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David A.

Rosenberg June 2, 2009


Chief Economist & Strategist Economics Commentary
drosenberg@gluskinsheff.com
+ 1 416 681 8919

MARKET MUSINGS & DATA DECIPHERING

Breakfast with Dave


DUE TO TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS, BREAKFAST WITH DAVE WILL RETURN ON
FRIDAY.
IN THIS ISSUE

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING • The Dow trades in two


A slightly different tone to start the day: legends — will shift tech
and financial weightings
Europe is off 0.6% and most of Asia is down as well (the Hang Seng index
slipped 499 points or 2.2%; the Kospi dipped 0.2%, Singapore Straits and the • There are four factors
Sensex closed 0.7% lower; though the Shanghai and the Nikkei eked out driving the equity markets:
technicals, fund flows,
fractional gains). All in, emerging markets declined 1.1% (reports that North valuation and
Korea is getting set to test launch more missiles didn’t help much). Emerging fundamentals
markets in general can hardly be described as cheap as they trade at 43x
• The folks at the ISM
earnings, but nothing really stands out as being undervalued right now. The S&P
claimed that the recession
500 has gone ahead, in our view, and priced in an earnings profile we don’t see has come to an end …
occurring for another three years — at the earliest. As everyone gazes at the wishful thinking
200-day moving average being taken out for the first time in 18 months, we are
• Caution on the Canadian
still wondering (see below) what the omen was yesterday from the fact that the dollar as we head into the
VIX index, for the first time in at least seven years, rose alongside a 2%+ BoC meeting
performance in the S&P 500 (normally, the VIX index declines between 10% and
20% on such a rally).

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.

Please see important disclosures at the end of this document.

Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. is one of Canada’s pre-eminent wealth management firms. Founded in 1984 and focused primarily on high net
worth private clients, we are dedicated to meeting the needs of our clients by delivering strong, risk-adjusted returns together with the highest
level of personalized client service. For more information or to subscribe to Gluskin Sheff economic reports, visit www.gluskinsheff.com
June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE

The futures market, without perhaps understanding what history teaches us


about the stance of monetary policy following a credit collapse, which is to keep We still expect to see
rates to the floor for, oh, about a decade, has gone ahead and priced in no fewer long dated yields enjoy a
than three Fed rate hikes over the next 12 months. Then again, it’s the same significant 2H recovery
futures strip that started to price out the easing cycle in late 2007 and price in once it becomes clear
Fed tightening this time last year. This is what opportunities are made of. We that there is no durable
still expect to see long-dated yields enjoy a significant second-half recovery once recovery starting in Q3
it becomes evident — likely later this summer — that there is no durable recovery
starting in the third quarter.

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

BOND SELLOFF BELIES DEFLATION REALITIES


Nothing is as important to the inflation backdrop as the labor market —
wages/salaries/benefits are seven times more powerful in determining the
corporate pricing structure. With this in mind, we see today a reference to a
Challenger, Gray and Christmas survey conducted in May showing that 52.4% of
companies have instituted salary cuts and/or other cost-cutting initiatives.

DOW TRADES IN TWO LEGENDS — WILL LIFT TECH & FINANCIAL


WEIGHTINGS
The Dow 30 is dropping not just GM (for the first time since 1925 — only G.E.
has been in the index longer) in favor of Cisco (bringing the tech weighting to
17% and likely to usher in more volatility as a result), but Citi is also going to be
replaced by Travelers, which in turn raises the financials share to 10% from 7%.

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

As the just-released Barclays survey of some 600 fund managers


revealed, fully 60% had been viewing the move off the March lows as a
bear market rally, less than 5% bought into the V-shaped recovery
forecast; and only 9% were fully invested. The risk of being pressured to
chase performance is high, and along with that, the odds of a further
melt-up, all the more so with the technicals being pierced in resounding
fashion.
3. The global trailing P/E multiple has surged five points during this rally to
15x. So this market is far from cheap. Let’s look at the S&P 500. A
classic mid-cycle multiple is 15x, so basically the market is pricing in $63
of operating earnings. That is being generous because based on where From a valuation
the corporate bond market is trading, the fair-value multiple is around standpoint, this market
12.5x, which then means that equities are discounting $75 of earnings, is far from cheap
which we would not expect to see until 2013 at the earliest. (A 15x
multiple is also rather generous when one considers that we now have an
economy where large chunks — autos, insurance, mortgages, banks — are
at least partially owned by the government.) Look at this way — we are
going to be hard-pressed to see operating EPS much better than $43 this
year. A ‘normal’ first-year earnings bounce is 20%, and again this is being
generous, but that would leave us with $52 EPS for 2010.
We give that prospect very little chance of occurring, and we have some
difficulty with the stock market going ahead and pricing in an earnings
profile that is likely four or more years away from occurring. Are we going
to be back pricing in end-of-cycle or recession earnings this time next year
at the rate at which investors are discounting the future. There may be
upside to this market based on factors (i) and (ii) but we remain
concerned about its longevity because at some point, post-bubble
earnings realities in a deflationary top-line environment (nearly two-thirds
of S&P 500 companies missed their revenue targets in Q1) will re-emerge
on the front burner.
4. The economic fundamentals are open for debate, to be sure. The same
consensus and equity market that couldn’t see the recession coming two
months before it did surface back in 2007 are now supremely convinced
that the recession is over and that economic renewal has begun. This
has gone even further than ‘green shoots’. But what provided the real
spark yesterday was the ISM index coming in at 42.8, up from 40.1 in
April; as with the consumer confidence surveys, this was the best result
since last September when Lehman collapsed. What caused the
excitement was that the folks at the ISM claimed that at 41.2 on the
business diffusion index, the recession comes to an end.
WISHFUL THINKING
Maybe that is true in a classic manufacturing inventory recession, but this was a
downturn led by asset deflation and a credit collapse. Let’s go back to when the
recession began in December 2007 and you may be interested to know that the
ISM was 49.1. The month before LEH collapsed, oh, only eight months into the
recession, the ISM was sitting at 49.3. So somehow, we are to believe that the
recession has ended because the ISM broke fractionally above 41.2. Mercy.
This was not a manufacturing-led recession — the factory sector was an innocent
bystander in this de-leveraging cycle.

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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.

Page 5 of 9
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

CAUTION ON CANADIAN DOLLAR:


Crude oil and the metals have broken out but natural gas and forest products We wouldn’t be long the
(together 10% of the export base) have actually fallen during this CAD run. The CAD heading into the
CRB index has gone nuts but the rally in the loonie has more than doubled the BoC meeting this
increase in the BoC’s commodity index so this has actually been a significant net coming Thursday
tightening of monetary conditions. I don’t think the BoC necessarily changes its
outlook but if it doesn’t at least pay any lip service to what the currency has
done since the last meeting I think it is going to look out of touch. All that has to
happen in the statement is an acknowledgment that the appreciation, while
deserved based on the favorable terms of trade shock, has overshot the
commodity fundamentals nonetheless.

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

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June 2, 2009 – BREAKFAST WITH DAVE

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