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BOJ To Start Lending ETF Shares To Prevent Market Freeze

October 29, 2019

BOJ To Start Lending ETF Shares To Prevent Market Freeze

While most central banks are contemplating how to gently break it to the public that since they are out of ammo with interest rates at all time low, and $15 trillion in global sovereign debt is now yielding negative – a financial abortion which suggests the value of money is negative – the only hope markets have to avoid collapse is for central banks to start buying stocks in the open market, the BOJ has no such problems: after all the Japanese central bank (alongside its Swiss peer) has for years been quite open that it purchases stocks and ETFs directly. Unfortunately, in its efforts to stabilize the market, the BOJ has been purchasing a little too many ETFs and it now owns far too much.

Last May, speaking to Japanese parliamentarians, BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda noted that the central bank now owns nealry 80% of the country’s stock of ETFs, the result of a program begun in 2010 and ramped up in 2013.

Unfortunately, the program failed in its immediate task: the main goal of ETF buying was to lower Japan’s equity-risk premium – the extra returns investors expect for buying stock rather than simply parking their money in riskless government debt. A lower premium should raise stock prices and make equity financing easier for listed companies. But at just shy of 7%, Japan’s premium remains stubbornly above the U.S.’s 6%—with the gap little changed in six years – according to Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Now what is truly terrifying is that the impact of the BOJ’s massive equity purchases is actually not easily visible in Japanese stock valuations as share prices have actually fallen as a multiple of earnings during the course of the program.

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

Weekly Commentary: Issue 2018: Market Structure 

January 6, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Issue 2018: Market Structure 

Financial conditions are much too loose. They remain too loose at home; they remain too loose abroad.

January 3 – ETF.com (Heather Bell): “…ETF flows really blew away previous records. Flows into exchange-traded funds were going full blast throughout the year and finished on a particularly strong note. A whopping $51 billion in new money came into U.S.-listed ETFs during December, pushing inflows for the year to $476.1 billion. Total assets now top $3.4 trillion. The data, which comes from FactSet, includes flows for every trading day of 2017. The $476.1 billion figure was far and away a record for annual inflows, blowing past the previous all-time high from last year of $287.5 billion.”

Think of this: 2017 ETF flows surpassed the previous year’s record flows by 66%. And while U.S. equities attracted the strongest flows at $180 billion, international equities were not far behind at $162 billion. There’s never been anything comparable to this Market Structure.

The Nasdaq100 jumped 4.0% in 2018’s initial four sessions. The Nasdaq Computer Index surged 4.2%. The Semiconductors jumped 5.8%. The Nasdaq Industrials gained 3.1%, the NYSE Healthcare Index 3.2%, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Oil Services Sector Index 5.1% and the S&P500 Index 2.6%. The mania is global. Germany’s DAX jumped 3.1% in four sessions, France’s CAC 40 3.0%, Spain’s IBEX 3.7%, and Italy’s MIB 4.2%. Japan’s Nikkei jumped 4.2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 3.0%, and the Shanghai Composite 2.6%. Notable EM gainers included Brazil (3.5%), Russia (4.6%), Argentina (7.1%), Poland (2.5%), Czech Republic (2.5%), Romania (3.0%), Philippines (2.5%) and Pakistan (5.1%). Portending a wild year in the currencies, a number of EM currencies went nuts this week.

Bubbles are self-reinforcing but inevitably unsustainable inflations. Asset Bubbles are fueled by some underlying source of unsound monetary inflation. Major speculative Bubbles and manias are always propelled by key misperceptions and resulting monetary disorder. Bubble flows intensified in 2017, as misperceptions became only more deeply embedded in the Structure of Securities Market Pricing. Loose finance is ensured indefinitely.

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

Kuroda-San in the Mouth of Madness

May 14, 2016

Kuroda-San in the Mouth of Madness 

Deluded Central Planners

Zerohedge recently reported on an interview given by Lithuanian ECB council member Vitas Vasiliauskas, which demonstrates how utterly deluded the central planners in the so-called “capitalist” economies of the West have become. His statements are nothing short of bizarre (“we are magic guys!”) – although he is of course correct when he states that a central bank can never “run out of ammunition”.

Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda attends a news conference at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, December 18, 2015.BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda     Photo credit: Toru Hanai / Reuters

The mental state of BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda may be even more precarious though. As Marketwatch reports, he recently gave an interview to German financial newspaper Börsen-Zeitung, in which he inter alia threatened even more BoJ intervention:

Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said the central bank “can still ease [its] monetary policy substantially” if necessary, in an interview with German financial newspaper Börsen-Zeitung published Wednesday. 

This is per se not surprising, although one wonders what Kuroda thinks can possibly be achieved by upping the ante on this:

1-BoJ assets vs. the NikkeiAssets held by the BoJ vs. the Nikkei index – April 1999 = 100 – click to enlarge.

We have added the Nikkei Index to the chart of BoJ assets above because inflating stock prices is one of the central bank’s declared goals – its stake in ETFs listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange has in the meantime exploded to more than 50% (which we believe is eventually going to create a socialist calculation-type problem).

The results of this mad-cap buying spree are decidedly underwhelming so far. Although the pockets of central banks are of unlimited depth, this is also no big surprise, as central bankers are probably the worst traders in the world.  One also wonders how further monetary easing is supposed to “improve” on this situation:

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

What Just Happened With OIL?

January 17, 2016

What Just Happened With OIL?

Yesterday, we reported exclusively how the Dallas Fed is pulling strings behind the scenes to conceal the fallout from the oil market crash. As Dark-Bid.com’s Daniel Drew notes, by suspending mark-to-market on energy loans and distorting the accounting, they are postponing the inevitable as long as possible. The current situation is eerily reminiscent to the heyday of the mortgage market in 2007, when mortgage defaults started to pick up, and yet the credit default swaps that tracked them continued to decline, bringing losses to those brave enough to trade against the crowd.

Amidst the market chaos on Friday, a trader brought something strange to my attention. He asked me exactly what the hell was going on with this ETN he was watching. I took a closer look and was baffled. It took me awhile to put the pieces together. Then when I saw the story about mark-to-market being suspended, it all made sense.

Here is the daily premium for the last 6 months on the Barclays iPath ETN that tracks oil:

Initially, Dark-Bid.com’s Daniel Drew thought this was merely a sign of retail desperation. As they faced devastating losses on their oil stocks, small investors turned to products like oil ETNs as they tried to grasp the elusive oil profits their financial adviser promised them a year ago. Oblivious to the cruel mechanics of ETNs, they piled in head first, in spite of the soaring premium to fair value. After all, Larry Fink is making the rounds to convince the small investor that ETFs are indeed safer than mutual funds. Because nothing says “safe” like buying an ETN that is 36% above its fair value.

Sure, there are differences between ETFs and ETNs, particularly regarding their solvency in the event of an issuer default, but the premium/discount problem plagues ETFs and ETNs alike. Nonetheless, widely trusted retail sources of investment information perpetuate the myth that ETNs do not have tracking errors.

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

Why Are Exchange-Traded Funds Preparing For A ‘Liquidity Crisis’ And A ‘Market Meltdown’?

May 14, 2015

Why Are Exchange-Traded Funds Preparing For A ‘Liquidity Crisis’ And A ‘Market Meltdown’?

Some really weird things are happening in the financial world right now.  If you go back to 2008, there was lots of turmoil bubbling just underneath the surface during the months leading up to the great stock market crash in the second half of that year.  When Lehman Brothers finally did collapse, it was a total shock to most of the planet, but we later learned that their problems had been growing for a long time.  I believe that we are in a similar period right now, and the second half of this year promises to be quite chaotic.  Apparently, those that run some of the largest exchange-traded funds in the entire world agree with me, because as you will see below they are quietly preparing for a “liquidity crisis” and a “market meltdown”.  About a month ago, I warned of an emerging “liquidity squeeze“, and now analysts all over the financial industry are talking about it.  Could it be possible that the next great financial crisis is right around the corner?

According to Reuters, the companies that run some of the largest exchange-traded funds in existence are deeply concerned about what a lack of liquidity would mean for them during the next financial crash.  So right now they are quietly “bolstering bank credit lines” so that they will be better positioned for “a market meltdown”…

The biggest providers of exchange-traded funds, which have been funneling billions of investor dollars into some little-traded corners of the bond market, are bolstering bank credit lines for cash to tap in the event of a market meltdown.

Vanguard Group, Guggenheim Investments and First Trust are among U.S. fund companies that have lined up new bank guarantees or expanded ones they already had, recent company filings show.

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

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