As I expected, the wildly optimistic expectations for further quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve at yesterday?s Open Market Committee meeting were not matched with substance. All we got was a continuation of existing modest programs and some minor tweaking of language.
Bernanke only managed to say that, ?further stimulus will be provided as needed.? The Fed left unchanged its statement that economic conditions would likely warrant holding the benchmark Fed funds rate near zero ?at least through late 2014.? It also said it would continue swapping $667 billion of short-term debt with longer-term securities to lengthen the average maturity of its holdings, an action intended to lower long-term interest rates known as Operation Twist.
Apparently, the slowdown in GDP growth from 2% in Q1 to 1.5% in Q2 was not enough to spur the Fed to action. Nor was a slowdown in jobs growth from an average 226,000 jobs per month to 75,000. The earliest the Fed can now take further accommodative action is at their next meeting on September 12-13, just seven weeks before the presidential election.
The dollar rose smartly against the yen and the Euro. Equities closed at their lows for the day. They could have fallen dramatically further. But I think that traders are holding fire until their learn the results of the ECB meeting on Thursday. If we get more rhetoric instead of action, and the Friday nonfarm payroll continues weak, then we will have a hat trick of disappointments that could trigger a more gut wrench plunge in the indexes going into next week.
At the very least, we should challenge the bottom the of recent upward channel, taking us down 50 points from here. That should double the value of my existing position in the (SPY) puts.
A couple of alleged Tweets, a few rumored phone calls, and what have we got? $2 trillion in new global stock market capitalization in hours. That was the bottom line after the purported communication between the staffs of Germany?s Angela Merkel, France?s Jean Francois Hollande, and ECB president Mario Draghi. But is the creation of this immense new wealth, which would alone rank as 10th in terms of GDP after France, justified?
If the intention was to punish hedge funds, the goal was certainly accomplished. The plaintive bleatings in email and text messages I received from hedge fund friends back home has been overwhelming. It was clear from the price action, straight line moves with no pullbacks, that the pain trade was definitely on. Pre-Thursday, the consensus wisdom was that market would crash into the August doldrums in the face of global economic data that was deteriorating by the day. Such is the price of betting against central banks that I highlighted in my recent trope ?Why Ben Bernanke Hates Me? (click here at http://madhedgefundradio.com).
Leading research houses seemed to be in an arms race with government institutions to see who could cut growth forecasts the fastest. They were all egged on by US Q2 corporate earnings reports, that were highly fudged and indifferent at best, with the most honest wisdom provided by the shocker from Apple (AAPL).
However, in the financial markets that are more often driven by emotion than information, politics trump fundamentals every day. With the street heavily positioned on the short side, the conditions for a snap back rally were ripe. This is why I had no positions at all for 10 days, and no equity holdings for over a month. Rather than chase the market on the downside, I waited for it to come to me, which is usually the best thing to do.
I have always believed that Europe has the ability and the resources to solve its problems at any time. To read my advice to the German government in detail, please refer to my report from Frankfurt, which I will write in the next couple of days, when I get some time.
All that is required is for Europe to make some unpleasant admissions of truths, and adopt some policies and institutions that have already been proven to work in the US. These are hard things to do politically, but that can be done. Make the politicians earn their pay for a change, I say. This is what makes the short game in Europe so risky, and why I have recently been so wimpy on my short Euro (FXE), (EUO) recommendations (in the reports, but without trade alerts).
Words are cheap, and their true value will become apparent when it comes time for Mario Draghi to deliver. If he does so quickly, we could see a ?RISK ON?, rally that could last until the end of the year and possibly take the S&P 500 up to 1,500. If he doesn?t, the August crash scenario down to 1,200 is back on the table, but no more. That table loses another leg if Ben Bernanke fails to deliver QE3 on Wednesday.
If all of this leaves you confused and befuddled, then welcome to the club. There are times when markets are just not forecastable, when the number of large variables and unknowns are too great to even make an intelligent guess at outcomes, and this is one of them. That?s why I am still 70% in cash, limiting my ?RISK ON? exposure to small, profitable positions in short Treasury and short yen call spreads. That?s down from 100% I had just last Wednesday.
Over the last two months, I have witnessed one of the least convincing rallies in the US stock market in recent memory. Looking at the chart for the S&P 500 below you can clearly see a modest, low conviction, declining volume rally in an ever-narrowing channel. This is further confirmed by the chart of the NYSE advance/decline ratio that is failing at the March support level, which has now become resistance.
Look at any other asset class and it is flashing warning lights. Ten year Treasury bonds are within a hair?s breadth of blasting through to an all time low yield below 1.42%. We all know from hard earned experience that stocks and bonds never go up together for more than short periods, and that it is almost always the debt markets that get the longer-term trend right.
That flight to safety currency, the Japanese yen, is also screaming at us that trouble is just around the corner. It made it to the ? 77 handle, or over $125.00 in the (FXY) in recent days. People are certainly not buying the Japanese currency because they like Japan?s long-term fundamentals and demographics, which are the worst in the world. Nor are they buying for the yield, which is zero.
It appears that stocks have rallied because traders believe that the Federal Reserve will launch QE3 at its upcoming August 1 meeting. Bonds have been rallying because they think it won?t. Only one of these markets is right. That means the Fed won?t be able to take further easing action until early next year, well after the presidential election. By then, it will have every reason in the world to launch QE3, with the ?fiscal cliff? at the top of the list. That?s why Ben Bernanke is not inclined to waste ammo now.
In the meantime, The US, China, and Japan are all slowing and Europe is falling off a cliff. I was speaking to a hedge fund friend of mine this morning who told me the German paper he read said that they were abandoning Greece. I replied, ?That?s funny, the German paper I read said that they were abandoning Spain.? What ECB rescue funds that are in place are being challenged in the German Supreme Court, creating further uncertainty.
Travel around European main streets, as I have done for the last 10 days, and the ?FOR SALE? signs are everywhere. These are not a signal that I should rush out and buy equities right now, no matter how high the dividends are. They will be higher still, later.
All of this is setting up for an August that could be grizzly. A Fed disappointment will lead to a rapid unwind of the recent stock market rally, and could take us down to the 2012 low at 1,266 pronto, or more. A pop to a 1.25% yield in the ten-year Treasury is a chip shot.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/sc72.jpg201267DougDhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngDougD2012-07-23 23:04:572012-07-23 23:04:57How the Fed Will Trigger the Next Crash
The victory of the centrist pro bailout New Democracy Party in the Sunday Greek elections sparked a furious rally in the overnight Asian markets, much of it driven by hedge fund short covering. The socialist, anti-bailout parties went down in flames. As I write this on Sunday night, the Dow futures are trading up 78 points from the Friday close and the Japanese yen is in free-fall. Too bad that I?m 110% long ?RISK ON? positions in my model portfolio.
That was no surprise as 70% of Greeks want to stay in the EC. The way is now paved for a more civilized workout of the country?s financial problems which spreads austerity out over many more years, making it more tolerable and digestible for its citizens.
The latest Commitment of Traders report showed the Euro (FXE) (EUO) shorts in the futures hit yet another all-time high, and that the underlying was now worth $20 billion in the foreign exchange market. Shorts in the interbank cash market and ETF?s are thought to be much larger. On top of that, central banks have been seen unloading reserves denominated in Euros.
This witches brew of one-sided positions made up the perfect ingredients for the type of rip-your-face-off, snap back short covering rally that we have seen in past days. This is why I covered my own shorts three weeks ago when it pierced the $126 handle.
Keep in mind that the media has a lot of blood on its hands with its wild over exaggeration in its predictions of the imminent collapse of Greece and its withdrawal from the European Community that was never going to happen. It is focusing 99% of its attention on the Land of Socrates and Plato that accounts for 1% of European GDP. In the meantime, it is ignoring Germany which has 30% of GDP and is still growing, albeit at a slower 1% rate.
CNBC, in particularly, seems to be mercilessly beating this dead horse, holding it out as an example of what will happen to the US if it pursues similar high spending polices. This is why they send a Tea Party activist out to Athens at great expense every week to provide your coverage and to bait the Socialist candidates. They haven?t been this wrong since they reported that the Facebook issue was 30 times oversubscribed in Asia the night before it became the worst IPO in history.
But Greece has about as much in common with America as the US Treasury has with the bankrupt city of Vallejo, California. If anything, Greece is a perfect example of what happens when the wealthy get away with paying no taxes. Anyone with substantial means there stashes their dosh in Swiss bank accounts, leaving only the poor to cough up government revenues. Rich Greeks are just better at it than Americans. After all, they have been practicing for 5,000 years.
Greece is so small that it would be economic for Germany to just pay off half of its national debt just to maintain stability for its largest export markets. Should they spend $270 billion to protect $1.27 trillion in annual exports? It makes sense to me.
And let me give you a little back story here which you probably haven?t heard. Where did all this debt come from? Greedy unions? Careless bureaucrats? Spendthrift socialists? Expensive national health care?? A very big chunk was the result of the 2004 Athens Olympics where the government spent billions on huge sporting facilities and infrastructure that would only be used once and that it could never afford. Who constructed these massive edifices? German engineering firms. I know because I was there. There is always more to the story than the headline.
I hope my guests at my upcoming July 18 Frankfurt strategy luncheon don?t tar and feather me, or whatever they inflict on miscreants there, for expressing this opinion.
All of this is leading up to a great shorting opportunity for the beleaguered European currency. Given the current positive background, it could make it all the way back up to $127.80. That is a neat 50% retracement of the recent move down from $132.80 to $123.00. But be careful not to fall in love with it. The major trend in the Euro is still down, aiming for $1.17. And with a 0.50% interest rate cut by the European Central Bank imminent, that target could be hit sooner than later.
The wild whipsaw movements in the markets on Thursday reminded us once again how dependent they have become on monetary stimulus from central banks. As if we needed reminding. Almost simultaneously, officials from the US, Japan and the UK hinted at a coordinated move at this weekend?s G-20 meeting in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Let?s hope for the sake of global financial stability that no one eats a bad taco down there. And say ?Hello? to Miguel for me at the notorious drinking establishment, The Giggling Marlin. Just make sure he doesn?t pick your pocket when he hangs you upside down by your ankles with a block and tackle to give you a tequila shot.
The rumors were enough to cause me to cover my sole remaining short position in the S&P 500 (SPY) and bat out some additional shorts in the Japanese yen, which would go into free fall in such a scenario. If the rumors are true, they will take the (SPX) up to 1,400 and I will make a killing on my hefty long positions in (AAPL), (HPQ), (JPM), (DIS) and shorts in (FXY) and (TLT). If not, then the large cap index will revisit 1,290 one more time and I will be left looking like a dummy while posting an embellished resume on Craig?s List.
To see how closely risk assets are correlated with quantitative easing, take a look at the chart produced below by my friend, Dennis Gartman of The Gartman Letter. It graphically presents the market response to QE1, QE2, and Operation Twist, which are highlighted in green. In fact, quantitative easing has become the on/off switch of the financial markets. Hence, we get ?RISK ON?/?RISK OFF? gyrations in spades.
While on the topic of monetary policy, let?s consider the implications of a Romney win in the November presidential election. The former Massachusetts governor and son of a Michigan governor has said that he would fire Federal Reserve Governor, Ben Bernanke, on his first day in office.
Well, he actually can?t do that, although it is great fodder for the faithful on the hustings. What he can do is appoint and anti QE, pro-austerity replacement when Ben?s second four year term is up on January 31, 2014. At the top of the list of replacements are Stanford University?s John Taylor of Taylor Rule fame and sitting non-voting board member, president of the Dallas Fed, and noted hawk, Richard Fisher.
How would the financial markets react? Much of the recent buying of stocks and other risk assets has been on the assumption that the ?Bernanke Put? would kick in on any serious selloff. No Bernanke means no Bernanke put. I can already hear portfolio managers thinking ?What, you mean there is risk in these things?? and heading for the exits as quickly as possible. The resulting market crash could make 2008-2009 look like a cakewalk. Your 401k would rapidly shrink to a 201k, and your IRA would become DOA. So be careful what you wish for.
That is unless you are a reader of this letter and a subscriber to my Trade Alert Service. Such a market meltdown would be one of the great shorting opportunities of the century. But to follow the game you have to have a program.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2000306-Hanging_with_the_best_of_them_Cabo_San_Lucas.jpg299400DougDhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngDougD2012-06-14 23:03:552012-06-14 23:03:55Be Careful What You Wish For
This is one of the most bizarre markets I have ever seen. The worse the economic outlook gets, the higher the market goes. But it doesn?t breathe like a normal market, with plenty of corrections along the way giving traders a chance to get in. It has been a straight line up with nary a pullback, trapping many players on the sidelines. But it has been going up so slowly that call option buyers have been left out in the cold too. What is the market struggling to tell we deaf investors?
Let?s go to the videotape. GDP peaked in Q3, 2010 and fell to a 1.5% rate by Q2, 2011, hardly a pace to set off fireworks. It has been flat lining ever since. Personal income has been falling for five consecutive months. So has sales growth. Industrial production hit a 22 month low in January.
Add up all these numbers, and you get a recession that starts by this summer at the latest. A data stream like this has reliably produced a recession every time for the last 50 years. Except, it?s different this time.
Enter quantitative easing. Virtually every major central bank in the world has rushed to print money in the past year. They have behaved like tag team wrestlers, with the Federal Reserve doing the heavy lifting, followed by Europe, Japan, the United Kingdom, and China.
How long did it take Europe?s quantitative easing to flood into the US? I reckon about five minutes. Look at the chart of the adjusted monetary base below prepared by the St, Louis Fed, which took off like a bat out of hell the second the ECB?s LTRO was announced.
However, all this stimulus is not having the desired effect, as very little of it is ending up in the real economy. You can see this in the velocity of money, or the number of times a dollar gets turned over per year, which has plunged to record lows in virtually every country. This means that all this cash is going into asset prices, especially stocks, where it stops dead in its tracks.
The scary thing about this is what happens to markets when the sugar infusions stop. For a preview, take a look at the chart for the S&P 500 last summer. The Fed ended QE2 on June 30. Within three months, the closely watched large cap stock index fell by 25%.
Markets didn?t recover until Europe started talking up their own QE prospects in the fall. It turns out that even the most dovish members of the Federal Reserve only want to use quantitative easing sparingly, and in small doses, because of the inflationary risks it presents down the road.
Markets are made up of people. Understand the people and you will understand the markets. Anticipate them, and you will make a fortune. I think what is happening here is that those who relied only on economic data and missed the true message of QE1 and QE2 and got trapped on the sidelines, greatly underperforming more aggressive peers.
They are not going to make the same mistake a third time. Those are the people buying up here. On top of that, others are buying simply because the stock market has gone up. Every time I have seen this happen in my 40 plus years in the business, it has ended in tears.
I am not cherry picking the data here to support a hopeless permabear position. I will not sit in a throne and order the tide to stop rising, like King Canute. Let me tell you what remains on the program:
*A $525 billion fiscal drag promises to suck 3.5% out of GDP by year end. This includes $250 billion from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, $100 billion in automatic sequestration budget cuts, and $100 billion from the end of the payroll tax holiday. These are not forecasts, they are certainties under current law.
*The great prop for the stock market, corporate earnings growing at red hot rates, have begun a noticeable slowdown.
*Budget cuts at the state and local level are moving ahead at a prodigious rate, sucking another 2% out of GDP. Some communities are now charging those pleading for emergency services $300 for 911 calls. Teacher layoffs continue unabated.
*Europe is going into recession on schedule. The EU commission just cut its 2012 prediction of GDP growth from 0.5% to -0.3%. Portugal will see a -3.3% shrinkage in GDP.
*The China slowdown continues, with the People?s Bank of China rushing to chop reserve bank requirements twice in three months.
*Oil? Has anyone looked at oil lately? Every oil company economist on the planet will tell you that when oil sticks over $110 a barrel, demand destruction explodes, guaranteeing a recession. It went out on Friday just short of this print. Oil truly sows the seeds of its own destruction.
The data are not all bleak. Car sales have made it back up to a 14 million unit annual rate, up from the 9 million units in 2008. The decline in jobless claims is indisputable. So the rally could continue for another month or two. But the jobs data can be highly fickle, volatile, and subject to scads of revisions. So I am keeping my core short position in the (SDS) and protecting it with short dated upside hedges.
When the fat lady sings for this market, I want to have a front row seat.
https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png00DougDhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngDougD2012-02-26 22:03:252012-02-26 22:03:25Coincident Economic Data Says Market is Topping
Those who lived through the cataclysmic ?flash crash? that occurred precisely at 2:45 pm EST on May 6, 2010, have been dreading a replay ever since. Their worst nightmares may soon be realized.
That is when the Dow Index (INDU) dropped a gob smacking 650 points in minutes, wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market capitalization. On that day, some ETF?s saw intraday declines of an eye popping 75% before recovering. A flurry of litigation ensued where many sought to break trades as much as 90% down from the last indication, some successfully.
The true reasons for the crash are still a matter of contentious debate. Many see a smoking gun in the hands of the high frequency traders who account for so much of the daily trading volume. But I happen to know that many of these guys pulled the plugs on their machines and went flat as soon as the big move started.
I think that it was the obvious result of too many people following similar models in markets with declining liquidity. The ease of instant execution through the Internet was another contributing factor. It also could be a symptom of no growth economies and lost decades in the stock market. The increasing short term orientation of many money managers also played a hand.
Mathematicians who follow chaos theory and ?long tail events? known as ?black swans? argue that the flash crash was not only inevitable, it was predictable. They are also saying that the next one could be far worse.
Since then we have suffered several mini flash crashes. These include the recent $200 collapse in gold, a $5 plunge in silver, a five cent gyration in the Euro, and a ten cent gap in the Swiss franc. Notice that these ?flash? events only happen on the downside, and that we don?t have flash melt ups.
In many respects, traders and portfolio managers dodged a bullet on that fateful day. What if it had happened going into the close? Then assets would have been marked to market less $1 trillion, and the Asian openings that followed hours later would have been horrific. This could have triggered a series of rolling flash crashes around the world from time zone to time zone that would have caused several trillion more in losses. Those losses eventually did happen, but they were spread over several more months at a liquidation rate that could be absorbed by the markets.
Regulators claim that they have reduced the risks of a flash crash through the enforcement of daily trading limits across a broader range of financial instruments. I am not so sure. During a real panic, preventing people from unloading risk is almost an impossible feat. I know because I have lived through many of them.
In the meantime, the S&P 500 continues its inexorable rise well above the exact point at which the last flash crash started, at 1,160. We are now 10% above that last flash point. Avoid, like the plague, shorting leveraged naked puts on anything.
The coming bear trap that I warned about last week sprung this morning on the non-subscribing unwary, triggering panic buying by short sellers in all ?RISK ON? assets. Oil (USO), gold (GLD), silver (SLV), copper (CU), and foreign currencies all moved in lockstep to the upside. The trigger was news that leaked out over the weekend that the International Monetary Fund would make available several hundred billion dollars to bail out the beleaguered European ?PIIGS?.
Never mind that the IMF immediately denied any such moves from multiple offices around the world. The tipoff that something big was coming was the strong performance during Friday?s stock market opening, ostensibly off the back of healthy ?Black Friday? figures, which rapidly faded at the close. I suppose the big money was too busy fighting turkey indigestion to maintain the ephemeral gains. Once the buying started during the Sunday Asian market hours, it was all over but the crying.
With many managers poo-pooing today's move, one has to ask if this is a one day wonder, a much needed 24 hour holiday from the deluge of bad news from the Continent?
The charts below suggest that this is more than a one day wonder and that there is more juice to go. Certainly breaking the 50 day moving average at 1,205 would be a positive development. At the very least, we should take a run to the old S&P 500 support level at 1,230, which should now pose substantial resistance. Break that, and the 200 day moving average at 1,266 comes into play, close to the three month highs we saw two weeks ago.
The interesting mover today was the Euro, which hardly moved at all, the ETF (FXE) gained a scant 0.53%. You would think that the troubled European currency would be the primary beneficiary of any rescue attempts. It wasn?t. This feeble response tells me that the Euro is fundamentally flawed, is still the currency that everyone loves to hate, and is looking at more downside than upside. That is why I didn?t join the lemmings this morning scrambling to cover shorts.
The volatility index (VIX) is just not buying this sell off. Even with the Dow down over 300 today, the (VIX) has only managed a meager 3% gain on the day. With a move in equities of this magnitude, you would expect volatility to rise by 15% or more. If traders and investors really believed that the risk markets were really going to crash to new lows, they would be paying through the nose to buy downside protection, which would be clearly visible in a (VIX) spike. These figures prove they aren?t.
Let?s do a quickie cross asset class review here and look at what else on the table. The S&P 500 is precisely at the 50% retracement of the entire 200 point move up from October 4. It could hold this level and keep the bull move intact. While junk bonds (HYG) are down, they are nowhere near the levels suggesting that a financial collapse is imminent. Advance decline ratios are at all-time highs, not exactly an argument for a new bear market. Nor are Treasury bonds drinking the Kool-Aide. Sure they are up today, but not as much as they should be.
It all has the makings of an asymmetric trade for me. That means that the next piece of good news will deliver a larger move up than the next piece of bad news will bring a down one. So a tactical long here will bring an outsized returns. It could well be that the failure of the Super committee is fully in the price, and the mere passage of the deadline might bring a big rally. There are certainly a lot of hedge funds looking to chase yearend performance and value players happy to bottom fish to pull this off.
The bulls also have the calendar strongly in their favor. Not only is the November-December period the second strongest bimonthly period of the year, investors are massively underweight equities. As I never tire in explaining to my permabear friends, most investors can?t sell stock they don?t own. That?s why the Armageddon scenario never kicked in during September. That leaves hedge funds and high frequency trading alone to break the downside supports, something they have so far been unable to do alone.
Which girls will get invited to the next dance? The same ones taken to the last one: commodities, energy, rail, coal, and technology stocks, especially Apple, which is sitting bang on its 200 day moving average today.
Of course I could be wrong about all of this. Conditions in the markets are so uncertain here that there are no real high quality trades to be found. Almost everyone is posting negative returns this year, including some of the smartest people I know. That?s why I have pared back my own trading in order to preserve my own 42% year to date gain. But then, I am 75% in cash, so I can afford to take a relaxed view of things.
Only trade here if your wife is pestering you for a larger Christmas shopping budget. Don?t even think about opening up a new short here, because you have already missed the big, easy move. Then again, you could consider getting a new wife. It might be cheaper.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/bear.jpg488650DougDhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngDougD2011-11-21 23:03:332011-11-21 23:03:33Watch Out for the Bear Trap
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Time for Another Shot of Monetary easing
