FINANCIAL REVIEW

Send Thank You Notes to Janet

Sinclair Noe — October 8, 2014

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Financial Review

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DOW + 274 = 16,994
SPX + 33 = 1968
NAS + 83 = 4468
10 YR YLD – .02 = 2.33%
OIL – 1.23 = 87.62
GOLD + 13.20 = 1222.50
SILV + .19 = 17.48

Volatility has kicked into high gear. Yesterday the VIX, the Volatility Index was up 11%, and today it dropped 12%. The Dow has had moves of 200 points or more five times in the last 10 days. There have only been 10 other days this year when the index has made moves of that magnitude. Yesterday was an ugly decline and today, stocks started drifting lower, and then suddenly, dramatically, jumped higher; by the closing bell it was the best day of the year. Send your thank you notes to Janet Yellen.

Pause for just a moment and think about what has been driving the markets for the past 5 years. Certainly, there are many factors but a big factor would have to be Federal Reserve monetary policy. Yesterday stocks looked like they were going to hell in a hand basket, and today the Fed’s FOMC minutes were released and the markets were revived as if they’d been given a big old hypodermic full of adrenaline straight to the heart.

We all know the Fed is ending its bond buying crusade this month, and the open question has been when they will raise interest rates. The minutes of the September FOMC meeting would have you believe they are in no hurry at all; they will take thing slow and easy; they want to avoid formal phrases like “considerable time” because that’s just too restrictive. They’ll follow the data of course, but they won’t rush the rates.

Also, inflation remains tame and there is no concern about inflation for a couple of years; and even though the job market has shown strength, there is still too much slack. And then there is the nagging problem of economic turmoil in Europe and Asia, plus concerns the dollar is getting just a bit too strong. Eventually the Fed will raise rates, probably in mid-2015.

The International Monetary Fund has issued its half-yearly global financial stability report, and they say the prolonged period of ultra-low interest rates encourages excessive risk taking in global markets and threatens a fresh financial crisis. The IMF report says the risks to stability no longer came from the traditional banks but from the so-called shadow banking system – institutions such as hedge funds, money market funds and investment banks that do not take deposits from the public. Policymakers are facing a new global imbalance: not enough economic risk-taking in support of growth, but increasing excesses in financial risk-taking posing stability challenges. Which is another way of saying the central bankers have created a financial bubble.

The stability report said low interest rates were “critical” in supporting the economy but loose monetary policies also prompted investment in high-yield but risky assets and for investors to take bigger bets. And emerging markets were considered especially vulnerable to rising US interest rates, as are we all. And so the Fed will raise rates at some vague point in the future, even as Japan sticks to Abenomics, and the Eurozone has opted for negative interest rates.

Which raises a question; what happened to the currency wars? You remember that various central banks were in heated battles to debase their currencies in a race to the bottom as a way to stimulate economies? It’s the only war the US has not jumped on. The dollar is strong and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew seems to think that’s fine and dandy.

A strong dollar is good if you are planning a European vacation; not so good if you are trying to sell Chevrolets in Germany. But for now at least, the threat of a destabilized Eurozone is a bigger threat to US growth than a possible slowdown in exports. The US has more to gain from Europe and Japan getting their policies right and getting their economies on track than it has to lose from American companies facing a less advantageous exchange rate for the time being.

As a side note, the IMF estimates that the size of the US economy was $17.4 trillion in 2014, just short of China’s economy, at $17.6 trillion. Based on purchasing power, which may not be the best way to measure, China’s economy was less than half the size of the US economy in 2005; by 2019, the IMF expects it to be 20% bigger.

Alcoa kicked off the earnings reporting season after the close of trade. The aluminum maker reported a profit of $149 million, or 12 cents a share, up from $24 million, or two cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding restructuring- and acquisition-related charges and other items, earnings rose to 31 cents from 11 cents. Revenue increased 8.2% to $6.2 billion. Alcoa beat estimates.

Alcoa marks the unofficial start of earnings season; actually the reports have been flowing in. Costco said its fiscal fourth-quarter profit rose 13% from a year earlier to $697 million, or $1.58 a share, on revenue of $35.5 billion.

The US budget deficit fell by nearly a third in fiscal year 2014. It’s still growing, just not so fast. Now it is just 2.8% of GDP. For the fiscal year ended September 30th, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the deficit at $486 billion, down about $195 billion from the $680 billion budget gap recorded in fiscal 2013. The Treasury collected a little over $3 trillion-nearly 9% more than it did a year ago-while spending rose just 1.4% to $3.5 trillion. One of the biggest drops in spending came from the Department of Defense, which cut outlays by $30 billion; that was before the situation in Iraq and Syria started to unravel.

The geopolitical problems around the world, specifically hotspots in oil producing regions of the world, should have put upward pressure on oil prices, but instead prices are down 20% since June 20th. And the reasons are basic; supply is up and demand is down. The shale boom in the US has added 1.1 million barrels a day to output, and next year that number is expected to climb to 2 million barrels a day. Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration forecasts consumption will shrink 0.2% to 18.9 million barrels a day this year, the lowest since 2012. One reason why demand is down is because we’ve been buying new cars, and those new models are much more fuel efficient. Conservation works. Who knew?

The EIA cut 2014 and 2015 crude price forecasts yesterday because of rising production and falling consumption. WTI will average $94.58 next year, down from a September projection of $94.67. Which raises the question of why the forecast prices are higher than current prices, in light of more supply and less demand. And the answer is simple. Shale oil is expensive to extract by historical standards and only viable at high-enough prices. About 70% of US reserves would remain economic with global prices at $75 a barrel, but that means a lot of rigs would shut down before prices hit $75 a barrel, and if rigs shut down, supplies would get tighter.

Now you might think that falling oil prices are an indication of slower global economic growth, and there may be something to that idea, or it might be that conservation thing we talked about; and you might be worried that slower growth would equate to a tough time for the stock market. The thinking here is that a bear market in oil prices equals a slowdown in the economy equals a bear market for stocks. Not so fast. You could also look at higher oil prices as a tax on consumers; the more we spend to fill up the tank, the less we have for other spending. So, a couple of professors studied (1) the relationship between oil prices and stock market returns, and the basic idea is that if oil prices drop by 10%, the stock market rises by 1%; there is more to the study, but that’s the basic idea.

Lower oil prices could have lots of knock-on effects around the world. Take Russia, which depends on oil sales to bring in foreign currency. The Russian government has set its three-year budget with the expectation that oil prices would stay at $100 per barrel. Forget about sanctions, low oil prices could really cause damage.

The last time the US had a domestic oil boom was in the 1980s, following the Arab embargo. It ended when new supplies overwhelmed the market. Prices dropped to $9.95 a barrel in April 1986 from $32.35 the previous August, and the annual average stayed below $30 a barrel until 2000. We don’t know if prices will go much lower, or if something will spark higher prices. We will probably never see $30 dollar oil again, but the $80 level is an important level of support, and we’re getting close.

Yesterday, the Nobel Prize in physics went to 3 scientists who built a better light bulb; today the prize for chemistry goes to 3 scientists who built a better microscope. Two Americans and a German have received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the “development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.” The laureates have expanded what we can with see with light microscopy from bacteria down to really small molecules. Optical microscopes use visible light, which doesn’t damage its subject. Electron microscopes, which can examine even smaller objects, require chemical preparation of the subject and can’t be used on living organisms. In fluorescent microscopy, proteins and other cell components are marked with luminescent molecules. It allows scientists to see molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain, as well as monitor the progress of proteins involved in diseases as they clump together. Basically, they figured out a way to use a microscope to look into the nanoworld; and just in case you were wondering, a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. Now there is theoretically no structure too small to be studied.

Thursday, May 08, 2014 - Monetary Policy Is Not A Panacea

Financial Review with Sinclair Noe

DOW + 32 = 16550
SPX – 2 = 1875
NAS– 16 = 4051
10 YR YLD + .01 = 2.60
OIL – 01 = 100.24
GOLD - .10 = 1290.80
SILV - .15 = 19.25

Stocks were mostly lower today. The closing numbers looked quiet but it was a roller coaster ride with the Dow Industrials up about 150 points. The Nasdaq also squandered early gains to finish in negative territory. The Nasdaq ended lower for a third straight session, its longest losing streak since early April. A late selloff in utilities and energy, among the best performing sectors recently, dragged the S&P 500 lower. Of 445 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 68.2% beat expectations, above the 66% beat rate for the past four quarters. Profits are expected to rise 5.3% this quarter.

The number of people who applied for new unemployment benefits last week fell to the lowest level in a month. Initial jobless claims dropped by 26,000 to a seasonally adjusted 319,000.

The federal government had a budget surplus of $114 billion in April. That is $1 billion more than a year ago and would be the biggest April surplus since 2008. For the fiscal year to date, CBO estimates the deficit to be $301 billion, down $187 billion compared to the same period in 2013.

Retailers posted modestly higher sales in April. Results from March and April are generally viewed together because of the shifting nature of Easter, which fell about three weeks later this year and moved into April from March last year. For the two-month period, retailers reported 3.4% growth, down from 3.5% a year earlier.

Consumer credit balances increased by $17.5 billion in March to a total of $3.141 trillion. The gain was a bigger increase than the $15.5 billion expected by economists. This was the biggest month-over-month growth rate since February 2013. Nonrevolving debt like college and auto loans grew by $16.4 billion. Revolving debt like credit cards increased by $1.1 billion.

At 4.21%, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is at its lowest since the week of November 7, 2013, so says Freddie Mac in their new weekly report on national mortgage rates. Last week, it averaged 4.29%. A year ago, it was 3.42%. Since the housing market crashed, the Federal Reserve has used extraordinarily easy monetary policy to keep interest rates like mortgage rates low in its effort to bolster the housing market and stimulate the economy.  Lately, various housing-market metrics such as existing-home sales, new-home sales, and mortgage applications have all been flagging. Last week, we learned that the US homeownership rate was at a 19-year low, and some experts think it'll never come back.

Yesterday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said, "One cautionary note, though, is that readings on housing activity—a sector that has been recovering since 2011—have remained disappointing so far this year and will bear watching. The recent flattening out in housing activity could prove more protracted than currently expected rather than resuming its earlier pace of recovery." That was the big takeaway from Yellen’s Congressional testimony yesterday.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen was back on Capitol Hill today for a second day of testimony. She appeared before the Senate Budget Committee.  Yellen’s favorite new line is, “Monetary policy is not a panacea.” That pretty much says it all.

There are a couple of trends that concern Yellen; long term unemployment; there are about 3.5 million workers who haven’t found a job for at least 6 months. Also, income inequality is pulling down spending and slowing the economy. Yellen would like to do something about these disturbing trends, but you know, “Monetary policy is not a panacea.”

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank was meeting to determine monetary policy for the Euroland; they decided to leave interest rates unchanged at 0.25%. ECB President Mario Draghi’s favorite line is “whatever it takes” and he’s been saying it for a couple of years. Euroland is slogging along with persistently low inflation and high unemployment. Draghi says something should be done, but he did not say what; and the ECB might address stimulus of some sort or another next month or so.

Perhaps Draghi is waiting to see how the situation in Ukraine plays out; right now the picture is smoky and very gray. Rebels in eastern Ukraine say they will proceed with a referendum this weekend seeking autonomy even though Russian President Putin appeared to withdraw his support for the vote. Putin yesterday presided over nationwide army drills, a day after he softened his tone by promising to withdraw troops from the border. The government in Kiev says a referendum would be illegal. Putin also indicated he would pull Russian troops from the Ukrainian border, but satellite images show that probably isn’t happening. The situation involving the tug of war between the West and Russia regarding Ukraine has steadily worsened over time and now involves outright economic warfare; sanctions on one side and the threat of energy shortages on the other.

Even former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is coming out of exile to hawk a new book. Geithner says there had been talk about nationalizing banks back in the crisis days. On the legacy of the bailouts, Geithner rejects criticism that the Troubled Asset Relief Program benefited the rich rather than ordinary Americans. And yet he acknowledges that the too big to fail banks are bigger and more dangerous than ever.

Have you ever seen a boxer knocked out? The devastating blow is the one you don’t see coming. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England and head of the Financial Stability Board, an international watchdog set up to guard against future financial crises, was recently asked to identify the greatest danger to the world economy. He answered shadow banking. It is huge and growing fast, and little understood, and even less transparent. We don’t even know exactly what counts as shadow banking; basically, it refers to lending by non-bank institutions and it involves more than $70 trillion in assets, up from about $25 trillion ten years ago.

A broader definition, however, would include any bank-like activity undertaken by a firm not regulated as a bank: it could be bond trading platforms set up by technology firms, or payment systems offered by Paypal or financing offered by a retailer such as Sears, or peer-to-peer lending, or money market funds, or who knows what. At the core is the concept of credit and lending. Shadow banking fills a void left by traditional banks, which have become miserly with lending.

Yet shadow banking is poorly or non-regulated. Think of the structured investment vehicles, a legal entity created by banks to sell loans repackaged as bonds. These were notionally independent, but when they got into trouble they pulled in the banks that had set them up. Or money market funds, which seemed like a nice safe place to park cash as a stop-gap measure; they seemed conservative, nearly risk free, until they suffered a run.

Banks must now incorporate structured investment vehicles on their balance-sheets. Money-market funds must hold more liquid assets, to guard against runs. Limits on leverage have been imposed or are being considered for many forms of shadow banks. American regulators are still allowing some money-market funds to create the impression that an investor can never lose money in them. The problem for banks is that they are involved in shadow banking, either in the form of loans to shadow banks, or because the banks buy the products created by shadow banks.

One of the biggest paces for concern is China. Banks there are banned from expanding lending to certain industries, and from luring deposits by offering high returns. So they do both of these things indirectly, through shadow banks of various sorts. Some firms are setting themselves up as pseudo-banks. It is hard to imagine that all the shadowy loans to unprofitable steel mills and overextended property developers will pay off. At which point the Chinese government will likely step in a take control, but there will be a cost.

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor and chairman of Roubini Global Economics is known as something of an economic pessimist, and now he thinks we’re on the verge of a bubble, but not a collapse. Roubini says the Federal Reserve will keep its key lending rate low even after it lifts off from near zero, where it has rested for the few years. That slow process of normalization will keep the spigot of borrowing flowing, helping support the economy. But it will also lead to risky lending practices. Hence, a bubble is inflating that could eventually pop.

Roubini cited the return of some of the key characters associated with the period before the last financial collapse: Lots of low quality bond sales, debt without strong protections for bondholders. Roubini says: “All the risky things that were happening back in ’06 and ‘07 are back again to the same level, if not more. So we are in the beginning of a credit bubble, but just the beginning.”

Nonetheless, Roubini doesn’t see the reversal happening immediately, citing money that continues to rush into the market. For now, credit investors appear to be stuck in an uneasy equilibrium.

He’s by no means the first person to make this claim: the question of financial stability is one of the key criticisms of the Fed’s accommodative policies. Roubini didn’t criticize the central bank, so much as say that the Fed is damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you don’t.

Yeah, well, we’ve all learned that monetary policy is not a panacea.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - Yellen in the Lions' Den

Financial Review with Sinclair Noe

DOW + 89 = 16,262
SPX + 12 = 1842
NAS + 11 = 4034
10 YR YLD - .01 = 2.62%
OIL - .22 = 103.83
GOLD – 24.20 = 1303.40
SILV - .41 = 19.66

Stocks were all over the place today. We started with triple digit gains for the Dow Industrials, dipped to triple digit losses, then back into positive territory for the close with the major indices closing just below their morning highs. This kind of volatility does not engender confidence; it does warrant caution.

The utilities sector gained 1.3% and finished ahead of the other groups, extending its YTD gain to 11.8%; the biotech ETF added 1%, while the broader healthcare sector advanced 1.1%.Tech stocks have been beaten up quite a bit over the past couple of weeks. The Nasdaq 100 Tech Index (NDXT) is down 7% since April 1st. The Nasdaq Composite has exhibited weakness, but not to the point of meeting the definition of a correction; it would take a slide to 3,922 to mark a 10% fall from the March 5 closing high at 4,357; a 10% pullback from the March 6 intraday high of 4,371 would be achieved at 3,934.

The Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, or CPI, increased 0.2% in March after posting a 0.1% increase in February. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core prices ticked up 0.2%.Prices rose 1.5% for the 12 months ending in March. That is up from February’s year-over-year reading of 1.1%. Core prices moved up 1.7% over the 12 months, up from 1.6% in February.

A major factor in both headline and core CPI in March was a 0.3% increase in shelter costs. On an annual basis, housing costs were up 2.7%, the fastest pace in six years. The indexes for medical care, used cars and airline fares also increased in March. Apparel prices rose for the first time this year. Household furnishings and recreation prices dipped in the month. Real or inflation-adjusted hourly wages, meanwhile, fell 0.3% in March to $10.31. Real wages have risen 0.5% over the past 12 months. So, we’re not seeing wage-push inflation.

The big difference has been housing; shelter costs account for a full third of the basket of goods and services tracked in the consumer price index. In the past year, consumer prices excluding shelter have risen just 1%, an indication that inflation pressures are subdued outside of housing.

The old rule of thumb was that rents and utilities combined should not take up more than 30% of household income. A new study by Zillow finds 90 cities where the median rent, not including utilities, was more than 30 percent of the median gross income. A study by Harvard finds that nationally, half of all renters are now spending more than 30% of their income on housing, up from 38% of renters in 2000. Part of the reason for the squeeze on renters is simple demand; between 2007 and 2013 the United States added, on net, about 6.2 million tenants, compared with 208,000 homeowners.

For many middle and lower income people, high rents choke spending on other goods and services, impeding the economic recovery. Low-income families that spend more than half their income on housing spend about a third less on food, 50% less on clothing, and 80% less on medical care compared with low-income families with affordable rents.

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen is scheduled to go to the lion’s den tomorrow, making a speech before the Economic Club in New York. Today, Yellen took the show on the road, speaking to a banking conference in Atlanta, she said current rules on how much capital banks must hold to protect against losses don't address all threats. She said the Fed's staff is considering what further measures might be needed, and such measures would likely apply to only the largest and most complex banks. Yellen said the Fed would review the likely effects of imposing stricter rules on banks. That probably plays better in Atlanta than Manhattan.

At some point Yellen must press the case of the Fed as regulator and in control of the banks rather than vice versa. Now, any threat or hint of threat at tighter control is only likely to result in the big banks moving risky behavior into less regulated areas of the financial system. These areas are often called the shadow banking system.

One area of concern for Yellen and her Fed colleagues is the short-term debt markets. So, Yellen would like to see the banks hold more capital; the idea being that it would make them less susceptible to a run. Now, when you hear that the Fed Chair is concerned about a bank run, this is not the old fashioned bank run, with customers lined up at the door of Bedford Savings and Loan and Jimmy Stewart trying to persuade his neighbors that their long-term loans will provide sufficient liquidity to short-term needs.

The problem goes to an area of regulation overlooked, or perhaps neglected by Congress and the various regulators; specifically derivatives; and after the collapse in 2008 what the regulators did was to concentrate the risk of the derivatives among four major Wall Street banks; the big banks just got bigger.

If you’ve ever stood in a teller’s line at the bank, you may have noticed the FDIC sticker, which reads, “Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.” Effectively, that means, if the assessments the FDIC charges the banks to meet the needs of the Deposit Insurance Fund run short, the taxpayer must prop up the fund to make insured depositors whole. On top of that promise, the National Depositor Preference statute came into being in the US in 1993, making all deposit liabilities at insured depository banks preferred over the claims of other creditors.

The serious wrinkle in the plan is that if one of the four largest banks in terms of derivative exposure was put into receivership by the FDIC, its derivative counterparties have the legal right to assert a super-priority claim on the liquid assets of the bank, jumping in front of depositors. Typically, the counterparties start grabbing their collateral before the public is even aware of the problem.

The Deposit Insurance Fund probably has about $40 billion in assets. With the Dodd-Frank prohibition against further taxpayer bailouts of banks, where would the FDIC turn to stem a run on one of the largest banks?

Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, the FDIC, acting as a conservator or receiver for an insured depository institution, has the right to “disaffirm or repudiate any contract or lease.” But here again, Wall Street has the FDIC between a rock and a hard place. Let’s say there was a reenactment of 2008 and Citigroup was sliding toward insolvency. If the FDIC repudiated Citigroup’s derivative contracts, it would set off a panic and contagion at the other three largest banks holding trillions in derivatives, creating an even larger financial tab for the Deposit Insurance Fund to meet. Banks taking deposits of public funds are required to pledge collateral against any funds exceeding the deposit insurance limit of $250,000. But derivative claims are also secured with collateral, and they have super-priority over all other claimants, including other secured creditors. The money is gone before you get to the teller’s window.

But before you lose any sleep over the prospects of another, potentially far worse global financial meltdown, take solace that the economy is recovering. There are a few more jobs, and consumers are spending, and the housing market is improving, and the Fed has been pumping money into the economy to foster this growth of credit. Right?

Well, one of the lessons we’ve learned in the recovery is that there is a difference between credit growth and economic growth. And absent real and sustainable economic growth a gap eventually forms as credit growth expands. The more one spends on a place of shelter the less one has to spend on other things, and overall demand is reduced. Bank lending finances the purchase of existing assets, particularly with reference to real estate. Such existing asset finance does not directly stimulate investment or consumption, but it drives up asset prices, and that leads lenders and borrowers to believe that even more credit is both safe and desirable. The expansion is like a rubber band that can only stretch so far.

So, it seems the greatest danger to the current economy are the very mechanisms that are still used to “fix” the last financial crisis: money-printing and asset-purchases by major central banks around the world that unleashed a global flood of liquidity for over five years. Most of this massively huge pile of cash has landed in the laps of banks, institutional investors, hedge funds, private equity firms, and other speculators has not been used to boost lending to the private, and thus has not contributed to the recovery of the real economy. Instead, it has been poured into financial assets and has artificially goosed their valuations.

This money sloshing through the system and the persistence of zero-interest-rate policies have driven desperate investors ever further out into “all risky asset classes,” including emerging assets, junk-rated corporate credit, Eurozone peripheral debt, and equities. That buying pressure has inflated their valuations even further. And in the emerging markets, it led to an appreciation of exchange rates.

And when the rubber band breaks, there will be a derivatives bet on it. When the derivatives default, the counterparties, operating in an unregulated shadow banking world of their own design, do not have sufficient capital to pay off the derivatives bet, and so the first thing they’ll do is raid the bank vaults, and when that dries up, the short-term credit markets freeze, because none of the counterparties have faith that the other party has any more in capital reserves than they have.