Month: March 2014

Warren Buffett once noted, Gold doesn’t do anything “but look at you.” It doesn’t pay a dividend or produce cash flow.

However, the fact of the matter is that Gold has dramatically outperformed the stock market for the better part of 40 years.

I say 40 years because there is no point comparing Gold to stocks during periods in which Gold was pegged to world currencies. Most of the analysis I see comparing the benefits of owning Gold to stocks goes back to the early 20^th century.

However Gold was pegged to global currencies up until 1967. Stocks weren’t. Comparing the two during this time period is just bad analysis.

However, once the Gold peg officially ended with France dropping it in 1967, the precious metal has outperformed both the Dow and the S&P 500 by a massive margin.

See for yourself… the above chart is in normalized terms courtesy of Bill King’s The King Report.

According to King, Gold has risen 37.43 fold since 1967. That is more than twice the performance of the Dow over the same time period (18.45 fold). So much for the claim that stocks are a better investment than Gold long-term.

Indeed, once Gold was no longer pegged to world currencies there was only a single period in which stocks outperformed the precious metal. That period was from 1997-2000 during the height of the Tech Bubble (the single biggest stock market bubble in over 100 years).

In simple terms, as a long-term investment, Gold has been better than stocks.

Moreover, I think there is considerable value in Gold today as an investment. Many investors argue that Gold has no intrinsic value. I disagree with this assessment as it does not consider the nature of the financial system.

Let’s compare Gold to the US Dollar.

Every asset in the financial system trades based on relative value. Ultimately, this value is denominated in US Dollars because the Dollar is the reserve currency of the world.

However, even the US Dollar itself trades based on relative value. Remember the Dollar is merely a sheet of linen and cotton that is printed by the Fed and is backed by the full faith and credit of the Unites States.

In this sense, the Dollar’s value is derived from the confidence investors that the US will honor its debts.

A second item to consider is the fact that the Dollar’s value today also derived from the Fed’s money printing. Indeed, a Dollar today, is worth only 5% of a Dollar’s value from the early 20^th century because the Fed has debased the currency.

As a result of this the world has adjusted to this change in relative “value” resulting in a Dollar buying less today than it did 100 years ago.

In this sense, Gold’s value is derived from investors’ faith in the Financial System (ultimately backstopped by the Dollar) and the Fed’s actions.

Gold also moves based on investors’ confidence in the system. If investors’ are afraid that the system is under duress (meaning that they have little confidence in the Dollar-based financial system) then they perceive Gold has having a higher value.

Similarly, if the Fed prints Dollars by the billions, Gold is perceived as having a higher value relative to the Dollar.

Thus, Gold does not have any less intrinsic value than the US Dollar does. In that regard we can price it relative to the Fed’s actions and to the fear of systemic risk to get an assessment of its true value.

With that in mind, today Gold is clearly undervalued relative the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet (see Figure 3 on the next page).

Since the Crash hit in 2008, the price of Gold has been very closely correlated to the Fed’s balance sheet expansion. Put another way, the more money the Fed printed, the higher the price of Gold went.

Gold did become overextended relative to the Fed’s balance sheet in 2011 when it entered a bubble with Silver.  However, with the Fed now printing some $85 billion per month, the precious metal is now significantly undervalued relative to the Fed’s balance sheet.

Indeed, for Gold to even realign based on the Fed’s actions, it would need to be north of $1,800. That’s a full 30% higher than where it trades today.

However, we can easily make another cigar butt argument that Gold’s true value is in fact higher than this.

As noted a moment ago, every asset in the financial system trades relative to investors’ confidence in that system. With the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world, that confidence is ultimately based on the idea the US will pay you if it owes you money.

If you remove this confidence, then the entire system collapses as the reserve currency is no longer perceived has having value.

The problem with this setup however is that the US, like almost every other country in the world (I’m including China which is sporting a Debt to GDP ratio north of 200% if you account for its Shadow Banking liabilities), has made promises that it cannot possibly keep.

The US “officially” owes nearly $17 trillion in debt. However, if you include unfunded liabilities this amount surges to at least over $80 trillion and likely north of $100 trillion.

These are promises the US has made. And the US Dollar’s value is based on the belief that the US will honor these promises.

The US is not isolated in this regard. Indeed, the problem of unfunded liabilities exists throughout the world.

In the case of Europe, the situation is so bad that the average EU country would need to have an amount equal to over 400% of its GDP sitting in the bank, earning interest at the government’s borrowing rate, in order to fund its unfunded liabilities.

The same goes for Japan and even China where the shadow banking system has liabilities north of 200% of China’s GDP.

These are promises that cannot be kept. And when these promises are broken confidence in the system will be broken. This will inevitably lead to a period of currency collapse. After this, ultimately there will be a need to restore confidence in the system.

The only way to do this will be by backing currencies with Gold again (or a basket of items that includes Gold).

Given the limited amount of Gold in the world, (a little over 171,000 tons) and the enormous amount of US Dollars in the world, this would require a revaluation of Gold to north of $10,000. Dylan Grice formerly of Societe General lays this out beautifully in the below chart.

I cannot possibly predict when all of this would happen. All I can state with 100% certainty is that ALL fiat currencies throughout history have failed.

This failure has been based on a loss of confidence. And the only way to restore confidence is to limit the ability of Central Banks to print money.

This will inevitably lead to some form of a Gold backed currency. Gold has been used as currency for over 5,000 years. It will be considered currency again in the future. When it does, the price of Gold will be much higher (remember, Gold has risen over 34 fold in the last 40 years).

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Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

While I always supported the overall message and energy that encompassed the Occupy Wall Street movement, I never backed the slogan of the 1% vs. the 99%. From my own personal experience, it is entirely clear that the actual problem is a far smaller group within the 1%, the 0.1% or the 0.01% (although I recognize “We Are the 99.9%” isn’t catchy).

This is why you’ll never hear me demonize “the 1%”, rather I always try to use the term oligarch, which refers a small handful of people who benefit most disproportionately from Federal Reserve handouts, D.C. corruption, tax code loopholes and the destructive trend of financialization generally.

This is is also why I became so disgusted by Sam Zell’s ignorant and destructive comments on Bloomberg television earlier this year that decided to pen an open letter to him.

Thanks to The Atlantic, we now have two charts that show what I have been writing about for many years now. It is not the 1% that is the problem, it’s actually a much smaller slice within that group that is thieving and pillaging at will from the rest of American society.

From The Atlantic:

I’ve written, over and over, that the most important divide in our wealth disparity was between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. For example, when I compared the evolution in investment income since the late 1970s, I often imagined a graph like this from the Economic Policy Institute, showing the 1 percent flying away from the rest of the country.

 

It turns out that that graph is somewhat misleading. It makes it look like the 1 percent is a group of similar households accelerating from the rest of the economy, holding hands, in unison. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

A few weeks ago, I shared this graph (from the World Top Incomes Database) showing how the top 0.01 percent—that’s the one percent of the 1 percent—was leaving the rest of the top percentile behind.

 

 

It’s even more egregious than that. An amazing chart from economist Amir Sufi, based on the work of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, shows that when you look inside the 1 percent, you see clearly that most of them aren’t growing their share of wealth at all. In fact, the gain in wealth share is all about the top 0.1 percent of the country. While nine-tenths of the top percentile hasn’t seen much change at all since 1960, the 0.01 percent has essentially quadrupled its share of the country’s wealth in half a century.

 

 

It turns out that wealth inequality isn’t about the 1 percent v. the 99 percent at all. It’s about the 0.1 percent v. the 99.9 percent (or, really, the 0.01 percent vs. the 99.99 percent, if you like). Long-story-short is that this group, comprised mostly of bankers and CEOs, is riding the stock market to pick up extraordinary investment income. And it’s this investment income, rather than ordinary earned income, that’s creating this extraordinary wealth gap.

 

The mainstream is finally starting to figure it out. From crony capitalistic corporate welfare (even the New York Times covered oligarch welfare last week) to the 0.01% problem. Now if the nine tenths of the 1% would stop complacently continue to tread water and challenge the oligarchs we might actually be able to change things.

Full article here.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1kkW59u Tyler Durden

Japanese real estate stocks were broadly speaking the worst global equity performers in the first quarter of 2014 along with broad weakness in Russia and China (note US consumer discretionary was the 25th worst equity index in the world). At the other end of the spectrum, the quarter belonged to everything Middle-Eastern with Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, and Qatar all soaring (along with – somewhat remarkably) Greece, Portugal, and Italy…

click image for colossal legible version

 

And the top and bottom 20 of the major indices that Bloomberg covers…

 

And in the US, here are the best and worst sectors…

 

 

Source: Bloomberg

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Submitted by Ron Paul of The Ron Paul Institute,

Last week Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill approving a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine and more sanctions on Russia. The bill will likely receive the president’s signature within days. If you think this is the last time US citizens will have their money sent to Ukraine, you should think again. This is only the beginning.

This $1 billion for Ukraine is a rip-off for the America taxpayer, but it is also a bad deal for Ukrainians. Not a single needy Ukrainian will see a penny of this money, as it will be used to bail out international banks who hold Ukrainian government debt. According to the terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-designed plan for Ukraine, life is about to get much more difficult for average Ukrainians. The government will freeze some wage increases, significantly raise taxes, and increase energy prices by a considerable margin.

But the bankers will get paid and the IMF will get control over the Ukrainian economy.

The bill also authorizes more US taxpayer money for government-funded “democracy promotion” NGOs, and more money to broadcast US government propaganda into Ukraine via Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. It also includes some saber-rattling, directing the US Secretary of State to “provide enhanced security cooperation with Central and Eastern European NATO member states.”

The US has been “promoting democracy” in Ukraine for more than ten years now, but it doesn’t seem to have done much good. Recently a democratically-elected government was overthrown by violent protestors. That is the opposite of democracy, where governments are changed by free and fair elections. What is shocking is that the US government and its NGOs were on the side of the protestors! If we really cared about democracy we would not have taken either side, as it is none of our business.

Washington does not want to talk about its own actions that led to the coup, instead focusing on attacking the Russian reaction to US-instigated unrest next door to them. So the new bill passed by Congress will expand sanctions against Russia for its role in backing a referendum in Crimea, where most of the population voted to join Russia. The US, which has participated in the forced change of borders in Serbia and elsewhere, suddenly declares that international borders cannot be challenged in Ukraine.

Those of us who are less than gung-ho about sanctions, manipulating elections, and sending our troops overseas are criticized as somehow being unpatriotic. It happened before when so many of us were opposed to the Iraq war, the US attack on Libya, and elsewhere. And it is happening again to those of us not eager to get in another cold — or hot — war with Russia over a small peninsula that means absolutely nothing to the US or its security.

I would argue that real patriotism is defending this country and making sure that our freedoms are not undermined here. Unfortunately, while so many are focused on freedoms in Crimea and Ukraine, the US Congress is set to pass an NSA “reform” bill that will force private companies to retain our personal data and make it even easier for the NSA to spy on the rest of us. We need to refocus our priorities toward promoting liberty in the United States!

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

It is perhaps little wonder that Virtu was in such a hurry to use the cover of the JOBS Act to IPO itself before the whole HFT ‘game’ was exposed. Just 5 years after we first drew the world’s attention to the potential damage that HFT could do; and mere minutes after we posted our article on how HFT is being set up to be the scapegoat for all that is broken with the market and conveniently distracting from the Fed, and god, or perhaps his agent on earth Goldman Sachs, ‘completely unexpectedly’ sends in the FBI:

• *FBI SAID TO PROBE HIGH-SPEED TRADERS OVER ABUSE OF INFORMATION
• *FBI Working With SEC, CFTC in High-Speed Investigation
• *FBI Investigating Whether High-Speed Firms Trade on Nonpublic Information

Now, the question is: how many HFTs will stop trading for fear that any further trading on ‘non-public information’ will be deemed criminal from this point… or keep trading and lobby/hope that “a reasonable man” will believe their liquidity-providing lies.
 

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London’s cobbled and quaint streets are no longer paved with gold as their fictitious character, Dick Whittington might have once believed in fairytale land. But, they certainly do attract the golden billionaire boys from around the world these days as London gets to the top position in the places to have a pad; but you don’t necessarily need to live there!

London is the new billionaires’ paradise according to new research that has just been released after analysis carried out on the high-end estate market by Beauchamp Estates ad Dataloft in the UK.

• There are 2, 170 billionaires in the world.
• Net income combined stands at $6.46 trillion. 
• It stood at $3.08 trillion in 2009. 
• 60% are self-made billionaires.
• 20% have inherited wealth. 
• 20% have a combination of inherited and acquired wealth. 
• 67 billionaires live in London, making it the top western capital. 
• Paris has 25 billionaires. 
• Geneva comes in at 3rd place in the list of cities in the western world that billionaires go to live in. But, it only has 18 of them and that’s despite the fact that it’s a tax haven.

What is the make-up of a typical billionaire, then? There are a few must-haves that every billionaire that has any self-respect needs:

• Over $83 million in real estate. 
• An average of four residences. 
• One of which must be in London to the tune of an average of over $38 million. 
• 42% of the wealth of a billionaire these days is in private holdings. 
• 35% is in publicly-held companies.
• 18% in cash. 
• Just 3% in residential real estate.
• 2% goes to artwork or travel expenses.

According to the study, if it’s under £10 million, then the residence is for the servants and not for the billionaires themselves.

But, will all the billionaires be staying in London, or will they be going there? Despite the financial crisis the safe haven of the world of real estate in London (in particular, in places such as Chelsea, Kensington, Knightsbridge and Mayfair) has risen by 23% since 2008 (the previous peak). London has seen super-prime properties change hands more often in London than in any other city in the world. In 2012, there were some300 super-prime sales made in the world and over 50% of them were in London. About one third of the people that bought those residences were British. The vast majority were from overseas.

According to recent studies, it’s the woes of the European Union periphery countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain that have meant that the ultra-high-net-worth people have been moving their assets out of those countries and they have chosen London for the property increases that have been seen there. It’s the Russians who (until now!) have been the driving force also behind that market.

Apparently, each nationality has its idiosyncrasies when buying. Singaporeans need lots of staff and the quarters to go with it. The Russians need security and the Middle Eastern billionaires need elevators everywhere. Brokers make a standard commission of 1.5-2.5%, but that’s a hefty sum in itself. Although, along with immense wealth goes (hand in hand?) ‘pain-in-the-neck’ demands and 100% availability of the brokers. Remember that money buys anything and everything; it can buy your time and even gets its hands on you.

Just a few days ago data was released that showed that housing in London rose by an average of £11,217 in March 2014, meaning that they are now at an all-time high.

• That’s a 2%-increase.
• The average property in London is worth £552,530, up 1.5% on October 2013 (previous high). 
• But, property in some of the most expensive boroughs fell. 
• Westminster fell by 2.3%, for example.
• A slow-down in prime areas has occurred, and the price rises are now rippling out to other areas of London.

The oil magnates, Middle Eastern Royalty and heir’s to world power have a place on London’s most expensive street, also known as Billionaire’s Row (once it was just plain old Millionaire’s Row), The Bishop’s Avenue in north London. But, it is a derelict forgotten wasteland, where the owners buy and then never go there. The buildings fall derelict, but they go up in price.

Perhaps just like the fictitious character Dick Whittington, with accompanied cat in tow, when they get to London the billionaires band of boys might just realize that the streets are not at all paved in gold, but rather they are grimy and poverty stricken.

Originally posted: London’s Billionaires Paradise

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1ojlQxc Pivotfarm

For all the talk about how High Frequency Trading has rigged markets, most seem to be ignoring the two most obvious questions: why now and what happens next?

After all, Zero Hedge may have been ahead of the curve in exposing the parasitism of HFT (anyone who still doesn’t get it should read the following primer in two parts from Credit Suisse), but we were hardly alone and over the years many others joined along to expose what is clear market manipulation aided and abeted by not only the exchanges but by the regulators themselves who passed Reg NMS – the regulation that ushered in today’s fragmented and broken market – with much fanfare nearly a decade ago. And yet, it took over five years before our heretical view would become mainstream canon.

One logical explanation is the dramatic and sudden about face by none other than Goldman Sachs, which from one of the biggest proponents of quant trading strategies including algo trading, and which used to make a killing courtesy of HFT (who can possibly forget Goldman’s charges against Sergey Aleynikov’s code theft which alleged “there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways“), has in recent weeks unleashed a de facto war on HFT, first with the Gary Cohn HFT-bashing op-ed, and then with the implicit backing of the IEX pseudo dark pool exchange, whose employee just mysteriously also is the protagonist of the Michael Lewis book that has raised the issue of HFT to a fever pitch.

So does Goldman know something the rest of us don’t that it is now ready to give up on the HFT goldmine which lost money on just one day in 1238? Why of course it does. And one would imagine that judging by the dramatic turnaround exhibited by Goldman that said something is very adverse to the ongoing future profitability of the HFT industry. The amusement factor only rises by several notches when one considers that Goldman also happens to be lead underwriter on the Virtu IPO offering: one wonders what they uncovered and/or what they know about the industry that nobody else does, and just how the VRTU IPO will fare now that Goldman is so openly against HFT.

But what does all of that mean for the big picture? We hinted at it yesterday, on twitter when we had the following exchange.

@LongOnlyTrader Only until market crashes. Then HFT will be the torches and pitchforks scapegoat. Not the Fed.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 31, 2014

Could it indeed be that the only reason why HFT – which has constantly been in the background of broken market structure culprits but never really taken such a prominent role until last night, is because the market is being primed for a crash, and just like with the May 2010 “Flash Crash” it will all be the algos’ fault?

This is precisely the angle that Rick Santelli took earlier today, during his earlier monolog asking “Why is HFT tolerated.” We show it below, but here is Rick’s punchline:

Are regulators stupid when it comes to high frequency trade? Well, i think that there was a time where they were a bit slow to the party. But i don’t think it’s stupidity or ignorance or not paying attention. So let’s wipe that off. So the question i’m asking is, why do they let it continue?

 

Why is it that anybody would want HFT to be unchallenged or at least not challenge it now? My reason, this is just my reason, when i look at the stock market it’s basically at historic highs. When i look at what the federal reserve is doing, it’s mostly to put stocks on all-time highs. When i look at all the debt and all the programs that don’t seem to be making a difference except for putting stocks on all-time highs, i see that you have this tower of power with regard to the stock market. And nobody wants to challenge or alter hft because it is good to go that many days without having a loss. So my guess is when the stock market eventually deals with reality and pricing, which will come at a time when there’s not a zero interest rate policy and we’re long past QE, I think they’ll address it.

Rick’s full clip:

Precisely: when reality reasserts itself – a reality which Rick accurately points out has been suspended due to 5 years and counting of Fed central-planning – HFT will be “addressed.” How? As the scapegoat of course. Because since virtually nobody really understands what HFT does, it can just as easily be flipped from innocent market bystander which “provides liquidity” to the root of all evil.

In other words: the high freaks are about to become the most convenient, and “misunderstood” scapegoat, for when the market finally does crash. Which means that those HFT-associated terms which very few recognize now, especially those on either side of the pro/anti-HFT debate who have very strong opinions but zero factual grasp of the matter, such as the following…

• Frontrunning: needs no explanation
• Subpennying: providing a “better” bid or offer in a fraction of penny to force the underlying order to move up or down.
• Quote Stuffing: the HFT trader sends huge numbers of orders and cancels
• Layering: multiple, large orders are placed passively with the goal of “pushing” the book away
• Order Book Fade: lightning-fast reactions to news and order book pressure lead to disappearing liquidity
• Momentum ignition: an HFT trader detects a large order targeting a percentage of volume, and front-runs it.

… will become part of the daily jargon as the anti-HFT wave sweeps through the land.

Why? Well to redirect anger from the real culprit for the manipulated market of course: the Federal Reserve. Because while what HFT does is or should be illegal, in performing its daily duties, it actively facilitates and assists the Fed’s underlying purpose: to boost asset prices to ever greater record highs in hopes that some of this paper wealth will eventually trickle down, contrary to five years of evidence that the wealth is merely being concentrated making the wealthiest even richer.

Amusingly some get it, such as the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, Stephen Roach, who in the clip below lays it out perfectly, and explains precisely why HFT will be the next big Lehman-type fall guy, just after the next market crash happens. To wit: “flash traders are bit players compared to the biggest rigger of all which is the Fed.” Because after the next crash, which is only a matter of time, everything will be done to deflect attention from the “biggest rigger of all.”

Roach start 1:30 in the clip below.

So, dear HFT firms, enjoy your one trading day loss in 1238. Those days are about to come to a very abrupt, and unhappy, end.

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Via Jim Quinn's Burning Platform blog,

Have you noticed the avalanche of IPOs in recent weeks? Remember the avalanche of IPOs in early 2000 and early 2007? John Hussman points out the inconvenient fact that 75% of the shitty recent IPOs lose money. Wall Street is dumping this crap on the muppets as fast as possible. They know it is late in the game and the party is just about over, but they will be dancing until the punchbowl is empty and everyone is puking in the bathroom. The lesson of history is that people never learn the lessons of history. Profits and cash flow matter in the long run. Accounting fraud and currency debasement have never sustained an economic system before and they won’t this time. Keep dancing if you choose, but you know the game is rigged and you aren’t part of the privileged rigger class.  

As John Hussman explains in his latest note,

Fed-induced yield seeking is alive and well, but the desire for new “product” is being satisfied not with mortgage debt, but with low quality covenant lite debt and equity market speculation.With regard to the debt markets, leveraged loan issuance (loans to already highly indebted borrowers) reached $1.08 trillion in 2013, eclipsing the 2007 peak of $899 billion. The Financial Times reports that two-thirds of new leveraged loans are now covenant lite (lacking the normal protections that protect investors against a total loss in the event of default), compared with 29% at the 2007 peak. European covenant lite loan issuance has also increased above the 2007 bubble peak. This is an important area for regulatory oversight.

Meanwhile, almost as if to put a time-stamp on the euphoria of the equity markets, IPO investors placed a $6 billion value on a video game app last week. Granted, IPO speculation is nowhere near what it was in the dot-com bubble, when one could issue an IPO worth more than the GDP of a small country even without any assets or operating history, as long as you called the company an “incubator.” Still, three-quarters of recent IPOs are companies with zero or negative earnings (the highest ratio since the 2000 bubble peak), and investors have long forgotten that neither positive earnings, rapid recent growth, or a seemingly “reasonable” price/earnings ratio are enough to properly value a long-lived security. As I warned at the 2000 and 2007 peaks, P/E multiples – taken at face value –implicitly assume that current earnings are representative of a very long-term stream of future cash flows. One can only imagine that recording artist Carl Douglas wishes he could have issued an IPO based his 1974 earnings from the song Kung Fu Fighting, or one-hit-wonder Lipps Inc. based on Q2 1980 revenues from their double-platinum release Funkytown.

The same representativeness problem is evident in the equity market generally, where investors are (as in 2000 and 2007) valuing equities based on record earnings at cyclically extreme profit margins, without considering the likely long-term stream of more representative cash flows.

 

Corporate profits appear likely to contract over the next few years from a mean-reversion perspective. The chart below shows corporate profits relative to GDP, against subsequent 4-year growth in corporate profits (right scale inverted). While relationship is not exact, there is little reason to believe that the current near-record share of profits will be sustained indefinitely. A high share of profits relative to GDP is related, even in recent economic cycles, to weak subsequent profit growth over the next several years. Arguments that the economy that has “changed” in a way that invalidates this regularity had better identify something that has permanently invalidated all of economic history prior to about 2010.

Read the rest of John Hussman’s Weekly Letter.

And while some have thrown cold-water on Hussman's chart suggesting it is missing the key Foreign vs Domestic difference in corporate profits… as he additionally explains, here is the 'domestic profits only' version…

 

On the subject of profit margins, there’s no question that the difference between CPATAX/GDP and domestic profits/GDP (one can use GNP almost identically) is driven by foreign profits, which have increased as a share of U.S. profits in recent years (just as profits earned in the U.S. by foreign companies have increased). But even if we exclude foreign profits and focus strictly on domestic profits, we find their GDP share at a record high, and can still explain that outcome as the result of mirror-image deficits in combined government and household savings.

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