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The Narrative Fix Is In

March 14, 2016

The Narrative Fix Is In

On August 2, 2012 Mario Draghi gave the most disastrous ECB press conference of all time. The market anticipation was enormous leading up to the event, as this was the moment where the ECB would unveil the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program — a new, ultimate weapon to be deployed to rescue the euro. In truth, the OMT then (and now) was just a bunch of words. Powerful and nice-sounding words, to be sure, but just words. All hat and no cattle, as they might say in Texas. The Germans then (and now) were clearly not on board with the OMT, and European markets broke hard. Spain’s stock market dropped more than 5% that day, and Italy’s was close to that. Spain’s 10-year bonds hit a 7.2% yield, and Italy’s hit 6.3%. You can imagine what happened in Portugal and Greece.
But the most amazing thing happened the next day on August 3. What the Financial Times had originally called “Draghi’s Blunder” was now written up as “Draghi’s Bold Move”. Every talking head and person of media influence (what game theory calls Missionaries) with access to the ECB or a European central bank started reading from the same playbook (“Mario is a genius”, “markets got it wrong”, etc.). I thought my head would explode if I heard the word “bold” one more time. Combine this with the European Plunge Protection Team buying up every risk asset in sight at the opening bell, and the rest, as they say, was history. European (and global) markets rocked on in risk-on mode for months … years, really, if you focus on Eurozone sovereign rates. It’s the purest example of Narrative creation and the Common Knowledge Game in action that I know, and was in many ways the spark for my starting Epsilon Theory.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Silver Age of the Central Banker

February 20, 2016

The Silver Age of the Central Banker

We all sing along
But the notes are wrong
– Matt & Kim, “Get It” (2015)

The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.
– Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War” (c. 400 BC)

Xerxes: Come Leonidas, let us reason together. It would be a regrettable waste. It would be nothing short of madness for you, brave king, and your valiant troops to perish. All because of a simple misunderstanding. There is much our cultures could share.
Leonidas: Haven’t you noticed? We’ve been sharing our culture with you all morning.

– “300” (2006)

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.
– Henry “The Mongoose” Temple, Viscount Palmerston (1784 – 1865)

Rick Grimes: [when he kills Shane] YOU made me do this! Not me! YOU did!
– “The Walking Dead” (2011)

“I should have thought,” said the officer as he visualized the search before him, “I should have thought that a pack of British boys – you’re all British, aren’t you? – would have been able to put up a better show than that – I mean –”
“It was like that at first,” said Ralph, “before things –”
He stopped.
“We were together then –”
– William Golding, “Lord of the Flies” (1954)

For the past six plus years, ever since the Fed launched QE1 in March 2009, we have lived in an era I’ve described as the Golden Age of the Central Banker, where the dominant explanation for why market events occur as they do has been the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence. By that I don’t mean that central bankers are actually omnipotent in their ability to control real economic outcomes (far from it), but that most market participants have internalized a faith that central bankers are responsible for all market outcomes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rewardless Risk

February 2, 2016

Rewardless Risk

Faramir: Then farewell! But if I should return, think better of me.
Denethor: That depends on the manner of your return.

– J.R.R. Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings” (1954)


I’m going full-nerd with the “Lord of the Rings” introduction to today’s Epsilon Theory note, but I think this scene — where Denethor, the mad Steward of Gondor, orders his son Faramir to take on a suicide mission against Sauron’s overwhelming forces — is the perfect way to describe what the Bank of Japan did last Thursday with their announcement of negative interest rates. The BOJ (and the ECB, and … trust me … the Fed soon enough) is the insane Denethor. The banks are Faramir. The suicide mission is making loans into a corporate sector levered to global trade as the forces of global deflation rage uncontrollably.

Negative rates are an intentional effort to weaken your own country’s banks. Negative rates are a punitive command: go out there and make more bad loans where risk is entirely uncompensated, or we will, in effect, fine you. The more bad loans you don’t make, the bigger the fine. Negative rates are only a bit worrying in today’s sputtering economies of Europe, Japan, and the US because the credit cycle has yet to completely roll over. But it is rolling over (read anything by Jeff Gundlach if you don’t believe me), it is rolling over everywhere, and when it really starts rolling over, any country with negative rates will find it to be significantly destabilizing for their banking sector.

There’s a reason that the Fed kept paying interest on bank reserves even in the darkest, most deflationary days of the Great Recession. Yes, it’s the Fed’s job to support full employment. Yes it’s the Fed’s job to maintain price stability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You Can Either Surf, or You Can Fight

January 15, 2016

You Can Either Surf, or You Can Fight

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son.  Nothing else in the world smells like that.

– “Apocalypse Now” (1979)

Hello, hello, hello, how low? [x3]
– Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991)

Outside the bus the smell of sulfur hit Bond with sickening force.  It was a horrible smell, from somewhere down in the stomach of the world.
– Ian Fleming, “Diamonds Are Forever” (1956)

There’s more than a whiff of 2008 in the air. The sources of systemic financial sector risk are different this time (they always are), but China and the global industrial/commodity complex are even larger tectonic plates than the US housing market, and their shifts are no less destructive. There’s also more than a whiff of 1938 in the air (hat tip to Ray Dalio), as we have a Fed that is apparently hell-bent on raising rates even as a Category 5 deflationary hurricane heads our way, even as the yield curve continues to flatten.
What really stinks of 2008 to me is the dismissive, condescending manner of our market Missionaries (to use the game theory lingo), who insist that the US energy and manufacturing sectors are somehow a separate animal from the US economy, who proclaim that China and its monetary policy are “well contained” and pose little risk to US markets. Unfortunately, the role and influence of Missionaries is even greater today in this policy-driven market, and profoundly misleading media Narratives reverberate everywhere.
For example, we all know that it’s the overwhelming oil “glut” that’s driving oil prices down and wreaking havoc in capital markets, right? It’s all about OPEC versus US frackers, right?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One Trader Loses It Over Draghi And Yellen’s Lies

October 29, 2015

One Trader Loses It Over Draghi And Yellen’s Lies

Epsilon Theory’s Ben Hunt is one of our favorite commentators and market analysts. He is a very rational, even-keeled and objective observer and trader of the capital markets, no matter how broken or centrally-planned they may be. Which is why we were disappointed to see that the two most recent appearances by the world’s foremost central-planners, Draghi and Yellen, managed to incense him as much as they did.

From Ben Hunt of Salient Partners (pdf)

Funny How?

I was watching the Draghi press conference the other week, and I had to turn off the TV. I found myself getting so … angry … not just at what Draghi was saying, but also the live blog reaction and the live market reaction, that I decided I was better off stepping back from the actual event and trying to figure out why I was having such a powerfully negative emotional reaction to the entire charade. It’s not the charade itself. I mean, if I were outraged by every inauthentic display of central banker “communication policy” and the media lapdog response, I’d be in some sort of permanent apoplectic fit. In fact, neither the central bankers nor the media even pretend any more that extraordinary monetary policy has any sort of material impact on the real economy, which I suppose is actually progress on the authenticity scale in a perverse sort of way.

I travel a lot speaking to investors and allocators of all sizes and political persuasions. I also read a lot from a wide variety of sources, also of all sizes and political persuasions. What I’m seeing and hearing on every issue that concerns capital markets and economics is not only an accelerated polarization of policy views between the left and the right (greater “distance” between the views), but also – and more troubling – a polarization (and in many cases a non-modal distribution) of policy views within the left and the right. The kicker: I think that this polarization is almost entirely driven by monetary policy and the power/wealth inequalities it creates.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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