Showing posts with label CMBS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CMBS. Show all posts

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Chinese Mini-Bank Runs: Show ‘em the Money and Deposit Insurance

The other day I posted here of a mini-run of a small Chinese rural bank in progress

What course of action has been taken in order quell the run? 

Well, Show ’Em the money!!! Literally.

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From the Guardian: (bold mine)
Rural banks in China's eastern city of Yancheng stacked piles of money in plain view behind teller windows to calm depositors queueing at bank branches for a third consecutive day, following rumours they had run out of cash.

According to residents of Sheyang county, panic began on Monday with a rumour that a branch of one local bank turned down a customer's request for a 200,000 yuan (£19,500) withdrawal. Banks declined to comment and Reuters was unable to verify the rumour.

The affected institutions are tiny compared with the scale of China's financial sector, and the rush for cash appears to be an isolated incident so far. Rumours found especially fertile ground there after a failure of three less-regulated rural credit co-operatives last January. Yet the news caught nationwide attention, reflecting growing public anxiety as regulators signal greater tolerance for credit defaults.
Well did show 'em the money work? Unfortunately not. (bold mine). From the same article...
Despite repeated appeals from local officials for calm, by Tuesday the run had extended to another local bank, the Rural Commercial Bank of Huanghai, residents said.

Earlier on Wednesday police and security guards stood by as dozens formed a long queue outside while an electronic sign urged depositors not to be worried by rumours.

The governor of Sheyang county, Tian Weiyou, posted a two-minute video statement on the county government's website on Wednesday, urging depositors not to panic. In it he said: "Please be assured that the People's Bank of China and the rural commercial bank system will ensure the interests of all depositors will be protected. The county's rural commercial banks will ensure that there will be enough funds for depositors to withdraw at any given time."
As one would note, "tiny" and "isolated" in the above report seem to have been negated by "extended to another local bank"

What this instead shows is the periphery-to-the-core dynamic in motion or the contagion from the fringe moving into the center.

The article goes on to advocate deposit insurance as a solution to the banking system's debt problem. 

But deposit insurance will signify a short term solution that comes not only at the cost of taxpayer money but also increases systemic risks from moral hazard—tendency to take on more risks because the costs of the risks will be borne by another partyin the long run.

As International University of Geneva Professor Frank Hollenbeck explained at the Mises Institute (as applied to the US) [bold mine]
Deposit insurance is one of the two factors which allows banks to take such risky gambles. Created in 1933, it is a perfect example of government policy that ultimately will be determined to have done more harm than good. It was supposed to reduce risks, but has done just the opposite. When governments provide flood insurance the private sector would never consider, people then build homes in areas prone to suffer from severe flooding.

Prior to deposit insurance, people were careful about where they deposited their money to pay rent or food bills. If a bank ran into trouble by undertaking poor lending practices, people would quickly try to pull their money out of the bank. Bank runs were a good thing because runs served to force banks to be extremely careful about their lending practices. The threat of a bank run maintained sound incentives.

Deposit insurance is a perfect example of Frederick Bastiat’s parable of the broken window: what is seen, and what is not seen. For about 70 years, bank runs have been eliminated; giving depositors what some would say is the illusion of protection. That is what is seen. What is not seen is, without insurance, banks would have been taking much less risks with deposits, and governments would have been less able to finance spending through bank purchases of their bonds.
In other words, deposit insurance is a privatize profits-socialize losses transfer mechanism that works in favor of the banking system charged to taxpayers.

And this also means that a lot today’s global financial and economic imbalances, aside from inflationism, stems from many other price distorting regulations such as deposit insurance. 

Two wrongs don’t make a right. 

China's problems has been about massive accumulation of unproductive debt fueled by fractional reserve banking, thus markets should clear such imbalances.

Meanwhile, the periphery to the core “run” on Chinese institutions continues…
 
Updated to add: With the shrinking availability of domestically sourced liquidity as the financial spigot have been closing, Chinese developers have reportedly tapped on a new way of financing: cross border Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS).

Monday, October 28, 2013

Phisix: The Implication of the US Boom Bust Cycle

We are big fans of fear, and in investing, it is clearly better to be scared than sorry. -Seth Klarman
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Stock markets of the US and select developed countries continue with its melt-UP record smashing breakout streak.

This week, the Dow Industrials (not in chart) climbed 1.1% approaching a record while her peers at historic highs also posted gains, particularly, S&P 500 +.88% and the Nasdaq +.74%. The Russell 2000 small cap closed nearly unchanged +.003%.
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Outperforming US stocks, this week, relative to emerging markets and against many other developed peers imply that the share of US stocks in terms of market capitalization to the world should be expanding.

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However, the flagging US dollar has essentially offset nominal currency gains made by US equities.

Net foreign selling in US equities during the 2nd quarter, which I cited two weeks back[1], represents the second largest in record since the 1990s.

Political bickering theatrics over government shutdown, debit ceiling and Obamacare reportedly prompted for net foreign selling of US assets in August. Net sales of U.S. equities by official holders abroad were a record $3.1 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg[2].

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Rising stock markets amidst severe currency strains hardly represents signs of economic strength. Instead such dynamics are manifestations of an escalation of monetary ailment.

A good example of such extremes can be seen in the unfolding real time currency crisis in Venezuela. The Caracas Index or Venezuela’s stock market benchmark has been in a phenomenal vertiginous parabolic climb—up 347.5% (!!!) year-to-date, this adds to the 2012 gains at 302.81% for a total of 650.31% in one year and ten months (!!!)—as the collapse of the Venezuelan Bolivar[3] as shown via its black market rates steepen.

Ironically, in the face of massive goods shortages or an economic standstill, the increasingly desperate Venezuelan government decrees a Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness[4]. Individual “happiness” will now be substituted for collective “happiness” as perceived and implemented by the political leaders[5].

I know the US is not Venezuela. Japan is not Venezuela too. But all three has exercised the same currency debasement programs, resulting to the same outcomes at varying degrees.

Venezuela which is at the advance stage of a currency crisis, serves as example of what may happen to the US or Japan if political leaders insist proceeding towards such trajectory.

And since the world still depends on the US dollar as main currency for foreign currency bank reserves and as the principal medium for payment and settlements for international financial transactions, despite actions by some nations to wean themselves from the US dollar via currency swaps, bilateral currency trade deals and barter[6], the fate of the US dollar will have significant influence on the direction of the global financial markets.

I would also add that aside from the US dollar, developments in the US financial markets—the largest in the world, for instance, the US stock markets, despite the fall of US market cap relative to the world, remains at 34.6% (as of October 13, 2013) according to Bespoke Invest[7]—will also have big sway on global markets. The meltdown from the perceived tapering by the Fed last May which intensified the actions of the bond vigilantes should be a noteworthy example.

In today’s globalization expect connectivity not just in the web, or telecoms but also in financial markets and economies.

Manipulating Earnings Guidance to Boost Share Prices

When market participants frenziedly bid up stock prices to astronomical levels, the unsustainability of such actions can be established by simple observations.

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Again as I pointed out last week, zooming stocks has led to astonishing valuations. The small cap Russell[8] 2000’s PE ratio[9] has been valued at a fantastic 84.51 as of Friday’s close.

Given that the Forward PE has been estimated at 22.5, this means that earnings for the coming year have been expected to explode by a stunning 276%!

However if one were to weigh on the sentiment of small businesses to assess such potentials, a recent survey by small business (conservative lobbying[10]) organization the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)[11] seems barely sanguine to justify such valuations (bold mine)
Small-business owner optimism did not “crash “ in September, but it did fall, dropping 0.20 from August’s (corrected) reading of 94.1 and landing at 93.9. The largest contributing factor to the dip was the significant increase in pessimism about future business conditions, although this was somewhat offset by a notable increase in number of small-business owners expecting higher sales
So we have basically a neutral condition unsupportive of wild earnings growth expectations. 

The same hold true with Dow Utility. With a trailing PE at 30.89 and forward PE at 16.15 this means that priced at Friday’s close, the drop in forward PE will mean that earnings must jump by 92%!

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Aside from bond based share buybacks discussed last week, publicly listed companies “beat earnings estimates” by resorting to lowering guidance[12] has been a major pillar in driving up US stocks.

As one would note, 62.6% of corporations recently beat earnings estimates. Although the positive surprise trend has been on a decline since 2006.

On the other hand, the spread or the variance between positive and negative guidance by companies has been in a deficit since the 3rd quarter of 2011.

In other words, listed firms set easier profit goals which they eventually outperform via “beat estimates”. The positive surprise then spurs higher prices.

In my view this looks like accounting prestidigitation.

Yet negative guidance according to the Factset has been at record levels[13]

For Q3 2013, 89 companies have issued negative EPS guidance while 19 companies have issued positive EPS guidance. If 89 is the final number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance for the quarter, it will mark the highest number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance since FactSet began tracking guidance data in 2006.

Managing earnings expectations in order to “beat the estimates” has usually been a bear market technique used by the management.

According to Investopedia.com[14] “It is one of the analyst's jobs to evaluate management expectations and determine if these expectations are too optimistic or too low, which may be an attempt at setting an easier target. Unfortunately, this is something that many analysts forgot to do during the dotcom bubble.”

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The Factset graph also shows that Utilities and Telecoms have had 100% negative guidance changes. In short, these two industries expect materially LOWER profits thus the widespread downscaling of their estimates.

So how on earth will Utility earnings jump by 92%?!

Except for the energy sector, positive guidance has been a scarcity.

Since corporate profits represent a component of the income side of the National Income and Product Account (NIPA) [15], the lowering of profit guidance hardly reflects on a robust economy. This hardly justifies a sustainable upside run of stock market prices.

But again over the interim, rational irrationality may rule.

The other way to look at these: Management of many publicly listed corporations may have purposely been guiding “earnings” expectations down in order to generate “surprises”. Such positive surprise should extrapolate to an increase in (earnings performance based) compensation.

Rewarding executives based on earnings performance has been loaded with agency (conflict of interest) problems

According to an academic paper written by Lan Sun of UNE Business School, Faculty of the Professions[16] (bold mine)
In theory, a link between a CEO's compensation and a firm performance will promote better incentive alignment and higher firm values (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). However, executive compensation contract is an incentive where opportunistic earnings management behaviour is likely to be detected since CEOs are expected to have incentives to manipulate earnings if executive compensation is strongly linked to performance. A substantial literature has emerged to test the relationship between executive compensation and earnings management and has documented that compensation contracts create strong incentives for earnings management…When earnings management is driven by opportunistic management incentives, firms will ultimately pay a price and its negative impact on shareholders is economically significant.
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So far, total corporate profits based on y-o-y changes inclusive of Inventory Valuations Adjustments (IVA) and Capital Consumption Adjustment (CCAdj)[17] have chimed with the trend of lowering of profit expectations.

Yet curiously bad news (negative trends), which represents the underlying largely overlooked or ignored real factor of declining trend of profitability or eps growth rate and net income as shown last week, has been seen as good news (by mainly focusing on beat estimates or nominal growth figures or Fed easing)

It’s all about selective perception or picking of information to fit one’s biases or beliefs.

Let’s Keep Dancing: The Intensifying Credit Orgy

In a manic phase of the boom-bust cycle, zooming stocks equals ballooning credit.

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Back to the future with exploding leveraged loans and covenant lite bonds, from the Financial Times[18] (bold mine)
Neiman Marcus, the upscale US department store chain, is no stranger to fashion trends. But in the autumn of 2005 the luxury retailer started a very different kind of fad – this time for an unusual new bond structure known as a “payment-in-kind toggle”.

Pik-toggle notes, as they became known, gave Neiman Marcus the option to pay its lenders with more bonds instead of cash if the retailer ever ran into financial difficulty. For a company that was at the time being bought by private equity giants TPG and Warburg Pincus, in a leveraged buyout involving about $4.3bn worth of debt, that additional financial flexibility was considered a savvy move….

The average amount of debt used to finance LBOs has jumped from a low of 3.69 times earnings in 2009 to an average 5.37 so far this year, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. At the height of the LBO boom, average leverage was 6.05.

The $6bn sale of Neiman Marcus to Ares and a Canadian pension fund is expected to leave the retailer with a debt of about seven times earnings.

At the same time, more than $200bn of “cov-lite” loans have been sold so far this year, eclipsing the $100bn issued in 2007. That means 56 per cent of new leveraged loans now come with fewer protections for lenders than normal loans.
Regulators have sounded the alarm bells on covenant light loans but the industry group has pushed back saying that loan warnings will hurt the “neediest borrowers”[19]. Such characterizes the rationalization of the mania phase. Echoing the infamous words of ex-Citibank chair Charles Prince during the height of the US housing boom, “For as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing[20].” 

Let’s keep dancing

And when it comes to yield chasing via increased leveraging, the absence of a stamp of approval by credit rating agencies has hardly become a factor to Wall Street’s peddling of Commercial Mortgage Bonds (CMBS). [note credit rating enthusiasts, credit rating warnings ignored by markets]

From the Bloomberg[21]: (bold mine)
Wall Street banks that package commercial mortgages into bonds are forgoing a ranking from Moody’s Investors Service on the riskier portions of the deals, a sign the credit grader isn’t willing to stamp the debt investment-grade amid deteriorating underwriting standards.

Moody’s didn’t grade the lower-ranking debt in 9 of the 14 commercial-mortgage bond transactions it’s rated since mid-July, according to Jefferies Group LLC. Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Cantor Fitzgerald LP and UBS AG (UBSN) are selling a $1 billion transaction this week that doesn’t carry a Moody’s designation for a $64.3 million portion that Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Rating Agency ranked the lowest level of investment grade, said two people with knowledge of the deal.

Moody’s absence from the riskier securities in commercial-mortgage deals suggests the New York-based firm is taking a harsher view of the quality of some new loans as issuance surges in the $550 billion market, Jefferies analysts led by Lisa Pendergast said in a report last week. Credit Suisse Group AG’s forecast for $70 billion of offerings this year would be the most since issuance peaked at $232 billion in 2007.

Credit bacchanalia has gone global. Booming issuance of high yield (junk) bonds linked to M&A has reached 2007 highs. 

From the Financial Times[22]:
A burst of investor “animal spirits” has boosted the value of mergers and acquisitions-related bonds to the highest raised since the financial crisis.

Global acquisition-related bond issuance from non-investment grade, or high yield, companies has risen by 15 per cent to $62.9bn for the year to date compared with the same period in 2012.

This is the highest amount since 2007, according to Dealogic, the data provider.

The surge has been driven by purchases outside the US as non-US acquisition bond issuance nearly tripled to $14.1bn compared with last year, including deals such as Liberty Global ’s $2.7bn issue
High grade corporates likewise reveals of a debt issuance bonanza.

From the Wall Street Journal[23], (bold mine)
According to data provider Dealogic, the $884.3 billion of highly rated corporate bonds sold in the U.S. this year through Wednesday has been the most of any year at that point since 1995, when it began keeping records.

October’s rush of supply has helped put 2013 back on track to exceed the record $1.01 trillion issuance seen in 2012.
The accounts above validate my view on the transition process of companies from hedge financing to Ponzi financing.

As I wrote last week[24], (bold original)
So while most publicly listed US companies have yet to immerse themselves into Ponzi financing, sustained easy money policies have been motivating them towards such direction.

The greater the dependence on debt, the more Ponzi like dynamics will take shape.

The Fallacy of Little Screwy People

Record or near record issuance of high yield bonds, commercial-mortgage bonds, covenant lite bonds leverage buyout loans and investment grade bonds constitute signs of liquidity trap? To the contrary it would seem like a tidal wave of money.

Yet most central bankers and the consensus see the former (as if the world exists in some vacuum) to justify direct intervention via QE.

And thus far all these credit easing has failed to accomplish its end.

And we don’t need to heed on the former Fed chief Alan Greenspan’s view[25] about forecasting.
We really can't forecast all that well. We pretend that we can but we can't. And markets do really weird things sometimes because they react to the way people behave, and sometimes people are a little screwy.
And if officials can’t forecast on the consequences of their policies using their econometric models, then why experiment?

Yet it is hardly about people being a “little screwy” but more about people responding to daft experiments imposed on societies as economic policies (US and their multiplier effects worldwide) by ivory tower bureaucrats who hardly knows about real economic relationships except to see them as mechanistic mathematical models, and at the same time, have the impudence to undertake grand trials because they barely have skin on the game. 

Moreover policies which punish savings and simultaneously “nudge” the public to wantonly indulge in reckless risk activities leads people to become “screwy”. Bad ideas have bad consequences.

So the cost of their policies will be borne by the average citizenry via restrictions of economic opportunities, financial losses, assuming a bigger burden of financing pet projects of politicians and their bureaucracy, diminished purchasing power and many other non-pecuniary social costs (e.g. erosion of moral fiber, curtailment of civil liberties, social upheaval and etc...)

And these booming credit markets have largely undergirded the financing of the housing or the stock markets bubbles rather than channelled to the real economy for productive activities. The opportunity cost for monetary policy-induced speculation has been the productive sectors, thus the real economy’s growth remains muted or sluggish relative to asset markets.

Monetary inflation has essentially been absorbed by the asset markets. Monetary inflation has spurred massive risk taking, speculative splurge, blatant momentum yield chasing, having been financed by exponential credit growth that has resulted to severe misallocation of resources, blatant mispricing of assets and maladjusted economies.

And such asset bubbles have become international. Thus risks from any unhinging of the bubbles from the US or from any developed economies or even from big emerging markets may likely have a domino effect.

We don’t really need to forecast. All we need is to understand the real economic relationships applied to instituted policies to appreciate the risks.

As the great dean of Austrian economics Murray Rothbard explained[26]: (bold mine)
Economics provides us with true laws, of the type if A, then B, then C, etc. Some of these laws are true all the time, i.e., A always holds (the law of diminishing marginal utility, time preference, etc.). Others require A to be established as true before the consequents can be affirmed in practice. The person who identifies economic laws in practice and uses them to explain complex economic fact is, then, acting as an economic historian rather than as an economic theorist. He is an historian when he seeks the casual explanation of past facts; he is a forecaster when he attempts to predict future facts. In either case, he uses absolutely true laws, but must determine when any particular law applies to a given situation. Furthermore, the laws are necessarily qualitative rather than quantitative, and hence, when the forecaster attempts to make quantitative predictions, he is going beyond the knowledge provided by economic science









[7] Bespoke Invest US Loses Share to Rest of World October 14, 2013

[8] Russell Investments Russell 2000® Index The Russell 2000 is a subset of the Russell 3000® Index representing approximately 10% of the total market capitalization of that index. It includes approximately 2000 of the smallest securities based on a combination of their market cap and current index membership.

[9] Wall Street Journal P/Es & Yields on Major Indexes Market Data Center


[11] National Federation of Independent Business October Report Small Business Economic Trends

[12] Bespoke Invest Guidance Remains Weak October 24, 2013

[13] Factset Guidance S&P 500 September 30,2013



[16] Lan Sun EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CONTRACT-DRIVEN EARNINGS MANAGEMENT ASIAN ACADEMY of MANAGEMENT JOURNAL of ACCOUNTING and FINANCE 2012


[18] Tracy Alloway and Vivianne Rodrigues Boom-era credit deals raise fears of overheating Financial Times October 22, 2013




[22] Financial Times M&A bonds surge to highest in six years October 21, 2013

[23] Wall Street Journal Latest Headlines Low Rates Bring Bond Bonanza October 25, 2012



[26] Murray N. Rothbard, 1. Economics: Its Nature and Its Uses CONCLUSION: ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY Man, Economy & State

Sunday, November 01, 2009

5 Reasons Why The Recent Market Slump Is Not What Mainstream Expects

``The next bubble in asset markets will not be in the West but in emerging Asia, led by China. The irony is that the more anaemic the Western recovery proves to be, the longer it will take for Western interest rates to normalize and the bigger the resulting asset bubble in Asia. Emerging Asia, not the U.S. consumer, will be the prime beneficiary of the Fed's easy money policy.”- Christopher Wood, Is the U.S. Economy Turning Japanese?

In this issue:

5 Reasons Why The Recent Market Slump Is Not What Mainstream Expects

The Cost of Self Esteem

5 Reasons Why The Recent Market Slump Is Not What Mainstream Expects

1. Reflation Trade Has Been A Crowded Trade

2. No Trend Goes In A Straight Line

3. Markets Have Been Liquidity Driven

4. Tightening Trial Balloons Responsible For Recent Shakeup

5. Nothing But A Head Fake Signaling

In a recent commentary marketing guru Seth Godin asked ‘Why do people celebrate Halloween?’

His answer, ``Because everyone else does….Most of what we believe is not a result of direct experience (ever seen an electron?) but is rather part of our collection of truth because everyone (or at least the people we respect) around us seems to believe it as well.” (bold highlights mine)

Let me add, for many, there is that need to be seen as conforming to traditions (social status), aside from the need to use such opportunities for networking.

Mr. Godin concludes that “social constructs” drive people to behave in traditional ways. In behavioral finance or economics, such traditionalism represents as the “comfort of the crowds” or the Bandwagon Effect or the Herding instinct.

In other words, it isn’t much about rationality vis-à-vis irrationality or evidence against theory but social impulses predicated on assumed experiences that motivates people’s actions to observe traditions.

The Cost of Self Esteem

In the marketplace, mainstream behavior represents the same dynamics-traditionalism, where the underlying assumption is that the consensus mindset applies as the self-evident truth, regardless of proofs.

For instance, interventionists or inflationists or the left predominantly use industrial era metrics to justify government interventionism in a world evolving around the “information age” whose platform is principally structured upon the twin forces of globalization and competition inspired technological revolution.

By postulating that today’s economic landscape as dissimilar compared with the configurations of the past, they argue that markets have been failing and thereby justify more intervention by the government via inflation (fiscal deficits, centralization, price controls, devaluation and so forth…) or increased regulation.

Moreover, the same line of thinking pervades the mainstream mindset when traditionalist fundamental models appear to be ‘foisted upon’ the public in the hypothesis that markets have been operating under “normal” or basic law of scarcity conditions, when the reality is that governments have been the markets!

For instance, some has sternly argued that can’t consumer price inflation can’t occur when unemployment is high. Yet, Iceland seems to be a real life example debunking such unrealistic model [see Iceland's Devaluation Toll: McDonald's].

In other words, the conventional approach have been to read and interpret the market or the global economy as operating under assumed models with historically similar dynamics, when the reality is ‘this time is different’ or that we are operating under uncharted territory.

Mr. Doug Noland in his Credit Bubble Bulletin hits the nail on the head in arguing that today’s economic environment is starkly different from any previous conditions we have ever seen, ``the unfolding reflation will be altogether different than previous reflations. The old were primarily driven by Fed-induced expansions of U.S. mortgage finance and Wall Street Credit. Our mortgage industry, housing and securitization markets, and Bubble economy were at the epicenter of global reflationary dynamics. The new reflation is fueled by synchronized fiscal and monetary stimulus across the globe. China, Asia and the emerging markets/economies have supplanted the U.S. at the epicenter. U.S. housing is completely out of the mix. Those fixated on old reflationary dynamics look today at tepid U.S. housing markets, mortgage loan growth, consumer spending, and employment trends and see ongoing deflationary pressures. The Fed is wedded to the old and is positioned poorly to respond to new reflationary dynamics. A stable dollar used to work to restrain global finance – hence global inflationary forces. The breakdown in the dollar’s stabilizing role has unleashed altered inflationary dynamics – forces that the Federal Reserve disregards.” (bold emphasis mine)

So why is it difficult to change peoples’ thinking even when presented by strong evidences?

Based on social constructs, Professor Arnold Kling of EconoLog argues that change comes at the cost of “acknowledging a loss of status” or “loss of group identity”.

This implies that self esteem derived from social linkages account for as one of the basic human needs, which can be seen in the order of values as framed by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (see figure 1)



Figure 1: Wikipedia.org: Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs

According to Wikipedia.org ``Maslow's hierarchy of needs is predetermined in order of importance. It is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the lowest level is associated with physiological needs, while the uppermost level is associated with self-actualization needs, particularly those related to identity and purpose.”

In short, one of the major costs or barrier or resistance to change dynamics of changing people’s thinking is self esteem. Professor Kling suggests, ``On political issues, I think that it is harder to change the mind of someone who is highly educated than someone who is not. The highly-educated person is more likely to have his sense of status and identity tied up in his political beliefs. He is more likely to have a made a larger investment in finding facts and theories that confirm his beliefs.”

This applies not only to politics but likewise to other aspects such as economic or social dimensions.

So what has this got to do with today’s market actions or more particularly today’s market slump?

A whole lot.

The “desperately seeking normal” camp or those “fixated on old reflationary dynamics” as distinguished by analyst Doug Noland, has interpreted the recent plunge in global markets as a semblance of vindication of the “ongoing deflationary pressures”.

Where they have been mostly wrong throughout the recent episode, fleeting market signals that appear to validate their supposition may otherwise be construed as “even a broken clock is right twice a day”.

5 Reasons Why The Recent Market Slump Is Not What Mainstream Expects

We see five factors why today’s market slump isn’t the scenario from which the desperately seeking normal camp expects.

1. Reflation Trade Has Been A Crowded Trade

There is a limit on how much a rubber band’s elasticity can be stretched before it snaps or the breakage of the so called “cross links”. The degree of elasticity depends on the basic dimensions and the quality composition of the rubber band.

Applied to the markets, there is also a limit on how markets can be manipulated or a maximum elasticity on how markets can accommodate extreme sentiment. This applies even across varying time dimensions, which means that even as fundamental imbalances of inflation are being built globally over the long term, strains from one sided or popular trades can be vented to reflect on an interim “breakage of cross links” or snap backs. Hence, long term or secular trends will always be spliced with intermittent countertrends.

In the context of the US dollar Index, which have been the foundation of today’s reflation dynamic, the recent rebound amidst the hefty decline in global markets epitomizes the interim crowded traded snap back (see figure 2).


Figure 2: US dollar Commitment of Traders and US dollar Index

The chart from futures.tradingcharts.com demonstrates on the crowded trade phenomenon where non-commercial positions (banks, hedge funds, or large speculators) have overwhelmingly shorted the US dollar, as shown by the blue vertical lines. Commercial positions (red lines) are the end users (as importers or exporters) who apply currency hedges.

In the most recent past, each time US dollar short contracts reached the -19,200 level, the US dollar “recoiled” (June and August). Today, large speculator short contracts have vastly broken below said levels. And this signifies the crowded trade.

Alternatively this means that as the US dollar rebounded, carry trades based on the US dollar may have all been closed which oppositely results to the steep drop in so-called risks assets.

2. No Trend Goes In A Straight Line

When we say long term or secular trends will always be spliced with intermittent countertrends it simply means that markets don’t move in a linear fashion.

In other words, there is a distinction between secular trends and countertrends or a difference between the short-term and the long term.

Confusing one for the other could risk a disastrous portfolio.

Today’s massive asset speculations have resulted to overextended markets as in the case of the US (see figure 3)


Figure 3: Chartoftheday: Extraordinary Bear Market Rally

Chartoftheday.com sees an exceptional episode in today market action by the Dow Jones Industrials from whose chart ``illustrates the duration (calendar days) and magnitude (percent gain) of all significant Dow rallies that occurred during the 1929-1932 bear market (solid blue dots). For example, the bear market rally that began in November 1929 lasted 155 calendar days and resulted in a gain of 48%. As today's chart illustrates, the duration and magnitude of the current Dow rally (hollow blue dot labeled you are here) is greater than any that occurred during the 1929-1932 bear market.”

It is quite obvious that the referenced site is biased towards the “old reflation model” with their view predicated on a bear market rally, and perchance, expects the US markets as in a path towards the Great Depression levels.

Unfortunately, using the basic metrics of the monetary standards alone, where the Great Depression was anchored to gold while today operates on a pure paper ‘US dollar’ standard, comparing the Great Depression with today would fundamentally be immaterial.

Nevertheless today’s significant correction amidst the vastly overstretched or overbought market denotes of a “normal” corrective phase of market dynamics.

While we haven’t bullish with the US markets, we can’t also be equally bearish for the simple reason that we see the US government as supporting their asset markets as a priority over the other areas of concern. As 2008 meltdown has shown, the survivability of the US dollar standard depends on the Federal Reserve’s key agents, the US banking system.

This is a fundamental variable that can’t seem to be comprehended by the consensus.

3. Markets Have Been Liquidity Driven

As earlier noted, another outstanding fallacy utilized by the old reflation model or desperately seeking normal camp is to extrapolate conditions of the yesteryears through traditional metrics to project a preferred or biased scenario.

For instance we noted that the humongous profits reaped by ‘Too Big To Fail banks’ have been fundamentally derived from trading [as previously discussed in What Global Financial Markets Seem To Be Telling Us]

This seems to have confounded mainstream analysts like MSN’s Jim Jubak who recently wrote, ``What's really disturbing to me, however, is that the model is relatively new, even at Goldman Sachs, and current financial policy is pushing Goldman and JPMorgan Chase to even more extreme versions of the "bank as trader" model.” (bold emphasis mine)

But of course, the “bank as trader” represents as the du jour model.

That’s because the only significant alternative way to rehabilitate the US banking system’s balance sheet is to profit from trading. The industry has been hobbled by balance sheet impairments from the recent bubble bust and this has reduced their incentives to engage in the traditional model of lending.

And the only way to consistently profit from trading is to have an environment that will be conducive to this. And the only way to attain this is to create it. Hence, the US government has engaged in a decisive, massive, monumental and unprecedented scale of operations. The US government, according to Bloomberg, ``has lent, spent or guaranteed $11.6 trillion to bolster banks and fight the longest recession in 70 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s a 9.4 percent decline since March 31, when Bloomberg last calculated the total at $12.8 trillion.” (bold highlight mine)

And this is why too the world appears to likewise adopt a seemingly complementary set of policies too.

This refusal to acknowledge the massive influence of government in today’s market system, results to this deep confusion between conventional models and evolving market realities.

Yet the ‘Bank As Trader’ model has been underpinned by the following sequence:

1. Taxpayers provide the Too Big To Fail banks with liquidity, loans, guarantees and equity.

2. Financial conditions has been stage managed by the US Federal Reserve via zero interest rate, quantitative easing, expansion of loan books of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHLB, and through various programs where the US government acts as market maker (such as Term Discount Window Program, Term Auction Facility, Primary Dealer Credit Facility, Transitional Credit Extensions, Term Securities Lending Facility, ABCP Money Market Fund Liquidity Facility, Commercial Paper Funding Facility, Money Market Investing Funding Facility, Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, and Term Securities Lending Facility Options Program.)

3. Investment banks, hence, profit immensely from the spread generated by these manipulated markets.

4. The resultant handsome profits generated from these arbitrage opportunities prompts companies to deploy huge employee bonuses which prompts for an uproar from politicians and media over the ‘evils of greed’.

Incidentally, this brouhaha over greed is obviously a myopic distraction in the sense that pay and profits simply signify as symptoms of the main disease.

The underlying fundamental malaise is that the ‘bank as trader model’ has been a product of the collusion between the banking system and the US government to inflate the economy to the benefit of the elite bankers!

Nevertheless, the ‘Bank As Trader Model’ appear to synthesize with the overall the fundamental strategy employed by the US Federal Reserve to revitalize its banking system.

How?

1. By manipulating the mortgage markets and US treasury markets with the explicit goal of lowering interest rates, in order to ease the pressures on property values and to mitigate the losses in the balance sheets of the banking system,

2. By working to steepen the yield curve, which allows for conducive and favorable trading spreads for banks to profit and to enhance maturity transformation aimed at bolstering lending, and

3. By providing the implicit guarantees on ‘Too Big To Fail’ banks or financial institutions, this essentially encourages the revival of the ‘animal spirits’ by fueling a run in the stock markets. As we have noted in Investment Is Now A Gamble On Politics, 5 financial stocks otherwise known as the Phoenix stocks accounted for most of the trading volume last September.

In short, the recovery of the US banking and financial system has basically been entirely dependent on government actions via inflation.

One cannot simply read today’s markets without addressing the policy recourse or anticipating the prospective actions of the US government.


Figure 4: Liquidity Prompted Markets Equals Highly Correlated Trade

And the impact to the global marketplace has been the same dynamics: a high correlation of market activities.

The inverse correlation of US dollar vis-à-vis ‘risk’ asset markets (commodities and stocks) seems like a déjà vu. This should be music to the ears of the ‘desperately looking for normal’ camp.

However, this isn’t about traditional fundamental model, but about liquidity.

A rising US dollar signifies global liquidity contraction, as leverage in parts of the global financial system could have forcibly been unwinded. Moreover a spike in the VIX or volatility sentiment appears to be chiming with the underlying theme.

In addition, given the synchronous market actions brought about by a seeming reversal in liquidity dynamics, then the impact should be reflected on Asia over the coming sessions due to the recent strong correlation (Figure 5)


Figure 5: Money Week Asia: High Correlation Liquidity Driven Trade

According to Chris Sholto Heaton of Money Week Asia, ``the markets are generally highly correlated in terms of direction, with an R-squared value of 0.94 (the maximum is one, implying perfect correlation). In short, when Wall Street rises, Asia rises; and when Wall Street falls, Asia falls.”

In other words, Asian Markets may indeed fall from a US dollar rally over the interim. But this should be a short-term countertrend or a buying opportunity more than a secular trend as liquidity dynamics favor Asia and emerging markets/

4. Tightening Trial Balloons Responsible For Recent Shakeup

High profile and prolific investment strategist of CLSA, Mr. Christopher Woods in a recent opinion column at the Wall Street Journal basically echoed my observation, Mr. Woods wrote, ``The reality of an increasingly command-driven economy in America means that government policy is likely to become the key determinant of where investors should place their money.”

If the recent hyperactivity of the markets had been based on government policy to reflate the system, then the easiest explanation should be to attribute the recent correction as a reversal of the liquidity flows.

However, what drives such motions? Could it be that monetary inflation hasn’t kept up with present price levels? Or has present price levels been too high for monetary inflation to support?

Or could it be that governments have suddenly rediscovered sound banking, where signs of bubbles may have prompted for active strategies to ‘exit’ from the today’s policy induced liquidity environment?

Aside from Israel and Australia, which had been the early birds in raising interest rates, Brazil followed suit with capital controls to stem foreign inflows, a week earlier.

Late this week, we find an eerie coincidence of central banks in a tightening mode.

Norway was the first European country to raise interest rates Friday, while India ordered its banks to keep more of its cash funds in government bonds, last Thursday.

In addition, four of the world’s biggest central banks signaled the end or the near end of their Quantitative Easing programs.

On Friday, the Bank of Japan announced that ``it will stop buying corporate debt at the end of the year, as central banks around the world phase out emergency measures taken at the height of the financial crisis” (Bloomberg).

Also last Friday, the US Federal announced that it has ``completed its $300 billion Treasury purchase program today amid signs the seven-month buying spree helped stabilize the housing market and limited increases in borrowing costs” (Bloomberg).

In addition, likewise on Friday, a former official of the Bank of England announced a prospective downscaling of their own Quantitative Easing program, ``Former Bank of England policy maker Charles Goodhart said the bank may scale back or pause its bond- purchase program next week as officials around the world start to pull back stimulus for their economies.” (Bloomberg).

The European Central Bank wouldn’t be left behind, again on Friday, ``European Central Bank council member Axel Weber signaled the bank may start to withdraw its emergency stimulus measures next year by scaling back its “very long- term” loans to banks.” (Bloomberg)

Articles like this also published last Friday (Financial Times) exacerbated on the uncertainty brought about by the changes in the direction in global central bank policies, ``As the Federal Reserve’s programme of buying mortgage debt edges towards $1,000bn this week, investors are starting to worry about what happens once the central bank starts to slow down and exit from this key plank of its monetary easing policy.”

Of course, Friday had been catastrophic for global equity and commodity markets. And perhaps, the ensuing selling pressure from these agitations may likely spillover to the coming sessions.

However, given the latest round of triumphalism from being able to pivot or manipulate markets higher enough to project an economic recovery, global governments seem to increasingly exude confidence over their actions, so as to embark on an audacious experiment to conjointly orchestrate an apparent end to the quantitative easing programs, in order to keep a rein on asset prices from spiraling higher.

Again this is new stuff for central banking: Concerted policies are seemingly aimed at nipping an asset bubble from its bud!

Nevertheless, this lamentably reflects on the artificial nature of today’s marketplace, as it has been primarily negotiated by global political and bureaucratic authorities.

This week’s violent reaction in the marketplace following the policy signaling ploy by key central bankers seems like trial balloons to test for market reactions.

It is likely that the corresponding events may prove to be knee jerk and temporary as the overall environment remains accommodative. Perhaps, central bankers have been heeding the PIMCO’s Paul McCulley advice when he recently wrote, ``that markets can stray quite far from “fundamentally justified” values, if there is a strong belief in a friendly convention, one with staying power. And right now, that convention is a strong belief in a very friendly Fed for an extended period. Thus, the strongest case for risk assets holding their ground is, ironically, that the big-V doesn’t unfold, because if it were to unfold, it would break the comforting conventional presumption of an extended friendly Fed.”

By trying to prevent a V-shape recovery as Central Bankers appears to have done, Mr. McCulley, banking on behavioral dynamics, suggests that markets can expect more of extended friendly policies from the Fed (and from other global central banks) which should prolong the rise in asset markets.

I wouldn’t share Mr. McCulley’s confidence though. His theory discounts the Ponzi dynamics required to maintain and improve on asset pricing.

What we seems certain is that volatility risks from bi-directional interventionist policies have been reintroduced and could be the dominant theme ahead of us.

However, it is my view that the upside risks as having more weight than the downside over the longer term, because the US government will likely sustain an implied “weak” US dollar policy.

Remember, with the goal to stabilize and promote interests of the banking system, as seen from Bernanke’s doctrines, the US will likely proceed with the devaluation path in order to reduce real liabilities via inflation.

Further, the Fed will likely work on normalizing its credit system by keeping the banking system’s balance sheets afloat with elevated asset prices from which the only recourse is to inflate the asset markets.

In the interim, markets can go anywhere.

5. Nothing But A Head Fake Signaling

In the US, the so-called exit from the Quantitative Easing seems likely a head fake move.


Figure 6: T2 Partners: Woes of Mortgage Markets Still Ahead

With the risks of the next wave of resets from the Alt-A, Prime Mortgages, Commercial Real Estate Mortgages, aside from the Jumbo and HELOC looming larger [as previously discussed in Governments Will Opt For The Inflation Route] (see figure 6), they are likely to exert more pressure on the banking system.

Resets of Alt-A mortgages will crescendo until the end of 2012. And as you can see the subprime is dwarfed by risk exposures from Alt-A, Commercial and the Prime Mortgage.

In addition, commercial mortgages which has a risk exposure of around $1 trillion, is more widely held by US financial institutions.

According to Wall Street Journal, ``In contrast to home loans – the majority of which were made by only 10 or so giant institutions – thousands of small and regional banks loaded up on commercial property debt. As a result, commercial real estate troubles would be even more widespread among the financial system than the housing woes. At the present, more than 3,000 banks and savings institutions have more than 300% of their risk-based capital in commercial real-estate loans.” (emphasis added)

So the Fed’s communiqué and the real risks appear to be antithetical. One will be proven wrong very soon.

In addition, the Fed has been actively trying to expand its power which at present is being heard by the US Congress.

Moreover, worries over the politicization of the Fed as a proposed law grants veto power to the Secretary of the Treasury over Section 13(3) emergency action by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (David Kotok).

In short, there is little indication that the Fed has embraced a tinge of sound banking. Instead, all these could be read as growing signs of the politicization of the monetary policies.

As Murray N. Rothbard in Mystery of Banking wrote, ``When expectations tip decisively over from deflationary, or steady, to inflationary, the economy enters a danger zone. The crucial question is how the government and its monetary authorities are going to react to the new situation. When prices are going up faster than the money supply, the people begin to experience a severe shortage of money, for they now face a shortage of cash balances relative to the much higher price levels. Total cash balances are no longer sufficient to carry transactions at the higher price. The people will then clamor for the government to issue more money to catch up to the higher price. If the government tightens its own belt and stops printing (or otherwise creating) new money, then inflationary expectations will eventually be reversed, and prices will fall once more—thus relieving the money shortage by lowering prices. But if government follows its own inherent inclination to counterfeit and appeases the clamor by printing more money so as to allow the public’s cash balances to “catch up” to prices, then the country is off to the races.”

At the end of the day, the policy path appears heavily skewed towards more inflation to insure against additional losses and to safeguard against renewed disruption in the banking system.