WTF Chart Of The Week

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

Back in early October, I noted that repo fails had jumped above $250 billion (combined “to receive” and “to deliver”) for three weeks straight. That wasn’t an auspicious result, as sustained collateral problems like that don’t correlate to happy things. It all began the week of September 5, in what seemed like a minor one-day nuisance over the 4-week bill yield.

October was something of lull in repo and other things, too. Nothing ever goes in a straight line, of course, so it wasn’t surprising to find by mid-November a resumption of concerns based so much in repo. The week of Thanksgiving, fails totaled again more than $400 billion, similar in scale to that week of September 5. Then they spiked by 50% more to $600 billion the week after.

FRBNY records $523 billion in repo fails now for the first week of December. That’s three straight more than $400 billion, two in a row better than half a trillion.

The 8-week average is even just shy of $350 billion. You can get rich being a collateral owner under these terms, raising the question where are they all?

While these are good charts, important charts, neither is our Chart of the Week. What we are looking for in this context of really another burgeoning “dollar shortage” episode is, as always, escalation.

I’m going to go out on a limb and claim there is something seriously wrong in repo.

 

All jokes aside, I know it sounds like a broken record but the dimension that matters is not intermittent collateral problems so much as the greater intensity to them and in a condensing timeframe. Escalation is a description you really don’t want to fit the circumstances.

Just as raging wildfires have a horrific tendency to jump fire-lines and even whole valleys given enough energy, funding issues can jump markets. The global “dollar” market is not a monolithic whole and never has been. It may be (very likely is) more fragmented today than at any point in the past owing to persistent balance sheet capacity problems (therefore the breakdown of covered interest parity that used to keep various funding markets working together in what sure seemed like a seamless whole). It would be a clear point of magnification, then, to find serious problems in one part of the eurodollar system spilling over into another one.

Leading us to our Chart of the Week:

The 3-month €/$ cross currency basis swap has plunged this week, a descent that really started the week after Thanksgiving. It has reached a level today last seen during the 2011 crisis. And this latest detour clearly marks its inflection where else but the week of September 5. In other words, you rarely find an exact match like the one we have here repo to €/$ swaps.

This particular instrument isn’t alone among XCurrBasisSwaps, either, it is merely the tenor and counterpart currency that right now is at the most extreme.

Because these are two very different funding mechanisms, repo and FX (Footnote dollars), there can be little doubt what is really at issue – “dollar” shortage as a matter of supply and therefore balance sheet capacity.

That’s the one common element linking collateral flow with the severe unwillingness (broken covered interest parity) to make a killing lending FX dollars to euro counterparties.

 

This doesn’t mean there is a crash right ahead. It does, however, suggest coming difficulties in various markets and more than that the global economy.

You can blame regulations all you want, as the mainstream has already rushed to do, being forced by such a huge move in €/$ cross to at least report on it, but there is no way this comes out as anything other than an escalating warning.

As a reminder, what negative premiums on XCurrBasisSwaps mean:

The cross currency basis swap is somewhat unique in that by fixing exchange values at both the outset and back end, it reveals purely financial perceptions in its values and changing values about the differences in interest payments. For example, in the 1990’s the basis swap for Japanese banks (again, not companies) was structurally negative, meaning that they had to pay a premium to swap into dollar funding because of negative perceptions of creditworthiness. This is the legacy of the downside of the “global dollar short”, as Japanese banks had accumulated large dollar asset positions (long US$ assets, short US$ funding) leaving them susceptible to such vagaries in dollar funding, whether repo or basis swaps or anything else someone on Wall Street or in London might dream up that wasn’t gold or actual cash…

 

The negative yen basis swap acts like leverage where even yields on the interim “investment” are negative. Any speculator or bank with spare “dollars” could lend them in a yen basis swap meaning an exchange into yen. Because you end up with yen you are forced into some really bad investment choices such as slightly negative 5-year government bonds, but that is just part of the cost of keeping risk on your yen side low. Instead, the real money is made in the basis swap itself since it now trades so highly negative. The very fact of that basis swap spread means a huge premium on spare dollars; which is another way of saying there is a “dollar” shortage.

 

Because of the shortage and its premium, you can swap into yen and invest in negative yielding JGB’s in size and still make out handsomely. There has been, in fact, a rush of foreign “money” into Japan to take advantage of this dollar shortage; the fact that there has been such enthusiasm and it still has not alleviated the imbalance proves scale and intractability.

"People Ask, Where"s The Leverage This Time?" - Eric Peters Answers

One of the Fed"s recurring arguments meant to explain why the financial system is more stable now than it was 10 years ago, and is therefore less prone to a Lehman or "Black monday"-type event, (which in turn is meant to justify the Fed"s blowing of a 31x Shiller PE bubble) is that there is generally less leverage in the system, and as a result a sudden, explosive leverage unwind is far less likely... or at least that"s what the Fed"s recently departed vice Chair, and top macroprudential regulator, Stanley Fischer has claimed.

But is Fischer right? Is systemic leverage truly lower? The answer is "of course not" as anyone who has observed the trends not only among vol trading products, where vega has never been higher, but also among corporate leverage, sovereign debt, and the record duration exposure can confirm. It"s just not where the Fed usually would look...

Which is why in the excerpt below, taken from the latest One River asset management weekend notes, CIO Eric Peters explains to US central bankers - and everyone else - not only why the Fed is yet again so precariously wrong, but also where all the record leverage is to be found this time around.

This Time, by Eric Peters

“People ask, ‘Where’s the leverage this time?’” said the investor. Last cycle it was housing, banks.

 

“People ask, ‘Where will we get a loss in value severe enough to sustain an asset price decline?’” he continued. Banks deleveraged, the economy is reasonably healthy.

 

“People say, ‘What’s good for the economy is good for the stock market,’” he said.

 

“People say, ‘I can see that there may be real market liquidity problems, but that’s a short-lived price shock, not a value shock,’” he explained.

 

“You see, people generally look for things they’ve seen before.”

 

“There’s less concentrated leverage in the economy than in 2008, but more leverage spread broadly across the economy this time,” said the same investor.

 

“The leverage is in risk parity strategies. There is greater duration and structural leverage.”

 

As volatility declines and Sharpe ratios rise, investors can expand leverage without the appearance of increasing risk.

 

“People move from senior-secured debt to unsecured. They buy 10yr Italian telecom debt instead of 5yr. This time, the rise in system-wide risk is not explicit leverage, it is implicit leverage.”

 

“Companies are leveraging themselves this cycle,” explained the same investor, marveling at the scale of bond issuance to fund stock buybacks.

 

“When people buy the stock of a company that is highly geared, they have more risk.” It is inescapable.

 

“It is not so much that a few sectors are insanely overvalued or explicitly overleveraged this time, it is that everything is overvalued and implicitly overleveraged,” he said.

 

“And what people struggle to see is that this time it will be a financial accident with economic consequences, not the other way around.”

"Leading Indicator Of Potential Weakness" Looms In Corporate Credit Markets

While credit spreads are broadly-speaking unmoved by recent chaos, signals are emerging that investors are starting to get worried about the $7.2 trillion U.S. investment-grade bond market.

Bloomberg"s Lisa Abramowicz points out that bond buyers are starting to show some signs of unease, with traders are increasingly turning to derivatives to hedge against potential losses.

This is a marked shift from earlier in the year, when many bond investors seemed unwilling to give up any returns for such protection.

During most of 2017, trading volumes in credit-default swaps sagged well below recent years" averages (the red oval below)

Now, however, Abramowicz notes that activity in the derivatives has risen sharply (green oval above), with volumes surging more than 110 percent in the week ended Aug. 11 compared with the same week in 2016.

That contrasts with a more than 10 percent decline in volumes on average throughout 2017 compared with the period last year.

"This is often a leading indicator of potential weakness," Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Brean Capital LLC, said on Bloomberg Radio on Tuesday.

Investors don"t want to sell their corporate-bond holdings because they know it could be difficult to buy them back in the future. But they are are feeling less secure owning the debt, especially at such high valuations. So they"re either getting exposure to the securities in a way that"s easy to exit quickly in a pinch, or they"re paying a premium to cover any losses incurred during a selloff.

"There are events on the horizon that could cause a dislocation," said Anindya Basu, a credit derivatives strategist at Citigroup Inc. "You"re seeing that feed through to the market."

"We've Never Seen Anything Like This": Repo Market Snaps As 10Y Suffers "Epic Fail"

It"s been a while since we saw any major dislocations in the Treasury repo market, i.e., collateral shortages as a result of surging TSY shorts, for the simple reason that after the first quarter when everyone was certain that Trump reflation trade would kick in but didn"t, the record number of built up spec net shorts got trampled by the rising price, rapidly shifting over to record longs.

However, the peace and quiet quiet in the repo market was shattered this week, when almost overnight the 10Y went from "normal" in repo, at a rate of 0.50% on Friday, to a special -2.00% on Monday, and then a Super Special, if not record, "fails rate" of -3.50% this morning.

Commenting on this dramatic move in 10Y repo rates, Stone McCarthy"s Alan Chernoff, in a note titled "Epic Fail", writes that "the 10-year note has been below the fails rate and shows no signs of moving! It opened at -350 basis points, and though pressure has eased off of it slightly, it is STILL below the fails rate at -300 basis points."

As a reminder, the fails rate is the 300 basis points below the lower end of the target fed funds rate, putting it at -200 basis points currently. And, if an issue falls below the fails rate, it becomes cheaper to just pay the fails charge of 200 basis points rather than deliver than issue, which is what is happening. In dollar terms, the agency repo fails nominal was at $131BN on  Sept. 6 vs $153.6 BN on Sept. 5, above the 5-DMA $90.7b, according to DTCC data.

To be sure, some firms that want to maintain good client relationships will likely want to deliver the trade at such a low rate, although it appears that not many are rushing to do so.

As Bloomberg writes, confirming what we have said repeatedly in the past 3 years when we commented on these sudden repo market dislocations, the "specialness is due to lack of supply as shorts roll from triple-issued old 10Y into single issue current 10Y."

No matter the reason, Chernoff observes that he has never seen a move quite like this and that "this is one of the lowest rates that we"ve ever seen the 10-year note repo trade at, and definitely the furthest below the fails rate."

One final observations: while even term 10-year repos are below the fails charge at -215 basis points, the 3-year note is only modestly tight at 65 basis points, while and most other issues are trading near GC.

Some final parting words: keep a close eye on the 10Y - a positioning move of this magnitude does not take place in a vacuum, and either "someone knows something" or another busload of specs is about to be crushed once more.

Debt Ceiling Deal Doubts Rise - USA Default Risk Hasn't Done This Since Lehman

The US Treasury Bill market remains notably inverted around the uncertain timing of the US debt limit debacle.

As Bloomberg reports, while Treasury bills maturing in October continue underperforming against November and December securities, the market has a murky view on the drop-dead date for the U.S. debt ceiling.

At the start of last week, concerns shifted to early October after the Treasury said in its 3Q refunding statement that it expects to be able to fund the govt through the end of September.

Focus then shifted back toward mid-October after the head of the House Freedom Caucus said he is ready to accept a debt ceiling increase without other conditions

However, one more worrisome market is starting to notably wake up to the reality of a deeply divided congress unable to agree on anything. The market for sovereign credit risk is flashing red with USA 5Y CDS now trading at its most extreme levels to German 5Y CDS since Lehman.

Note that the current credit-risk-premium for US Treasuries is higher than it was during 2013"s government shutdown and 2015"s down-to-the-wire debt ceiling debate.

But while Treasury and credit markets are flashing red anxiety levels, the VIX curve is doing the exact opposite and pricing in a relative drop in volatility... before a resurgence in the start of 2018...

So T-Bills worry about early October... VIX worries about year-end... and CDS confirm they have a problem. Who will be right?

The Amazon Effect: Retail Bankruptcies Surge 110% In First Half Of The Year

As Amazon flirts with a $500 billion market cap, letting Jeff Bezos try on the title of world"s richest man on for size if only for a few hours, for Amazon"s competitors it"s "everything must go" day everyday, as the bad news in the retail sector continue to pile up with the latest Fitch report that the default rate for distressed retailers spiked again in July.

According to the rating agency, the trailing 12-month high-yield default rate among U.S. retailers rose to 2.9% in mid-July from 1.8% at the end of June, after J. Crew completed a $566 million distressed-debt exchange. Meanwhile, with the shale sector flooded with Wall Street"s easy money, the overall high-yield default rate tumbled to 1.9% in the same period from 2.2% at the end of June as $4.7 billion of defaulted debt - mostly in the energy sector - rolled out of the default universe.

In a note, Fitch levfin sr. director Eric Rosenthal, said that “even with energy prices languishing in the mid $40s, a likely iHeart bankruptcy and retail remaining the sector of concern, the broader default environment remains benign."

He"s right: after the energy sector dominated bankruptcies in the first half of 2016, accounting for 21% of Chapter 11 cases, in H1 2017 the worst two sectors for bankruptcies are financials and consumer discretionary.

And if recent trends are an indication, the latter will only get worse as Fitch expects Claire’s, Sears Holdings and Nine West all to default by the end of the year, pushing the default rate to 9%. "The timing on Sears and Claire’s is more uncertain, and our retail forecast would end the year at 5% absent these filings," Rosenthal wrote.

Putting the retail sector woes in context, Reorg First Day has calculated that retail bankruptcies soared 110% in the first half from the year-earlier period, accounting for $6 billion in debt.

The list includes name brands such as Gymboree, Payless, rue 21 and the Limited, all of which cited the Amazon affect as a contributor to their downfall.

“Many retailers have echoed the familiar cries of those that filed before them—the proliferation of online shopping, rapidly deteriorating brick-and-mortar retail, the rise of fast fashion, hefty lease obligations and shifting consumer preferences,” Reorg First Day said in a midyear review.

While it is far from empirically, and certainly scientifically established, every incremental retail bankruptcy should add approximately $5-10 billion to AMZN"s market cap, further cementing Jeff Bezos as the world"s richest monopolist man.

BMO Finds An A New Source Of Systemic Risk

In a time of suffocating, crushing market complacency (which has made the lives of financial analysts so boring, they have even quantified what complacency is), a pet hobby that has emerged within the financial community is to find new possible sources of underappreciated systemic risk. One such attempt comes from BMO"s Mark Steele today, who notes that aside from the pressure that the short to medium end of the curve is dishing out as Central Banks turn hawkish, "the market dishes out some of its own early signals of a more important nature."

Steele says he created a basket of Chinese Bank CDS to look for systemic risk there, and yesterday it notably broke above a narrowing trend – Exhibit 1.

Breaking the basket down, BMO highlights China Construction Bank as the key member that shows the greatest, albeit liquidity induced, "breaking bad" spike – Exhibit 2

Here, Steele will stop readers before they go asking about BofA, or SocGen, credit risk, to say that the bank"s systemic risk basket sleeps like a baby. His spin would be to tell you that it seems an opportune time to buy protection – Exhibit 3.

So is a Chinese bank the potential source of the next systemic risk? His answer: "The systemic risk problem this time round won’t come directly from a Chinese bank. The potential Lehman will come indirectly. We update that basket from I Never Kissed a Bear with the overnight breakdown below – Exhibit 4"

For those asking, the basket in question is charted below: it represents what Steele believes are China"s Systematic Risk Entities - aka China"s chronic acquirors profiled here at the end of June - that got a call from the Chinese Bank regulator at the end of June. He then adds "If we had to break down the basket to have the market call out the potential Lehman, we’d say it was (Wicked?) Wanda."

This Is How A "Bail-Out" Becomes A "Bail-In"

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Here’s the perfect example of how insane our financial system has become.

It was announced yesterday that, after a 24-hour white-knuckled ride, Spanish banking giant Banco Popular had been sold to Banco Santander for the price of just 1 euro.

Note- that’s 1 euro in TOTAL. Not 1 euro per share.

Banco Popular had once been one of Spain’s largest banks.

But just as certain banks tend to do from time to time, Popular sacrificed responsibility and good conduct for quick profits.

They spent years gambling their depositors’ savings away on idiotic, dangerous, pitiful loans. And those bad loans eventually came back to bite them.

The modern business of banking is all about pooling customer deposits together and making various loans and investments with those funds.

Safe, responsible banks make sensible investments.

They maintain extremely high loan standards. And they keep a SUBSTANTIAL rainy day fund set aside in case those loans and investments go bad.

Banco Popular did none of those things.

Back in 2006 during the height of the real estate bubble, for example, Popular maintained a liquidity ratio of less than 2% according to its annual report that year.

This means that over 98% of its customers’ savings had been gambled away on bad loans and bad speculations.

Eventually those risky loans started failing, and the bank started losing money.

Last year alone Popular lost 3.5 billion euros, which is about as much as they earned in all of the bubble years combined.

Fearing for the banks ability to continue servicing its customers, European regulators stepped in on Tuesday and forced a fire sale.

Banco Santander “won” that auction, again, paying a symbolic price of just 1 euro.

This means that Banco Santander will now inherit all the toxic loans (and consequent losses) that Popular had on its books.

The insanity here is that Santander had almost no time to conduct its due diligence, i.e. research the business to understand what they were buying.

Banco Popular had a balance sheet worth over $150 billion with hundreds of thousands of different loans.

It would take months to even begin scratching the surface of such a massive balance sheet.

By comparison, the last time I bought a business I paid $6 million and spent more than a year conducting due diligence.

Santander bought a $150 billion business and spent less than 24 hours trying to understand what they were buying.

This is nuts. And ENORMOUSLY risky for Santander.

But perhaps even more insane is that this deal is now being hailed by European governments and financial media as a wonderful solution to the looming problem of bank insolvency.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that this problem wasn’t really solved.

It was just transferred from one bank to another. The assets are still toxic. They just happen to be owned by Santander now.

Most importantly, Banco Popular is FAR from alone.

Here in Italy, in fact, a number of smaller banks are teetering on insolvency.

And regulators have been scrambling trying to find potential suitors to copy this shotgun wedding ‘solution’.

But so far, no success.

Not a single bank in Italy has sufficient capital to absorb the toxic debts of another.

Plus the government itself is totally bankrupt.

So basically an insolvent government and insolvent large banks are trying to figure out how to bail out insolvent smaller banks.

It’s total madness.

And this is the important lesson: eventually they run out of options.

There’s no one left to bail out a bad bank… no taxpayers, no white knight, no bondholders, no shareholders. Nobody.

Except for depositors.

This is when a “bail out” becomes a “bail in”, and the depositors get stuck with the bill.

Bottom line: This matters. It’s your money at stake.

Don’t simply assume that your bank is in good condition. Examine their financial statements and find out for sure.

Don’t keep 100% of your life’s savings at a single institution. Make sure you diversify. If a bail-in ever occurs, it will be the largest depositors who get hit first.

And definitely consider diversifying geographically. Avoid keeping everything in the same country, especially if that country is bankrupt– the bail-in risk is much higher.

The world is a big place and there’s a ton of opportunity out there, including plenty of responsible, conservative places to bank.

And it’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off because a portion of your savings is in a safe, well-capitalized bank.

Secret Recording Implicates Bank of England In Libor Rigging

While it may seem like yesterday, it was nearly five years ago that the Libor scandal first broke, and with it brought scandalous suggestions that none other than the Bank of England was implicated.

As we first reported in July 2012, according to Barclays then CEO Bob Diamond, it was high level individuals at the BOE who may (or may not) have been aware that Libor had been "manipulated" and were (or were not) also active in the setting process:

• BARCLAYS SAYS BANK OF ENGLAND CALLED ON OCT. 29, 2008 ON LIBOR


• BARCLAYS SAYS DIAMOND MADE NOTE OF CALL; RECEIVED CALL FROM PAUL TUCKER


• BARCLAYS SAYS TUCKER SAID `CERTAIN" BARCLAYS DIDN"T NEED ADVICE; SAID LIBOR DIDN"T ALWAYS NEED TO BE SO HIGH

And yet, concerned about how deep the rabbit hole would go if a central banker was implicated, Diamond tried to cover it up:

• BARCLAYS SAYS DIAMOND DIDN"T BELIEVE HE HAD GOT INSTRUCTION

Even as:

• BARCLAYS SAYS DEL MISSIER CONCLUDED INSTRUCTION HAD BEEN GIVEN; TOLD RATE SETTERS TO LOWER RATES

The note in question was represented below:

Needless to say, when it comes to the central bank nothing happened: a few BOE personnel were reassigned, some quietly lost their jobs, and nobody was prosecuted or charged. Certainly, nobody went to prison.

* * *

Fast forward nearly five years later, when the Libor scandal may have reemerged after a secret recording that implicates the Bank of England in Libor rigging has been uncovered by BBC Panorama.

According to the BBC, the 2008 recording adds to evidence the central bank repeatedly pressured commercial banks during the financial crisis to push their Libor rates down, just as suggested by Bob Diamond in 2012.

The recording calls into question evidence given in 2012 to the Treasury select committee by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker, the man who went on to become the deputy governor of the Bank of England. In the recording, a senior Barclays manager, Mark Dearlove, instructs Libor submitter Peter Johnson, to lower his Libor rates.

Dearlove tells him: "The bottom line is you"re going to absolutely hate this... but we"ve had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower." To which Johnson objects, saying that this would mean breaking the rules for setting Libor, which required him to put in rates based only on the cost of borrowing cash.

Mr Johnson says: "So I"ll push them below a realistic level of where I think I can get money?"

His boss Mr Dearlove replies: "The fact of the matter is we"ve got the Bank of England, all sorts of people involved in the whole thing... I am as reluctant as you are... these guys have just turned around and said just do it."

The phone call between Mr Dearlove and Mr Johnson took place on 29 October 2008 the BBC notes, the same day that Tucker, who was at that time an executive director of the Bank of England, phoned Barclays boss Diamond. Barclays" Libor rate was discussed.

Diamond and Tucker were called to give evidence before the Treasury select committee in 2012. Both said that they had only recently become aware of lowballing, despite Diamond"s abovementioned tacit admission, which he then tried to cover up.

In its report, Panorama says it played the October 2008 recording to Chris Philp MP, who sits on the Treasury committee.

He told the programme: "It sounds to me like those people giving evidence, particularly Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker were misleading parliament, that is a contempt of parliament, it"s a very serious matter and I think we need to urgently summon those individuals back before parliament to explain why it is they appear to have misled MPs. It"s extremely serious."

Responding to the recording, Diamond told the BBC: "I never misled parliament and… I stand by everything I have said previously." Tucker did not respond to our questions. Peter Johnson, the Barclays Libor submitter, was jailed last summer after pleading guilty to accepting trader requests to manipulate Libor.

Two traders who made requests for Mr Johnson to move Libor up or down, Jay Merchant and Alex Pabon, were found guilty last June of conspiracy to defraud along with another submitter, Jonathan Mathew.

However, the jury could not reach a verdict on two other traders then on trial, Ryan Reich and Stelios Contogoulas. The Serious Fraud Office requested a retrial which concluded last week. Both Mr Reich and Mr Contogoulas were unanimously acquitted. Panorama also played Contogoulas the October 2008 recording. He said he believed that if it had been played during the criminal trials it might have affected the outcomes.

He said: "That"s the thing, you know in these trials that we went through they separated everything, separated trading requests and lowballing. So anything that has to do with this they don"t go in. So you"re asking me do I think that if all this was in would it make a difference? Probably, is the answer."

* * *

Another notable "criminal" to emerge from the Libor scandal was Tom Hayes, the UBS and Citi-based Libor manipulating protagonist of the recent book "The Spider Network", and who was arguably at the center of the prosection"s LIbor case. He has repeatedly claimed that the real culprits are not those - like him - who executed the Libor rigging, but the ones at the very top who have the instructions to do so.

Like, as the case may be, the Bank of England.

Yet while some junior people went to prison, nobody in the corner office, and certainly nobody at the BOE has faced any criminal consequences from their actions.

The BBC adds that the Serious Fraud Office, which brought the Barclays prosecutions told Panorama that evidence of lowballing, was provided to the recording. They also say they are still investigating lowballing and that they follow the evidence "as high as it goes and aim to charge the most senior people wherever there is a realistic prospect of conviction".

The Bank of England said: "Libor and other global benchmarks were not regulated in the UK or elsewhere during the period in question.... Nonetheless, the Bank of England has been assisting the SFO"s criminal investigations into Libor manipulation by employees at commercial banks and brokers by providing, on a voluntary basis, documents and records requested by the SFO."

Ironically, it is precisely that it was unregulated that may have given the Bank of England the green light to assume it can manipulate it with impunity.

It remains to be seen if, nearly a decade after the Libor manipulation took place, any central banker will go to prison over it.

Pigs Waiting To Get Slaughtered (Video)

By EconMatters

We discuss the Stock Market Bubble is this video and provide some metrics to help the Federal Reserves Members spot the Bubble, since they seem to be having difficulty spotting the Bubble Market. The Fed should call an emergency meeting tomorrow, and hike rates the 50 basis points they were supposed to do last year, but passed on.

This Federal Reserve is the most clueless Federal Reserve in a long line of incompetent Federal Reserves. They have followed in the exact footsteps of the 2007/08 Financial Crisis Playbook, it is as if The Federal Reserve is trying to Destabilize the entire Global Financial System on purpose.

We are definitely witnessing the euphoric phase of the stock market bubble, because investors couldn`t be more blindly bullish than they are right now. This is the equivalent to the shoe shine story regarding the Market Psychology right before the 1929 Market Crash, clueless ebullience is off the charts right now in Financial Markets!

Do you spot the Bubble now Janet Yellen? I will give you my person number, and I will be happy to walk you through it, so that you understand the magnitude of why this is the biggest stock market bubble of all time.

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

As Cash Shortage Leads To Manufacturing Contraction, Economic Shockwaves, Indian Banks Slash Interest Rates

Over 50 days after Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi stunned India"s population when he announced on November 8 he would unexpectedly eliminate 86% of the existing currency in circulation in what was supposed to be a crackdown on the shadow economy, but instead has resulted in a significant hit to the broader, cash-based economy, overnight we noted the first official confirmation of how substantial the impact of Modi"s demonetization has been, when the Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index printed at 49.6 in December, the first contraction reading since December 2015, as the war on cash crippled demand.

According to the report, output and new orders fall for first time in one year; companies reduced buying levels and payroll numbers; Input cost inflation accelerated, while charges rose at softer rate.

Commenting on the report, IHS Markit economist Pollyanna De Lima said that “having held its ground in November following the unexpected withdrawal of 500 and 1,000 bank notes from circulation, India’s manufacturing industry slid into contraction at the end of 2016. Shortages of money in the economy steered output and new orders in the wrong direction, thereby interrupting a continuous sequence of growth that had been seen throughout 2016. Cash flow issues among firms also led to reductions in purchasing activity and employment.

Looking at the upcoming timeline of cash exchanges, she noted that "with the window for exchanging notes having closed at the end of December, January data will be key in showing whether the sector will see a quick rebound.”

As Bloomberg added, other recent data also mirror the stress. Motorcycle maker Bajaj Auto Ltd.’s total sales slipped 22 percent in December, the steepest fall in at least 21 months. Motorcycle sales, a key indicator of rural demand, declined 18%. India’s biggest automaker by volume, Maruti Suzuki Ltd., reported a 4.4 percent drop in domestic December sales, the first decline in six months, while overall sales fell 1 percent from a year earlier.

A continued slowdown will strip India of its position as one of the world’s fastest-growing big economies and risk a political backlash against Modi. On Wednesday another key economic report is due, when the Service PMI data is due before focus shifts to the government’s first official growth estimate for the year through March.

India’s economy, which until recently was expected to be the world"s fastest growing, large economy, outpacing China...

... is now expected to grow 6.9% in the year through March, according to a consensus estimate. That’s well below the 7.3% predicted by a survey in November and the previous year’s 7.6% actual expansion. At this rate of deterioration, China, and its "goalseeked" 6.5% annual growth rate may soon regain the top spot among world economies.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to offset the slowing economy as a result of the Prime Minister"s unprecedented demonetization gamble, overnight Indian banks, led by market leader State Bank of India, announced sharp cuts to their lending rates after the recent surge in deposits as ordinary Indians brought their cash to the bank for "safekeeping", raising hopes that lower borrowing costs will help spark credit growth in Asia"s third-largest economy.

On Sunday, State Bank of India, India country"s biggest lender by assets, said it had cut its so-called marginal cost of funds-based lending rates (MCLR) by 90 bps, while unveiling new products for mortgage loans, one of the fastest-growing areas. Other lenders including Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Dena Bank followed suit and also cut their lending rates by 45-90 basis points across tenures. Analysts expect more lenders to follow suit.

Banks have received 14.9 trillion rupees ($219.30 billion) in old 500, and 1,000 rupees notes from depositors since Modi"s cash overhaul. That had raised expectations banks would have room to cut lending rates, which is seen as vital to increase credit growth and spark a revival in private investments.

Cited by Reuters, Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of SBI, said at a news briefing on Monday, the rate cuts were intended to "jump start" credit growth and could raise it by 100-200 bps in the year ending in March. Even if accurate, it remains to be seen if such credit growth will have an offsetting impact on economic growth.

SBI now expects credit growth for 2016/17 fiscal year to be 8-9%, Bhattacharya said, still lower than the lender"s previous formal guidance of 10-12% growth. Any signs of a revival in credit could ease some of the worries from Modi"s move, which has sparked a severe cash shortage that has paralyzed parts of the economy.

The rate cuts also come after Modi on Saturday warned banks to "keep the poor, the lower middle class, and the middle class at the focus of their activities," and to act with the "public interest" in mind.

Modi"s comments were made in a special New Year"s eve speech in which he defended his ban on higher-value cash notes and announced a slew of incentives including channeling more credit to the poor and the middle class.

Some have expressed optimism that the combined impact of banks cutting lending rates and subvention provided by the government to small businesses is likely to help turn around growth faster than expected in the next fiscal year," said Saugata Bhattacharya, chief economist at Axis Bank, the third-biggest Indian lender. Many others remain skeptical.

For now, however, the immediate impact was on Indian Bonds, which rose after SBI"s interest cutting announcement, pushing the yield on the sovereign note due September 2026 to 6.4% from 6.51%. If anything, this is the latest sign that in a world drowning in leverage, and whose economy is priced to perfection, any ongoing "tightness" and rising rates, will only lead to adverse consequences not only in Emerging Markets, but developed ones as well.

Crushing The $50 Trillion Sideline Cash Conundrum

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Blackrock estimates there is a whopping $50 trillion in cash “sitting on the sidelines”.

Bloomberg writer Lisa Abramowicz calls it the $50 Trillion Conundrum.

As most Mish readers understand, there is no conundrum. Let’s go over why, one more time.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how much cash investors are holding these days.

BlackRock puts the figure at more than $50 trillion, a figure that includes a host of different metrics, from central-bank assets to financial-firm reserves and consumer savings accounts.

Other measures show a similar trend. Private-equity firms are amassing great piles of liquid securities, with Blackstone saying that nearly one-third of its assets are in cash. Fund managers in general have boosted reserves as a share of their portfolios to levels that match the highest since 2001.

So what is the meaning of this trend toward bigger cash cushions? Several weeks ago, my response was to say that all this money will support asset values going forward. That may have been too simplistic.

Just because there’s more cash in the financial system doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s available to buy securities, nor that it’ll prevent a repricing of debt and equities that have been propped up by years of unconventional monetary policies. In fact, it could even indicate more risk out there, as one reader astutely noted. Fund managers may be holding more cash to offset a bigger pool of leveraged derivative bets, which may or may not be sufficient to compensate for the risk.

Sideline Cash Silliness

Barring trivial exceptions, sideline cash can never support asset prices for the simple reason for every buyer of equities there is a seller.

Money cannot flow into stocks or bonds. If $50 trillion in sideline cash purchased equities and bonds, there would still be $50 trillion in sideline cash.

The minor exception to the rule there is a seller for every buyer are new or secondary offerings, trivial in comparison to the alleged sideline cash theory.

Sideline cash is a function of Fed printing and the ability of banks to borrow money into existence.

Statement 1: Several weeks ago, my response was to say that all this money will support asset values going forward. That may have been too simplistic.

Wrong

Statement 2: Just because there’s more cash in the financial system doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s available to buy securities, nor that it’ll prevent a repricing of debt and equities that have been propped up by years of unconventional monetary policies.

Better, but still wrong, and missing a key point: In aggregate it cannot be used to buy securities.

No Conundrum

Sideline cash will keep rising as long as debt expansion and Fed printing continues, but not a penny of it can come into the markets, except for new or secondary offerings.

There is no conundrum. Nor is there any such thing as “sideline cash”. Someone has to hold every penny printed into existence, at every point in time until reverse repos drain the cash.