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Time to Get Real: Part I

September 10, 2016

Time to Get Real: Part I

its-time-to-get-real1In a world where fair value is a central bank veiled enigma it’s frankly a challenge to keep things real, but I’ll have a go at it in what will be a 3 part series covering central banks, the underlying fundamental picture, and a technical assessment of charts. In this part I’ll be covering central banks and putting their actions into context of the realities of a changing world and will aim to address some of the implications.

Part I: Central banks

After years of watching central bankers do their bidding I’ve come to the conclusion that they are the designers of the ultimate Pokemon Go game by leading investors to ever more extreme locations to find little yield nuggets on their screens.

My largest criticism of this game has been that free market price discovery is largely dead and nobody knows what is real any longer, producing a false sense of security as, at any signs of trouble, central banks feel compelled to intervene ever further removing markets from their natural balance. In short: Creating a bubble with devastating consequences we will all end up paying for in one form or another.

For now one may call it a market of pure multiple expansion as GAAP earnings and price have completely diverged in 2016:

gaap

Indeed, as earnings have declined since their peak in 2015 we have seen one central bank intervention after another. Just in 2016 alone we have witnessed dozens of new rate cuts, the ECB modified and added to its QE program with QE3 an almost forgone conclusion, Japan added stimulus with the BOJ on track to own 60% of all ETFs in Japan with more to come. China intervened repeatedly, the UK cut rates and re-launched QE as well, and central banks such as the SNB have been busy expanding their share purchases of US stocks.

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

A Wall Street Witches Brew——Hockey Sticks And Financial Engineering Games

April 19, 2016

A Wall Street Witches Brew——Hockey Sticks And Financial Engineering Games

In a nearby post Jeff Snider makes a clean kill of the sell side hockey stick. Just 22 months ago (June 2014), Wall Street projected GAAP earnings of $144.60 per share for the S&P 500 in 2015.

Needless to say, that was off by a country mile. In fact, it was too high by 67%, but the instructive tale lies in the process of getting there.

Since 2013 actual results and 10K filings were long done by June 2014, you have to say that the street was virtually wallowing in hopium. To wit, the above 2015 estimates embodied a two-year gain of 45% from the actual figure of $100.20 per share for 2013.

And so it went. By March 2015 the consensus estimate had been lowered sharply to $111.34 per share because the fond hopes of the prior June had not quite worked out. In fact, GAAP results for 2014 had come in at only $102.31 per share, meaning a tiny gain of just 2.1% for the year and an impossible hole to fill with respect to the two-year gain of 45%.

Worse still, this December 2014 LTM reported figure was not just way short of the mark; it actually represented a reversal of direction. The post-crisis earnings recovery had already peaked at$106 per share in the September 2014 LTM period and was now down nearly 4%.

But no matter. The consensus estimate of $111.34 for 2015 made midway through the year represented a gain of nearly 9% over 2014. As per usual, of course, that was all back-loaded to the second half. The actual Q1 2015 GAAP profit of $25.81 was already in and represented a 6% decline from prior year.

But on Wall Street the hockey stick springs eternal. By the time of the September consensus estimate, first half earnings were already down by 17%. But the consensus assumed a stick save in the final quarter. Earnings per share were now projected.at $95.06 per share, representing a full year drop of just 7%.

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

For Canada’s Banks This Is “The Next Shoe To Drop”, And Why It Will Drop This Spring

March 31, 2016

For Canada’s Banks This Is “The Next Shoe To Drop”, And Why It Will Drop This Spring

Roughly around the time the market troughed in early February, we asked “After The European Bank Bloodbath, Is Canada Next?” The reason for this question was simple: we said that “when compared to US banks’ (artificially low) reserves for oil and gas exposure, Canadian banks are…not.”

Stated otherwise, we warned that the biggest threat facing Canada’s banking sector is how woefully underreserved it is to future oil and gas loan losses.

We added that unlike their US peers, “Canadian banks like to wait for impairment events to book PCLs rather than build reserves, in effect throwing the entire process of reserving for future losses out of the window.”

We then cited an RBC analysis according to which a 7% loss reserve would be sufficient to offset loan losses in what is shaping up as the biggest commodity crash in history. We disagreed:

We wish we could be as confident as RBC that this is sufficient, however we are clearly concerned that if and when Canada’s banks finally begin to write down their assets and flow the impariments though the income statement, that things could go from bad to worse very quickly, and not necessarily because Canada’s banks are under or over provisioned, but for a far simpler reason – once the market focuses on Canadian energy exposure, it will realize just how little information is freely available, and if European banks are any indication, it will sell first and ask questions much later if at all.

However, indeed assuming a worst case scenario, one in which the banks will have to “eat” the losses and suffer impairments, then the question emerges just how much capital do these banks truly have, which in turn goes back full circle to our post from the summer of 2011 which led to much gnashing of teeth at the Globe and Mail.

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

After Crashing, Deutsche Bank Is Forced To Issue Statement Defending Its Liquidity

February 8, 2016

After Crashing, Deutsche Bank Is Forced To Issue Statement Defending Its Liquidity

The echoes of both Bear and Lehman are growing louder with every passing day.

Just hours after Deutsche Bank stock crashed by 10% to levels not seen since the financial crisis, the German behemoth with over $50 trillion in gross notional derivative found itself in the very deja vuish, not to mention unpleasant, situation of having to defend its liquidity and specifically assuring investors that it has enough cash (about €1 billion in 2016 payment capacity), to pay the €350 million in maturing Tier 1 coupons due in April, which among many other reasons have seen billions in value wiped out from both DB’s stock price and its contingent convertible bonds which are looking increasingly more like equity with every passing day.

DB did not stop there, but also laid out that for 2017 it was about €4.3BN in payment capacity, however before the impact of 2016 results, which if recent record loss history is any indication, will severely reduce the full cash capacity of the German bank.

From the just issued press release:

Ad-hoc: Deutsche Bank publishes updated information about AT1 payment capacity 

Frankfurt am Main, 8 February 2016 – Today Deutsche Bank published updated information related to its 2016 and 2017 payment capacity for Additional Tier 1 (AT1) coupons based on preliminary and unaudited figures.

The 2016 payment capacity is estimated to be approximately EUR 1 billion, sufficient to pay AT1 coupons of approximately EUR 0.35 billion on 30 April 2016.

The estimated pro-forma 2017 payment capacity is approximately EUR 4.3 billion before impact from 2016 operating results. This is driven in part by an expected positive impact of approximately EUR 1.6 billion from the completion of the sale of 19.99% stake in Hua Xia Bank and further HGB 340e/g reserves of approximately EUR 1.9 billion available to offset future losses.

The final AT1 payment capacity will depend on 2016 operating results under German GAAP (HGB) and movements in other reserves.

The updated information in question:

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

Will Greek “Hope” Offset “Limit Down” Contagion From The “Frozen” China Crash

July 8, 2015

Will Greek “Hope” Offset “Limit Down” Contagion From The “Frozen” China Crash

Today’s market battle will be between those (central banks) “hoping” that a Greek deal over the weekend is finallyimminent (which on one hand looks possible after a major backpeddling by Tsipras – who may never have wanted to win the Greferendum in the first place – yesterday in Brussels and today during his speech in the Euro Parliament, but on the other will be a nearly impossible sell to Greece as any deal terms will be far harsher than the deal offered by the Troika 2 weeks ago and will have no debt reduction), and those who finally noticed that the Chinese central planners have effectively lost control.

For those who may have missed the overnight fireworks, here are some more indicative Bloomberg headlines about China:

  • China’s Stocks Plunge as State Intervention Fails to Stop Rout
  • China Freezes Trading in 1,300 Companies as Stock Market Tumbles
  • China’s State-Owned Firms Ordered Not to Cut Share Holdings
  • China’s Market Rescue Makes Matters Worse as Prices Lose Meaning
  • China Ramps Up Policy Response as Panic Grips Stock Market

While pundits have been eager to downplay what is now a historic rout in Chinese risk assets, one that is matched by the depression of 2008 and which has sent the SHCOMP from up 60% for the year 3 weeks ago to barely green losing some 15 Greeces in market cap since mid-June…

… the same pundits to whom neither the oil crash nor a Grexit nor the imminent collapse in Q2 corporate revenues and GAAP EPS, or anything else matters, the reality is that the Chinese stock rout is very clearly starting to have contagion effects on the rest of the economy, crashing commodities such as crude, gold, copper, iron and virtually everything else where China has been a marginal source of demand, but leading to forced selling of anything that is not nailed down.

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

 

Record Financial Engineering Will Goose Stocks: Goldman

April 29, 2015

Record Financial Engineering Will Goose Stocks: Goldman

GE, in order to paper over a net loss of $13.6 billion and declining revenues in the first quarter, said on April 10 that it would buy back $50 billion of its own shares. That’s on top of the $10.8 billion in actual buybacks last year. The announcement was beat only by Apple’s $90 billion announcement last year, to which it added another $50 billion on Monday.

It’s going to be a great year, not for revenues and earnings, but for share buybacks. Hence for share prices and executive bonuses, despite crummy revenues and earnings. Goldman Sachs says so.

In a note to clients, Goldman predicted that companies would goose share buybacks by 18% over 2014 and dividends by 7%. That would be a $1-trillion banner year.

The year has started out on the right foot. Repurchase plans, including GE’s mega-dose, have already reached $337 billion through April 24, Reuters reported, based on data from Birinyi Associates. That’s a 34% jump over the same period last year.

The next party of actual repurchases will commence in a week or so, Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin wrote in the note. Turns out, that’s when about 80% of the S&P 500 companies will have exited their blackout period for share repurchases, which stretches from about five weeks before they report earnings to two days afterwards.

So be it if actual earnings, as reported under GAAP, are in the doldrums. By reducing the number of shares outstanding, companies automatically increase their earnings per share. And EPS is the magic metric, particularly “adjusted” ex-bad items EPS. It performs outright miracles.

 

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

Some Folks At The Fed Are Lost——No Juice To The Macros, Part 1

March 25, 2015

Some Folks At The Fed Are Lost——No Juice To The Macros, Part 1

Yesterday we demonstrated that stock market valuations are not merely “on the high side” as Janet Yellen averred last week. Instead, they are positively in the nose-bleed section of history.

You don’t get the Russell 2000 trading at 90X honest-to-goodness GAAP earnings or 125 biotechs with aggregate LTM losses of $10 billion sporting a combined market cap of $280 billion unless you are deep into bubble land. In fact, the chart on the median PE multiple for all NYSE stocks bears repeating.

Recall this graph is based on trailing GAAP earnings for all companies with positive income. But that was for the LTM period ending in June 2014.  Since then the market is up by 7%, yet reported earnings have basically flat-lined. S&P 500 earnings for the June 2014 LTM period, for example, were $103 per share——-a level that has now dropped to $102 per share for the December LTM period.

In short, the median NYSE valuation multiple is now at upwards of 22X—a level far above even the dotcom and housing bubble peaks. It is no wonder, therefore, that even a certified Cool-Aid drinker like St Louis Fed head, James Bullard, has now confessed that he fears a “violent” Wall Street sell-off when the Fed finally ends an 80 month streak of ZIRP sometime this fall.

So what are they waiting for? Actually, this morning’s
Wall Street Journal expressed it about as plaintively as it comes. In a word, the monetary politburo is waiting for zero interest rates, massive debt monetization and its wealth effects promises and “puts” to goose the macros:

 

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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