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Bonds are still trading quite defensively, and the yield on the 10-year T-note has
managed to do in less than six months, which is to soar 170 basis points, what it
took 48 months to do in the last bear market in bonds (June/03 to June/07).
Inflation expectations are getting way ahead of themselves — the 5-year/5-year
breakeven levels in the TIPS market are now at 2.4% (above the average of the
past five years — you would think we’d be staring at a fully employed economy
right in the face). This is at a time when both the YoY trends in the CPI and PPI
are negative to boot, not to mention the highest underlying jobless rate and
lowest industry CAPU rates in modern history! Talk about a new paradigm. The
U.K. gets its credit outlook downgraded, and its currency soars and its bond
market vastly outperforms Treasuries. Welcome to silly season. The 2s-10s
curve is back at 275bps, a record steepness, and never before has a curve this
steep been sustainable — it will flatten, the question is how.
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
As an aside, from our lens, part of the run-up in Treasury yields may be related
to the shift to risky assets, perhaps related as well to exuberance over some of
the economic data and hopes the recession will end. Though we did see yields
bottom in 1993 and again in 2003, long after recessions ended, so the contours
of the recovery are also very important in the interest rate outlook — bond yields
never hit their bottom until after the unemployment rate peaks, and that is likely
at least a year away, in our view. But there are technical factors at play too,
which is mortgage-related selling (mortgage investors move to offset their
duration exposure when rates back up by selling Treasuries — this last happened
in a situation like this in the summer of 2007 and it ushered in one of the most
fantastic buying opportunities in years at the long end of the curve). Those
pundits calling for higher yield activity seem more bent on following the market
than calling it.
In any event, overnight, we did see along with the profit-taking in equities (and
we shall soon see if yesterday’s move was a classic ‘double top’ with the January
6th intra-day high or if the break of the 200-day m.a. was the onset of a whole
fresh set of legs for this cyclical up-move), the yen and dollar recover and oil and
copper retreat a tad. The commodity-based currencies are also off a bit, in part
because the Reserve Bank of Australia said that there is “scope for some further
easing” in policy. That trimmed about 0.5% from the Aussie — will the BoC also
find a way to curb the over-enthusiasm over the loonie when it releases its press
statement on Thursday? (We think so.)
On the data front, a mixed bag overall: While the U.K. printed a ‘green shoot’
data-point in the form of home loan approvals (43,201 in April from 40,038 in
March — best in a year), the CIPS construction index dropped to its lowest level
in at last three years (45.9). France’s PPI deflated 0.9% MoM in April and -6.4%
on a YoY basis versus -4.7% in March (consensus was for a -5.5% reading on a
YoY basis). And, the Eurozone unemployment rate jumped to a 10-year high of
9.2% in April from 8.9% in March (coming in above the 9.1% consensus
estimate). Inflation rates through most of Asia have just plunged to their lowest
level in two years.
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
THERE ARE FOUR DIFFERENT FACTORS THAT DRIVE THE EQUITY MARKET
They are:
1. Technicals
2. Fund flows/Market positioning
3. Valuation
4. Fundamentals
Let’s examine each one at the current time.
1. With regard to the technicals, they are uber-bullish. Not only has the A-D
line broken out to the high side, but the S&P 500 yesterday broke above
the intra-day high of 943 set back on January 6, not to mention taking out Technicals for the equity
the 200-day moving average. The ultimate retest will have to wait
market are uber-bullish
another day. This market is at risk now of melting up; and, as I said
before when I was keeping an open mind regarding the longevity of this
rally, notwithstanding my skepticism, if credit spreads, Libor, the Ted
spread and commodity prices could all go back to pre-Lehman levels, why
couldn’t the S&P 500 too? That would mean a possible test to the high
side of 1,200, believe it or not. That is an observation, not a forecast, by
the way. Back when we hit that level last fall, it was a glass-half-empty
feeling of being down 20% from the highs; this time around it is a cause
for celebrating an 80% move off the lows! The S&P 500 is now up more
than 4.0% for the year; the Nasdaq, which was the first of the major
averages to break above the 200-day m.a., is up 16.0% year-to-date. The
Dow is roughly flat.
2. The rally seemed to have stalled out on May 8 and for the next three
weeks, all the market seemed to do was range-trade between 880 and
920 on the S&P 500 … until yesterday. The initial source of buying power
in March was the dramatic short-covering and pension fund rebalancing. In the last three weeks,
Then in April the retail investor became enamoured of the ‘green shoots’ it seems that the market
and found $12 billion of money to put into equity mutual funds (only the was going nowhere …
second net inflow in the last year, by the way). And, as May morphed into until yesterday
June we likely have started to see the capitulation among institutional
portfolio managers, who collectively shard by cautious view.
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
Moreover, within the ISM survey details, what we see is that 28% of businesses
reported any growth at all last month, compared with 39% in May 2008 — again,
when the recession was into its fourth month. Somehow, with fewer industries The folks at the ISM
expanding now compared to then, the recession, we are told, is done. If only it
claimed that the
recession has come to
were true.
an end … if only it were
true
No doubt there was good news in the ISM orders component (it rose to 51.1
from 47.2 — best level since December/07) and the customer inventory
segment was at its tightest level since April/08. But it is hard to believe that
orders will continue to expand in the absence of a recovery in consumer sales;
and that is going to require an end to the multi-month wave of job losses. What
was dismissed, for some reason, from the ISM report was that the employment
component dipped to 34.3 from 34.4 — when the recession began, it was sitting
at 48.7. Fascinating way to the end the recession — ISM employment 14 points
lower than when the downturn officially began.
Not only must employment bottom before the recession ends, but so must
consumer spending. So what we saw yesterday morning that was interesting
was that the combination of the tax relief and benefit increases gave personal
income an artificial $110 billion boost (at an annual rate) in April, and even with
that stimulus, consumer spending still contracted $5½ billion or 0.1% on top of
a 0.3% decline in March. Wages and salaries in the private sector contracted
$1.3 billion, the eighth decline in a row totalling a cumulative $160 billion loss.
As with so many other parts of the economy (mortgages, autos), the only factor
holding up household incomes is the government.
The really big story is that the fiscal stimulus is assisting in the household
balance sheet repair process, but is not really doing much to spur consumer
spending — highlighted by the rise in the personal savings rate to a 15-year high
of 5.7% from 4.5% in March and zero a year ago — never before has the savings
rate risen so far over a 12-month span. Note that the post-WWII high in the
savings rate is 14.6% and that is where I believe we are heading. Despite the
conventional wisdom, this is highly deflationary. For a very good ‘take’ on how
spending behaviour is changing on a secular basis, see Americans Get Even
Thriftier as Fears Persist on page A2 of the WSJ. While street economists are
consumed with ‘green shoots’, which is just noise in a downward spending
trajectory, I found what the economist from John Hopkins University (Christopher
Carroll who specializes in consumer behaviour) had to say in the article very
interesting.
In real terms, consumer spending was down 0.1% after a 0.3% drop in March
and points to a moderate contraction for the current quarter. Remember that
consumer spending was also marked down in the revised Q1 report to 1.5% at
an annual rate from 2.2%. Still no evidence of much in the way of ‘green shoots’
here outside of improvement in the second derivative.
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
We are not as bearish on the stock market, at least over the short-term, with the
S&P 500 breaking its 200-day moving average. As we said, there is the risk of a
melt-up as portfolio managers play catch-up. After seeing housing starts
collapse 13%, core capex orders slide 1.5% for two months in a row, jobless Q3 will be key and the
claims pierce the 600k mark for an unprecedented 17 weeks in a row, organic
debate whether or not
we are seeing a recovery
personal income drop for eight months running and back-to-back declines in
will not be settled until
retail sales with little sign of a turnaround in the weekly May data-flow, it stands
we have a good two
to reason that this is an equity market that is extremely forgiving and resolute in
months of data to digest
its belief that the recession will give way towards sustainable positive growth
starting next quarter. We say this with the utmost of humility, but the onus,
indeed the pressure, is now squarely on the bears.
The first quarter was a write-off for GDP and the second quarter is going to show
a contraction of between 2.0% and 4.0% at an annual rate — practically every
economist has this in their forecast. The key is the third quarter and the reality
is that the debate will not be settled until we have a good two months worth of
data to glean at, which means that this rally could well be extended through the
summer; after a 40% rally from the lows, that is certainly a possibility. As for
bonds, well, as with equities the technicals have been pierced and the next level
of support on the 10-year T-note yield is 4.11%.
However, long-term, we believe that the U.S. economy is in a gigantic mess and
that risk-taking in the stock market is not going to be rewarded on a sustained
basis. We continue to hold the view that the stock market, which peaked in
2007 just two months shy of the most intense recession in 70 years, is vastly
overrated as a forecasting device and we strongly believe that portfolios will
need to be cash-generating machines.
If the portfolio isn't providing steady income, the return for investors is going to
be extremely minimal or even negative. So obviously bonds will be playing a
huge role — Treasuries and Canadas at current levels offer a significant inflation-
adjusted yields and high-grade corporates still look attractive despite the
ongoing compression in spreads. Within equities, we hold to the view that
investors should focus on strong dividend-payers and stable cash flows.
One final item to note on Mr. Market; it is not a shoe-in that the stock market is
about to stay on this one-way ticket north. Two things happened yesterday that
is worth noting. First, the late-day round of profit-taking left the S&P 500 at
942.87, which was below the intra-day high of 946.0 reached back on January
6. And something very strange happened in yesterday’s session, which is that
the VIX index rose 3.8% even as the S&P 500 rallied 2.6%. Not only has the VIX
index, in the past, fallen over 95% of the time that the stock market advances,
at no time in the last seven years did a 2%-plus surge in the S&P 500 coincide
with an increase in vol … until yesterday.
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
Just a hint that the BoC isn’t happy with the pace of the CAD’s runup, which is
destabilizing for the economy, let alone unwarranted (also unprecedented) —
could well see a few pennies lopped off the loonie if investors decide to take
same profits. As an aside, the CAD has the identical correlation with natural gas
as it has with the oil price (70%). I would say that the loonie “should” be trading
closer to 83 cents as opposed to 93 cents based on what the overall terms of
trade effect has been from the commodity price pickup. So brother, can you
spare a dime?
But make no mistake, the commodity sector is on a serious run here, and looks
like the flip-side of the breakdown in the U.S. dollar, which has declined to its
low water mark of the year and could easily slip another 5-10% from here. Oil
prices have surged to their highest levels since last November (like so many
other things) and seemingly poised to move into that OPEC range of $70-75/bbl.
Copper has broken out in a meaningful way too — now at a fresh seven-month
high. The CRB index is firming too and just came off its best month — a 14%
run-up in May — since July 1974.
The much-maligned Baltic Dry Index surged 5.4% yesterday and has now
doubled in just the last month, and this has proven in the past to be a fairly
decent leading indicator of the broad resource complex. Unlike the USA, which
has not enjoyed a three-month string of 50+ ISM prints since September-
November of 2007, China just managed to achieve that feat — hence the rally in
the commodity market.
As we said yesterday, this bodes well for the Canadian stock market, which has
an 86% positive correlation with the CRB index versus 28% for the S&P 500.
Moreover, while the Canadian economy is clearly hitched to the United States,
the TSX enjoys a 60% correlation to the Shanghai index — whereas the more
insular U.S. market is only 40% correlated.
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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
ABOUT US
Page 8 of 9
June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE
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