, the nominal level and real level of interest rates is one of those forces. The positive preoccupation with the efficacy and with the certainty of outcome of passive investing must be another, right?

 

AF: Yes.

 

JG: And the peace and quiet in the markets as reflected in readings in both the MVE Index, which registers bond activity, and the VIX Index, which measures agitation in the stock market, those things are at record or near level lows. So Alan, how do you see the constellation of these forces?

 

AF: Well, we joke on a trading desk when we come in the morning if the futures are down-- like today they were down a bit this morning. But we joke about what time they"re going to go positive during the day, and usually it"s after the Europeans go to the pub or something at around 11 o"clock. By 2 o"clock they"re positive.

 

And I just mentioned this because it"s very unusual and something I"ve never seen in 30 years or so of doing this that sort of nothing rattles this market. And I think some of it is the vol being depressed.

 

JG: Now let"s explain this. So volatility now, it"s like a thing. It used to be stocks and bonds.

 

AF: It used to be observed based upon how options are priced. Now it"s actually a source of income.

 

JG: Right. It"s like an asset class.

 

AF: It"s a bond.

 

JG: But it"s movement. It"s kind of capitalized movement, right?

 

AF: Right.

Toward the beginning of the interview, Fournier shared a story with Grant about how a high-net worth broker recently asked for meeting to pitch a suite of new "short volatility" investment products. After grilling the broker about the details of how the products are managed, he asked how the funds are protected in case of a sudden spike in volatility. The broker waved his question aside and said there products are all adequately hedged.

After doing some more due diligence, Fournier discovered that the broker was wrong. And it"s not that he lied, Fournier surmised - it"s that the broker didn"t have an appropriately deep understanding of how the products work.

AF: Yeah. So I"m going to tell you a little story which is interesting, which is suggestive of the idea that we"re pretty late in this tick-tock game.

 

JG: All right, I"m ready.

 

AF: Well a friend of a friend asked to come see me who is a high net worth broker at one of the investment banks. And he said, "Look, I know I can"t help you in the stock market because you"re doing your own thing in your fund and get that, but maybe we can help here with fixed income." I said, "Sure, come on by. Let"s talk."

 

He comes in and I ask the question, "So what are people doing for income?" And he said, "We have this great product that sells vol." And I said, "Oh, how does that work?" And, well, it was a very basic explanation. Selling puts, selling calls, straddles, blah, blah, blah. And I said, "What happens if the market goes down?" And he said, "Well, there are ways they protect against that." I was like OK, and I just was very curious. So I said, "Send me the documentation." So he sends me the brochure with all the legal details and so forth, and there"s really no protection. They"re just selling vol and collecting income, which has been successful.

In the most unsettling excerpt from the interview – for mom and pop investors, that is – Fournier shared a story about a talk he gave to a group of pension-fund investment-committee members. Some investment bank trying to scrounge up brokerage business had taken the group of these investors on a tour of Washington, D.C., and Fournier was recruited to speak about his experiences in the hedge fund industry as sort of a keynote for the day’s events.

So, Fournier told a story that emphasized the risks of selling volatility.

Afterward, his audience sat there, stone-faced. As he would come to find out, many of their funds were running vol-selling strategies which – as we’ve explained time and time again – are much riskier than most investors realize.

And these are pension funds – purportedly some of the most risk-averse institutional investors.

JG: So when you sell vol, what do you do exactly? Do you sell puts on the VIX Index?

 

AF: Yes, and different tenors. And there are strategies that will sell vol at a level and buy vol further down and try to dampen potential crash risk and those kinds of things. But essentially you"re just collecting income by being a house, selling puts.

 

So a few weeks later another investment bank invites me to come and speak to some pension investors. And they were taken them to Washington to sort of hear what was going on down there. And then they brought them up  to New York and I was sort of the end of the day, talk to a hedge fund practitioner kind of thing. And I sat there and I told the story about how this guy was trying to sell me vol, expecting some kind of reaction from them.

 

JG: And they said so?

 

After doing some more due diligence, Fournier discovered that the broker was wrong. And it"s not that he lied, Fournier surmised - it"s that the broker didn"t have an appropriately deep understanding of how the products work.

 

JG: This is a group of--

 

AF: Pension funds, large European pension funds. And he said, "Yeah, but they have a strategy where, when you get a selloff, they sell more into the selloff." So if the VIX spikes from 10 to 15, you sell more. And then you continue to have this tremendous monthly pattern of income.

 

So as I was walking out of there I thought, my goodness, the central banks have succeeded in pushing people out on the risk curve. They"re taking people that are managing the pensions of state pensioners and they have them in negative earning sovereign instruments. And now they have them-- they"re so desperate for some yield, they"re systemically selling volatility, which is remarkable.

In one of the most interesting excerpts from the interview, Fournier explains how a chance breakfast meeting inspired him to switch from long subprime lenders to short a few years before the housing crisis began.

The timely switch allowed Fournier to book winning trades on both the long side – he cashed in as home prices climbed toward their pre-crisis peak – and against during the collapse. He was inspired to change his position after learning from a subprime mortgage broker how the loans the broker was selling worked.

After their discussion, it quickly became apparent to Fournier that the whole subprime lending model was reliant on home-price appreciation, and the minute housing prices peaked, there could be a very significant credit event.

JG: This is where we have different lines of work Alan, because in the years 2001, "02, "03, "04, "05, "06, Grant"s Interest Rate Observer deplored these queues of people lining up irrationally and uneconomically to buy the houses, the makers of which you were long.

 

It takes all kinds of people to make a world. I’m not throwing stones.

 

AF: We also got long subprime lenders. And we got to know them well. And early on it was clear that this was going to be a booming opportunity for subprime lenders. I mean, you were taking debt that was costing folks very high rates on credit cards and pulling equity out of homes. And so that was a natural arbitrage that created this big opportunity. And then using subprime to fund the purchase of second homes, driving up real estate prices. And I was actually at a breakfast with a company coming public that I ended up investing in where I asked them a number of questions about how these loans work. And it became very clear that the whole key to those loans was home price appreciation. And at that breakfast, I kind of logged this view, that, wow, when this turns, it"s going to be a very significant credit event.

 

JG: Let me, if I may just interrupt to observe, how unusual it is for someone who has been long, a big theme, to turn around and successfully to change views and become short, successfully, that same theme. It"s done sometimes at a bar in recounting fabulous fabled stories, but rarely in real life. Tell me about kind of the intellectual flexibility this requires. When did you decide to kind of jettison the bullish view on subprime?

 

AF: Well, it was a matter of first developing understanding of what was going on and how this reflexive process, classic Soros reflexive process was interacting with the real world. And it was very simple. Easy credit drive up home prices. The fact that home prices was growing up was making credit easier. And so it was a matter of how long that would play out and when it would end. We had the patience to wait. And we made some money in long side of some of the subprime lenders during this period. And it was really gaining the knowledge of what these CDO and CDS securities were that was an eye-opening opportunity for me.

So Fournier switched from being long doomed mortgage lenders like American Home Mortgage to shorting the mortgage-backed security products that would eventually slide all the way to zero.

Later in the interview, Grant asks Fournier for his thoughts on bitcoin.

In a heartening display of modesty and intellect, Fournier demurred, instead of offering a barrage of chaotic, unqualified opinions like some of his peers have tended to do.

“That’s something I don’t understand well.”
 

Could Trump"s Tax Bill Trigger A Mass Exodus From Manhattan? Goldman Seems To Think So...

New York"s billionaire hedge fund managers have blazed the trail south in recent years with the likes of David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones and Eddie Lampert all ditching the Empire State for Florida...a state which brings not only pristine beaches and year-round golf weather but also the added benefit of a 0% personal income tax rate. 

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg once again points out this morning, the decision to ditch the over-taxed states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will be even easier if Trump"s tax plan succeeds in eliminating the state and local income tax deduction...a deduction which could cost a New Yorker making $1,000,000 a year a cool $21,000 in extra taxes.

The problem for the Connecticut hedge-fund set -- and, more broadly, for a lot of the Wall Street crowd -- is that Republican proposals in both the House and Senate would drive up taxes for many high-earners in the New York City area. By eliminating the deduction for most state and local taxes, an individual making a yearly salary of $1,000,000 -- a figure not uncommon in the financial industry -- would owe the Internal Revenue Service an additional $21,000, according to a preliminary analysis by accounting firm Marcum LLP.

 

“It would almost be irresponsible if you weren’t thinking about moving,” he said.

 

Not surprisingly, Miami is exploiting the potential tax change to woo Manhattan"s most successful "millionaire, billionaire, private jet owners" (to cite Obama) as Miami"s luxury real estate agents say they"re having a hard time keeping up with the sudden surge in demand.

The Miami Downtown Development Authority is throwing a party next month during the annual Art Basel show, and Nitin Motwani, a real estate developer, has invited wealthy Northeasterners who’ve expressed interest in moving to the area. Because the proposed tax changes are practically begging them to relocate, Motwani expects a crowd.

 

State and local taxes, also called SALT, “can and should be a major catalyst,” said Motwani, a development authority board member. Tax reform will “certainly be something we’re highlighting” at the party, in the Perez Art Museum. “Inertia is a tough thing, but you add on another tax bill and maybe that pushes you over the edge.”

 

Jeff Miller, director of luxury sales for Brown Harris Stevens in the Miami area, said he’s fielded a half-dozen calls from clients motivated by higher taxes to step up their search for South Florida property.

 

Two clients who work at New York City financial firms have scheduled tours of a newly completed 7,000-square-foot (650-square-meter) home on the Venetian Islands, Miller said. The $22.5 million asking price buys views of Biscayne Bay and a spot to moor a yacht.

 

“Usually it’s a snowstorm that would push them to pick up the phone,” Miller said. “The tax plan has the same effect.”

So what does this mean for the overall impact on domestic migration patterns?  Well, Goldman figures that the changes currently contemplated on the Senate bill could ultimately result in 2-4% of Manhattan"s top earners relocating to lower taxing jurisdictions...

The increased effective tax differential between high- and low-tax areas may increase movement from the former to the latter. Exhibit 4 shows the increase in effective tax rate differentials for a few relevant pairs of states. For instance, we estimate that the TCJA would increase the gap between the combined S&L income tax rates in New York City vs. Connecticut by about 2pp to 5-6%. States with zero income tax such as Texas and Washington would experience the largest gains in relative tax competitiveness. The simple median increase in the tax gap across the six illustrative pairs is a bit above 1.5pp.

 

For our initial analysis of the potential migration effects, we review the academic literature on taxes and mobility. The reviewed studies shown in Exhibit 5 focus on high-income earners, because the literature tends to ?nd only small tax effects among lower- and middle-income earners. The studies are mixed, but the median study suggests a 2% decline in the number of top-income earners after 3-10 years per percentage point increase in the tax rate gap. Combining this median 2% mobility estimate with the 1-2 percentage point increase in the tax gap between New York City and New Jersey/Connecticut suggests that the TCJA would eventually lower the number of top-income earners in New York City by 2-4%, for example.

...and if that"s not at least somewhat concerning to legislators in Albany, Trenton and Sacramento...it should be.

Tepper, who heads Appaloosa Management, relocated to Miami Beach in 2015 from Short Hills, New Jersey. Jones kept Tudor Investment Corp. in Greenwich, Connecticut, when he moved to Palm Beach, Florida, last year. In 2012, Lampert, best known as Sears Holdings Corp.’s chief executive officer, took his hedge fund to Miami from the same tony Connecticut town.

 

State budgets feel the impact. When Tepper moved his firm to Florida, forecasters warned it could jeopardize New Jersey’s budget because the firm generated more than $100 million in state income tax. In 2013, state income tax generated by residents of seven of the wealthiest towns in Fairfield County amounted to $1.8 billion, according to the Hartford Courant, or about 9 percent of the Connecticut state budget.

 

“There is a certain amount of burying one’s head in the sand and naivete in Hartford,” Connecticut’s capital, McGuire said. “I don’t think they believe it can happen.”

Oh well, it"s not as if New Jersey is teetering on the edge of solvency courtesy of a massively underfunded public pension ponzi...

"This Is A Paralyzed Market": Hedge Fund Turnover Drops To All Time Low

Back in July, Canaccord analyst Brian Reynolds put out a contrarian piece which broke with numerous conventional wisdom norms about the state of the market, key among which was that traders are not complacent, but rather - in light of collapsing trading volumes, something which has plagued bank income statements in the past 2 quarters - simply paralyzed, as they no longer have a grasp of financial "logic" when it is all superceded by central bank liquidity injections, and as such most trades feel fake, forced and just part of the FOMO charade to avoid losing one"s job.

As Reynolds explained, "Investors are not complacent. Their stances range from extremely aggressive to bearish" and added that these "opposing forces have led to a compression of volatility. When stocks have rallied strongly, they have then been met with investor selling. When stocks sell off, the buybacks have picked up after the selling runs its course. That has been the case for more than eight years. Those forces have led to an equity bull market that moves higher in fits and starts, with some brief pullbacks from time to time. Given the positioning of equity investors and continued flows into credit, we do not see that pattern changing for some time." Meanwhile, sandwiched inbetween these two trends, investors - both retail and institutional - find themselves in trade limbo, and the outcome is a gradual decline in trading volumes "which is more reflective of paralysis than complacency among equity investors."

And while one can posit theories explaining this bizarre market until one is blue in the face, the most vivid confirmation of Reyonld"s "paralysis" thesis emerged in the latest batch of hedge fund 13Fs, which was analyzed by Goldman earlier this week, and noted here in "These Are The Top 50 Hedge Fund Long And Short Positions."

In the report, Goldman highlighted various notable outliers, such as the latest record high in hedge fund leverage...

... coupled with the recent plunge in short interest (which as a share of S&P 500 market cap sits just below 2.0%, matching January of this year as the lowest level since 2012)...

... even as hedge fund "crowding" in a handful of top names hits an all time high:

But the most interesting to us, and the hedge fund community, we believe is the following chart, which shows that hedge fund portfolio turnover continued its downward trend and reached a new record low in the third quarter Across all portfolio positions, turnover registered 26% in 3Q. Turnover of the largest quartile of positions, which make up the vast majority of fund portfolios, fell to just 13%.

This means that once hedge funds have established positions, they no longer trade in and out, but simply lean back and let it ride. And why not: with the most popular hedge fund positions this year being also the best performing ones, namely Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Alphabet and Microsoft, why ever both selling.  Indeed, as the next chart shows, the bulk of the collapsing turnover is largely due to tech stocks:

Of course, this strategy of loading up on winner and letting them ride is a two-edged sword. while it is the best strategy on the way up, it also becomes a quasi private equity strategy, in which the price formation is created on the margin with increasingly less volume. And, since such tech holdings are becoming ever more illiquid, the threat is what happens once the narrative shifts and instead of buying, hedge funds start to sell these most concentrated of growth names. One could say that a tech selloff is emerging as one of the more concerning black - or at least gray - swans in the market. In fact, we are did say just that...

Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Google, Microsoft are the 5 most widely held HF stocks. Tech selloff = black swan pic.twitter.com/XXJ6PRbwUP

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 22, 2017

These Are The Top 50 Hedge Fund Long And Short Positions

In its latest quarterly hedge fund trend monitor - a survey of 804 hedge funds with $2.1 trillion of gross equity positions ($1.4 trillion long and $704 billion short) - which analyzes hedge fund holdings as of Sept 30, Goldman makes some interesting observations about the current state of the hedge fund industry. First and foremost, it finds that the average equity long/short hedge fund has posted a 10% YTD return, which while the strongest since 2013 is once again underperforming the S&P for the 7th consecutive year.

In terms of holdings, it"s a continuation of what we discussed the last two quarters - everyone and their kitchen sink is plowing into high beta, "growty" and "momentum" tech names, and since most funds still underperform the S&P, the average net leverage is at all time high. Here"s Goldman:

Fund performance has been lifted by sector (Information Technology) and factor (growth, momentum, large-cap) exposures. Our Hedge Fund VIP list of the most popular long positions,  whose top five stocks are FB, AMZN, BABA, GOOGL, and MSFT, has outperformed the S&P 500 by 770 bp YTD (25% vs. 17%).

Also notable, while at least on paper hedge funds are expected to diversify, in reality the average HF carries 68% of its long portfolio in its top 10 positions, just below the record high reached in early 2016. Meanwhile, confirming that the market is afflicted by a creeping paralysis, portfolio position turnover fell to a new record low last quarter, at just 13% for the largest fund positions. Oh yes, and nobody is short: hedge fund short interest as a percent of S&P 500 market cap remained close to 2%, near the lowest level in five years.

Below are Goldman"s 5 key observations from this edition of the HF Trend monitor:

1. PERFORMANCE: The average equity long/short hedge fund has returned +10% YTD on the strength of the most popular long positions, high exposure to Information Technology, and atypical factor tilts toward large-caps and away from value stocks. This ranks as the strongest return since 2013 and compares with 17% for the S&P 500, 16% for the average large-cap core mutual fund, and 2% for macro hedge funds.


2. SECTORS: Information Technology remains the largest net sector exposure, accounting for 27% of fund portfolios. However, the 307 bp overweight tilt relative to the Russell 3000 is 100 bp smaller than at the start of 3Q. Materials represents the largest sector overweight. Financials is the largest underweight and a major source of disagreement with large-cap mutual funds, which are overweight the sector. Current overweights in Energy and Consumer Discretionary are nearly the smallest tilts in recent history, as is the underweight in Utilities.


3. LEVERAGE: Hedge funds increased net leverage in 3Q 2017 as the most popular positions continued to outperform a rising equity market. Short interest as a percent of S&P 500 market cap remained close to 2%, near the lowest level in five years.


4. VERY IMPORTANT POSITIONS: Our Hedge Fund VIP list (ticker: GSTHHVIP) of the most popular long positions has outperformed the S&P 500 by 770 bp YTD. The VIP list contains the 50 stocks that appear most often among the top 10 holdings of fundamentally-driven hedge fund portfolios. The basket’s absolute and risk-adjusted YTD returns rank as the strongest since 2013. The list’s top 5 stocks are FB, AMZN, BABA, GOOGL, and MSFT. The basket has outperformed the S&P 500 in 65% of quarters since 2001, generating an average quarterly excess return of 62 bp. 10 new constituents entered the basket this quarter, compared with a quarterly average of 16 stocks since 2001: EQIX, GDDY, IAC, IQV, MGM, MPC, NRG, SBAC, TTWO, and XPO.


5. CROWDING AND TURNOVER: Hedge funds continue to demonstrate high conviction in their favorite positions. The typical hedge fund has 68% of its long equity assets in its top 10 positions, just below the record high of 69% in 1H 2016. Similarly, our crowding index increased but remains shy of its 2016 extremes. Quarterly turnover of the largest portfolio positions fell to new historical lows, at 13%, declining in all sectors but Health Care.

The biggest component of the favorable hedge fund return in Q3 was a result of the outperformance of the Goldman Hedge Fund VIP basket, also known as the "hedge fund hotel"index, a list of 50 names which are the most widely held hedge fund stocks. Good luck selling them during a firesale, as happened in early 2016 when the GSTHHVIP basket crashed, wiping out four years of gains in a few months.

With no crash yet, and despite softness during the last month, Hedge Fund VIP names outperformed the broad market YTD both in absolute and risk-adjusted terms according to Goldman.

The basket’s strong  return has more than made up for its higher volatility (8 vs. 6 for S&P 500), combining for a YTD ratio of return/volatility of 3.0, above the ratio of 2.8 for the S&P 500 and the best since 3.2 in 2013.

What is more concerning is that as discussed the past two quarters, the trend of growing hedge fund leverage (to make up for loss of alpha), continues, and according to Goldman, funds added net leverage entering 4Q. Data calculated by Goldman Sachs Prime Services on exposures in their business show that net leverage has risen in recent months and is near cycle highs.

Meanwhile, everyone has given up on shorting: in fact, short interest as a share of S&P 500 market cap sits just below 2.0%, matching January of this year as the lowest level since 2012. Relative to trading volumes, the short interest ratio (days to cover) ranks higher compared with history but still far below the cycle high in 2015.

Predictably, with market leadership increasingly more concentrated, and with fewer leaders, the density of hedge fund portfolios is near all time highs.

Hedge fund crowding in the most popular positions rose slightly in 3Q 2017 but remains below the extremes reached in 2016. The average hedge fund holds 68% of its long portfolio in its top 10 positions, just below the record “density” of 69% in 1H 2016. The increase in hedge fund portfolio density mirrors the growing share of S&P 500 market cap accounted for by the 10 largest index constituents, which has risen steadily for two years but even now sits near the average level since 1990.

As a tangent, those who were long tech, remained long tech as the average infotech portfolio turnover dropped to the lowest on record.

So putting it all together, here are the 50 positions which make up the latest GS VIP list, i.e., the 50 most popular hedge fund longs...

... and the list of 50 stocks representing the most important short positions.

Finally, here are the 20 stocks with the highest positive and negative changes in popularity.

As a reminder: traditionally, being long the most shorted hedge fund names and shorting the most favored ones has been a source of double digit alpha ever since 2011, and while this year that may have been different, for now, there is no reason to assume this normalcy will persist especially once the revulsion with tech names reappears once more.

Hunting Angels: What The World"s Most Bearish Hedge Fund Will Short Next

It"s not easy being "the world"s most bearish hedge fund", a description we first conceived nearly three years ago, and one look at Horseman Capital"s returns over the past three years confirms it: after generating market-beating returns for much of its existence, things went bad in 2015, and much worse in 2016...

... when the Fund had a record net short equity position of over -100%, just as the market ripped higher after the Trump election.

That said, 2017 has been much better for Horseman and its CIO Russell Clark, who correctly timed the year"s two big short trades so far: the mall REIT and the shale shorts.

Unfortunately, his other positions stood in the way, and as of the end of October (a good month with 2.04% in P&L), the fund is just 0.25% up on the year. Worse, after a period of calm, steady, upward grinding monthly performance for much of the previous several years, Horseman"s sharpe ratio has cratered, as the monthly return variance surged, with a -6% month following two +7% months as a result of gross leverage that has never been higher, even if the net equity position - while still largely short - is far more manageable than it was in 2016.

Still, having been well ahead of the pack on the two big shorts of 2017, most money managers are always curious what if anything Clark - and Horseman - are shorting next. Well, they are in luck, because in his latest letter, he unveils the answer: according to Clark, the next major source of alpha will be shorting fallen angel bonds.

In his November letter to clients, Clark explains why he is hunting for soon to be "fallen angels", and where he got the idea from. And after more fund managers read the following excerpt, we have a feeling that the next big leg lower in not only junk, but also crossover credit, is imminent:

Mifid II will come into force soon, and a lot of research that used to be free, will need to be paid for. This has been a reason to ask ourselves some serious questions, namely what research do I read, and what has made me the most money. Strangely the research that has been most profitable for me, will remain free even post Mifid II as it is publicly available. The International Monetary Fund produces Global Financial Stability Reports. The stand out report for me was the April 2008 report that highlighted Eastern European banks vulnerability to wholesale funding. I shorted many of the banks named in the report. Most fell 70% to 90% subsequently.

 

What does the most recent issue of the Global Financial Stability Report have to say? It notes that BBB bonds now make up nearly 50% of the index of investment grade bonds, an all time high. BBB bonds are only one notch above high yield, and are at the greatest risk of becoming fallen angels, that is bonds that were investment grade when issued, but subsequently get downgraded to below investment grade, or what is known these days as high yield. It then points out that investors have never been more at risk of capital loss if yields were to rise. In addition, it notes volatility targeting investors will mechanically increase leverage as volatility drops, with variable annuities investors having little flexibility to deviate from target volatility. Another interesting point was that mutual fund share of the high yield market in the US have risen from 17% in 2008 to 30% today, and notes that investors outflows have become much more sensitive to losses than they used to be.

 

So my favourite research (love the price!) is telling me that US investment grade debt is very low quality, and could produce some large fallen angels. It then goes on to tell me that mutual funds are much larger in the high yield market than they used to be. It also tells me low rates means the capital losses are much higher than they used to be. And that investors in high yield mutual funds are much flightier than they used to be! Essentially the IMF are telling me that if you get a large enough fallen angel, the high yield market will freak out, and volatility will spike causing volatility targeting investors to dump leveraged positions. Sounds good to me - but with growth so good and the market so strong, how on earth would we get a fallen angel?

 

To find a potential fallen angel, I looked through the holdings of investment grade bond ETFs to find large BBB bond issuers. The biggest of the BBB issuers happened to be the large telecommunication companies. The sector has over USD300bn of BBB rated debt compared to a high-yield market of USD 1tn. I am not a debt specialist, but I have noticed that falling share prices tend to be good lead indicators on debt downgrades, and the US telecommunication sector has not been participating in the market rally this year. The story looks good to me, and it comes via my favourite research source. US debt markets look in trouble to me, whether that has any effect on broader equity markets remains to be seen.

Aside from this rather original idea, some other notable changes in Horseman"s industry exposure are noted: while both the retail and E&P shorts are still there, they have been notably tamed, and of note are two other major shorts (both in the US): one in real estate (we assume this is a play on the adverse impact of rising rates on real estate valuations), and the healthcare sector, a short whose thesis is quite interesting and we will reveal tomorrow.

For those wondering, the top 10 positions by % of NAV are the following:

Needless to say, we wish Horseman much success with a prompt realization of his BBB-short, especially since it appears that his LPs are starting to get cold feet, and the fund"s AUM has shrunk by half from $2.8 BN  one year ago...

... to less than half, or $1.2BN currently.