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This Market Is a “Wheelbarrow of Dynamite” Waiting to Blow
This Market Is a “Wheelbarrow of Dynamite” Waiting to Blow
But in come the cronies to tell us not to worry about it.
DELRAY BEACH, Florida – It’s hot in Florida. Steamy hot. Hair curls and bodies go limp.
The “relief rally” continued yesterday. All over the world, stocks gained. So did oil and commodities. (More on that below in today’s Market Insight.) The Dow was up 369 points – a 2.3% move. Chinese stocks were up by about 5%. Why?
U.S. GDP numbers for the second quarter came out higher than expected. The economy grew by an annual rate of 3.7%. And influential New York Fed chief William Dudley said the argument for a rate increase in September was “less compelling.”
A Decline in Excess of 50%
Oh, ye of little faith… fear not! Things are happening just as they should. It is the end of summer. Markets are giving strong hints of things to come in the fall. Like Vesuvius, a plume of smoke rises… and a cloud of dust hangs over the markets. The economic earth rumbles… and animals take flight.
But in come the cronies to tell us not to worry about it.
And who knows what happens next?
Your editor is a fairly good plumber. He can put the pipes together and unclog the toilet. Alas, his record as a market soothsayer is spotty. He is rarely wrong, but often so early that by the time the event occurs even he has forgotten he ever predicted it.
But today we are encouraged and emboldened. We swagger ahead, like a reedy poet into a rough bar, confident in the knowledge that there are giants behind us. Yes, economist and money manager John Hussman’s forecast is similar to our own. From his most recent note for Hussman Fund clients:
German Newspaper Accuses Spain’s Central Bank of Hiding Collateral Risks from ECB
German Newspaper Accuses Spain’s Central Bank of Hiding Collateral Risks from ECB
Shoddy collateral labeled “ECB-eligible” is a great deal for banks.
Since the financial sectors of Southern Europe and Ireland hit the rocks during the height of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, many of their respective banks have grown dependent on the generosity of the ECB – a generosity that, as Greece recently learned to its great cost, has its limits.
In the last three years, the banks of Europe’s biggest bailed out economy, Spain, have received ultra-low interest loans from the ECB worth some €140 billion. To obtain that liquidity, the banks are required by law to deposit collateral with the ECB. However, Germany’s leading business and financial newspaper Handelsblatt now reveals that some Spanish banks have received special treatment from Spain’s central bank, the Banco de España, some of whose officials have shown no qualms about bending the rules:
Handelsblatt has learned that the Spanish central bank repeatedly stretched the ECB rules recently. It approved securities as collateral that were not sufficiently creditworthy. In addition, other bonds were “ECB-eligible,” but the discount on those bonds should have been higher than it was and the amount of money received in return lower.
This Spanish laissez-faire attitude has consequences for the rest of Europe. On the one hand, it exposes the ECB to the risk of being left with low-quality securities in the event of a bank failure. This would ultimately become a burden for European taxpayers.
On the other hand, it is advantageous for banks if their securities are unjustifiably classified as “ECB-eligible,” because such bonds are easier to sell and at good prices.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Unnerving Thing Global Automakers Just Said About China’s Economy
The Unnerving Thing Global Automakers Just Said About China’s Economy
Global automakers, still intoxicated with their own optimism after years of white-hot growth that transformed China’s auto market from a backwater to the largest market in the world, have an increasingly chilling message.
The auto industry is a huge force in driving economic growth in China. Most vehicles sold in China are manufactured in China. The component industry has been booming. The distribution and dealer network has been growing in leaps and bounds. Every new plant and dealership means more construction, more equipment, more jobs. Then there’s finance and insurance and all the other elements that make up the car business. But now there’s a slowdown.
Today it was BMW. China has been BMW’s largest, most promising, nirvana-like market. Not that BMW’s results for Q2 were that bad. The euro’s swoon produced a year-over-year sales gain of 20%. Yet, due to soaring costs, despite the weak euro, net profit fell 1.1%.
The problem: China’s market is “normalizing” and “becoming increasingly competitive,” BMW said in a statement. “In the medium and long term, we remain utterly convinced of China’s potential for growth,” it said. But it warned, “If conditions on the Chinese market become more challenging, we cannot rule out a possible effect on the BMW group’s outlook.”
China’s contribution to BMWs operating profit dropped 23% in Q2, echoing Volkswagen’s report last week. BMW has cut production in China by 16,000 vehicles this year, CFO Friedrich Eichiner explained. He blamed the stock market. As it crashed, it kept customers from making large purchases; others demanded hefty discounts.
“Normalization” means the Chinese market is in the transition from Nirvana to a rough-and-tumble saturated market where brands have to fight each other for market share to get any sales increases. But no problem: “In the medium and long term, however, we remain utterly convinced of its potential for growth…” he said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Oil Re-Bloodies the “Smart Money”
Oil Re-Bloodies the “Smart Money”
The “liquidity death spiral.”
Oil plunged again on Monday, with West Texas Intermediate down over 4%. At $45.17 a barrel, it’s just a hair away from this year’s oil-bust low. During 8 weeks in a row of relentless declines, WTI had plunged 26%. July’s 21% drop was the largest monthly decline since the Financial Crisis collapse in 2008.
There’s a laundry list of perceived reasons: The rig count has been rising again. Shale oil companies, like Whiting Petroleum, are bragging about “record” production to prop up their shares. Production in Russia has been strong. And OPEC, powered by Saudi Arabia and increasingly Iraq, raised production in July to 32 million barrels per day.
There’s the dreaded surge of Iranian oil onto the world markets. Just this weekend, Iran’s oil minister mused that his country could raise oil production by 500,000 bpdwithin a week of when the sanctions would be lifted and by 1 million bpd within a month.
It gave oil markets the willies. They were already fretting over the slowdown in China, the crude oil inventories in the US, at a record for this time of the year, the oil inventories in other developed markets, and even oil stored in leased tankers. Oil everywhere, it seems.
Whatever the perceived reasons, the price of oil has gotten re-crushed, and so has the hope a few months ago that this would be over by now.
Moody’s is ringing alarm bells over a wave of defaults among US oil and gas companies: “The energy price slide continues to create operating and liquidity pressures for the oil and gas sector, which contributed to seven of the 15 defaults recorded and accounts for a large share of companies with low ratings and weak liquidity.” And it expected the energy sector “to be a primary driver of defaults over the next year.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Chilling Thing Gartner Just Said About a Once Hot Engine of Global Growth
The Chilling Thing Gartner Just Said About a Once Hot Engine of Global Growth
Hope took another hit from the reality of fickle, strung-out consumers.
Apple sold 1.5 million watches during the first week, about 200,000 a day, its most successful product launch ever. Before the launch, media hype had become a total-immersion program. No company has ever dominated the media like this. Today,MarketWatch reported that sales, based on data from Slice, might have plunged 90% since that week, to fewer than 20,000 watches a day, and on some days fewer than 10,000.
“The value of a smartwatch for the average user is still not compelling enough,” explained IT research and advisory company Gartner in its report on worldwide electronic device shipments.
But it’s not just smartwatches.
The other beacon of hope in the electronic device sector, the smartphone, got broadsided today by Samsung, which cut its Q2 guidance, expecting revenues to drop 8% from a year ago. Yet, in April, the company had launched its flagship Galaxy S6 which was supposed to boost sales. Samsung didn’t give details, but there are a few culprits, such as lousy S6 performance against its competitors, weak demand in China and Europe, and the old standby, currency headwinds.
Gartner now expects shipment growth in the once sizzling mobile phone market to slow to a barely perceptible 3.3% in 2015. The report points at China:
The global market has been affected by a weaker performance in China. We have witnessed fewer and fewer first time buyers in China, a sign that the mobile phone market there is reaching saturation. Vendors in China will have to win replacement buyers and improve the appeal of their premium offerings to attract upgrades, if they want to maintain or increase their market share.
So it’s going to get tough in the Promised Land of 1.36 billion consumers. Hence, hope has to move beyond China:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Get Used to Selloffs, Central Bankers Say as They Fret about the Terrifying Moment When Liquidity Evaporates
Get Used to Selloffs, Central Bankers Say as They Fret about the Terrifying Moment When Liquidity Evaporates
Axel Weber, president of the Bundesbank and member of the ECB’s Governing Council until he quit both in 2011 to protest the ECB’s bond purchases, quickly landed a new gig: chairman of UBS. WHIRR went the revolving door. From this perch, he warned in 2012 that the easy-money policies and the expansion of central-bank balance sheets would lead to “new turmoil in the financial markets.” Now that the turmoil has arrived, he’s at it again.
“Volatility and repricing” – a euphemism for losses – are “part of getting back to normal,” he told NBC. We should get used to it, he said, echoing what ECB President Mario Draghi had said a couple of days ago. So no big deal. However, he was fretting “about the liquidity in the market, in particular under stress situations.”
Despite unleashing a deafening round of QE on the European markets, the ECB has watched helplessly as government bonds have done the opposite of what they should have done: Prices have plunged, and yields have spiked. The German 10-year yield soared in seven weeks from 0.05% to over 1% on Thursday, before settling down a bit. And it wasn’t even a “stress situation.”
US Treasuries have sold off sharply as well since the beginning of February, with the 10-year yield jumping from 1.65% to 2.31%, the worst selloff since the taper tantrum in 2013.
Now one word is on the official panic list: “liquidity.” They’re thinking about the terrifying moment when it suddenly evaporates.
Weber blamed central banks for the liquidity issues in the global bond markets. They’ve been buying “vast amounts of assets and putting them on their balance sheets”; not just government bonds but also corporate bonds. Since central banks “buy and hold,” they “take some liquidity out of the market.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
