Tag: finance

Everything was lining up nicely for a new record high in the S&P 500 this morning after the better than expected claims data (only 963,000 Americans filed for first time claims last week!!)… and then the 30Y auction hit (at 1400ET) and was a disastrophe coinciding with a spike back above the record closing high for the S&P…

Just one ‘wafer-thin mint’ more of fiscal and monetary largesse…?

Triggering weakness in bonds and stocks and a bid for gold and silver…

Nasdaq managed to bounce back from its drop but the rest of the US majors ended red…

The momo/value rotation un-rotation accelerated…

Source: Bloomberg

Value stocks continued to sink after their surge earlier in the week…

Source: Bloomberg

Bonds were clubbed like a baby seal, with the longer-end up around 5bps (2Y unch)…

Source: Bloomberg

30Y Yields are back at the June FOMC Minutes release levels…

Source: Bloomberg

We do note that while this move higher in rates ‘feels’ large, it is of a smaller scale than the early June bear

Source: Bloomberg

And while bonds and stocks were hit, gold was bid on the auction ‘fail’ (though came back and steadied after)…

Silver followed a similar path but was strongly higher on the day…

There was a major divergence between real rates (spiked) and gold (spiked) after the auction chaos…

Source: Bloomberg

Mark Gutman (@MarkGutman9) noted this odd move:

“Interesting to see Gold up & Bonds down. Yields are kept low so there isn’t enough demand at the price. Fed will be forced to buy more to keep yields low, in turn pushing fair prices higher thus reducing demand even more – forcing the Fed to buy even more. Cycle of death.“

Of course, all this (falling bond and stock prices and rising vol) was bad news for Risk-Parity funds and may lead to some exaggerated swings as forced deleveraging takes place…

The Dollar ended the day lower but rallied as the SHTF this afternoon…

Source: Bloomberg

CNH weakened after Larry Kudlow’s comments…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin trod water on the day, recovering from some overnight weakness…

Source: Bloomberg

Copper continued to tumble…

And oil ended lower…

The Gold/Silver ratio erased most of last week’s spike thanks to silver’s gains today, but stalled again around 70x…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, is time up?

Source: Bloomberg

And it’s still a long way for bonds and stocks to ‘meet in the middle’…

Source: Bloomberg

David Portnoy has been having a good Thursday. Earlier, Goldman Sachs’ research department initiated Penn National – Portnoy’s stake in the company from the Barstool deal comprises the bulk of his wealth – with a price target of $60 a share, 20% higher than the price at Wednesday night’s close. As a result, the stock soared.

Apparently, Portnoy is trying to parlay this latest success into riding bitcoin “to da moon”, as they say. In a series of tweets, he proclaimed that the pioneering digital currency is going to “12,000,000,000”.

1200 here we come #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/KpU8A8PX4I

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 13, 2020

I meant 12000000000 https://t.co/o7TyVUM4wq

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 13, 2020

Does this mean Portnoy is once again essentially frontrunning his arm of “DDTG” loyalists”? It’s possible.

Perhaps Bitcoin’s performance in recent weeks has  Portnoy convinced that traders who have argued for bitcoin as a more appealing alternative to gold – despite its many, many flaws (to be fair, we’re not saying the pet rock is perfect) – might be on the right track.

Of course, on a more fundamental level, buying bitcoin requires making a bet that the systems underlying bitcoin  – namely, the internet, and the bitcoin network – won’t ever be compromised. To be sure, it’s fair to argue that the “digital gold” that’s growing in popularity thanks to ETFs like GLD carries similar risks.

Authored by Thorstein Polleit vioa The Mises Institute,

On August 4, 2020, the price of gold surpassed $2,000 per ounce.

While one may say that the price of gold is on the rise, it would actually be more meaningful to say that the purchasing power of the world’s fiat currencies vis-à-vis gold is on the decline…

…because this is what a rising price for gold and silver in, say, US dollars, euros, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, or Swiss francs really stands for: The higher the price of this precious metal, the lower the exchange value of official currencies.

Gold isn’t just a good like any other.

It is special: it is the “ultimate means of payment,” the “base money of civilization.”

 Monetary history bears this out: whenever people were free to choose their money, they went for gold. Indeed, gold has all the physical properties that make for sound money: gold is scarce, homogenous, easily transportable, divisible, mintable, durable, and, last but not least, has a relatively high value per unit of weight. Even though officially demonetized in the early 1970s, people haven’t stop appreciating gold’s “moneyish” qualities.

However, it is not only the rising gold price that indicates that the purchasing power of fiat currencies is on the decline. Basically, all other goods prices go up as well, most notably asset prices—the prices of stocks, bonds, housing, and real estate. This means that you can buy fewer and fewer stocks, bonds, and houses with a given official currency unit. From this perspective, you can rightfully conclude that a broad-based debasement is going on as far as the world’s major official fiat currencies are concerned.

Of course, this is not what most people would wish for, as they prefer to hold a kind of money that doesn’t go down in value, money that actually preserves or even increases its purchasing power over time. Actually no one who is in his right mind would wish to hold inflationary money. Unfortunately, however, central banks have been debasing their official fiat currencies over the last decades. To make things even worse, the monetary debasement is gathering speed due to the consequences of the politically dictated lockdown crisis.

Central banks around the world print up ever greater amounts of fiat currencies to make up for lost income and profits. It is against this background that the rise of goods prices in terms of official currencies can be interpreted in a meaningful way: the rise in the quantity of money will, as an economic law, cause the exchange value of the money unit to go down—either in absolute terms or in relative terms (that is by keeping money prices at a higher level when compared to a situation in which the quantity of money has not been increased).

In view of central banks‘ expansion of the quantity of fiat currency, people increasingly seek to hold assets, such as, say, stocks, housing, real estate, and commodities, that are considered to be “inflation protected.” As they exchange fiat currencies for other goods, the money prices of these goods are bid up, and higher money prices are equivalent to a decline in the purchasing power of fiat currencies. Of course, financial market traders will be among the first to react and benefit, while those less informed will get the shaft.

In a world in which central banks not only ramp up the quantity of fiat currency but also push market interest rates to zero, people get hit particularly hard. Saving in traditional instruments (bank deposits, money market funds, etc.) is made impossible. The artificially lowered interest rates also contribute to asset price inflation: the prices of stocks and real estate are driven upward. Those holding fiat currencies suffer losses as far as their purchasing power is concerned, while people who hold assets that gain in price are on the receiving end.

Unfortunately, an end to central banks’ inflationary policies is not in sight. There is the widespread and deeply entrenched belief among people that an increase in the quantity of fiat currency would make the economy richer, and that it would help overcome financial and economic crises. This is, however, a serious mistake, for all an increase in the stock of money does is make some richer at the expense of many others. And an inflation policy can cover up economic and financial problems only for so long.

Ludwig von Mises wrote:

The collapse of an inflation policy carried to its extreme—as in the United States in 1781 and in France in 1796—does not destroy the monetary system, but only the credit money or fiat money of the State that has overestimated the effectiveness of its own policy. The collapse emancipates commerce from etatism and establishes metallic money again.1

Mises’s words should help us to better understand why the appreciation of gold (and lately also silver) vis-à-vis the fiat currency universe has been underway for quite some time now.

China is once again implying that “imported” COVID-19 cases may have been caused by imported foodstuffs. First it was shrimp and salmon from Norway and Ecuador, now it’s frozen chicken wings from Brazil.

Reuters reported that authorities in Shenzen found traces of the virus on the packaging of the chicken wings imported from Brazil, a country with one of the worst outbreaks in the world. One day later, a similar discovery was made in Xian City, though this time on packages of frozen shrimp from Ecuador.

Shenzhen’s health authorities did thorough testing and tracing, and eventually said they found no new cases connected to the packaging.

Reports of contaminated food have led supermarkets and markets across the country to ditch fresh salmon and shrimp, destroying millions of dollars of product. However, we’ve started to wonder whether the tests used by the Chinese authorities might be set off by something else in the packaging.

The Brazilian embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It is hard to say at which stage the frozen chicken got infected,” said a China-based official at a Brazilian meat exporter.

The Shenzhen Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters said the public needed to take precautions to reduce infection risks. Meanwhile, the WHO said Thursday that there are no confirmed examples of the virus being “food borne”.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Amidst looting of stores in downtown Chicago on Sunday night, it has now emerged that rioters also attacked a charity building with sick children inside.

The Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago’s Near North Side is home to the Ronald McDonald House, which provides care and support for sick children and their families while they are receiving treatment at nearby Lurie Children’s Hospital.

That building became the target of rioters in the early hours of Monday morning as more than 30 families sleeping inside huddled together in fear.

“The charity said more than 30 families and their sick children were sleeping inside when the looters, who had taken over downtown, ransacking stores and vandalizing properties, started attacking the building,” reports the Washington Times.

The building was placed on lockdown after rioters began smashing front windows and a door had to be boarded up.

Thankfully, no one was injured.

According to Lisa Mitchell of Ronald McDonald House Charities, staff were “frightened” and families were put under “additional stress and worry” over fears that they wouldn’t be able to get to the hospital if necessary.

“No one was injured, at least not physically,” writes Dave Blount. “Fortunately, none of the mostly peaceful protesters thought to set the building on fire, as they did recently after blocking exits from the East Precinct in Portland.”

“Anyone who aids and abets rioting shares responsibility for the results, whatever those results may turn out to be. That applies to the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, pro sports, and the rest of the riot-rewarding, pro-BLM liberal establishment.”

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Talks between TikTok-owner ByteDance and Microsoft are up in the air, but while seemingly every incremental development about the negotiations becomes front page news in the business press, the business community might actually be more worried about the fate of WeChat, and what the administration’s executive order might mean for members’ bottom line.

Because whether Trump likes it or not, China is the world’s biggest market (by population) and second-biggest economy after the US (Chinese economists argue that it’s already larger than the economy of the US). And WeChat is critical medium through which Chinese consumers perform a multitude of tasks, from paying their bills, to ordering takeout, to shopping online – and so much more.

According to a WSJ report, more than a dozen major US multinational companies raised concerns with the administration during a call with White House officials on Tuesday to discuss the scope and impact of Trump’s executive order, which won’t take effect until Sept. 15.

Apple, Ford Motor, Walmart and Walt Disney were among those participating in the call, along with P&G, Intel, MetLife, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, United Parcel Service, Merck and Cargill.

To put it succinctly, these companies are afraid that the administration’s action could inadvertently force them off the WeChat platform in China, which would put practically every American company that does substantial business in China at an even bigger disadvantage to domestic companies.

Even so, US companies are concerned the administration’s action could effectively cut them off from access to the lucrative China market, for example by ending their ability to accept payments or advertise on WeChat. As one of WSJ’s ‘expert’ sources said, many Americans simply don’t understand how dominant WeChat is in the Chinese market.

“For those who don’t live in China, they don’t understand how vast the implications are if American companies aren’t allowed to use it,” said Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council. “They are going to be held at a severe disadvantage to every competitor,” he added.

Even beyond WeChat, its owner Tencent is even more dominant: Disney and the other entertainment focused companies are concerned that Tencent could retaliate by cutting them off from its domestic platforms. The NBA is worried about a streaming deal with Tencent, and a spokesman Mike Bass said the league is “awaiting further clarity on the executive order.”

Chinese officials are also eager to talk and figure out what, exactly, is going on, which is perhaps why they’re reportedly pushing to modify the six-month “review” of the Phase 1 trade deal and instead discuss the administration’s actions when the two delegations hold a virtual check in next week.

With the election coming up in a few months, we would be shocked if the Trump Administration actually followed through with any plan that would effectively exclude American companies from the Chinese market. While there isn’t much that can shake markets out of their centrally-planned trajectory, such a steep drop in Apple’s smartphone sales just might do it. Remember what happened last time Apple’s China business hit a speed bump?

Authored by Eduardo Neret via Campus Reform,

Campus Reform recently asked young Americans about President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders to suspend student loan payments and cut payroll taxes, which were aimed at helping struggling Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

Most were surprised to hear about Trump’s efforts. Even though most people Campus Reform spoke with were not Trump supporters, many admitted he was helping Americans.

“I mean, I’m not really all about President Trump, but, the part of funding schools to giving us money while in this crisis, in this whole pandemic, it did help,” one student said while referencing the CARES Act.

“It’s shocking in a way because, like, I also don’t like him, so it’s shocking that he did that,” another person added.

“And I think it does change kind of my view on what he’s done throughout the pandemic.”

WATCH:

Campus Reform also asked people if they feel Trump is trying to help Americans during the pandemic.

“I know with these measures, it does seem like he wants to help,” one person said.

“What he did recently was good for us,” one student added. “I mean…we’re struggling students and a lot of people, it’s not just us.”

“Definitely he’s trying to help,” another individual said. “I think he’s trying to help.”

It was just days ago that we reported on changes at Robinhood that would prevent tracking sites and hedge funds from accessing data about how many users owned particular stocks on its platform. 

In that piece, we joked: “Like its order flow, we’re guessing ‘everything’s for sale’ at Robinhood and wouldn’t be surprised if the brokerage creates a hedge fund ‘product’ with this data moving forward.”

Now it seems that if Point72’s Steve Cohen has his way, that is exactly what could happen. Business Insider reported on Wednesday that Cohen has reached out to other trading platforms and investing apps in an attempt to find similar tracking data his firm can use to detect “new trading signals”. 

It’s easy to conclude that, in addition to selling order flow, brokerages may soon be selling this type of data to all hedge funds that are desperate to be the next Citadel by front-running retail in any way they can. 

Cohen’s firm reached out to other platforms “just hours” after Robinhood restricted access to its API, the report notes. Additionally, the owner of Robintrack.net, the website that aggregated the data from Robinhood, told Business Insider he had “seen evidence that Point72 and quant hedge fund D.E. Shaw” were trying to scrape the site’s data. 

The report also notes that Cohen’s fund is not the only one who has reached out to other platforms over the last 48 hours. 

For years, the website RobinTrack.net had been doing a great job of mining RobinHood’s data to provide raw data and a visualization of which stocks the users of the retail brokerage have been holding and disposing of on a daily basis.

But last Friday, CNBC reported that the brokerage will no longer display how many of its users hold a certain stock. In addition, it is going to be taking down its public API data that allows other sites to source its data for visualization and analysis purposes.

“The data has been used to show booms in retail stocks,” a CNBC report said last Friday. “You guys know RobinTrack well. A lot of financial news outlets use it for reporting, including CNBC.”

Robinhood said in a statement that even thought it is restricting third party access to its API data, it still has “many other tools” that its users can offer. 

“Trends and data are often misconstrued and misunderstood,” Robinhood said. “The majority of its users” are buy and hold users, not daytraders, the brokerage said.

Yeah, right. Aside from the PR spin of trying to position itself as a serious brokerage and not a casino app for unemployed daytraders, we’re guessing there is another angle to Robinhood removing this data: if you want it in the future, you’re going to have to pay. 

Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

Gold and silver got had an abysmal day on Tuesday (Aug. 11). The price of gold dropped more than 5%, falling far below the $2,000 level. It was the worst single-day rout in seven years.

[ZH: Gold is still tracking 10Y real rates almost perfectly]

Things stabilized somewhat on Wednesday with apparent support above $1,900, but the big selloff fueled speculation that the gold bull run could be over.

Here are three questions you should ask yourself before declaring the gold bull dead.

1. Do you believe the economy can quickly recover? Let’s say they develop a coronavirus vaccine tomorrow. Do you believe that the economy can just spring back to life?

2. Do you believe that the federal government will stop borrowing and spending billions of dollars every single month anytime soon? Keep in mind, the federal government was borrowing and spending billions of dollars a month before the pandemic.

3. Do you think the Federal Reserve is going to stop printing money, raise interest rates and shrink its balance sheet in the near future? Likewise consider that the Fed was slashing rates, printing money and growing its balance sheet before the coronavirus reared its ugly head.

If you answer no to any of these questions, pronouncing last rights on the gold bull market might be premature.

After the stellar, record-sized 3Y and 10Y auctions earlier this week, moments ago the Treasury concluded refunding week with another record auction, this time in the form of an all time high $26BN in 30Y bonds.

However besides the record auction size, today’s 30Y sale had nothing in common with this week’s prior coupon auctions both of which passed with flying colors, as this was without doubt the ugliest 30Y auction in years.

Pricing at a high yield of 1.406%, this was a 2.4bps tail to the 1.382 When Issued – the biggest tail since last July – and well above last month’s 1.357%.

The other metrics were far worse, however, with the Bid to Cover plunging from 2.50 to just 2.136, the lowest since July 2019 and one of the lowest on record.

The internals were even uglier, with Indirects plunging from 72% to 59.8%, the lowest since November and well below the 66.2% six-auction average. And with Directs taking down just 11.9%, it left Dealers holding a whopping 28.3% of the sale, the most since July 2019. 

Overall, this was a very ugly auction, and due to the record auction size, or due to today’s massive Apple concurrent issuance or just because of rising reflation fears, whatever the reason the curve quickly repriced sharply wider, and as the 30Y yield spiked to a level from early July, the 10Y yield has pushed above 0.70%.

Curiously, the unexpectedly ugly auction also sparked a bit of a trapdoor effect in stocks which also dipped suggesting that even a glimmer of validated reflation creeping into bond auctions will be enough to shock both the stock and bond market.