Category Archives: Equities

earnings

Posted on by

Who would have thought…

Earnings Season Already Looks Like a Train Wreck

By Jeff Cox

June 24 (CNBC) — Companies haven’t even started posting second-quarter earnings results yet, but the early picture isn’t pretty.

The pre-earnings season is often referred to by market insiders as the “confessional”—that time when Corporate America starts letting shareholders know the truth between earnings perception and reality.

If this quarter’s version is a reliable indicator, there will be some serious penance handed out once announcements officially begin in two weeks.

Earnings pre-announcements have been decidedly ugly, running about 7 to 1 negative to positive.

That’s the worst level since the first quarter of 2009, when, in the words of Citigroup chief strategist Tobias Levkovich, “the global economy was sitting on the edge of the abyss undergoing a financial crisis and near systemic meltdown.”

Alcoa traditionally kicks off earnings season, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average component and aluminum producer expected to show profit of 10 cents a share.

But more broadly, Wall Street consensus expects little profit growth in S&P 500 companies for the second quarter.

That could be bad news for stocks, considering that earnings per share collectively has closely mirrored the 140 percent growth in the stock market index since the March 2009 lows.

All the market talk about what the Federal Reserve has in store, Levkovich said, has come “almost without spending any time looking at earnings estimates or trends less than a month before second-quarter results are released.”

“Such a thought process seems ill-founded since earnings matter the most for equities, in our opinion, and there is relatively robust statistical evidence to back up that contention,” he said. “In this respect, we have been a tad shocked by the surge in negative-to-positive pre-announcement trends that make 2009’s surge appear less worrisome in retrospect.”

Indeed, a flat earnings outlook suggests a flat market or worse, particularly after the sour reaction following last week’s pronouncement from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that the central bank’s $85 billion a month liquidity program could wrap up in 2014.

For his part, Levkovich is no alarmist. His team espouses what it calls a “Raging Bull” theory that sees a strongly positive long-term market outlook.

But his words do fit with an increasingly likely outlook in which the market will be at the least hard-pressed to match the 11.6 percent year-to-date gains on the S&P 500.

Bullish investors have been counting on growth to fuel the next leg of the rally.

Profit outlooks, though, seem too rosy.

S&P Capital IQ projects the third quarter to show 6.7 percent gains and the fourth quarter to register 11.6 percent. Levkovich calls the expectations “a bit too optimistic,” which seems like an understatement considering that most economic indicators outside of housing are showing signs of a slowdown.

He sees the future entailing a healthy pulling back of earnings estimates, which investors should watch closely.

“We suspect that such trimming may come about over the next six months, rather than in one fell swoop,” Levkovich said. “Thus, future estimate cuts could be a drag on equity prices and investors need to shift their attention away from just watching every wiggle out of the Fed.”

Share

last update from Rome, home tomorrow

Posted on by

Markets remain in ‘QE off’ mode, with stocks down and longer term rates up.

‘QE on’ was a misguided speculative bubble in any case, as QE is, at best, a placebo, and in fact somewhat of a tax as it removes a bit of interest income.

But obviously global markets view it as a massive stimulus, as per the various market responses.

The real economy, however, continues to suffocate from a too small US federal budget made even smaller by the proactive tax hikes and spending cuts.

Yes, there is some private sector credit expansion trying to fill the ‘spending gap’ caused by the fiscal tightening, but all that and more is needed to keep it all growing in the face of the ongoing automatic fiscal stabilizers that make it an ‘uphill’ battle for the forces of non govt credit expansion.

So seems to me this all leads to lower equity prices as prospects for earnings and growth fade, and, at some point, lower bond yields as expectations for Fed rate hikes are pushed further into the future by the economic reality.

I also look for confidence readings, one of the few ‘bright spots’, to fade with the equity sell off as well.

And, at some point, ‘QE on’ ceases to matter, under the ‘fool me once…’ theory???

And should that happen, and the Fed be exposed as ‘the kid in the car seat with the toy steering wheel who everyone thinks is driving’, no telling what happens…

Share

Taper worms at the wheel

Posted on by

The taper worms are still driving things this am.

To the taper worms, tapering equals ‘bonds’ higher in yield and stocks lower in price.

Fundamentally, however, the Fed only tapers if the economy is strong which is good for stocks.

And no tapering means the economy is weak, which is fundamentally bad for stocks and bond friendly (lower yields).

That is, the Fed uses the taper message to signal its economic forecast, and it’s that economic forecast that is fundamentally meaningful for stocks and bonds.

But in this thin/illiquid May market the whims of global hedge funds and portfolio managers rule.

Share

Thinking Caps On – Grab a Coffee – Sales/Trading Commentary

Posted on by

From: JJ LANDO
At: May 14 2013 07:41:14

Consider the following thought experiment. These are the scenarios:
A. The Treasury decides that it will fund itself 30% more in Overnight Bills and reduce issuance across the curve.
B. The Fed announces it will increase QE by 30% (it will remit the net income of this activity back to the Treasury like taxes)
C. Congress announces a new tax on all passive income from USTs, to holders both at home and abroad (ie Central Banks), for all new-issue USTs
D. Lew pre-announces that we will ‘selectively default’ and apply a haircut of on all future Treasury coupon payments of new issues.

Here’s what’s funny. Most intelligent market participants will say things like:
A. Stocks down a few percent on fear of downgrade. Economy slightly weaker or unchanged.
B. Stocks up 5-10% and economy grows another 1% for 1-2yrs; monetary stimulus.
C. Stocks down 5-10% on tax hike (like last year) that maybe corrects. Economy slows 1-2% for a year or so because it’s a tax hike (ie fiscal consolidation).
D. Stocks down 80% and we go into a great depression on steroids. All investment dollars flee the US. I can’t tell you what happens next because my Bloomberg account gets shut down. They might even declare an Internet Holiday.

Here’s what’s craziest: THESE ARE ALL THE SAME THING. The name and the process is different, the OPTICS is different, but the net is the same. There’s the government and there’s everyone else. The government either pays more out – in interest payments or transfer payments or vendor payments, or it takes back more in taxes or default or interest ‘savings.’ Everything the government net gets in ‘revenue’ the rest of the world loses in income. Everything the government dissaves (deficits) the rest of the world saves. Equal and opposite.

[You need to further get around the idea that reserves are overnight bills and there’s no such thing as ‘monetary base’ – just interest rates; that lower discount rates are lower no matter how you get there; that rate cuts are taxes are austerity, even considering the benefit to risk assets from ‘lower riskfree discount rates’… it’s all basically true if you think abt it long and hard].

Here we are, almost 550 rate cuts into this thing, and inflation everywhere with QE is basically falling (see chart), and incomes are falling everywhere but in the top brackets (see page 9 here for a TRULY SOBERING CHART)… let us never forget that the goal is TO IMPROVE PEOPLE’S QUALITY OF LIFE NOT TO JUICE GDP . Thus economics as a whole also has some major shortcomings. Exporting your way to prosperity is the same as turning your entire population into servants to foreign masters. Disinflation due to lower input costs or better goods or technological gains are good things. HOWEVER if suddenly 20-somethings find social currency in free online friend status rather than cars and houses and weddings – if it makes them happy that’s great but it is also a downward shift in the demand curve that if isn’t replaced leads to someone somewhere being unemployed. These are different issues that shouldn’t all be swept under the ‘disinflation’ rug.

But I digress. Where am I going with all this?
Let’s pretend risk is now in the last 6m-18m phase where everything rallies, everyone in the pool, everyone chases any risk premium to sell, and the underlying income trends are irrelevant. Since I also will posit the Fed isn’t hiking in the next 18 months, I now believe the Fed will entirely miss this risk cycle. Which means they are on hold beyond any trading horizon. So what triggers the end of the cycle? Most would argue – the fear that they ‘tighten’ or ‘hike’ or ‘aren’t on hold anymore.’
To that I disagree…the income and earnings just isn’t there and QE is hurting…in fact the reason the consumer is now tracking +3-4% has been due to a decline in the savings rate (1-handle in q1 as tax hikes hit) that is prone to reverse…it’s MUCH more likely is what triggers the end is that the world starts to understand that QE is a lot like a tax (+ some ‘Richfare’) rather than a stimulus…and that lower rates do raise asset prices for the asset rich but lower incomes and the net to the median person is not what it appears…I see progress on this day every front…TBAC is starting to get it…the inflation markets are starting to get it… we’ll get there … low rates forever…buy blues..

Share

REINHART: Regarding Hilsenrath//+ Retail Sales

Posted on by

A number of people have inquired about this morning’s front page article in the WSJ by Jon Hilsenrath, “Fed Maps Exit from Stimulus.”

This seems constructed by Jon in a way that is very much reminiscent of the three-day inflation scare and talk of early exit he created last year. Note four points:

1. Jon does not have access to policy makers in the way the WSJ beat reporter once had. The days of Wessel and Ip are over. Bernanke was very reluctant to provide informal guidance to begin with, and the practice virtually ceased with the report of the Subcommittee on Communications at the beginning of last year. Essentially, they decided to speak authoritatively in FOMC statements and everyone was free to offer their own view in the public record after that, but not off camera.

2. The first two paragraphs are an extended, bloated, version of the single sentence in the statement that said “The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes.” Those paragraphs don’t say anything more than the Fed has a plan to do its job. This reminds me of the CNBC banner yesterday morning while Bernanke was giving his speech on financial stability. It said “BREAKING NEWS: THE FED IS MONITORING FINANCIAL STABILITY.” It would have been just as informative to run the banner “BREAKING NEWS: THE FED IS STILL IN BUSINESS.”

3. Note that the only two on-the-record, active voices are Charlie Plosser and Richard Fisher. Those two are probably last on the list of reliable co-conspirators for the core of the Committee that makes policy. But those quotes, plus the older Williams’ one, allows Jon to write “Fed officials” to make it sound like he has access to the second floor of the Board. It also lets him bring out the stale dealers survey.

4. Note the inconsistencies in the story. Fed officials want to put more volatility in the market by conveying that QE is a flexible, smoothly adjusting instrument. The problem is that this makes more sense if the effect of QE was on flows, not stocks, which they have studiously denied for four years. By the way, if those conspiring officials want to make clear it won’t be a slow, steady retreat of accommodation, than they better tell Janet Yellen to stop showing the optimal policy path. Good luck to that.

I believe the central message, which is what I have described in earlier notes: Fed officials want to put as much volatility as possible back into the market before starting to raise rates, provided financial conditions otherwise remain supportive to sustained expansion. They’ll take opportunities to do so on the back of an equity market rally. But Jon Hilsenrath is not the means they will do so.

Vincent


Karim writes:
RETAIL SALES

  • April retail Sales were strong both in terms of the actual advance and composition. Moreover upward revisions to the control group for Feb and March imply an upward revision to Q1 GDP from 2.5% to 2.8%.
  • The 0.5% advance in the control group for April was more impressive due to the breadth and composition of the gains. In particular, all the major discretionary spending categories were quite strong: electronics 0.8%, clothing/accessories 1.2%, sporting goods 0.5% and restaurants 0.8%.
  • As the chief economist of the ISCS commented the other day on chain store sales for April: It is most likely being boosted by a stronger household wealth effect from higher home and stock market prices. Although it was an improvement of recent months, the pace was still dampened by adverse seasonal weather,
  • With fiscal drag peaking this quarter, and private sector growth maintaining the momentum it has shown since Q4 of last year, its making 3-3.5% growth more plausible in the second half. Most dealer forecasts are still in the 2-2.25% area.

HILSENRATH

  • Technically, Reinhart is correct: Hilsenrath is not the mouthpiece for the Fed and this is not all new news.
  • But, he is piecing together a story that the Fed wants out there. That the last hiking cycle was too predictable in terms of both pace and size (25bps/meeting). So, the idea that they can taper a bit and skip a meeting; or taper a bit and taper at a greater pace at the next meeting, are ideas they probably want out there.
  • My guess is Bernanke outlines these concepts in greater detail next week at his JEC testimony (May 22) and that if we get another 175k or greater in private payroll growth plus another strong month in retail sales for May, we could see some tapering at the June meeting.
  • Also notable was Bernanke’s comment on Friday that the Fed is ‘looking closely for signs of excessive risk taking”.

Share

Wholesale sales

Posted on by

Though a bit old, this March release is yet another indicator that shows signs of rolling over.

With the tax hikes and spending cuts, it’s up to private sector credit expansion to rise to the occasion. Should the lost income and lost jobs cause it instead to roll over, we’re looking at negative GDP.

How well do stocks forecast this risk?
Note, for example, the last time private sector credit expansion went into reverse, the S&P rallied to an interim peak of over 1,400 mid May of 2008, in front of a 50%+ sell off.

Not at all that it will happen again, but that markets aren’t all that good at forecasting private sector credit acceleration going into reverse.


Full size image

Share

placebo’s doing their thing

Posted on by

As previously discussed, financial placebos like QE do cause market participants to alter behavior out of either a misunderstanding of the actual fundamentals, or in anticipation of reactions by others presumed to be misinformed. And while the effects of these activities get reversed, however sometimes the effects are more lasting.

And there are also first order and second order effects. For example, a QE announcement could unleash misinformed fears about ‘money printing’ and ‘currency debasement’ and subsequent portfolio shifting that drives down the currency in the fx markets and drives up the price of gold. And the same misguided fears could cause bond yields to go higher in anticipation of a stronger/inflationary economy, even with the Fed buying bonds in an attempt to take yields lower.

So right now the QE/’monetary policy works if large enough’ placebo is at least partially driving things in both Japan and the US, and today’s announcement of the possibility of the ECB buying asset backed securities is now also at work.

And along the same lines but with a different ‘sign’ is the ideologically driven idea that cutting govt spending in the face of a large output gap- the sequester- is a plus for output and employment. Same for the year end tax hikes.

The underlying fundamental I don’t see discussed is whether private sector credit expansion can continue to sufficiently ‘overcome’ the declining govt deficit spending and satisfy the ‘savings desires’/demand leakages.

The main sources of private sector credit expansion are housing, student loans ($9 billion increase in March), and cars. Since 2009, the private sector credit expansion has managed to stay far enough ahead of the declining govt deficit, which has fallen from about 9% of GDP to about a rate of 6% of GDP by year end (mainly via the ‘automatic fiscal stabilizers’ of higher tax receipts and moderating transfer payments) resulting in about 2% real growth.

The question now is whether the private sector credit expansion can survive the 1.25% of GDP shock of the FICA tax hike and sequesters- which reduce support from the govt deficit to only maybe 4.5% of GDP- and still continue to sufficiently feed the (ever growing) demand leakages enough to generate positive GDP growth.

The stock market is often the best leading indicator of the macro economy, but it has ‘paused’ for two double dips that didn’t happen over the last few years, and it is subject to influence from placebos. Additionally, valuations change as implied discount rates change, and so in this case P/E’s shifting upwards may be discounting interest rates staying low for longer, due to an economy too weak to trigger Fed rate hikes, but strong enough to keep sales and earnings at least flat.

Placebo Surgery Shows Surprising Results

By Kate Melville

Research by Doctor Cynthia McRae of the University of Denver’s College of Education provides strong evidence for a significant mind-body connection among patients who participated in a Parkinson’s surgical trial.

Forty persons from the United States and Canada participated to determine the effectiveness of transplantation of human embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of persons with advanced Parkinson’s disease. Twenty patients received the transplant while 20 more were randomly assigned to a sham surgery condition. Dr. McRae reports that the “placebo effect” was strong among the 30 patients who participated in the quality of life portion of the study.

“Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received,” says Dr. McRae. More importantly, objective ratings of neurological functioning by medical personnel showed a similar effect. In the report, appearing in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. McRae writes “medical staff, who did not know which treatment each patient received, also reported more differences and changes at 12 months based on patients’ perceived treatment than on actual treatment.”

One patient reported that she had not been physically active for several years before surgery, but in the year following surgery she resumed hiking and ice skating. When the double blind was lifted, she was surprised to find that she had received the sham surgery.

Although patient perceptions influenced their test scores, when the total sample of patients was grouped by the actual operation they received, patients who had the actual transplant surgery showed improvement in movement while, on average, patients who had sham surgery did not.

Professor Dan Russell at Iowa State, the study’s co-author, says the findings have both scientific and practical implications. “This study is extremely important in regard to the placebo effect because we know of no placebo studies that have effectively maintained the double-blind for at least 12 months. The average length of placebo studies is eight weeks,” according to Russell. Dr. McRae notes that similar results related to the placebo effect have been found in other studies with patients with Parkinson’s disease. She says that there is a need for placebo controls in studies evaluating treatment for Parkinson’s as the placebo effect seems to be very strong in this disease. Dr. McRae also reports that although the sham surgery research design is somewhat controversial and has raised some ethical concerns, the results of this study show “the importance of a double-blind design to distinguish the actual and perceived values of a treatment intervention.”

Knee Surgery Proves No Better Than Placebo

By Katrina Woznicki

July 10, 2002 (UPI) — For individuals suffering from osteoarthritis in their knees, a common type of knee surgery has been found to be no more beneficial than a placebo, a new study revealed Wednesday.

Researchers at the Houston VA Medical Center and at Baylor College of Medicine came to this surprising conclusion after comparing various knee treatments to placebo surgery on 180 patients with knee pain.

The patients were randomly divided into three groups. One group underwent debridement, in which the damaged or loose cartilage is the knee is surgically removed by an arthroscope, a pencil-thin tube that allows doctors to see inside the knee. The second group received arthoscopic lavage, which flushes out the bad cartilage from the healthier tissue. A third group underwent a placebo surgery. They were sedated by medication while surgeons simulated arthroscopic surgery on their knees by making small incisions on the leg, but not removing any tissue.

During a two-year follow-up, researchers found no differences among the three groups. All patients reported improvement in their symptoms of pain and ability to use their knees. Throughout the two years, patients were unaware whether they had received the “real” or placebo surgery.

However, patients who received actual surgical treatments did not report less pain or better functioning of their knees compared to the placebo group. In fact, periodically during the follow-up, the placebo group reported a better outcome compared to the patients who underwent debridement.

Share

Norway oil fund makes big move from bonds to stocks

Posted on by

Seems like this ‘quasi’ govt type of thing is often later shown to be behind ‘difficult to explain’ ‘liquidity driven’ equity moves.

Norway oil fund makes big move from bonds to stocks

By Richard Milne in Oslo

April 29 (FT) — Norway’s oil fund has reduced its bond holdings to their lowest ever level as the worlds largest sovereign wealth fund signals its discomfort with the effects of western central banks money printing.

The fund held just 36.7 per cent of its $726bn assets in bonds at the end of the first quarter, the lowest proportion since it first received money in 1996. Its equity holdings were close to a record high, accounting for 62.4 per cent of the total.

Yngve Slyngstad, the funds chief executive, told the Financial Times there had been a significant change in rhetoric away from its previous comments that it was comfortable with a high level of equity holdings.

Now it is that we are not so comfortable with the low returns in the bond portfolio. It is not enthusiasm for the equity market but a lack of enthusiasm for the bond market, he said.

The worlds biggest sovereign wealth fund by some distance, Norways oil fund has for some time been concerned about the low level of government bond yields and what that will mean for fixed income return.

But Norges Bank Investment Management, as it is also known, is reluctant to comment about money printing, known as quantitative easing, by the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England or Bank of Japan as the fund is part of the Norwegian central bank.

Still, Mr Slyngstad said unconventional actions were riskier than normal measures, signalling his unease. Unconventional in this context means untried. Things that are untried have a different risk profile than things that have been tried, he added.

The fund has been shifting both its bond and equity holdings away from dollar, yen, euro and sterling assets to those of emerging markets . But the fund is noticeably more positive on US Treasuries than other western government bonds with Mr Slyngstad saying they serve [a] double purpose of being a haven and highly liquid.

Mr Slyngstad said the fund could take several courses of action to reduce the risk of a sharp fall in bond prices, including buying real assets such as property and diversifying into new currencies. It has also reduced the average duration of its bond holdings from about six to five years.

His comments came as the fund delivered its biggest ever quarterly increase in its market value of NKr366bn. It posted a 5.4 per cent overall return with equities gaining 8.3 per cent and fixed income just 1.1 per cent. Apple, Santander and BHP Billiton were its worst-performing investments while BlackRock, Nestl and Novartis were the best. The oil fund also formally unveiled its plans to become a more active investor , as first revealed by the Financial Times. Mr Slyngstad has joined the nomination committee of Swedish truckmaker Volvo , the first time the fund has formally participated in the selection of board directors.

Share