finance – Page 18399

Peter Schiff On WhatsApp And The "Dysfunctional And Distorted Economy"

Submitted by Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital,

Two pieces of business news announced this week provide a convenient frame through which to view our dysfunctional and distorted economy. The first (which has attracted tremendous attention), is Facebook’s blockbuster $19 billion acquisition of instant messaging provider WhatsApp. The second (which few have noticed) is the horrific earnings report issued by Texas-based retail chain Conn’s. While these two developments don’t seem to have much in common, together they shed some very unflattering light on where we stand economically.

Given the size and extravagance of the Facebook deal, it may go down as one of those transactions that define an era (think AOL and Time Warner). Facebook paid $19 billion for a company with just 55 employees, little name recognition, negligible revenues, and little prospects to earn much in the future. For the same money the company could have bought American Airlines and Dunkin’ Donuts, and still have had $2 billion left over for R&D. Alternatively they could have used the money to lock in more than $1 billion in annual revenue through an acquisition of any one of the numerous large cap oil producing partnerships. Instead they chose a company that is in the business of giving away a valuable service for free. Come again?

Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, is not your typical corporate CEO. Through a combination of technological smarts, timing, luck, and questionable business ethics, he became a billionaire before most of us bought our first cars. And in the years since social media became the buzzword of the business world, Wall Street has been falling over backward to funnel money into the hot sector. As a result, it may be that Zuckerberg looks at real money the way the rest of us look at Monopoly money. It also helps that a large portion of the acquisition is made with Facebook stock, which is also of dubious value.

But even given this highly distorted perspective, it’s still hard to figure out why Facebook would pay the highest price ever paid for a company per employee – $345 million (more than four times the old record of $77 million per employee, set last year when Facebook bought Instagram). The popular talking point is that the WhatsApp has gained users (450 million) faster than any other social media site in history, faster even than Facebook itself. Based on its rate of growth, the $42 per user acquisition cost does not seem so outrageous. But WhatsApp gained its users by giving away a service (text messaging) for which cellular carriers charge up to $10 or $20 per month. It’s very easy to get customers when you don’t charge them, it’s much harder to keep them when you do.

Boosters of the deal expect that WhatsApp will be able to charge customers after the initial 12-month free trial period ends (it now charges 99 cents per year after the first year). Based on this model, the firm had revenues of $20 million last year. But what happens if another provider comes in and offers it for free? After all, the technology does not seem to be that hard to replicate. Google has developed a similar application. More importantly, no one seems to be projecting what the cellular carriers may do to protect their texting cash cows.

WhatsApp gives away what AT&T and Verizon offer as an a la carte texting service. As these carriers continue to lose this business we can expect they will simply no longer offer texting as an a la carte option. Instead it will likely be bundled with voice and data at a price that recoups their lost profits. If texting comes free with cell service, a company giving it away will no longer have value. People will still need cellular service to send mobile texts, so unless Facebook acquires its own telecom provider, it can easily be sidelined from any revenue the service may generate.

Some say that texting revenue is unimportant, and that the real value comes from the new user base. But how many of the 450 million users it just acquired don’t already have Facebook accounts? And besides, Facebook itself hasn’t really figured out how to fully monetize the users it already has. In other words, it is very difficult to see how this mammoth investment will be profitable.

From my perspective, the transaction reflects the inflated nature of our financial bubble. The Fed has been pumping money into the financial sector through its continuous QE programs. The money has pushed up the value of speculative stocks, even while the real economy has stagnated. With few real investments to fund, the money is plowed right back into the speculative mill. We are simply witnessing a replay of the dot com bubble of the late 1990’s. But this time it isn’t different.

In another replay of that spectacular crash fourteen years ago, the appliance and furniture retailer Conn’s has just showed the limits of a business built on vendor financing. In the late 1990’s telecom equipment companies almost went bankrupt after selling gear to dot com start-ups on credit. For a while, these “sales” made growth and profits look great, but when the dot coms went bust, the equipment makers bled. Conn’s makes its money by selling TVs and couches on credit to Americans who have difficulty scraping up funds for cash purchases. For a while, this approach can juice sales. Not surprisingly, Conn’s stock soared more than 1500% between the beginning of 2011 and the end of 2013. These financing options are part of the reason why Conn’s was able to keep up the appearance of health even while rivals like Best Buy faltered in 2013.

But if people stop paying, the losses mount. This is what is happening to Conn’s. The low and middle-income American consumers that form the company’s customer base just don’t have the ability to pay off their debt. The disappointing repayment data in the earnings report sent the stock down 43% in one day.

In essence, Conn’s customers are just stand-ins for the country at large. In just about every way imaginable, America has borrowed beyond its ability to repay. Meanwhile our foreign creditors continue to provide vendor financing so that we can buy what we can’t really afford.

So thanks for the metaphors Wall Street. Too bad most economists can’t read the tea-leaves

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hDhspv Tyler Durden

China Faces "Vicious Circle" As Commodity Collateral Collapses

As we warned last week, stockpiles of iron-ore have reached record levels in China as end-demand slumps but, as Bloomberg notes, this is potentially creating massive dislocations in other markets. Record imports of iron ore and copper, driven by traders who use them as loan collateral, risk repeating the vicious cycle of repayment difficulties and falling prices already seen in the steel-trading market. A stunning 40 percent of the iron ore at China’s ports are part of finance deals (having replaced copper after China's last shadow-banking crackdown) and with the glut, prices drop (driving down the value of collateral on loans) and "borrowers, forced by their bankers to repay loans or to top up collateral, will have to sell the metals, sinking market prices even further and begetting a vicious cycle."

As we noted last week, Bloomberg reports China’s record imports of iron ore and copper, driven by traders who use them as loan collateral, risk repeating the vicious cycle of repayment difficulties and falling prices already seen in the steel-trading market.

Iron Ore stockpiles ar record highs…

But Lenders seeking repayment are finding irregularities, including the same pile of materials used as collateral for multiple borrowings, China International Capital Corp. said.

Xiao Jiashou, known as the “steel-trading king” in Shanghai, had his assets frozen as China Minsheng Banking Corp. sues for money owed.

…

About 40 percent of the iron ore at China’s ports are part of finance deals, Mysteel Research estimates.

“The risk comes when metal prices fall by a large magnitude within a short time, driving down the value of the collateral,” Yang Changhua, a researcher with Beijing Antaike Information Development Co., said in a Feb. 19 interview. “Borrowers, forced by their bankers to repay loans or to top up collateral, will have to sell the metals, sinking market prices even further and begetting a vicious cycle.”

And those prices are tumbling:

Steel reinforcement-bar futures in Shanghai have fallen 19 percent in the past year, while iron ore delivered to China’s Tianjin port dropped 22 percent

And non-performing loans are therefore – exploding (as we noted here)…

Traders began having trouble repaying loans when steel prices in China slumped 38 percent in the seven months through August 2012 as the economy slowed. In the southern city of Foshan alone, local banks have given 100 billion yuan in credit to steel traders, Caijing magazine reported this week, citing a local banker it didn’t name. Loans to the sector helped drive non-performing loans in Yunnan province to 5.86 percent as of November 2013…

At China Citic Bank Corp., bad assets surged from 2011 to 2013 mainly because of non-performing loans to the steel-trade industry, Moneyweek magazine reported on Feb. 17, citing bank President Zhu Xiaohuang. The lender said on Dec. 12 that it plans to write off 5.2 billion yuan of bad debt for 2013.

At least a third of China’s 200,000 steel-trading firms will collapse as part of the credit crisis which started at the end of 2011, the official Xinhua news agency said Feb. 7, citing industry estimates. Nanjing Iron & Steel Co. said last month its 2018 bonds may stop trading due to losses.

Everyone should also know that like a metastatic cancer, the amount of non-performing, bad loans within the Chinese financial system is growing at an exponential pace.

But no matter how much the PBOC cracks down, only one thing matters:

“Those cash-starved steel mills or trading firms don’t care whether steel or iron-ore prices are falling,” said Zhang Jizhou, a trader at Ningbo Future Import & Export Co. “Their priority is to get cash flow so they can survive.”

So the shadow-banking system filled the gap as prime lenders disappeared…

Which means, howevere well intended, the PBOC is exacerbating the situation that many have drawn ugly comaprisons to the subprime-lending bubble in the US.

Simply put, the 'clever' people in China – having had their copper financind taken away, have shifted to steel – as the following diagram explains (just replace Copper warrants with Iron Ore…)

Which will end just as disastrously… unless of course, China once again unleashes the ghost cities building spree. Which it inevitably will: after all it has become all too clear that not one nation – neither Developing nor Emerging – will dare deviate from the current status quo course of unsustainable, superglued house of cards "muddle-through" until external, and internal, instability finally forces events into a world where everyone now has their head in the proverbial sand.

The big question is then, does China re-ignite huge inflation in an attempt to save its vicious-circle-facing economy or does the "pig in the python" get expelled first as fast-money carry leaves en masse and crushes collateral values…

< a href="http://ift.tt/1gTDrpv">

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1h7fKtl Tyler Durden

China Faces “Vicious Circle” As Commodity Collateral Collapses

Iron Ore stockpiles ar record highs…

But Lenders seeking repayment are finding irregularities, including the same pile of materials used as collateral for multiple borrowings, China International Capital Corp. said.

Xiao Jiashou, known as the “steel-trading king” in Shanghai, had his assets frozen as China Minsheng Banking Corp. sues for money owed.

…

About 40 percent of the iron ore at China’s ports are part of finance deals, Mysteel Research estimates.

“The risk comes when metal prices fall by a large magnitude within a short time, driving down the value of the collateral,” Yang Changhua, a researcher with Beijing Antaike Information Development Co., said in a Feb. 19 interview. “Borrowers, forced by their bankers to repay loans or to top up collateral, will have to sell the metals, sinking market prices even further and begetting a vicious cycle.”

And those prices are tumbling:

Steel reinforcement-bar futures in Shanghai have fallen 19 percent in the past year, while iron ore delivered to China’s Tianjin port dropped 22 percent

And non-performing loans are therefore – exploding (as we noted here)…

Traders began having trouble repaying loans when steel prices in China slumped 38 percent in the seven months through August 2012 as the economy slowed. In the southern city of Foshan alone, local banks have given 100 billion yuan in credit to steel traders, Caijing magazine reported this week, citing a local banker it didn’t name. Loans to the sector helped drive non-performing loans in Yunnan province to 5.86 percent as of November 2013…

At China Citic Bank Corp., bad assets surged from 2011 to 2013 mainly because of non-performing loans to the steel-trade industry, Moneyweek magazine reported on Feb. 17, citing bank President Zhu Xiaohuang. The lender said on Dec. 12 that it plans to write off 5.2 billion yuan of bad debt for 2013.

At least a third of China’s 200,000 steel-trading firms will collapse as part of the credit crisis which started at the end of 2011, the official Xinhua news agency said Feb. 7, citing industry estimates. Nanjing Iron & Steel Co. said last month its 2018 bonds may stop trading due to losses.

Everyone should also know that like a metastatic cancer, the amount of non-performing, bad loans within the Chinese financial system is growing at an exponential pace.

But no matter how much the PBOC cracks down, only one thing matters:

“Those cash-starved steel mills or trading firms don’t care whether steel or iron-ore prices are falling,” said Zhang Jizhou, a trader at Ningbo Future Import & Export Co. “Their priority is to get cash flow so they can survive.”

So the shadow-banking system filled the gap as prime lenders disappeared…

Which means, howevere well intended, the PBOC is exacerbating the situation that many have drawn ugly comaprisons to the subprime-lending bubble in the US.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1h7fKtl Tyler Durden

Central Bankers: Inflation is God’s Work

Submitted by Doug French via the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada,

Inflation is always somebody else’s fault. Ludwig von Mises called out finger pointing central bankers and politicians decades ago in his book, Economic Policy. “The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.”

In the fall of 2007, Gideon Gono blamed his country’s inflation rate of 4,500 percent on “the differences that Zimbabwe has had with its former colonial master, the UK,” and added, “we are busy laying the foundations for a serious deceleration programme.” Deceleration? A year later inflation was 231 million percent.

Money printing didn’t have anything to do with it according to the central banker. Droughts began to be more frequent in the 2000’s and Gono believed ”there is a positive correlation between the drought and inflation.” Dry weather, he told New African magazine, has, “got a serious bearing on our inflation level.”

In Gono’s dilluded mind,inflation was about the weather, lack of support from other nations, and political sanctions. He had nothing to do with the hyperinflation in his country. “No other [central-bank] governor has had to deal with the kind of inflation levels that I deal with,” Gono told Newsweek. “[The people at] my bank [are] at the cutting edge of the country.”

These days in Argentina its not the weather and political sanctions causing prices to rise, its businesses engaging in commerce. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is urging her people to work “elbow-to-elbow” with her government to stop companies from looting the people with high prices. Two weeks ago the government devalued the peso by 20 percent but it is private businesses that are stealing from working people with price increases.

Posters of retail executives have been plastered around Buenos Aires. For instance, Wal-Mart Argentina’s president Horacio Barbeito has his mug on a poster with the caption, “Get to know them, these are the people who steal your salary.”

Kirchner’s cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich calls economists who point to government policies as inflation’s culprit “undercover agents.” He implies that these economists are the tools of business. “Argentines should know that independent, objective economists don’t exist,” Capitanich claims. “I want to say emphatically that when unscrupulous businessmen raise prices it has absolutely nothing to do with macroeconomic variables.”

In 2012 the president of Argentina’s central bank, Yale-educated Mercedes Marcó del Pont, said in an interview, “it is totally false to say that printing more money generates inflation, price increases are generated by other phenomena like supply and external sector’s behaviour.”

So while its central bank prints, the Kirchner government has enlisted the citizenry to work undercover in the fight against rising prices. A free smartphone application is encouraging Argentines to be citizen-cops while they shop.

The app is a bigger hit than “Candy Crush” and “Instagram.” President Kirchner wants “people to feel empowered when they shop.” And, they do. “You can go checking the prices,” marveled Analia Becherini, who learned of the app on Twitter. “You don’t even have to make any phone calls. If you want to file a complaint, you can do it online, in real time.”

“Argentina’s government blames escalating inflation on speculators and greedy businesses,” reports Paul Byrne for the Associated Press, “and has pressured leading supermarket chains to keep selling more than 80 key products at fixed prices.”

However, businesses aren’t eager to lose money selling goods. Fernando Aguirre told Chris Martenson that with price inflation running rampant, “Lots of stores don’t want to be selling stuff until they get updated prices. Suppliers holding on, waiting to see how things go, which is something that we are familiar with because that happened back in 2001 when everything went down as we know it did.”

In his Peak Prosperity podcast with Aguirre, Martenson makes the ironic point that when governments print excessive amounts of money, goods disappear from store shelves. In a hyper-inflation the demand for money drops to zero as people buy whatever they can get their hands on. Inflation destroys the calculus of profit and loss, destroying business, and undoing the division of labor.

Aguirre reinforced Martenson’s point. Describing shelves as “halfway empty,” in Argentina he said, “The government is always trying to muscle its way through these kind of problems, just trying to force companies to stock back products and such, but they just keep holding on. For example, gas has gone up 12% these last few days. And there is really nothing they can do about it. If they don’t increase prices, companies just are not willing to sell. It is a pretty tricky situation to be in.”

Tricky indeed. “It would be a serious blunder to neglect the fact that inflation also generates forces which tend toward capital consumption,” Mises wrote in Human Action. “One of its consequences is that it falsifies economic calculation and accounting. It produces the phenomenon of illusory or apparent profits.”

Inflation is also rampant at the other end of South America. Venezuela inflations is clocking in at 56 percent. Comparing the two countries, Leonardo Vera, a Caracas-based economist told the FT, “Argentina still has some ammunition to fight the current situation, while Venezuela is running out of bullets.”

Fast money growth has also led to shortages such as “newsprint to car parts and ceremonial wine to celebrate mass,” reports the FT.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is using the government’s heavy hand to introduce a law capping company profits at 30 percent. Heavy prison sentences await anyone found hoarding, overcharging, or “destabilising the economy.” Hundreds of inspectors have been deployed to enforce the mandates.

The results will be predictable. “With every new control, the parallel, or black market, dollar will keep going up, and so will the price and scarcity of milk, oil, and toilet paper,” says Humberto García, an economist with the Central University of Venezuela.

Don’t expect the printing to stop any time soon. Central bankers believe they are doing God’s work. “To ensure that my people survive, I had to print money,” Gideon Gono told Newsweek. “I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren’t in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. The whole world is now practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.”

It seems disasters wrought by inflationary policies must be experienced again and again, as “Inflation is the true opium of the people,” Mises explained, “administered to them by anticapitalist governments.”

The practice of central banking is the same around the world. The only difference is in degree. Before he destroyed the Zimbabwean dollar Gono looked to America for inspiration. “Look at the bridges across the many rivers in New York and elsewhere,” Gono told New African, “and the other infrastructure in the country that were built with high budget deficits.”

The Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Venezuela inflations may seem to be something that happens to somebody else. But Mr. Aguirre makes a point when asked about 2001, when banks in Argentina, after a bank holiday, converted dollar accounts into the same number of pesos. A massive theft.

“Those banks that did that are the same banks that are found all over the world,” Aguirre says. “They are not like strange South American, Argentinean banks–they are the same banks. If they are willing to steal from people in one place, don’t be surprised if they are willing to do it in other places as well.”

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1dcpsXc Tyler Durden

Is This The Moment The Fed Decided To Go All In?

In December 2008, two brief conversations from Ms Yellen and Mr Bullard appear to have set the scene for both the scale and focus of the Fed’s actions over the ensuing years… ironically it was Janet Yellen’s fear of a “rising” labor force participation rate and Jim Bullard’s rapid realization that the US was “moving to a Japanese-style deflationary, zero nominal interest rate, situation at an alarming pace.” Topics that now are quickly ushered away as nonsense by the mainstream economist crystal-ball gazers…

Yellen sees a rising labor force participation rate, fears a rising unemplyment rate, and lays out the 3 areas on which to focus to fix that…

YELLEN: Turning just very briefly to the labor market, the Beveridge curve chart that Stephanie presented during her briefing suggests that we have seen an unusually large increase in the unemployment rate recently in comparison with the decline in job openings, at least in the JOLTS data. I think one interpretation might be that the unemployment rate has risen in part because we have had an unusual rise in labor force participation during this recession.

Labor force participation has been higher than would be expected, particularly for three demographic groups: young adults, married women, and older workers nearing retirement. Analysis by my staff estimates that this rise in participation could reflect behavioral responses to unusual credit constraints and wealth declines.

Specifically, young adults aged 20 to 24 years appear to be entering the labor force in unusual numbers, and that might reflect diminished access to student loans.

Similarly, more married women are entering the labor force, and that’s a possible reflection of diminished access to home equity and credit card loans.

Finally, an unusually large number of older workers are in the labor market, and that may reflect the negative wealth shock associated with the collapse of housing values and the plummeting stock market.

All in all, I expect the anomalous increase in labor force participation to put continued upward pressure on the unemployment rate.

And what happened – the Fed/Govt juiced student loans, piled liquidity into car loans, and smashed home and stock prices up… and the labor force participation rate collapsed and so did jobs…

Then Bullard comes out all “shock-and-awe”…

BULLARD: In sum, I think we are moving to a Japanese-style deflationary, zero nominal interest rate, situation at an alarming pace.

To stay in the game and control expectations, we need a Volcker-like transformation, something like—although the situation is different—the ’79 announcement, which knocked private-sector priors off the idea that they should trigger all reactions to announcements on nominal interest rates.

You need a dramatic move that emphasizes this new reality. Continued focus on the federal funds rate at this point would not face that reality.

Now, of course, the Labor force participation rate is collapsing, there are no jobs created by the energizing of those credit lines and the Fed is desperate to dismiss any perspective that we are turning Japanese.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1dcnGFn Tyler Durden

For 50 Years, It’s Been “Me” And “Want” And It’s Not “Fair”

Across 5.2 million books and 500 billion words, Google’s Ngram allows a deep sociological dive into the mood of the world. It would appear that starting around the mid -60s, the world shifted to a “me, me, me” society and that’s not “fair”.

Source: Goldman Sachs

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1f5uQuJ Tyler Durden

For 50 Years, It's Been "Me" And "Want" And It's Not "Fair"

Source: Goldman Sachs

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1f5uQuJ Tyler Durden

5 Things To Ponder: Sex, Money And The Carry Trade

Submitted by Lance Roberts of STA Wealth Management,

In last week's newsletter, I discussed the return of "Bad News Is Good News" as the driver of the markets. This week saw the continuation of that theme as one economic report after another came in far below expectations. The question remains, and something I discussed this week on The Willis Report, is whether it is actually all just a function of the weather? Of course, there is something inherently wrong with driving asset prices higher based on hopes that a weaker economy will keep the Fed's "liquidity fix" flowing to drug addicted Wall Street traders. Under that theory, we should be rooting for an outright "depression" to double our portfolio values. But, when put into that context, it suddenly doesn't make much sense. Yet that is the world in which we live in…for now.

Therefore, as we wind down the week on this "options expiry" Friday, here is a list of things to think about over the weekend.

1) The Economics Of Sex by The Austin Institute

This first bit is really just something I found interesting. The essential mission of the Austin Institute is the dissemination of both thought-provoking and rigorous academic research on family, sexuality, social structures and human relationships. The "economics of sex" is interesting from the standpoint that the value of "sex" has fallen precipitously over the last few decades due to scientific advances and the decline of the "moral" fabric in society. What would it take to cause that "price" to once again rise?

2) Hayek On Keynes: "Economics Was A Sideline For Him" via Zero Hedge

"Keynes will be remembered as "a man with a great many ideas that knew very little economics," Friedrich Hayek notes in this brief interview and when challenged on his 'parochial' knowledge of economic history he was "not sheepish in the least… he was much too self-assured." Hayek's perspective casts Keynes in a very different light than his fan's apostolic adoration might suggest, "he was utterly contemptuous of anything that had been done before." While Hayek describes Keynes as one of the most intelligent people he had known, he perhaps sums up the man's work in this brief phrase – "economics was just a side-line for him." As we note below, many describe Keynesian policy as 'dumb', however a more appropriate word would be 'foolish'."

3) Harry Dent's Big Buy Signal via Above The Market

In the late 1980s, Dent forecast that the Japanese economy, then the darling of the world, would soon enter a slowdown that would last more than a decade. In the early 1990s, he predicted that the DOW would reach 10,000. Both of these predictions were met with much skepticism, and yet both eventually came to pass. In late 2006, he estimated the Dow would reach 16,000 – 18,000 and the NASDAQ 3,000 – 4,000.

In his 2011 book, he suggests that consumer spending will begin to plummet in 2012 with the Dow bottoming out somewhere between 3,000 and 5,600 in 2014. After hitting bottom, stocks will experience a mini-rally in 2015-2017 before falling into a final bottom during the 2019-2023 period, when the 45-50 age group troughs because the U.S. birth rate reached its own low in 1973.

Robert Seawright takes Dent to task with a recent missive.

"Now marketing himself as a “rogue economist,” Harry Dent is forecasting “gold down to $750 an ounce, housing down 35%, oil down to $10 a barrel, the Dow down to 6,000, [and] a war between inflation and deflation” this year. The headline is indeed shocking:

If Only HALF of Harry’s Forecasts Come to Pass, the American Life We Know Will Disappear for Good!"

However, as a long term investor, I think we need to set aside "predictions" for a moment. The question we should be thinking about is whether Dent's work on demographics has merit…or not?

4) Understanding The Carry Trade By Joseph Stuber

There is much debate over the Fed's ongoing "quantitative easing" programs and whether or not there is an actual effect on asset prices. Joseph did a good job at explaining how the Fed's programs creates the "carry trade" that lifts asset prices. This also explains why the markets are so fixated on the Fed's "tapering" commentary.

"The reason it matters to investors is that stock and bond prices have benefited greatly from QE and deficit spending. Not only has QE expanded M2, but a large portion of that M2 has found its way directly into stocks, pushing equity valuations higher and higher. The reason QE hasn't produced significant economic growth is in part the fact that the money created on the front-end of this process has been invested in risk assets rather than flowing into the economy to stimulate GDP growth.

Here is a simple graphic that demonstrates this dynamic:"

5) QE Is Here To Stay via Pragmatic Capitalist

I have discussed previously that the U.S. is likely now caught in a "liquidity trap." Cullen's comments regarding "QE-4EVA" is suggestive of that view being correct.

"Why do I think this? Well, first of all, the Fed’s balance sheet is going to remain large for a long time because the Fed isn’t going to shrink its balance sheet by selling assets. So the effects of QE are here to stay. But more importantly, I think the economy is operating at a muddle through pace for reasons I’ve discussed previously and that means that the Fed will maintain an accommodative interest rate structure for some time.

The interesting thing about this potential world is that it means QE is the new policy tool of choice. In other words, QE could potentially replace interest rate policy as the primary policy variable.

QE is probably here to stay in some form for the foreseeable future. In fact, it could become THE policy tool of choice in future business cycles…"

As always, I hope that you will have an enjoyable weekend.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1f5uNzj Tyler Durden

The Most Beloved, And Hated, Hedge Fund Stocks Are…

Step aside long-time hedge fund hotel darlings Apple and AIG, and make room for Government Motors, which with a record 196 hedge fund owners, is now the biggest recently bankrupt hedge fund darling du jour. We wish GM, and its record number of “smart money” holders the best in continuing their channel stuffing “expansion” strategy.

Of course, the fact that virtually everyone and the kitchen sink is already in GM, means that there is little possible upside from here as all the fast money is already in, and at best can only depart on even the slightest deviation from perfection pricing (and with China cracking, and local demand for discretionary purchases plunging, GM will be one of the first casualties).

Which brings us to the second table: that of the most shorted, and hated, stocks by hedge funds. Recall that as we have shown time and again, the only guaranteed strategy to generate alpha in a market in which there is no risk (thank you Charmanwoman), is to be long the natural hedges – the worst, most horrible companies around. We noted as much most recently in September 2013 when we reflected on the one year anniversary of our “go long the most shorted trades” idea from September 2012. As the chart below confirms, doing precisely this has generated a return some 40% higher than the S&P 500 itself.

So where will the hedge fund pain be in the coming months, as the Fed tapers only to realize it can’t untaper in a world in which the unwind of rhte carry trade means Lehman 2.0 (see China) and the end of the capital markets as we know them, and thus the Untaper?

Presenting the most shorted, according to Goldman, stocks by hedge fund experts.

Anyone going long these names is virtually assured to outperform the market over the next year.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bSX0Pn Tyler Durden

Silver Surges As Bonds, Stocks, And The USD End Week Unchanged

While The Russell 2000 briefly regained positive territory for 2014 (up 1.5% on the week), the Dow, S&P, and Trannies ended the shortened and low volume week practically unchanged (and the Dow -2.6% YTD). Treasury yields oscillated as bad-news-good-news played out but ended the week practcically unchanged (10Y -1bps, 5Y +1bps). The USD drifted lower today to end the week very modestly positive (+0.1%) as EUR strangeth dominated JPY and CAD weakness). VIX went higher all week (admittedly OPEX-impacted) as underlying stocks remained bid. Credit markets ended the week wider than they opened on Tuesday (despite equity strength). Depsite the USD, commodities rose on the week with Silver and WTI crude up almost 2% and gold up 0.5%. For an options-expiration day, today's volume was very weak. And 2014's best performing S&P 500 sectors… Healthcare and Utilities.

While the Nasdaq ands Russell high beta muppets got the attention, the "big" indices ended the week practically unchanged….