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Italian stocks tumbled with the FTSE MIB dropping 2.3% – the worst performer among major European markets on Monday – and hitting its lowest level since April 2017, while the country’s bonds plunged to the lowest level since February 2014 amid what now appears to be an inevitable showdown between Italy and the EU, after the European Commission said Italy’s budget plans are in breach of common rules.

Over the weekend, the European Commission told Italy it is concerned about its budget deficit plans for the next three years since they breach what the EU asked the country to do in July, but a defiant Rome insisted on Saturday it would “not retreat” from its spending plans.

In a letter to Italy’s Economy Minister Giovanni Tria, the Commission said that with a planned headline deficit of 2.4 percent of GDP in 2019, Italy’s structural deficit, which excludes one-offs and business cycle effects, would rise by 0.8 percent of GDP. Under EU rules Italy, which has a public debt to GDP ratio of 133 percent and the highest debt servicing costs in Europe, should cut the structural deficit every year until balance.

“Italy’s revised budgetary targets appear prima facie to point to a significant deviation from the fiscal path” commonly agreed by European Union governments, EU Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Pierre Moscovici wrote in a letter to Italian Finance Minister Giovanni Tria. “This is therefore a source of serious concern,” the commission’s finance chiefs said in their letter Friday responding to a note sent by Tria the day before.

“We call on the Italian authorities to ensure that the Draft Budgetary Plan will be in compliance with the common fiscal rules,” the letter added at the same time as the council of EU ministers asked Italy in July to reduce that structural deficit by 0.6% of GDP next year, which means the deficit would be 1.4 points off track, Reuters reported.

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

“Waiting For The World To End” – Bond Rout Bodes Badly For Exuberant Equity Investors

October 7, 2018

“Waiting For The World To End” – Bond Rout Bodes Badly For Exuberant Equity Investors

It was a tough week for stock market investors but the primary driver of the chaotic crumble in small caps and tech stocks was not one of the usual suspects and even for those who consider themselves ‘hedged’ or balanced it was the worst week in 7 months.

The blame for this blight on Americans’ wealth was placed squarely on the shoulders of the bond market and its violent and high velocity lurch higher in yields.

Yields rose across the curve on the back of strong US economic data and hawkish comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Powell, forcing equity investors to reevaluate the higher rate environment.

To be sure, the absence of uncertainty has been bewildering given the fact that the US government’s budget deficit has swelled, contributing to the country’s debt load, now at $21.5 trillion. Meanwhile, corporate America has gone on a borrowing spree to take advantage of near-record low rates. In fact, according to Bloomberg, excluding financials, S&P 500 companies have more than doubled their borrowings to $5 trillion over the past decade.

“There are a lot of people waiting for the world to end because of this bond market,” said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, which oversees $156 billion.

“Low rates will keep going forever — a lot of justification for high valuations is based on the assumption. That assumption is largely broken.”

And, as Bloomberg notes, prophesies of doom are everywhere.

There’s billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller, who says our “massive debt problem” will ignite a crisis.

Oaktree Capital’s Howard Marks warns that public and private debt will be “ground zero when things next go wrong.”

And Citadel’s Ken Griffin sees a credit binge ending badly.

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

China Cuts Reserve Ratio, Releases 1.2 Trillion Yuan Amid Rising Trade War, Record Defaults

October 7, 2018

China Cuts Reserve Ratio, Releases 1.2 Trillion Yuan Amid Rising Trade War, Record Defaults

China’s central bank announced it would cut the Required Reserve Ratio (RRR) for most banks by 1.0% effective October 15 for the fourth time in 2018, a little over three months after the PBOC announced a similar cut on June 24, as Beijing seeks to stimulate the slowing economy amid the growing trade war with the US, a slumping stock market, a sliding yuan and a record number of bond defaults.

The People’s Bank of China announced on Sunday local time that it lowered the required reserve ratio for some lenders by 1 percentage point according to a statement on its website. The cut, which will apply to a wide range of banks including large commercial banks, joint stock commercial banks, city commercial banks, non-county rural banks and foreign banks, will release a total of 1.2 trillion yuan ($175 billion), of which 450 billion yuan will be used to repay existing medium-term funding facilities which are maturing, and the remaining RMB 750bn will help offset the seasonal rise in liquidity demand during the second half of the month due to tax payments, according to the PBOC.

But the real reason behind the RRR cut is that it is intended to boost sentiment before the onshore equity market re-opens on Monday after the week-long holidays, as well as to support liquidity conditions at a time when global interest rates have suddenly spiked to multi-year highs..

Commenting on the cut, Goldman economists said that while they had been expecting one RRR cut per quarter in H2, “the 1pp magnitude surprised us on the upside.”

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

Macquarie: “There Is A Growing Possibility That The Plot Might Go Terribly Wrong”

October 6, 2018

Macquarie: “There Is A Growing Possibility That The Plot Might Go Terribly Wrong”

EMs in the crosshairs: Between war games, fake news and bonds

From military exercises to trade wars, the fury is intensifying. At the same time, global liquidity is compressing while rates are rising. Growing uncertainty, contracting liquidity & rising cost of capital will continue to place non-US assets (and in particular EMs) in the crosshairs.

“Wag the Dog” showed the power of ‘fake news’ but…

In the 1997 movie ‘Wag the Dog’, a spin doctor was hired to help distract people from sex scandals by staging a televised ‘fake war’ in the lead-up to the Presidential elections. It was the first time that Hollywood described what has recently become known as meddling or convincing people that ‘white is black’. These days there are far more efficient and potent ways of targeting voters & disseminating fake news than Brean (spin doctor) could ever have imagined.

Ever since then the life has been imitating art. From John Kerry’s swift-boat controversies in ’04 to data dumps and fake accounts in ’16, the avalanche of bots and news (fake or otherwise) has become so overwhelming that people have no chance to process it, and separate the wheat from the chaff. As societies no longer agree on what truth is, there is no need for verifiable facts.

…it could all go badly wrong while liquidity continues to tighten

This brings us to the latest news that the US Seventh fleet might conduct military exercises in the South China Sea. Although there are real issues at stake (freedom of navigation), there is clearly considerable room for accidents and unexpected turns.

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

Think You’re Prepared For The Next Crisis? Think Again.

October 6, 2018

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Think You’re Prepared For The Next Crisis? Think Again.

Even the best-laid preparations have failure points

No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.

~ Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

~ Mike Tyson

Scottish poet Robert Burns aptly penned the famous phrase: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.” (commonly adapted as “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”)

How right he was.

History has shown time and time again that the only 100% predictable outcome to any given strategy is that, when implemented, things will not go 100% according to plan.

The Titanic’s maiden voyage. Napolean’s invasion of Russia. The Soviet’s 1980 Olympic hockey dream team. The list of unexpected outcomes is legion.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during WW2, went as far as to say: “In preparing for battle, I’ve always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”

This wisdom very much applies to anyone seeking safety from disaster. Whether preparing for a natural calamity, a financial market crash, an unexpected job loss, or the “long emergency” of resource depletion — you need to take prudent planful steps now, in advance of crisis; BUT you also need to be mentally prepared for some elements of your preparation to unexpectedly fail when you need them most.

Here are two recent events that drive that point home.

Lessons From Hurricane Florence

A family member of mine lives in Wilmington, NC, which received a direct hit last month from Hurricane Florence.

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

The “VaR Shock” Is Back: Global Bonds Lose $880 Billion In One Week

October 6, 2018

The “VaR Shock” Is Back: Global Bonds Lose $880 Billion In One Week

Markets were in turmoil, S&P futures were locked limit down as traders panicked, the establishment political system was in chaos and global bond portfolios were about to suffer a near record $1.2 trillion in losses in just a few days.

All this took place in the hours and days following Donald Trump’s November 8, 2016 election as a Value at Risk (or VaR) shockwave spread around the globe over fears Trump would ignite an inflationary conflagration that would undo years of unorthodox monetary policy, sending interest rates soaring and crashing stock markets.

In retrospect it didn’t happen, and as the initial shock from the political revolution in the US fizzled, bond buying resumed and the VaR shock of 2016 faded as an unpleasant memory.

Or rather, it didn’t happen then, because fast forward a little under two years, when the realization that something may is profoundly changing with the US economy has unleashed the latest global bond market Value at Risk, or VaR shock, when in just the span of three days as interest rates blew out both in the US and across the world…

… some $876 billion in aggregate bond market value was lost, the biggest weekly drop since the Trump election VaR shock, and wiping out one year’s worth of mark to market profits as the aggregate value of global bonds tumbled to $48.9 trillion, the lowest going back to October 2017.

The immediate catalysts have been extensively discussed here in recent days: a record non-manufacturing ISM, a surprisingly hawkish speech by Fed Chair Powell in which he warned that rates “may go past neutral” and, topping it off, another strong nonfarm payrolls report. Meanwhile, European bonds have tumbled on renewed fears about Italian politics while Emerging Markets have been routed as a result of the strong dollar which in turn has squashed local bonds.

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

We Just Witnessed The Biggest U.S. Bond Crash In Nearly 2 Years – What Does This Mean For The Stock Market?

October 4, 2018

We Just Witnessed The Biggest U.S. Bond Crash In Nearly 2 Years – What Does This Mean For The Stock Market?

U.S. bonds have not fallen like this since Donald Trump’s stunning election victory in November 2016. Could this be a sign that big trouble is on the horizon for the stock market? It seems like bonds have been in a bull market forever, but now suddenly bond yields are spiking to alarmingly high levels. On Wednesday, the yield on 30 year U.S. bonds rose to the highest level since September 2014, the yield on 10 year U.S. bonds rose to the highest level since June 2011, and the yield on 5 year bonds rose to the highest level since October 2008. And this wasn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. We saw bond yields spike all over the developed world on Wednesday, and the mainstream media is attempting to put a happy face on things by blaming a “booming economy” for the bond crash. But the truth is not so simple. For U.S. bonds, Bill Gross says that it was a lack of foreign buyers that drove yields higher, and he says that this may only be just the beginning…

And, according to Gross, the carnage may not end here: “Lack of foreign buying at these levels likely leading to lower Treasury prices,” echoing what we said last week. And as foreign investors pull back from US paper, look for even higher yields, and an even higher dollar, which in turn risks re-inflaming the EM crisis that had mercifully quieted down in recent weeks.

I believe that Gross is right on target.

And Jeffrey Gundlach has previously warned that when yields get to this level that it would be a “game changer”…

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

“Monster Move” In Treasuries Unleashes Global Market Rout

October 4, 2018

“Monster Move” In Treasuries Unleashes Global Market Rout

A sea of red has greeted stock traders across the world this morning after what one analyst called “monster moves” in U.S. Treasury yields.

The bond rout that sent 10Y Treasury yields to the highest since May 2011 promoted by stronger than expected US economic data, and which accelerated after upbeat, hawkish comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell after the close, spread into Asia and Europe on Thursday, spurring more gains for the dollar and triggering widespread declines in equities.

The catalyst for the selloff was the stronger than expected ADP private payrolls print and the near record print in the Services ISM survey which showed activity at its strongest since August 1997, sparking speculation the payrolls report on Friday could also surprise, with some suggesting a print as high as 500,000 was possible. Subsequent comments from Powell who said the economic outlook was “remarkably positive” and that rates might rise above “neutral” helped the 10Y yield climb to 3.18% on Wednesday. U.S. jobs data on Friday may stoke boosting expectations for rate hikes into 2019, with the jobless rate seen dropping to 3.8 percent, matching the lowest since 1969.

“Fixed income is the center of the financial world, and it’s hard to have a conversation without talking about the monster moves we saw in yesterday’s U.S. trade,” said Chris Weston head of research at Pepperstone Group. “It’s a very rare occurrence to see U.S. Treasuries undergo such a huge move.”

The selloff in 10Y Treasuries, which caught traders by surprise with both its velocity and magnitude, continued overnight on Thursday sending the yield on 10Y TSYs as high as 3.2325%, the steepest daily increase since the shock outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, before fading to catch its breath amid massive trading volumes.

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

Gold in the “Everything Bubble”: Effective Diversification?

September 25, 2018

Gold in the “Everything Bubble”: Effective Diversification?

What do you do when nearly all asset classes are overvalued?

Diversification is one of the oldest principles by which people try to hang on to their wealth, however little they might have. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, it goes. Diversification is not designed to maximize profits or minimize costs. It’s designed to get you through a smaller or larger fiasco, not necessarily unscathed but with at least some of your eggs intact so that you can go to market another day. This search for stability is a critical concept when looking at gold as diversification of risk in other asset classes.

There are many reasons to own or trade gold that are beyond the scope of my thoughts here on diversification. So I’ll leave them for another day.

The classic and most basic diversification for American households has been the triad of stocks, bonds, and real estate. In the past, it was often held that when stocks go up, bonds decline. This has to do in part with the Fed, which tends to raise rates when things get hot, thus driving up bond yields (which means by definition that bond prices decline). So stocks and bonds balanced each other out to some extent.

Throw in some leveraged real estate – the house you live in – and in the past, your assets were considered sufficiently diversified.

But this no longer applies today: Stocks, bonds, and real estate – both residential and commercial – all boomed together since the onset of QE in 2009. Other asset classes boomed to, including art and classic cars. Almost everything went up together in near lockstep. For a while, gold and silver, which had been on a surge since 2001 continued to surge. In other words, it was very difficult to achieve actual diversification.

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

The Dollar Shortage & China’s Bond Selling Are About To Corner the Fed

September 21, 2018

The Dollar Shortage & China’s Bond Selling Are About To Corner the Fed

Earlier this week – news went by relatively unnoticed by the ‘mainstream’ financial media (CNCB and such) that Beijing’s started selling their U.S. debt holdings.

Putting it another way – they’re dumping U.S. bonds. . .

“China’s ownership of U.S. bonds, bills and notes slipped to $1.17 trillion, the lowest level since January and down from $1.18 trillion in June.”

Remember – dumping U.S. debt is China’s nuclear option (which I wrote about back in April – click here to read if you missed it).

And although they’re starting to sell U.S. bonds – expect it to be at a slow and steady pace. They don’t want to risk hurting themselves over this.

I believe China may be selling just enough to get the attention of Trump and the Treasury. A soft warning for them not to take things too far with tariffs and trade.

Yet already just as news hit the wire that China was selling bonds a few days ago – U.S. yields spiked above 3%. . .

Don’t forget that China’s the U.S.’s largest foreign creditor. And this is an asset for them.

And although them selling is worrisome – the real problems started months ago. . .

Over the last few months, my macro research and articles are all finally coming together. This thesis we had is finally taking shape in the real world.

I wrote in a detailed piece a few months back that foreigners just aren’t lending to the U.S. as much anymore (you can read that here).

I called this the ‘silent problem’. . .

Long story short: the U.S. is running huge deficits. They haven’t been this big since the Great Financial Recession of 08.

And it shouldn’t come as a surprise to many.

Because of Trump’s tax cuts, there’s less government revenue coming in. And that means the increased military spending and other Federal spending has to be paid for on someone else’s tab.

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

Albert Edwards: Why The Next Recession “Might Only Be Six Months Away”

September 20, 2018

Albert Edwards: Why The Next Recession “Might Only Be Six Months Away”

SocGen’s Albert Edwards is out with a new note today – one which he says he wasn’t going to write – but felt compelled to do so anyway due to the ongoing rout in the US bond market, which has prompted the following question that Edwards tries to answer: Is the Ice Age over?… of as he elaborates:

“As the bond rout continues, the biggest call investors have to make is whether the break of the multi-decade downtrend marks the end of the secular bull market. This is the big one. Get on the wrong side of a new multi-year bear market in government bonds and all investment portfolios will be shredded to ribbons, as bonds are the cornerstone of most equity valuation models.”

To Edwards this is a familiar question because as he explains, it is “exactly the same bold heading box I wrote in my Global Strategy Weekly of 13 June 2007.” As he recalls, “the rout in the bond market back then was even more savage than it has been in recent weeks, with the 10y yield rising from 4¾% in mid-May 2007 to the 5¼% peak on 12 June, just one day before I wrote the words above, pondering the possible end of the secular bull market for Government bonds.”

Furthermore, just like now, yields were also set to break out above the secular downtrend and respected bond investors such as Bill Gross were, just like now, calling for the end of the secular bull market. Referring to a chart from SocGen’s head of technical analysis, Edwards points out that the break in the 10y above 2.8% was not the key level that could mark the end of the secular bull market, but rather it was the 3.05% zone as shown in the chart below. Indicatively, earlier today the 10Y hit 3.09% after reaching as high as 3.11% yesterday.

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

Once the Bubbles Pop, We’re Broke

August 31, 2018

Once the Bubbles Pop, We’re Broke

I hate to break it to you, but the everything bubble isn’t permanent.

OK, I get it–the Bull Market in stocks is permanent. Bulls will be chortling in 2030 that skeptics have been wrong for 22 years–an entire generation. Bonds will also be higher, thanks to negative interest rates, and housing will still be climbing higher, too. Household net worth will be measured in the gazillions.

Here’s the Fed’s measure of current household net worth: a cool $100 trillion, about 750% of disposable personal income (DPI):

Household net worth has soared $30 trillion in the past decade of permanent monetary and fiscal stimulus. No wonder everyone is saying Universal Basic Income (UBI)– $1,000 a month for every adult, no questions asked–is affordable, along with Medicare For All (never mind that Medicare is far more expensive than the healthcare provided by other advanced nations due to rampant profiteering, fraud and paperwork costs–we can afford it!)

And we get to keep the Endless Wars ™, trillion-dollar white elephant F-35 program, and all the other goodies–we can afford it all because we’re rich!

We’re only rich until the bubbles pop, which they will. All speculative bubbles deflate, even those that are presumed permanent, And when the current everything bubble pops, net worth–and all the taxes generated by bubble-era capital gains–vanish.

Take a look at the Federal Reserve’s Household Balance Sheet (June 2018):
$34.6 trillion in non-financial assets
$81.7 trillion in financial assets
$15.6 trillion in total liabilities ($10 trillion of which is home mortgages)
$100 trillion in net worth

So $25 trillion is in real estate. When the housing bubble pops, $10 trillion will go poof. Maybe $12 trillion, but why quibble about a lousy $2 trillion? We’re rich!

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

We Are All Lab Rats In The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

August 18, 2018

We Are All Lab Rats In The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

And how do things usually work out for the rat?

There are ample warning signs that another serious financial crisis is on the way.

These warning signs are being soundly ignored by the majority, though. Perhaps understandably so.

After 10 years of near-constant central bank interventions to prop up markets and make stocks, bonds and real estate rise in price — while also simultaneously hammering commodities to mask the inflationary impact of their money printing from the masses — it’s difficult to imagine that “they” will allow markets to ever fall again.

This is known as the “central bank put”: whenever the markets begin to teeter, the central banks will step in to prop/nudge/cajole the markets back towards the “correct” direction, which is always: Up!

It’s easy in retrospect to see how the central banks have become caught in this trap of their own making, where they’re now responsible for supporting all the markets all the time.

The 2008 crisis really spooked them. Hence their massive money printing spree to “rescue” the system.

But instead of admitting that Great Financial Crisis was the logical result of flawed policies implemented after the 2000 Dot-Com crash (which, in turn, was the result of flawed policies pursued in the 1990’s), the central banks decided after 2008 to double down on their bets — implementing even worse policies.

The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

It’s not hyperbole to say that the monetary experiment conducted over the past ten years by the world’s leading central banks (and its resulting social and political ramifications) is the largest-ever in human history:

(Source)

This global flood of freshly-printed ‘thin air’ money has no parallel in the historical records. All around the world, each of us is part of a grand experiment being conducted without the benefits of either prior experience or controls. Its outcome will be binary: either super-great or spectacularly awful.

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

David Stockman: The World Economy Is At An Epochal Pivot

August 14, 2018

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David Stockman: The World Economy Is At An Epochal Pivot

A ‘Great Reset’ approaches

David Stockman warns that the global economy has reached an “epochal pivot”, a moment when the false prosperity created from $trillions in printed money by the world’s central banks lurches violently into reverse.

There are few people alive who understand the global economy and its (mis)management better than David Stockman — former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, best-selling author of The Great Deformation, and veteran financier — which is why his perspective is not to be dismissed lightly. He knows intimately how how our political and financial systems work, as well as what their vulnerabilities are.

And Stockman thinks the top for the current asset price bubble era is in — specificially, he thinks it hit its apex in January 2018. As this “Everything Bubble” prepares to burst, Stockman estimates the risk of economic crisis is as great, if not greater than, the 2008 Great Financial Crisis because of the radical and unsustainable monetary policy expansion the central banks have pursued over the past decade.

This has caused the prices of stocks, bonds, real estate and most other assets to appreciate at rates that have no basis in the ongoing income/cash flow of the global economy. In short, they are wildly overvalued.

A key condition that Stockman has been waiting to see, that serves as a signal the bubble’s bursting is nigh, is the concentration of speculative capital into fewer and fewer stocks as the “good” options for investors shrink. We now clearly see this in the FAANG complex (a topic covered in detail in our recent report The FAANG-nary In The Coal Mine)

Stockman’s main warning is that there’s no bid underneath this market — that when perception shifts from greed to fear, the bottom is much farther down than most investors realize. In his words, it’s “rigged for implosion”.

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

Weekly Commentary: Intimidate Nobody

July 21, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Intimidate Nobody

Strangely perhaps, but late in the week my thoughts returned to James Carville’s 1992 comment: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

Things have changed so profoundly since then, though I get no sense that many appreciate the momentous ramifications. It seems like ancient history – the bond market king of imposing discipline. Bonds maintained an intimidating watchful eye. No crazy stuff – from politicians, central bankers or corporate managements. The bond market of old would have little tolerance for $1.0 TN deficits, QE or a prolonged boom in BBB corporate debt issuance. Contemporary markets seem to have only a burgeoning desire to tolerate.

July 19 – Reuters (Trevor Hunnicutt and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed): “Donald Trump’s comments that a strong dollar ‘puts us at a disadvantage’ caused an instant fall in the greenback on Thursday and marked another example of the U.S. president commenting directly – and sometimes contradictorily – on the country’s currency. Talking directly about the dollar is a break with typical practice by U.S. presidents, who are wary of being seen as interfering directly with financial markets… ‘There are certain comments most presidents wouldn’t make,’ said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading. ‘They’d defer monetary policy to the Fed and the dollar to the Treasury secretary. But Donald Trump is not most presidents.'”

July 19 – CNBC (Jeff Cox): “President Donald Trump’s move to criticize the Federal Reserve is almost without precedent in a nation that places a high priority on the independence of monetary policy. Almost all of Trump’s predecessors steered clear of Fed critiques in the interest of making sure that interest rates were set to whatever was best for the economy and not to boost anyone’s political fortunes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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