Monday, January 13, 2014

Phisix: Will a Black Swan Event Occur in 2014?

2013 turned out to be a very interestingly volatile and surprising year. It was a year of marked by illusions and false hope.

Mainstream’s Aldous Huxley Syndrome

The Philippine Phisix appears to be playing out what I had expected: the business cycle, or the boom-bust cycle. Business cycles are highly sensitive to interest rate movements.

At the start of 2013 I wrote[1],
the direction of the Phisix and the Peso will ultimately be determined by the direction of domestic interest rates which will likewise reflect on global trends.

Global central banks have been tweaking the interest rate channel in order to subsidize the unsustainable record levels of government debts, recapitalize and bridge-finance the embattled and highly fragile banking industry, and subordinately, to rekindle a credit fueled boom.

Yet interest rates will ultimately be determined by market forces influenced from one or a combination of the following factors as I wrote one year back: the balance of demand and supply of credit, inflation expectations, perceptions of credit quality and of the scarcity or availability of capital.
The Philippine Phisix skyrocketed to new record highs during the first semester of the year only to see those gains vaporized by the year end.


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During the first half of the year, I documented on how Philippine stocks has segued into the mania phase of the bubble cycle backed by parabolic rise by the Phisix index (for the first four months the local benchmark rose by over 5% each month!) and the feting or glorification of the inflationary boom via soaring prices of stocks and properties by the mainstream on a supposed miraculous “transformation[2]” of the Philippine economy backed by new paradigm hallelujahs such as the “Rising Star of Asia”[3], “We have the kind of economy that every country dreams of”[4], underpinned by credit rating upgrades, which behind the scenes were being inflated by a credit boom. This romanticization of inflationary boom is what George Soros calls in his ‘reflexivity theory’ as the stage of the flaw in perceptions and the climax[5].

While I discussed the possibility of a Phisix 10,000 as part of the inflationary boom process, all this depended on low interest rates.

But when US Federal Reserve chairman suddenly floated the idea of the ‘tapering’ or reduction of Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP) global equity markets shuddered as yields of US treasuries soared. Yields of US treasuries have already been creeping higher since July 2012 although the ‘taper talk’ accelerated such trend.

Since June 2013, ASEAN equity markets have struggled and diverged from developing markets as the latter went into a melt-up mode.

Just a week before the June meltdown I warned of the escalating risk environment due to the rising yields of Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) and US treasuries[6].
However, if the bond vigilantes continue to reassert their presence and spread, then this should put increasing pressure on risk assets around the world.

Essentially, the risk environment looks to be worsening. If interest rates continue with their uptrend then global bubbles may soon reach their maximum point of elasticity.

We are navigating in treacherous waters.

In early April precious metals and commodities felt the heat. Last week that role has been assumed by Japan’s financial markets. Which asset class or whose markets will be next?
Anyone from the mainstream has seen this?

Since the June meltdown, instead of examining their premises, the consensus has spent literally all their efforts relentlessly denying in media the existence of bear market which they see as an “anomaly” and from “irrational behavior”. 

They continue to ‘shout’ statistics, as if activities of the past signify a guaranteed outcome of the future, and as if the statistical data they use are incontrovertible. They ignore what prices have been signaling.

My favorite iconoclast and polemicist Nassim Nicolas Taleb calls this mainstream devotion on statistical numbers as the ‘Soviet-Harvard delusion’ or the unscientific overestimation of the reach scientific knowledge.

He writes[7], (bold mine)
Our idea is to avoid interference with things we don’t understand. Well, some people are prone to the opposite. The fragilista belongs to that category of persons who are usually in suit and tie, often on Fridays; he faces your jokes with icy solemnity, and tends to develop back problems early in life from sitting at a desk, riding airplanes, and studying newspapers. He is often involved in a strange ritual, something commonly called “a meeting.” Now, in addition to these traits, he defaults to thinking that what he doesn’t see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.
English writer Aldous Huxley once admonished “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Thus I would call mainstream’s rabid denial of reality the Aldous Huxley syndrome

Mainstream pundits like to dismiss the massive increase in debt which had supported the current boom. They use superficial comparisons (as debt to GDP) to justify current debt levels. They don’t seem to understand that debt tolerance function like individual thumbprints and thus are unique. They treat statistical data with unquestioning reverence.

I’ll point out one government statistical data which I recently discovered as fundamentally impaired. What I question here is not the premise, but the representativeness of the data.

The Philippine Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) recently came out with 2012 Flow of Funds report noting that the households had been key provider of savings for the fifth year[8].

Going through the BSP’s “technical notes”[9] or the methodology for construction of the flow of funds for the households, the BSP uses deposits based on the banking sector, loans provided by life insurances, GSIS, SSS, Philippine Crop Insurance and Home Development Mutual Fund, Small Business Guarantee and Finance Corporation and National Home Mortgage and Finance Corporation. They also include “Net equity of households in life insurances reserves and in pension funds”, “Currency holdings of the household” and estimated accounts payable by households, as well as “entrepreneurial activities of households” and “other unaccounted transactions in the domestic economy”[10]

But the BSP in her annual report covering the same year says that only 21.5 households are ‘banked’[11]. Penetration level of life insurance, according to the Philam Life, accounts for only 1.1% of the population[12]. SSS membership is about 30 million[13] or only about a third of the population. GSIS has only 1.1 million members[14]. These select institutions comprise the meat of formal system’s savings institutions from which most of the BSP’s data have been based.

Yet even if we look at the capital markets, the numbers resonate on the small inclusion of participants—the Phisix has 525,085 accounts as of 2012[15] or less than 1% of the population even if we include bank based UITFs or mutual funds and a very minute bond markets composed mainly of publicly listed entities.

So no matter how you dissect these figures, the reality is that much of the savings by local households have been kept in jars, cans or bottles or the proverbial “stashed under one's mattress”.

In the same way, credit has mostly been provided via the shadow banking sector particularly through “loan sharks”, “paluwagan” or pooled money, “hulugan” instalment credit or personal credit[16].

In short, the BSP cherry picks on their data to support a tenuous claim.

In fairness, the BSP has been candid enough to say, at their footnotes, that the database for the non-financial private sector covers only “the Top 8000 corporations” and that for the “lack of necessary details” their “framework may have resulted to misclassification of some transactions”.

But who reads footnotes or even technical notes?

The Secret of the Philippine Credit Bubble

This selective data mining has very significant implications on economic interpretation and analysis.

This only means that many parts of the informal economy (labor, banking and financial system, remittances[17]) has been almost as large as or are even bigger than their formal counterparts.

We can therefore extrapolate that the statistical economy has not been accurately representative of the real economy.

Yet the mainstream has been obsessed with statistical data which covers only the formal economy.

And in theory, the still largely untapped domestic banking system and capital markets by most of the citizenry hardly represents a sign of real economic growth for one principal reason: The major role of banks and capital markets is to intermediate savings and channel them into investments. With lack of savings, there will be a paucity of investments and subsequently real economic growth.

In short, the dearth of participation by a large segment of the Philippine society on formal financial institutions represents a structural deficiency for the domestic political economy.

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Any wonder why the mainstream pundits with their abstruse econometric models can’t capture or can’t explain why Philippine investments[18] have remained sluggish despite a supposed ‘transformational’ boom today?

This also puts to the limelight questionable efforts or policies by the government to generate growth via “domestic demand”.

Yet the mainstream hardly explains where “demand” emanates from? Demand may come from the following factors: productivity growth, foreign money, savings, borrowing and the BSP’s printing money.

With hardly significant savings to tap, and with foreign flows hobbled by rigid capital controls, the corollary—shortage of investments can hardly extrapolate to a meaningful productivity growth or real economic growth.

So in recognition of such shortcoming, the BSP has piggybacked on the global central bank trend in using low interest rates (then the Greenspan Put) to generate ‘aggregate demand’.

As a side note; to my experience, a foreign individual bank account holder can barely make a direct transfer from his/her peso savings account to a US dollar account and vice versa without manually converting peso to foreign exchange and vice versa due to BSP regulations.

The BSP anticipated this credit boom and consequently concocted a policy called the Special Deposit Accounts (SDA) in 2006, which has been aimed at siphoning liquidity[19]. Eventually the SDA backfired via financial losses on the BSP books even as the credit boom intensified.

The BSP imposed a partial unwinding of the SDA which today has only exacerbated the credit boom.

Given the insufficient level of participation by residents in the banking sector and the capital markets, thus the major beneficiaries and risks from the zero bound rate impelled domestic credit boom meant to generate statistical growth have been concentrated to a few bank account owners, whom has accessed the credit markets. This in particular is weighted on the supply side, e.g. San Miguel

The credit boom thus spurred a domestic stock market and property bubble.

This has been the secret recipe of the so –called transformational booming economy.

Yet, the large unbanked sector now suffers from the consequences of a credit boom—rising price inflation.

Well didn’t I predict in 2010 for this property bubble to occur?

Here is what wrote in September 2010[20]
The current “boom” phase will not be limited to the stock market but will likely spread across domestic assets.

This means that over the coming years, the domestic property sector will likewise experience euphoria.

For all of the reasons mentioned above, external and internal liquidity, policy divergences between domestic and global economies, policy traction amplified by savings, suppressed real interest rate, the dearth of systemic leverage, the unimpaired banking system and underdeveloped markets—could underpin such dynamics.
My point is that these bubbles have been a product of the policy induced business cycle.

Also these can hardly represent real economic growth without structural improvements in the financial system via a financial deepening or increased participation by the population in the banking sector and in the capital markets. 

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The chart from a recent World Bank report[21] represents a wonderful depiction of the distinctiveness of the distribution credit risks of ASEAN and China.

From the Philippine perspective, households indeed have very small debt exposure basically because of low penetration levels in the Philippine financial system. Whereas most of the insidious and covert debt build up has been in the financial, nonfinancial corporations and the government.

Ironically, Indonesia whom has very low debt levels has been one of the focal point of today’s financial market stresses which I discuss in details below.

This only shows that there are many complex variables that can serve as trigger/s to a potential credit event. Debt level is just one of them.

Why a Possible Black Swan Event in 2014?

I say that I expect a black swan event to occur that will affect the Phisix-ASEAN and perhaps or most likely the world markets and economies.

The black swan theory as conceived by Mr. Taleb has been founded on the idea that a low probability or an ‘outlier’ event largely unexpected by the public which ‘carries an extreme impact’ from which people “concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact”[22]

The Turkey Problem signifies the simplified narrative of the black swan theory[23]. 

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A Turkey is bought by the butcher who is fed and pampered from day 1 to day 1000. The Turkey gains weight through the feeding and nurturing process as time goes by.

From the Turkey’s point of view, the good days will be an everlasting thing. From the mainstream’s point of view “Every day” writes Mr. Taleb “confirms to its staff of analysts that Butchers love turkeys “with increased statistical confidence.””[24]

However, to the surprise of the Turkey on the 1,001th day or during Thanksgiving Day, the days of glory end: the Turkey ends up on the dinner table.

For the Turkey and the clueless mainstream, this serves as a black swan event, but not for the Butcher.

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For me, the role of the butcher will be played by rising interest rates amidst soaring record debt levels.

Global public and private sector debt from both advanced economies and emerging has reached $223 trillion or 313% of the world’s gdp as of the end of 2012[25]. This must be far bigger today given the string of record borrowings in the capital markets for 2013, especially in the US (see below).

Moreover, recent reports say that there will be about $7.43 trillion of sovereign debt from developed economies and from the BRICs that will need to be refinanced in 2014. Such ‘refinancing needs’ account for about 10% of the global economy which comes amidst rising bond yields or interest rates[26].

While I believe that the latest Fed tapering has most likely been symbolical as the outgoing Fed Chair’s Ben Bernanke may desire to leave a legacy of initiating ‘exit strategy’ by tapering[27], the substantially narrowing trade and budget deficits and the deepening exposure by the Fed on US treasuries (the FED now holds 33.18% of all Ten Year Equivalents according to the Zero Hedge[28]) may compel the FED to do even more ‘tapering’. 

Such in essence may drain more liquidity from global financial system thereby magnifying the current landscape’s sensitivity to the risks of a major credit event.

And unlike 2009-2011 where monetary easing spiked commodities, bonds, stocks of advanced and emerging markets, today we seem to be witnessing a narrowing breadth of advancing financial securities. Only stock markets of developed economies and of the Europe’s crisis afflicted PIGS and a few frontier economies appear to be rising in face of slumping commodities, sovereign debt, BRICs and many major emerging markets equities. This narrowing of breadth appears to be a periphery-to-core dynamic inherent in a bubble cycle thus could be seen as a topping process.

Meanwhile the Turkey’s role will be played by momentum or yield chasers, punters and speculators egged by the mainstream worshippers of bubbles and political propagandists who will continue to ignore and dismiss present risks and advocate for more catching of falling knives for emerging markets securities.

And the melt-up phase of developed economy stock markets will be interpreted by mainstream cheerleaders with “increased statistical confidence”.

The potential trigger for a black swan event for 2014 may come from various sources, in no pecking order; China, ASEAN, the US, EU (France and the PIGs), Japan and other emerging markets (India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa). Possibly a trigger will enough to provoke a domino effect.

I will not be discussing all of them here due to time constraints

Bottom line: the sustained and or increasing presence of the bond vigilantes will serve as key to the appearance or non-appearance of a Black Swan event in 2014.

As a side note: the dramatic fall on yields of US Treasuries last Friday due to lower than expected jobs, may buy some time and space or give breathing space for embattled markets. But I am in doubt if this US bond market rally will last.

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[1] See What to Expect in 2013 January 7, 2013




[5] George Soros The Alchemy of Finance John Wiley & Sons page 58, Google Books


[7] Nassim Nicolas Taleb Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Random House New York, p.9 Google Books




[11] Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Annual Report 2012 p.50


[13] Domini M. Torrevillas Garbage collectors are now SSS members Philstar.com October 17, 2013

[14] Government Service Insurance System GSIS prepares for UMID-compliant eCard enrollment







[21] World Bank EAST ASIA AND PACIFIC ECONOMIC UPDATE Rebuilding Policy Buffers, Reinvigorating Growth October 2013 p.46



[24] Nassim Nicolas Taleb Op. cit p93

[25] Wall Street Real Time Economics Blog Number of the Week: Total World Debt Load at 313% of GDP May 11, 2013



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Will an ASEAN Black Swan Event Occur in 2014?

Mainstream talking heads also continue to dismiss how interest rates may affect security prices and the economy. The prevalent belief is that interest rates will remain either perpetually low and that an increase in interest rates will hardly impact on the stock markets.
Even the former value investor Mr. Warren Buffett understands the sine qua non role played interest rates to investments. At CNN Money, in 199 Mr. Buffett wrote[1], (bold mine)
To understand why that happened, we need first to look at one of the two important variables that affect investment results: interest rates. These act on financial valuations the way gravity acts on matter: The higher the rate, the greater the downward pull. That's because the rates of return that investors need from any kind of investment are directly tied to the risk-free rate that they can earn from government securities. So if the government rate rises, the prices of all other investments must adjust downward, to a level that brings their expected rates of return into line. Conversely, if government interest rates fall, the move pushes the prices of all other investments upward. The basic proposition is this: What an investor should pay today for a dollar to be received tomorrow can only be determined by first looking at the risk-free interest rate.

Consequently, every time the risk-free rate moves by one basis point--by 0.01%--the value of every investment in the country changes. People can see this easily in the case of bonds, whose value is normally affected only by interest rates. In the case of equities or real estate or farms or whatever, other very important variables are almost always at work, and that means the effect of interest rate changes is usually obscured. Nonetheless, the effect--like the invisible pull of gravity--is constantly there.
Mr Buffett goes on to cite 1964-1981 where rising interest rates depressed investments, and reversed from 1981 onwards.

As I previously pointed out Discounted Cash Flow analysis of any investments are heavily interest rate sensitive[2] and so as with the debt and interest payments affecting these. 

Last week the Philippine government raised $ 1.5 billion at record low rates via the global markets[3]. Indonesia, despite the financial market pressures equally raised $4 billion but at much higher rates[4]. Indonesia’s foray into the global debt market has been part of the record Rp 357.96 trillion ($29.2 billion) the government plans to raise this year. Both Indonesian and Philippine bonds were reportedly oversubscribed.

Bizarrely, yields across the Philippine treasury curve jumped significantly higher after the successful bond offering.

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Stunningly yields of short term one month (upper left) and six month (upper right) treasuries soared by about (TWO HUNDERED) 200 and over (ONE HUNDRED) 100 basis points! Last week’s spike in short term yields has even breached past June levels!

Meanwhile yields of long term 10 year (lower left) and 25 year bonds (lower right) rose by much less but still has risen significantly to reach the June levels.

To me, this raises many questions. Why hasn’t the bullishness of foreigners spilled over to the largely closed Philippine sovereign bond markets which had been in tight control by the banking and government? Could this be that some major local financial institutions appear to be feeling the heat from the recent market pressures? Which institutions may have been affected by the recent spurt of yields? Will the damage be contained?

And…will this be like June a knee jerk reaction or will this represent a new trend? Or will last week’s action serve as portent to the culmination of the convergence trade[5]—the grotesque mispricing of domestic bond markets that has underpinned the current bubble?

If last week’s trend persists then we will see a flattening of the yield curve, which means lesser motives for banks to lend.

Philippine treasuries remained as the only financial markets unscathed by the recent strains; apparently, not anymore.

Getting to be a lot interesting, no?

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Unlike the Philippines, Indonesia’s $ 4 billion bond sales did push 10 year local currency bond yields down by about 16 basis points over the last few days.

But all three ASEAN majors, has seen rising yields be it Thailand and Malaysia or even Singapore (down by about 26 basis points from August 2013 highs) and the South Korean counterparts (also down by 12 bps from August 2013 highs)

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ASEAN currencies continue to exhibit sustained signs of deterioration. While the USD-Indonesian rupiah (upper left) had an interim late week decline perhaps due to the dollar bond sale, the weak rupiah vis-à-vis the USD remains at a one year high.

Meanwhile, US Dollar continues to strengthen relative to the Thailand baht (upper right) and the Philippines peso (lower left). The US dollar has already broken beyond the September in terms of the rupiah and the baht. The US dollar is also at the verge of a breakout against the peso from the September levels.

The USD-Malaysian ringgit has also staged a weekly decline, nonetheless general trend remains in favor of the USD. The same holds true for the USD-Singapore Dollar but not the USD-South Korean won which has been rallying through the year.

In sum, currency conditions of most ASEAN majors have likewise been exhibiting symptoms of sustained market stress.

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This chart by the Philippine Phisix and Thailand’s SET continues to fascinate me. The reason is that both seem as a mirror image of the other. I thought last week that the correlation might break since the SET greeted the New Year or the first day of the year with a 5.23% quasi-crash while the Phisix continued to struggle her way up.

But I guess following this week’s performance, where the Phisix has once again revealed signs of weakness, these two benchmarks may re-converge soon.

Among ASEAN majors it has been Malaysian stocks as measured by the KLCI that have remained defiant of the regional weakness as the KLCI continue to drift at near record highs. Although Indonesian and Singaporean stocks as measured by JCI and STI respectively has regained some grounds they largely remain in doldrums. Meanwhile despite the rising won, the South Korean KOSPI has been sharply deteriorating over the last month.

Whether ASEAN’s market strains are being induced by the Fed’s tapering or not, or from the recent tremors in China’s bond and stock markets or from domestic politics, rising interest rates will put ASEAN’s debt conditions under the spotlight.

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And it’s not just bonds, currencies and the stocks. ASEAN’s credit worthiness has been under scrutiny, as measured by Credit Default Swaps (CDS) where the probability of default has been on the rise.

As a recent Bloomberg report puts it last Wednesday, “cost of insuring Malaysia’s sovereign debt climbed to a two-month high” while for “Thailand, the contracts climbed to a four-month high and in the Philippines they reached a level not seen since October.”[6]

Will I recommend buying Philippine or ASEAN stocks under current environment? Generally no but with a possible conditionality based exception: the mining industry.

As for the general markets, I will recommend refraining from catching falling knives and heed the sage of Omaha, Mr. Warren Buffett’s judicious advice, “if the government rate rises, the prices of all other investments must adjust downward, to a level that brings their expected rates of return into line.”

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[3] Wall Street Journal Philippines Raises $1.5 Billion Via Global Bond January 5, 2014



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Will San Miguel’s Minsky Moment Occur in 2014?

One potential ‘black swan’ event in the Philippine setting could be triggered by publicly listed San Miguel Corporation [PSE:SMC]. 

While some in the mainstream media have rightly pointed to SMC’s huge repayment schedule for 2014 and 2015 as the key source of concern, for me this would be secondary.

Based on the 2012 annual report[1], San Miguel’s maturing net long debt schedule for 2013 was Php 3.279 billion, for 2014 Php 66.987 billion, in 2015 Php 69.953 billion, 2016 Php 29.843 billion, 2017 28.767 billion and in 2018 (and after) Php 25.388 billion.

Others have argued that SMC has sufficient assets to cover such liabilities. But as I have pointed out in the past[2], SMC’s assets have been based on “market observable prices”. This means that boom time prices have bloated SMC’s assets and equity valuations. I have also noted that SMC has even disclosed that changes in interest rates and foreign exchange rates would have material impact on these metrics.

In short, presumptions of the consistency of boom time prices in the face of an adverse event would signify unrealism

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This would be no different from those who use PE ratios to value securities during major inflection points. As in the case of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, when the falling S&P 500[3] came to grip with the onset of an economic recession, earnings (the denominator in the P/E ratio) dramatically fell relative to stock prices, the result had been a surge in the PE ratio (revealed by the red ellipse). Consequently, the S&P collapsed to reflect on the new recession-crisis environment or the new reality.

The other point is the quality of SMC’s assets. Have these assets been unencumbered by debt? Not in the case of Petron and Philippine Air Lines.

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My main concern would be the SMC’s deepening dependence on short term debt in financing of her operations. SMC seems to be operating a Ponzi financing scheme dynamic, as theorized by neo-Keynesian Hyman Minsky, by relying entirely on debt and or asset sales to finance her ballooning liabilities or what I call as debt in-debt out[4].

SMC’s annual total borrowings have almost doubled in 2012 from 2007[5] (left window). In 2013, total borrowings have reached 2012 levels as of the 3rd quarter alone. Yet total annual borrowings (blue trend line) have mostly been in short term borrowings (red trend line).

If we get the net position for both long and short term borrowing and payment (right window), we find that in 2010 and 2011, long term borrowings funded the firm’s marginal debts and other expenditures. These added to SMC’s long term debt position. Meanwhile short term borrowing dominated SMC’s financing operations in 2012.

As of the 3rd quarter of 2013, SMC has relied on long term financing. But again, even when long term debt provided the kernel of SMC’s funding, short term debt played a very substantial role in bridge financing of the operations of the company.

The key question is what happens if there will be a spike in short term domestic interest rates? (like last week) Will domestic banks continue to finance SMC’s short term funding requirements? For one reason or another (possibly due to exogenous factors), when a margin or collateral call on the banking system occurs, where will SMC get her financing? How will SMC manage to rollover short term debt? Will her short term liabilities, largely unseen by the public, be exposed and incite a contagion?

SMC’s short term debt churning approaches the proximity of 10% of the Philippine banking resource system. And if we add the long term debt this will pass the 10% mark if SMC’s total annual borrowing will exceed Php 1 trillion in 2013.

An environment of increasing interest rates will only amplify SMC’s rollover, counterparty and credit risks that could lead to a Minsky moment.

The Minsky moment[6] signifies the climax of the credit cycle, as per Hyman Minsky’s financial instability theory[7], where spiralling debt leads to cash flow problems and eventually a collapse in asset values.

“If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem” was a quote attributed to industrialist J Paul Getty. If we rephrase this in terms of San Miguel’s case, If you owe the bank Php 1,000 that's your problem. If you owe banks Php 1 trillion, that's the banking system's problem.

Should interest rates continue to rise, will San Miguel’s Minsky Moment occur in 2014?

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[6] Wikipedia.org Minsky moment

[7] Hyman P. Minsky The Financial Instability Hypothesis Levy Economics Institute May 1992
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A US Stock Market Black Swan in 2014?

A bubble represents a market process in response to government policies.

And as I have pointed out last year I call the topping process of a bubble cycle a Wile E. Coyote moment[1]
rising markets on greater debt accumulation amidst higher interest rates is a recipe for the Wile E. Coyote moment.

Markets can continue to run until it finally discovers that like Wile E. Coyote they have run past the cliff.
The Wile E. Coyote momentum continues to blossom in the US and may continue to flourish for as long as stock market returns outpaces the rate of increase in the interest rates or outruns the burden of financing from debt accumulation.

The point of establishing the Wile E. Coyote conditions is to understand the risk environment, and not to predict the timing of its inflection point, where the latter is the work of soothsayers.

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Record US stocks are also being pushed by near record margin debt. As of November, based on 1995 US dollar and inflation adjusted chart, NYSE margins debt has been knocking on a record high[2].

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Meanwhile corporate buybacks have breached past 2000 and 2007 highs largely funded by debt. On the other hand, retail investors continue to pile into the US stock markets, likewise beating the 2000 and 2007 highs.

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As of January 6th, based US flow of funds on US equities[3], households stampeding into the stock markets has largely been channelled through equity mutual funds and equity ETFs as institutional investors sold.

And this fantastic ramping up of record credit via various instruments has been accounted by Prudent Bear’s eagle eyed Doug Noland[4]. (bold mine)
The year 2013 saw record ($1.52 TN from Bloomberg) U.S. corporate debt sales. For the second straight year, investment-grade debt issuance set an annual record ($1.125 TN). Junk bond issuance ($360bn) set a new record, with record sales of payment-in-kind (PIK) and “cov-light” bonds. Junk-rated loan volumes surged to a record $683 billion, surpassing 2008’s $596 billion (according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ Leveraged Commentary and Data). Total global corporate bond issuance surpassed $3.0 TN. Global speculative-grade bond sales approached an unprecedented $500 billion (from S&P). Global IPO volumes jumped 37% from 2012 to $160 billion (from S&P).

At $233bn, private-equity buyouts reached their highest level since 2007 (Dealogic). The U.S. IPO market enjoyed its strongest issuance year since 2007. A total of 229 deals raised $61.7bn, with dollars raised up 31% compared to 2012. And it’s certainly worth noting that hedge fund assets increased more than $360 billion during the year to reach a record $2.70 TN (from Prequin), despite ongoing (“crowded trade”) performance issues.
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This massive absorption of credit from the yield chasing crowd has been indiscriminate, as yield chasing has prompted junk bond issuance as noted above[5] to fresh records above the pre-Lehman levels. 

Such incredible record breaking streak where 2000 and 2007 highs have been dislodged, could this time be different?

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Yet the speculative excess by mostly the households have driven up earnings based on Dr. Robert Shiller's cyclically adjusted P/E ratio to proximate the 25x trailing earnings level which has been threshold “where secular bull markets have previously ended” notes STA Wealth’s Lance Roberts[6].

It’s interesting to see if the following dynamic will still hold: “if America sneezes, does the world catch a cold?”

And such massive credit creation reminds me of what essentially drives the potential 2014 Black Swan event. From the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises[7]
All governments, however, are firmly resolved not to relinquish inflation and credit expansion. They have all sold their souls to the devil of easy money. It is a great comfort to every administra­tion to be able to make its citizens happy by spending. For public opinion will then attribute the resulting boom to its current rulers. The inevitable slump will occur later and burden their successors. It is the typical policy of après nous le déluge. Lord Keynes, the champion of this policy, says: "In the long run we are all dead." But unfortunately nearly all of us outlive the short run. We are destined to spend decades paying for the easy money orgy of a few years.
Will a Black Swan event in the US occur in 2014?

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[3] Yardeni Research, Inc. US Flow of Funds: Equities January 6, 2014

[4] Doug Noland 2013 in Review Credit Bubble Bulletin Prudent Bear.com December 27, 2013

[5] Wall Street Journal 'Junk' Loans Pick Up the Slack, January 9, 2014

[6] Lance Roberts Market Bulls Should Consider These Charts January 9, 2014

[7] Ludwig von Mises Come Back to Gold Mises.org April 25, 2013
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Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Has the French Atlas Shrugged Moment Arrived?

In the dystopian classic one of the world’s best selling novel, Atlas Shrugged, written by the great philosopher, novelist and free market champion Ayn Rand, deepening government intervention in a society has led the wealthiest to refuse paying soaring taxes and to reject government regulations by shutting down vital industries and the economy.

It seems that we are witnessing a real time “Atlas Shrugged” moment in France such that even establishment media seem to acknowledge the gravely flawed political economic model.

The Newsweek recently published an article by Janine di Giovanni depicting the Atlas Shrugged moment entitled "The Fall of France".

Some excerpts (hat tip Cato’s Dan Mitchell)
Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent.

As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth – business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere…

This angry outburst came from a lawyer friend who is leaving France to move to Britain to escape the 70 percent tax he pays. He says he is working like a dog for nothing – to hand out money to the profligate state. The man he was pointing to, in a swanky Japanese restaurant in the Sixth Arrondissement, is Pierre Moscovici, the much-loathed minister of finance. Moscovici was looking very happy with himself. Does he realize Rome is burning?…
The curse of the welfare state…
But the past two years have seen a steady, noticeable decline in France. There is a grayness that the heavy hand of socialism casts. It is increasingly difficult to start a small business when you cannot fire useless employees and hire fresh new talent. Like the Huguenots, young graduates see no future and plan their escape to London.

The official unemployment figure is more than 3 million; unofficially it’s more like 5 million. The cost of everyday living is astronomical. Paris now beats London as one of the world’s most expensive cities. A half liter of milk in Paris, for instance, costs nearly $4 – the price of a gallon in an American store…

Part of this is the fault of the suffocating nanny state. Ten years ago this week, I left my home in London for a new life in Paris. Having married a Frenchman and expecting our child, I was happily trading in my flat in Notting Hill for one on the Luxembourg Gardens.

At that time, prices were such that I could trade a gritty but charming single-girl London flat for a broken-down family apartment in the center of Paris. Then prices began to steadily climb. With the end of the reign of Gaullist (conservative) Nicolas Sarkozy (the French hated his flashy bling-bling approach) the French ushered in the rotund, staid Hollande.

Almost immediately, taxes began to rise…
Productive citizens flee as the Santa Claus fund goes dry…

When I began to look around, I saw people taking wild advantage of the system. I had friends who belonged to trade unions, which allowed them to take entire summers off and collect 55 percent unemployment pay. From the time he was an able-bodied 30-year-old, a cameraman friend worked five months a year and spent the remaining seven months collecting state subsidies from the comfort of his house in the south of France.

Another banker friend spent her three-month paid maternity leave sailing around Guadeloupe – as it is part of France, she continued to receive all the benefits.

Yet another banker friend got fired, then took off nearly three years to find a new job, because the state was paying her so long as she had no job. “Why not? I deserve it,” she said when I questioned her. “I paid my benefits into the system.” Hers is an attitude widely shared.

When you retire, you are well cared for. There are 36 special retirement regimes – which means, for example, a female hospital worker or a train driver can retire earlier than those in the private sector because of their “harsh working conditions,” even though they can never be fired.

But all this handing out of money left the state bankrupt…

The most brilliant minds of France are escaping to London, Brussels, and New York rather than stultify at home. Walk down a street in South Kensington – the new Sixth Arrondissement of London – and try not to hear French spoken. The French lycee there has a long waiting list for French children whose families have emigrated.

So no matter how mainstream media portrays improving statistics or rising financial markets as signs of recovery, in the real world, for as long as the government wages war on her productive citizens, real economic recovery will hardly materialize.
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And considering France’s ballooning debt (measured by debt to GDP which stands at 90% as of 2012), soaring yields of French bonds (10 year as shown in the chart above from Bloomberg), which extrapolates to higher cost of servicing debt amidst economic stagnation, will equally make the highly levered French economy vulnerable.

Importantly, given the global dynamic of rising bond yields, France may serve as another potential trigger for a Black Swan event in 2014.
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Tuesday, January 07, 2014

ASEAN Crisis Watch: Indonesian Bond Market Convulses, Rupiah and Stocks plummet, Thai’s Stock Market New Year Meltdown

I was in a shut down mode when Thailand’s stocks, as measured by the SET, met the new year or 2014 with a 5+% collapse.

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The stock market crash had been in tandem with equally a crumbling currency, the Thai baht. 

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The USD-Thai Baht has reached a 3 year high yesterday, with the gist of USD Thai baht spike in over just two months. The plummeting baht appears to be accelerating.

All these had mostly been attributed to outflows from political jitters
 
While politics serve as a visible ‘cause’, they are actually aggravating circumstances to Thailand’s hissing credit Bubble.

Thailand’s stunning New Year meltdown serves as a reminder of how fragile ASEAN markets has been.

On the other hand, since last year I have been posting on the growing risks from Indonesia’s sharply deteriorating financial conditions which I call as the Indonesian crisis watch (see here here and here)

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Yesterday, Indonesia’s local currency government bond market collapsed, with 10 year yields soaring to a 2011 high.

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The bond meltdown has been accompanied with the continued foundering of the USD-rupiah which has now reached a 5 year high.

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Indonesian stocks as measured by the JCI likewise fell yesterday. 

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In contrast to the SET, the JCI remains relatively resilient. Although the path of least resistance has been on a downside albeit at a moderate pace compared to her peers.

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Finally yields of 10 year Philippine government LCY bonds spiked yesterday as the US Treasury counterpart has now drifted at the plus or minus 3% level. 

Has this been another "one off" event as the mainstream likes to portray? Or are these signs of the cracking of the convergence trade? 

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The Philippine peso has been in chorus with her ASEAN counterparts as the USD-Php hits a 3 year high.

It should be interesting to see how rising domestic and foreign interest rates along with the steep fall in the Peso will affect the small but concentrated highly leveraged financial system.

Like China, ASEAN markets and economies serve as potential triggers for 2014 Black Swan event.

Ignore the above facts at your own peril.

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Monday, January 06, 2014

Graphic of the Day: Fish Politics

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Source/hat tip AEI’s Mark Perry
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Property Bubbles Promotes Homelessness: China Edition

Property bubbles also reduces the disposable income of marginal fixed income earners who will have to pay more for rent and likewise reduces the affordability of housing for the general populace.
That’s how I earlier described the impact of property bubbles to a society which addicts of inflationism choose to ignore.

Well it appears that the property bubbles in China appears to be confirming my view.

From Reuters:
Zig-zagging left and right through a maze of dark, narrow corridors in a high-rise's basement, 35-year-old kitchen worker Hu has joined the many thousands of Chinese fleeing fast-rising property prices by heading down - down underground.

Hu lives here beneath an affluent downtown apartment building, in a windowless, 4 square-meter (43 square-foot) apartment with his wife. For 400 yuan ($65.85) a month in rent, there's no air-conditioning, the only suggestion of heat is a pipe snaking through to deliver gas to the apartments above and the bathroom is a fetid, shared toilet down the hall.
"I can't afford to rent a house," said Hu as he showed off his meager appointments. Living in basement apartments isn't illegal in China, but like anywhere else it is nothing to brag about and Hu, who guts fish for 2,500 yuan a month at a popular Sichuanese hotpot restaurant on the street above, declined to provide his given name. "If I weren't trying to save money, I wouldn't live here," he said.

Locals have dubbed Hu and his fellow subterranean denizens the "rat race" - casualties and simultaneously emblems of a housing market beyond the government's control.
More:
That's pushing more and more newly arrived urbanites underground. Of the estimated 7.7 million migrants living in Beijing, nearly a fifth live either at their workplace or underground, according to state news agency Xinhua. Beijing's housing authority refuted this statistic, saying in an email to Reuters that a government survey last year found only about 280,000 migrants living in basements and that only a small percentage of Beijing's basements were being used as dwellings.

Last month, authorities sealed Beijing's manhole covers after local media discovered a group of people living in the sewers below, with one, a 52-year-old car washer, reported by the local media to have been living there for at least a decade. The sewer dwellers were relocated and those not from Beijing sent back home.

Surging residential prices are both boon and bane to the government. China's booming property sector accounts for roughly 15 percent of GDP and heavily indebted local governments rely on land sales - selling land earns them roughly three times what they collect from taxes.

But rising prices are putting home ownership farther out of reach for most Chinese, worsening the gap between rich and poor and breeding social discontent.
Surging bond yields (which translates to interest rate increases)…

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(Yields of China’s 10 year bonds from investing.com)

…along with spiraling debt (e.g. local government debt which includes the shadow banking system has reached $2.95 to $3.3  trillion) and skyrocketing property prices are ingredients to a bubble bust.


China’s unwieldy debt conditions is just one of the potential triggers for a Black Swan event in 2014. 
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Gary North: Inflation: The Economics of Addiction

I will start my 2014 post with a recommended read from Austrian economist Gary North on the economics of addiction to inflationism.
Inflation: of all the dangers to the free market economy, historically and theoretically, the greatest is this one, yet it is one of those subjects that remain wrapped in mystery for the average citizen. This elusive concept must be understood if we are to return to the free market, for without a thorough comprehension of inflation's mechanism and its dangers, we will continue to enslave ourselves to a principle of theft and destruction.

This essay is an attempt to compare the process of inflation to a more commonly recognized physiological phenomenon, that of drug addiction. The similarities between the two are remarkable, physically and psychologically. Nevertheless, it must be stressed from the outset that any analogy is never a precise scientific explanation. No analogy can claim to be so rigorously exact as to rival the accuracy of the original concept to which it is supposed to be analogous. It is, however, an excellent teaching device, and while it is no substitute for carefully reasoned economic analysis, it is still a surprisingly useful supplement, which can aid an individual in grasping the implications of the economic argument.

Before beginning the comparison, it is mandatory that a definition of inflation be presented, one which can serve as a working basis for the development of the analogy.

One workable definition has been offered by Murray N. Rothbard, who is perhaps the most reliable expert on monetary theory: inflation is "any increase in the economy's supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal." An even better definition might be this one, adopted for the purposes of exposition in this study: "any increase in the economy's supply of money, period." Thus, the level of prices is not the criterion in determining whether or not inflation is present. The only relevant factor is simply whether any new money is being injected into the system, be it gold, silver, credit, or paper.

Unfortunately, many economists and virtually the entire population define inflation as a rise in prices. The more careful person will add that this rise in prices is a rise in the overall price level of most goods in the economy, one which is not due to some national disaster, such as a war, in which the rise can be attributed to an increase in aggregate demand as a result of changed economic expectations. Other economists, even more precise, attempt to define inflation as an increase in the money supply greater than the increase of aggregate goods and services in the economy. Professor Mises himself, in his earliest study on monetary theory, employed a definition involving comparisons between the aggregate supply of money and the aggregate "need for money." But in later years, he abandoned this definition, and for very good reasons, as he has explained:
There is nowadays a very reprehensible, even dangerous, semantic confusion that makes it extremely difficult for the non-expert to grasp the true state of affairs. "Inflation," as this term was always used everywhere and especially also in this country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and of bank deposits subject to check. But people today call inflation the phenomenon that is the inevitable consequence of inflation, that is, the tendency of all prices and wage rates to rise. The result of this deplorable confusion is that there is no term left to signify the cause of this rise in prices and wages. There is no longer any word available to signify the phenomenon that has been up to now called "inflation." It follows that nobody cares about inflation in the traditional sense of the term. We cannot talk about something that has no name, and we cannot fight it. Those who pretend to fight inflation are in fact only fighting what is the inevitable consequence of inflation. Their ventures are doomed to failure because they do not attack the root of the evil. They try to keep prices low while firmly committed to a policy which which must necessarily make them soar. As long as this terminological confusion is not entirely wiped out, there cannot be any question of stopping inflation.
Read the rest here.

I strongly suspect that 2014 will be the year of the Black Swan (low probability, high impact events that have hardly been seen by the mainstream) or what in statistics is known as  the “fat tail distribution”. 

This stage will signify as the traumatic withdrawal syndrome phase for addicts of inflationism.

Mr. North describes this phase:
5. Shaking the Habit

Withdrawal -- the most frightening word in the addict's vocabulary. Depression -- the most horrible economic thought in the minds of today's citizens. Yet both come as the only remedies for the suicidal policies entered into.

To the addict, withdrawal means a return to the normal functioning of the body, a return to reality. The path to normalcy is a decidedly painful avenue. Withdrawal will not restore him to his pre-addiction condition, for too much has already been lost -- socially, physically, financially, spiritually. But he can live, he can survive, and he can make a decent life for himself.

For the inflationist economy, a cancellation, or even a reduction, of the inflation means depression, in one form or another. This is inevitable, and absolutely necessary. Prices must be permitted to seek their level, production must rearrange itself, and this will mean losses to some and gains for others. The inflationary effects of the monetization of debt, the pyramiding of credit, are then reversed. The man who deposited the $100 is pressed for payment by creditors, so he withdraws his money. The banks are faced with either heavy (and unfulfillable) specie demands, or at least with credit and currency withdrawals. The bank calls in its loans, sells its property, and begins to liquidate. The man who bad borrowed the $90 now must pay up, with interest. He goes to his bank, takes out the $90, and his bank has to call in the $81 it had loaned out. The $900 built on the original $100 disappears, again as if by magic. This is the process of demonetization of debt, and it is clear why there would be a drastic decline in prices, and why a lot of banks would be closed, some of them permanently.

The suffering imposed by depression is unfortunate, but it is the price which must be paid for survival. If the consequences of runaway inflation are to be avoided, then this discomfort must be borne. The depression, lest we forget, is not the product of a defunct capitalism, as the critics invariably charge. It is the restoration of capitalism. Free banking, even without the legally enforced one hundred percent reserve requirement, can never develop the rampant inflation described here. The inflation came as a direct result of State-enforced policies, and the State must bear the blame. Sadly, it never does. It accepts responsibility for the politically popular "boom" conditions, but the capitalists cause the "busts."
Such withdrawal phase, or the transitory phase where boom morphs into a bust, will be signaled by a progressive rise in interest rates (expressed via the tanking bond markets) which will greatly impact the incumbent deeply leveraged global financial and economic system.

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