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Asset Markets, The Sports Illustrated Jinx, And The Dodgers

September 9, 2017

Asset Markets, The Sports Illustrated Jinx, And The Dodgers

Why do stocks and assets markets crash?

Why is there is a Sports Illustrated jinx and magazine cover stories often signal a sign of a top or bottom of the subject being portrayed?

Regression to the mean, or, more simply, just moving back to the long-run averages.   

Dodgers Tank After SI Cover Story

After going on a tear of 51-9,  the best 60 game winning stretch in 105 years,  the ink was barely dry on the August 28th Sports Illustrated’s cover, which read, “Best Team Ever,” before the Dodgers went into a major tailspin.

Dodgers_SI_Jinx

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“Best. Team. Ever?” The ink was barely dry the cover of our Aug. 28 issue—which hit newsstands Aug. 23, with a corresponding comparison to the greatest teams in history online—when the Dodgers fell into a tailspin that they have yet to escape. Through Aug. 25, they had gone 91-36 for a .717 winning percentage, which put them on a 116-win pace, good enough to tie the 2001 Mariners for the highest total of the 162-game expansion era. Since then, they’ve lost 10 of 11 to the Brewers, Diamondbacks and Padres, and while they still have an ample cushion to win the NL West and wrap up homefield advantage in the National League playoffs, they’ve shown that even if the infamous Sports Illustrated cover jinx is a myth, this squad is hardly invincible.  –  Sports Ilustrated, September 6

Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx A Myth?

We disagree.

Teams, players, politicians, companies,  markets or, whatever or whoever, always seem to be cover stories either at at their peak or nadir.   For sure,  the Dodgers 51-9 winning stretch was unsustainable, and the law of averages had to kick in.

Black Swans Are Rare

We do admit there are on rare occasions when Black Swans come along that defy all probabilities and shatter age old records.  Rarely.

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

China Warns Officials: Allow Social Unrest, Lose Your Job

March 27, 2016

China Warns Officials: Allow Social Unrest, Lose Your Job

To be sure, there are always going to be financial and geopolitical landmines and every once in awhile we – and by “we” we’re referring to the market, or the country, or humanity, or whatever collective you want to choose – are going to step on one on the way to ushering in a black swan event.

But when we look out across markets and across the political landscape it’s difficult to escape the feeling that there are more black swans waiting in the wings – so to speak – than usual. There’s the threat of a dirty bomb being detonated in a crowded Western European urban center for instance. Or the chance that Turkey ends up “accidentally” killing a Russian or Iranian soldier while shelling the Azaz corridor. And how about the possibility that China tries to save its economy by chancing a 30% devaluation of the yuan and inadvertently plunges the world into a crisis far worse than 2008?

The interesting thing to note about the third crisis event listed above is that an economic implosion in China may spawn a black swan far larger than that which would emanate from a crisis in the country’s banking sector and/or a deeper devaluation of the RMB.

As we’ve discussed on multiple occasions of late, China desperately needs to purge its economy of excess capacity. The industrial sector is weighed down by too much debt and too little demand, but an acute overcapacity problem prevents the market from getting anywhere close to clearing. Either Beijing moves quickly to ameliorate this, or else a wave of defaults will ripple through the industrial complex on the way to crippling the country’s banking sector, where NPLs are probably at least five times greater than the official numbers suggest.

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

Will Puerto Rico Cause An Inadvertent “Black Swan” Derivatives Melt-Down?

July 2, 2015

Will Puerto Rico Cause An Inadvertent “Black Swan” Derivatives Melt-Down?

I really had not been paying much attention to the Puerto Rico debt situation.  After all, $72 billion in debt that might go bad – big deal.  The Fed can print up $72 billion in credit lines with the push of a button.

But a friend of mine happened to mention to me today (Monday) that MBIA’s stock was down over 23% and Assured Guaranty’s stock was down over 13%.  That woke me up.

MBIAMBI guarantees $4.5 billion in par amount of Puerto Rico muni paper.  As of it’s latest 10-Q (March 31, 2015), MBI showed a book value of $3.9 billion. Puerto Rico alone could more than wipe out MBI’s net worth.  But that’s only a portion of the story. The bigger part of the story is buried off-balance sheet in the footnotes in opaque financial structures called Variable Interest Entities (VIE’s). Remember those from 2008?  I remember them vividly.

The VIEs are the off-balance sheet vehicles that triggered the massive chain of counterparty defaults which de facto collapsed the U.S. financial system in 2008.  The VIEs are where the credit default swaps and other nebulous forms of OTC derivatives bet slither around.

Companies like MBI and AMBAC underwrite  credit “enhancement” guarantees on these massive cesspools of debt – and the associated derivatives that are “wrapped around” the debt structures – and stick them in VIEs.  MBI’s 10-K has several pages of footnotes which vaguely describe the contents of its VIEs.   The problem is that MBI and its ilk are thinly capitalized relative to the potential size of the liabilities they face if the credit markets become volatile to the downside.

 

mushroomcloud1

Toxicity plus toxicity does not equal purification.  But VIEs that contain off-balance sheet debt and derivative guaranteed equals toxicity cubed, at least.   In other words, whatever MBI lists as its “net” credit exposure in its financials, take that number and, at the very least, triple it.

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

 

 

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