I was in Manhattan last week attending Grant’s Fall Investment Conference. The U.N. General Assembly is meeting there, and the streets were blocked off in places. The NYPD was out in full force. I heard one passerby complain about the inconvenience of it all to one police officer. He responded, “Don’t blame the NYPD, blame the General Assembly.”

With the General Assembly in Manhattan and the G-20 in Pittsburgh, government has taken over the headlines this week. It seems half the world is mostly preoccupied with telling the other half what to do. No doubt, bossiness is in a bull market.

At Grant’s conference, I heard presentations on gold, the dollar, oil, real estate and more by a slate of luminaries, including John Paulson. Paulson is one of the best hedge fund managers in the world. There were many others, including Grant himself, who has created something of a stir lately.

Jim Grant, the host and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, has turned bullish on the recovery. In a Wall Street Journal piece on Saturday, the great bear turned in his claws and picked up the horns of a bull.

In a phrase, Grant’s thesis runs this way: The sharper the decline, the stronger the rebound. For this, he finds ample evidence in the historical record. The economy bounced back strongly after each sharp contraction — such as those in 1893-94, 1907-08, 1920-21 and 1929-31.

In the current recession, GDP (a rough measure of economic activity) contracted nearly 4% from peak to trough, which is a sharp recession as these things go. So, Grant reasons, the rebound will follow the historical pattern.

Grant loves to challenge the consensus. And the consensus this time around is that the recovery will be weak. I loved the quote he pulled from economist A.C. Pigou: “The error of optimism dies in the crisis, but in dying it gives birth to an error of pessimism. This new error is born not an infant, but a giant.”

Grant makes an eloquent and thoughtful case, as he always does. He goes on to conclude in his editorial: “The world is positioned for disappointment. But in economic and financial matters, the world rarely gets what it expects. Pigou had humanity’s number.”

I hope Grant is right. It is an appealing case, but I don’t buy it. Too many of the problems of the prior boom remain unresolved. There is still too much leverage and debt in the system. And on a more basic level, business is not good across a spectrum of sectors. The contraction is still ongoing. I’m inclined to remember the old bearish refrain that things are never so bad that they can’t get worse.

It’s All About Markets

It’s true we’ve had a sharp contraction, but there is no rule that says we can’t contract more. A nearly 4% decline in GDP could turn into an 8% contraction when all is said and done. The move from 4% to 8% would be painful, indeed. Even then, we would be a far cry from the dark woods of the Great Depression.

In some ways, the whole discussion is irrelevant anyway. As investors, we care about markets, and not GDP growth. There is a great fallacy out there that if the economy does well, stocks should do well (or if the economy does poorly, stocks should do poorly). Hence, too many so-called investors waste an inordinate amount of time talking about recovery, or lack thereof.

It’s possible that Grant is right: GDP does expand strongly. But investors could still lose. We have one glaring historical example: From 1964-1981, GDP grew 370%. And the sales of the Fortune 500 more than sextupled. Yet the Dow Jones industrial average went from 874 on Dec. 31, 1964 to 875 on Dec. 31, 1981.

As Warren Buffett once wrote: “Now, I’m known as a long-term investor and a patient guy, but that is not my idea of a big move.”

For investors, it is all about the price paid. The really relevant question is not one of whether or not the economic recovery is real. The question is: are stocks cheap enough? To answer that, you have to look at stocks and compare them with the alternatives.

My answer is some stocks are cheap and some are not. It is hard to generalize. In my view, investing is a craft of the specific. It is in the picking of the trees in which investing skills pay off the most, not in assessing the forest. There are, undoubtedly, specific stocks that will prove nice investments over the next few years. Finding them is what we are all about.

Sincerely,
Chris Mayer

Source: Are the Bears Turning Bullish?

Good day… And a Happy Friday to one and all! It’s still raining here in St. Louis this morning, but I won’t that get me down, as it is a Friday! G-20 has gotten a bit ugly, folks… Seems everyone just can’t seem to get along! Imagine that! 20 different countries, and now they want to be able to watch another country’s finances and comment on them! Oh, I can see that working out real well! NOT!

So… Yesterday, we had the dollar gaining back the ground that it had lost the previous day, but at the end of the day, we’re looking very much like the currencies hadn’t moved from morning to morning… And overnight, didn’t bring about much movement… So… When you get to the currency round-up below, you’ll see the dollar’s gains were small, and short-lived.

The U.K. and France are a bit upset with the U.S. and the President’s plan to reduce the number of board members to the IMF, and guess who is on the chopping block? That’s right… The U.K. and France! I really don’t care about all this stuff, except to watch the saber rattling, and jockeying for “supreme leader”… I won’t say any more about that here…

I did notice thought that, just as I said months ago, regarding the BRIC countries, that they would have to be reckoned with, due to their HUGE Treasury Chests of reserves, and the fact that they have a good portion of the World’s population… Ok, where was I? Oh!, I noticed that it was going to be announced today that G-20 was going to take over as the main forum for global economic coordination. They will take that over from the G-8…

Well, guess who’s a part of G-20 that wasn’t a part of G-8? The BRIC countries! They will have more say in what goes on economically! Just like I said they would! This is a big deal, in that this shifts the power from the rich countries to the emerging markets… Yes, the rich countries are still in the Group of 20… But, the emerging markets outweigh them now!

And already, we can hear China taking shots at the U.S…. And, now that everyone can comment on other countries’ economies, the U.S. took a shot at Germany, saying that they haven’t done enough to spur Domestic Demand… Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is up for election on Sunday, shot back at the U.S., and said… “We should also look at imbalances between currency regions and not pick on specific countries within the Eurozone.”

OK… Let’s talk about something else… I was reading the Financial Times last night, and came across a story that really said something… Here it is… The FT…

“Losses on loans at U.S. banks and other lenders rose to $53 Billion in the first quarter, almost triple the previous high, reached in 2002, said a group of regulators, including the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Nonbank lenders, particularly hedge funds, hold $1 of every $3 in troubled loans and 47% of all distressed loans. Loans made to media and telecommunications companies were in the worst state. Lending to the financial-services sector was the next worst, followed by loans to property companies.”

But Hey! According to people in power that should know better, it’s time to sound the all-clear horn!

And that brings me to something I wrote about the other day, regarding the delayed foreclosures… A reader was kind enough to send me this that maybe explains the delays…

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose on 60 million mortgages. That is the number of American mortgages currently reported to be held by MERS. Over half of all new U.S. residential mortgage loans are registered with MERS and recorded in its name. Holdings of the Kansas Supreme Court are not binding on the rest of the country, but they are dicta of which other courts take note; and the reasoning behind the decision is sound.

And… As another reader pointed out to me… It sure doesn’t make the holder of the loan any richer to foreclose on it, given the state of the housing market today…

Ok… Enough of that! Yesterday, I talked about how Japanese yen was living right these days, rallying when the dollar is weak, and rallying alongside the dollar when it’s not! Well… One of the reasons this could be happening with regularity, is that it is believed that Japanese exporters are repatriating their profits, as their fiscal first half ends this month…

So, does that mean the rug gets pulled out from beneath yen next week? Hmmm… I don’t think so… I think that the one thing that’s really underpinning yen right now is this new found appreciation by the Bank of Japan for yen strength! Just last night, Japan’s Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii reiterated his opposition to intervention in foreign- exchange markets.

Now, I don’t know how long the exporters in Japan are going to go along with this new found appreciation for yen strength… But for now… Yen is on the verge of gaining even more ground…

In New Zealand overnight… The string of good data prints ended with a thud! New Zealand’s Trade Deficit widened almost double what was expected! UGH! Remember, New Zealand has to import lots of things, and when the exports of wool, dairy, and lumber aren’t strong, their deficit gets whacked! So, New Zealand would always have a Trade Deficit… But, at times it gets completely out of hand, and this is one of those times… Kiwi, got taken to the woodshed after the report printed, as well it should!

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) had a board member giving an interview last night, and when asked about the SNB’s repeated jawboning to get the franc weaker, he had this to say… “with regards to the Swiss franc this means that we counter an appreciation of the franc against the euro decisively.”

Now, that’s a horse of a different color! All this time we were led to believe that the SNB would intervene to get the franc weaker VS the dollar! No wonder the franc has kicked some dollar tail lately, without a peep from the SNB… The franc was allowed to get stronger VS the dollar, as long as the euro was moving in the same direction, same general percentage move VS the dollar!

Our mortgage production guru, Stacy Blair, was talking the other day in a meeting, and mentioned that mortgage rates had edged down again, and production was picking up once more… Well, that plays well with a story I read last night… The average interest rate for U.S. home mortgages fell to less than 5%, and loan applications surged 13%, the Mortgage Bankers Association said. The nationwide average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined to 4.97%. The application surge amounted to a 50% increase compared with the end of June.

OK… So… I would guess that most of that stuff is re-financing loans, but hey! Like I told everyone on our desk 6 months ago, when the rates were in the 4% region… Go refinance your home loan! And then put the money you save each month in savings!

We get back to some data in the U.S. today, and I think that it could have a lot to do on whether the currencies rally or not VS the dollar. Durable Goods Orders for August prints first, and is expected to really fall back from July’s strong 4.9% print… August is expected to print just a .4% gain for Durable Goods… That won’t get the “strong recovery flag wavers” out, and that won’t be good for the non-dollar currencies…

Then later we get the U. of Michigan Consumer Confidence report, which could turns things around for the non-dollar currencies… As the Consumer Confidence report is expected to be strong… ????? Why? I have no idea… (besides the obvious, stock strength)

We’ll also see New Home Sales data for August…

Have you noticed the collapse of the Oil price? Pretty steep drop in just a couple of days! I told you the other day that the G-20 might put pressure on commodities… Oil is off, and Gold has fallen back below $1,000 wink, wink…

So… To recap, the dollar’s rally was stopped short. The G-20 is the new global economic monitor, and the U.S. is ticking the U.K. and France off, regarding seats on the IMF board. G-20 is getting hot and heavy… Japanese exporters are repatriating their profits thus propping up Yen… And, New Zealand’s Trade Deficit widens again…

Currencies today 9/25/09: A$ .8650, kiwi .7185, C$ .9175, euro 1.4685, sterling 1.6010, Swiss .9720, rand 7.4280, krone 5.7850, SEK 6.9170, forint 184.25, zloty 2.8550, koruna 17.15, RUB 30.09, yen 90.20, sing 1.4160, HKD 7.75, INR 47.98, China 6.8286, pesos 13.48, BRL 1.7995, dollar index 76.73, Oil $66.28, 10-year 3.36%, Silver 16.31, and Gold $997.32

That’s it for today… I hope you have a Fantastico Friday, and Wild and Wacky Weekend!

Chuck Butler

Source: G-20 Heats Up…

• Inflation fears were quelled at least temporarily as U.S. consumer prices were raised only slightly last month, and actually experienced their biggest drop in almost 60 years. Higher gas prices contributed to the 0.1% increase in the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) versus the April’s CPI, which was flat. Financial markets had expected a 0.3% increase. The CPI fell 1.3% versus the same period last year, the largest drop since April 1950. “There is no sign that there has been widespread inflation because of the Fed’s quantitative easing regime. In fact, long-term inflation expectations haven’t budged and the Fed is still ahead of curve on inflation,” economic and investment strategist John Canally of LPL Financial told Reuters.

• Four of the nation’s largest banks repaid $54.7 billion to the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), freeing themselves of government restrictions on lending and pay.JPMorgan & Chase Co. (NYSE: JPM) repaid $25 billion, andMorgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.(NYSE: GS) repaid $10 billion each, Bloomberg News reported. As Money Morning’s Martin Hutchinson reported yesterday (Wednesday), the other two banks, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) and BB&T Corporation (NYSE: BBT) repaid their debts of $6.6 billion and $3.1 billion respectively. The banks are among 10 other that agreed last week to repay $68 billion in TARP funds,Bloomberg News reported. “Our strong capital position allowed us to pay back TARP in a very short amount of time,” BB&T Chief Executive Officer Kelly King said in the bank’s statement.

• Beleaguered outdoor clothing retailer Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc.(Nasdaq: EBHI) yesterday (Wednesday) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and said it planned to sell itself to private equity firm CCMP Capital LLC for $202 million. The sale to CCMP, known as a 363 sale, means the sale needs the approval of a judge, and other bidders could emerge. CCMP is entitled to a $5 million breakup fee if it loses to a higher bidder. Court filings show that Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) and CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) will provide up to $100 million in financing during the bankruptcy case,The New York Times reported. Eddie Bauer said its 371 stores in the United States and Canada are operating as usual.

• Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) options will begin trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), enabling investors to bet on the company using a technique Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffet has rejected, Bloomberg News reported. “Usually, if you want to buy or sell a stock, you should buy or sell the stock,” Buffett said last year on the weekend of the company’s annual meeting. “Using options, four times out of five you will be right, the last one you’ll miss. I’ve virtually never used options as a way to enter or exit a position.” CBOE will offer contracts on Buffet’s conglomerate starting today (Thursday).

• FedEx Corp.’s (NYSE: FDX) losses more than tripled in its last quarter, and the company said things won’t be much better in the near future, The Associated Press reported. The nation’s second-largest package shipper reported a loss of $876 million, or $2.82 per share in the quarter ended May 30. That compares to a loss of $241 million, or 78 cents per share in the same period last year. “The operating environment for our first two quarters in fiscal 2010 is expected to be extremely difficult,” Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Alan B. Graf Jr. said. The company has not yet decided whether it will have to lay off more workers or make further cutbacks due to poor economic conditions, Graf said in a conference call with investors.

• Newly sold automaker Saab secured a key court ruling yesterday (Wednesday) to cut 75% of the more than $1.28 billion (10 billion in Swedish crowns) of debt after a vast majority of creditors approved the proposal, Reuters reported.  Sweden-based Saab was sold on Tuesday to fellow countrymen Koenigsegg Group ABby soon-to-be former parent General Motors Corp. (OTC:GMGMQ).

• The annual rise in gas prices entered its 50th straight dayyesterday (Wednesday) after crude prices bounced back after an initial slump in the beginning of this week, The Associated Pressreported. Pump prices are now at a national average of $2.67 per gallon. The rising crude prices and less production has added to the typical increase in demand in the late spring and summer months as more Americans take to the roads for vacation-related travel.

• After being dogged by reports of orderless days at the Paris Air Show, The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) finally got a $153 million order for two single-aisle planes, The Associated Press reported. But this order pales when compared to the $6.2 billion in orders already attained by rival Airbus S.A.S. Both aircraft makers are feeling the economic crunch by the worldwide recession.

• China will use part of its $200 billion sovereign wealth fund to invest in hedge funds, according to Felix Chee, who will initially run the fund. “We will have a preference for managed accounts,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News Wednesday at the GAIM International hedge fund conference at Monaco’s Grimaldi Forum. “The platform would like a core of single-manager funds and fund-of-funds.” Chee, is a special adviser to the chief investment officer of China Investment Corp.’s hedge fund and proprietary trading effort, “It’ll be across the spectrum of strategies,” he said. “We’re looking for the best managers and a handful of fund of funds, and when I say handful I mean five or less.”

• A prominent Wall Street analyst sees the benchmark S&P 500 Index (NYSE: .INX) breaking its all-time record by the end 2012. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Thomas Lee said on Wednesday the index should surge back above 1,500, its October 2007 high in less than three years, provided the U.S. economy sees a V-shaped recovery.  “The global economy is in the midst of a synchronized recovery,” Lee said at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit.  Lee also reiterated his year-end 2009 target of 1,100 for the S&P 500, saying the United States will likely come out of its recession some time this summer, followed by the rest of the developed world.

• Prices on Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) mortgage securities rose for the fifth day Wednesday, pushing yields down as they tracked a drop in rates on benchmark U.S. Treasuries, foreshadowing possible further declines in borrowing costs for new home-loans. Yields on Washington-based Fannie Mae’s 30- year fixed-rate mortgage bonds fell by 0.02% to 4.56% in New York trading, the lowest since June 3, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Treasuries and so-called agency mortgage bonds rallied after a government report showed the cost of living rose less than forecast in May. The mortgage-bond yields are down from 5.07% on June 10, the highest level since the Federal Reserve announced plans to buy home-loan bonds in November.

• Applications for mortgages fell for a fourth consecutive week, with overall demand plunging to its lowest level in nearly seven months, according to a report Wednesday from the Mortgage Bankers Association.  Rising interest rates have tempered demand for refinancings and new purchase applications, as the industry group’s seasonally-adjusted index fell 15.8% to 514.4 for the week ended June 12, the lowest since the week ended November 21, 2008.  Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.50%, down 0.07% from the previous week, but significantly higher than the all-time low of 4.61% set in the week ended March 27,Reuters reported.

Source: Investment News Briefs Thursday June 18, 2009

As I’ve mentioned in recent issues, oil had near-term targets of $70 in its sights. It hasn’t disappointed, shooting past the $73 mark late last week – a level not seen since the first week of November 2008.

On a technical basis, because oil has not only moved above, but also stayed above all the major moving averages (including the all-important 200-day average), it’s now got $80 in its sights. If any pullback is going to occur, which should happen after solid runs like this, the move down should hold at the $65 per barrel range.

On a fundamental note, we’ve got three reasons for the recent price rise…

1. Hedge funds seem to be pumping more money into the market again.
2. OPEC has decreased oil supply levels.
3. There seems to be some consensus that oil demand might be picking up from the slack levels seen over the past six months.

For now, the market looks strong and any pullbacks should be met with more buying. Here’s how you can play it…

How To Play Oil With Minimum Fuss

The chart below shows the daily movements of the front-month futures contract (July)…

The easiest way to play the broad oil market (either to the upside or downside) is to go for the very popular and highly liquid exchange traded fund, United States Oil (NYSE: USO). The fund mimics the moves of crude oil futures that trade on the NYMEX.

You can trade USO like a normal stock in a regular stock brokerage account and the ETF has options contracts available, too.

Since we first went bullish on oil, USO traded around $32. It’s now around $38.80 and is a very effective “cheaper” alternative to the high-priced arena of futures and futures options, while still profiting from the same moves as the underlying oil market.

Natural Gas Making Unnatural Moves

Having been stuck in the doldrums for ages, the natural gas market has really woken up recently.

Prices have coiled into a narrow trading range over the past two weeks, with volatile swings of 300-400 points over just a few days becoming the norm. At the moment, it looks like the $3.50 per MMB/tu level is the floor, while the market tries to decide which way it eventually wants to go.

Keep Tabs On The 20-Day Moving Average For Clues To The Next Move

With natural gas prices still sitting near multi-year lows, we continue to have a bullish longer-term perspective.

Also, I’ll reiterate a technical observation from my last issue: Because the 20-day moving average has crossed above the 50-day moving average for the first time since July 2008, this usually leads to a change in direction.

However, as volatile as natural gas is, the 20-day MA is flirting with crossing back underneath the 50-day MA, unless natural gas can muster a convincing move above the $4.000 per MMB/tu level.

We still like natural gas on the long side, but be patient here. This is a real, in-demand natural resource commodity, so it never has the worry factor of going out of business or bankrupt.

You can participate in this market by using the equivalent ETF for natural gas - United States Natural Gas(NYSE: UNG), which reacts just like the futures and futures options do. If you’re considering bullish strategies, UNG offers options contracts as well.

When Inflation Hits, You Want To Be Invested Here

The financials markets and investing can be a highly divisive subject… but most people agree on one thing:

Interest rates and inflation will rise eventually (in fact, rates have already started to rise), while the U.S. dollar will fall. This will be in response to the huge debt that the American government is getting itself into, due to the financial crisis and bailout programs.

Scenarios like this have always led to bullish moves into commodities, as they can buffer the effects just mentioned above. Witness the bullish moves in virtually every commodity sector that began in earnest a few months ago.

One of the best places to be in order to protect yourself from inflation is the metals markets. In fact, gold and silver have fared exceptionally well since the end of 2008 – and haven’t looked back since.

Our technical levels have served us well, allowing us to spot the support areas for both metals – gold near the $880 per ounce level, while solid support for silver comes in at $12.000 per ounce. Both have bounced from those areas and have enjoyed strong moves.

Although both metals are currently seeing slight pullbacks, they should resume their upward marches toward $1,000 and $20 for gold and silver respectively.

You can trade gold and silver directly through the futures options that trade on the NYMEX. Or if you prefer regular stock and options-based plays, check out their respective ETFs – the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD) and iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV).

Source:Three Reasons Why Oil Prices Are Rising… And Where They’re Headed Next

Good day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! You know the Jobs Jamboree data that printed on Friday, and created some HUGE euphoria among the media types that love to just “read the news” and not actually do the research to report it? Yes… It was a very good number, on the outside… Not that losing 345,000 jobs in a month is a good thing, but it is far better than the near 700,000 jobs lost a couple of months ago.

So… I’ve got that to talk about today… And the rebound by the dollar that has taken the euro to the 1.38 handle and looking as if it is going to go lower… And, then finally, I have to get on my soapbox again, because I don’t think I want my President calling me names! So, all that and more as we begin this 2nd week of June…

OK… Well… Did you get all caught up in the euphoria of the Jobs Jamboree on Friday? I know the 2 different cable news stations we have on here in the office, sure took the number, hook, line and sinker. The markets all reacted violently to the number too… At first… You see, when the number was reported, which was -345,000 for May, the euro took off, and the dollar selling was incredible, but the flurry only lasted about 1/2 hour, then someone with an ounce of gray matter, looked closer at the number. It was like a game of Who’s foolin’ Who?

So… Here’s the skinny… If the jobs losses were really just -345,000 in May it would have signaled a bottoming of the job losses, and a bottoming of the recession / depression, which would feed right into the inflation story, albeit a lot sooner than anyone would have expected… And with that thought, the dollar got sold. But… A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, and the currencies were soon to reverse their recent trend, and it all came back to the Jobs Jamboree…

First of all… The Bureau of Lying Statistics, I mean Labor Statistics, reported on their website that 220,000 jobs were created in May through the Birth / Death Model… And 43,000 of the 220,000 “ghost jobs” were Construction jobs… Really? You’ve got to be kidding me! But if you think that’s all… That’s just the tip of the labor iceberg… The number of unemployed persons actually increased by 787,000 in May! The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more increased by 268,000 over the month to 3.9 million and has tripled since the start of the recession.

Not that I’m trying bum you out on a Monday morning, I just think you “should know” the score… The total number of unemployed persons is 14.5 Million… In January of this year 5 months ago it was 11.6 million… And… Oh, by the way… The 9.4% Unemployment Rate? It’s probably nearing 20% in “real terms”…

The thing that gets me is that people, investors, traders, hedge funds, etc. all react to data and make investment decisions based on the data when it prints… I guess this will teach them to wait until all the dust settles and the numbers have had a chance to be exposed to the daylight! I just think it’s a shame that we have to deal with these liars, and cheats, just to make us all “feel good”…

So… Eventually the truth comes to the top, because the truth… Is out there! So… Why is this bad for the currencies? Well… In normal times this news would be manna from heaven for the currencies… But these aren’t normal times, as the President, U.S. Treasury Sec. and Fed Chairman all remind us at least once a week… And the trading pattern for this type of bad news, is that the inflation picture everyone was thinking of last week and the week before, just isn’t going to come that fast… So… The currencies gave back gains that they had made in the last two weeks…

Whew! I typed all that “non-stop” and have to give my fat fingers a chance to rest here for a minute!

The euro also has had to deal with the Irelands rating was lowered by S&P to AA… But, I do have to say that since I’ve come in this morning, the bias has been to sell dollars, and buy euros… But, the move has been very small…

There’s not much in the data cupboard this week, until Thursday when the May Retail Sales report prints… The Butler Household Index (BHI) tells me to expect stronger Retail Sales in May. Wednesday we’ll get the May Budget Statement, which will be around a deficit of -181 Billion… Did you all get that notes I wrote last week about the month of April and the Budget Deficit… Did it hit home with you? Maybe I should repeat it just for GP…

Here’s what I said on Thursday… The Budget Deficit this April was $20.9 Billion, the first deficit in this “tax-paying” month in 26 years! Can you imagine that? In April when taxes are paid, we recorded a deficit? That’s pretty amazing folks… April 2009 tax receipts dropped 44% compared with those in April 2008.

And Here’s what I said on Friday… And I also believe that we will return to the underlying Weak Dollar Trend for good in the 2nd half of this year… Because… By then… the U.S. Budget Deficit, which has already breached 5% of GDP (late last year), will be heading beyond 10% of GDP this year. So… Do you want to own a truck load of dollars when the markets are staring at a Budget Deficit of greater than 10% of GDP? I don’t think so!

And… Then this week we get the actual data to tie it all together in a nice bow!

I just saw a news story flash across the screen quoting the President… Hmmm, seems President Obama believes that his “stimulus package” will create 600,000 jobs… Well, that should be in the bag, right? I mean if it’s not people being hired to take the census, then the BLS will just create them out of thin air, and the President will be able to say… “See! I told you I would create 600,000 jobs!”

I shake my head in disgust… I really do folks… And speaking of the President… I don’t know about you… But I’m tired of him apologizing to other countries… And I really don’t like him calling me names… OH! He’s calling you names too!

OK, back to regular stuff… The Reserve Bank of New Zealand will meet this week, and I’m on the fence regarding what they will do… I’m leaning toward leaving rates unchanged, but jawboning for further rate cuts… Which is about the same as actually cutting them! So… Just cut the darn things! Quit beating around the bush!

And… U.S. Treasury yields continue to climb higher, and that means further losses to holders… The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit a seven-month high this morning… Treasuries have to deal with more supply this week. Hmmm… I have to blow my own horn here and tell you that I told you a couple of months ago that this would happen… That the deficit spending would create a monster, and that monster would be the need to issue more Treasuries than ever before, and the more you issue, the less the value of those outstanding become… So, to sell them, you have to allow the markets to let the yields rise to attract investment, and… As the yields rise, those previous issues lose value, in the secondary markets… Sure, if you hold them to maturity, there’s no principal loss… But how many of those Treasuries were bought last year in the flight to safety, to hold until maturity? I don’t have an answer, but my guess is… Not many!

See? Deficits Do Matter! And these days it’s the Budget Deficit that’s taking the hits… The Trade Deficit, which used to be the Big Kahuna, is no longer adding $700 Million to the Current Account each year. In fact, the Trade Deficit will print this week for April, and is expected to remain below $30 million… Not a Surplus, but still, much better than the $65 million figures we used to see every month! As I’ve explained before though this is simply, not the preferred way to reduce one’s Trade Deficit… To have a recession! No, it would have been far better to have our exports be competitive…

And in the “here we go again” category… Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar signed an agreement to create a Persian Gulf monetary union, committing themselves to working toward a common currency despite the withdrawal of the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

These “oil states” threaten to do this about once a year… Kuwait finally go tired of waiting and dropped their peg to the dollar over a year ago! But, an oil monetary unit? Now that would really put a dent in the dollar’s armor, eh? Just don’t go hanging your hat on that happening any time soon!

I think that we’ve seen some real profit taking in the past few days… A reversal of the risk taking that was going on… And… The feeling that we went too far too fast… This move back in the euro and other currencies does give all those that were sitting on the sidelines and just couldn’t pull the trigger on the rally that began in March, an opportunity to get in at cheaper levels than the past two weeks…

And with that… I’ll head to the Big Finish!

Currencies today 6/8/09: A$ .7870, kiwi .62, C$ .89, euro 1.3850, sterling 1.59, Swiss .9130, rand 8.1850, krone 6.4470, SEK 7.8645, forint 207.35, zloty 3.2810, koruna 19.50, yen 98.55, sing 1.4585, HKD 7.7520, INR 47.57, China 6.8372, pesos 13.40, BRL 1.9615, dollar index 81.30, Oil $67.45, Silver $14.96, and Gold… $951.02

Chuck Butler

Source: Who’s Foolin’ Who?

Then begins the horror.

But just look around. There are plenty of frightening and unnatural scenes going on.

Broadly speaking, it’s a merciless war between inflation and deflation. But there are many different attacks, ambushes, counterattacks, feints, and massacres going on.

The Dow retreated 173 points yesterday. Typically, following a major fall in the stock market, there is a ‘reflex rally’ that lasts several months. Our rough guess was that it would carry on until summer. Most analysts think it will exhaust itself sooner. Who knows? But yesterday, it looked as though the rally may be nearing an end.

The rally itself is a part of a larger battle between two contradictory body parts – the heart and the mind. The heart wants to believe that the worst is over. It reacts sentimentally, remembering the glory days of the great bubble era and wishing they were back. Higher consumer confidence readings sent the stock market higher on Tuesday – the heart ruled.

But on Wednesday, it was the head’s turn. The head looks at the facts: housing and employment are still going down. People will spend less money. Businesses will make less money. Ergo, no reason to expect stocks to go up. Instead, they’re more likely to go down. The Dow scurried back to the lines it occupied at the beginning of the week.

The head noticed, too, that the Treasury market is getting slammed by higher yields. The long bond yielded 4.56% yesterday – up from well below 3% at the end of last year.

“Treasury yields give cause for concern,” says this morning’s Financial Times.

“Rising Treasury yields threaten to stifle economic recovery,” continues another article in the same paper.

But has the top of the bond market really passed? Is the credit cycle now in full retreat? Will homeowners and businessmen be tortured with higher interest rates?

Those are the questions the head was asking yesterday. And it didn’t like the answers. If there were any green shoots, it reasoned, higher interest rates could crush them.

And then at least a few heads began thinking about what this meant to the big strategic issues… and how this flick will turn out.

At the end of last year, America’s great buddy, China, changed its policy. Instead of buying long-dated US debt, China began buying the short stuff. China’s top man openly wondered whether the US would be able to protect the value of the dollar and keep its promises to foreign lenders.

“We have a huge amount of money in the United States,” we quoted China’s premier just yesterday. He reminded the US that China had entrusted a lot of its wealth to US paper and went on to request that America respect its obligations to bond buyers. Obviously, the Chinese must wonder if the US is capable of protecting its currency while still funding its war against deflation.

Tim Geithner promptly responded. “Yes we can!” But the Chinese cogitated on the matter… ‘No they can’t,’ they began to think. Then, they switched to buying short-term US debt, leaving the longer-term bonds to other buyers. Since the Chinese were the biggest buyers at US Treasury debt auctions, this switch in policy had a quick and noticeable effect. Bills rose. Bonds fell. The yield on bills fell to below zero, while the yield on the 30-year bond has gone steadily up.

If America’s supply lines to cheap credit have been cut, she is at a great strategic disadvantage. Or rather, her pre-existing strategic disadvantage is becoming more apparent: she depends on foreigners just to be able to continue living in the style to which she has become accustomed. As the president of the United States of America acknowledged this week:

“We’re out of money now.”

But how does this affect the war between inflation and deflation?

The US is on the side of inflation, of course. It put its whole economy on a war footing and has earmarked more resources, in real terms no less, to the fight than it spent on WWII.

In a larger sense, the US is at war with capitalism… and with nature herself. Markets have natural rhythms. They go from boom to bust… from inflation to deflation… from expansion to contraction naturally. Trying to stop the bust is futile. It is a fight against Fate… a losing proposition. And it is diabolically unnatural. You have to take the bad with the good in life. There’s no going to Heaven without dying. And you can’t rebuild a house without tearing down the old one. Mistakes must be corrected. Old, worn-out businesses have to go out of business so that new ones can take their places. Bad investments need to be deflated… liquidated. Failed managers and failed business models must be eliminated. Bubble delenda est.

The feds can’t beat nature. The bubble can’t be reflated. They can’t make the situation better than it would be if they left it alone. But they can make it a lot worse.

They still have the nuclear option. Then we’ll all be blown to Hell…

More…after some thoughts from Manraaj Singh, over at Profit Hunter, on the recent rally… and on the next big commodity opportunity…

“There is no accounting for the irrationality of the markets, but the economic data simply doesn’t support the current rise in share prices. Consider what actually triggered this economic crisis – the bursting of the US property bubble. The latest data on US housing makes it very clear that the bubble still hasn’t completely burst.

“The results of the benchmark S&P/Case-Shiller US house price survey came out yesterday. The index tracks house prices in 20 major US cities. And its results show that house prices fell by 19.1% in the first three months of this year. That’s the biggest drop in the index’s 21-year history. And it was a bigger drop than analyst were expecting. Figures like that make me extremely sceptical about claims that the market has already priced-in most of the bad news. It hasn’t.

“That doesn’t mean you ought to pull-out of markets entirely right now. The investments that look set to keep rising despite a broad sell-off are those for which there is a clear catalyst… like sugar.

“We’ve been following this story very closely in Profit Hunter. The epicentre of the looming global sugar shortage is in India. The country was the world’s second-biggest sugar exporter until recently. But a combination of bad weather, crop substitution and tighter credit markets has led to a sharp drop in production there.

“The market for sugar is about to get a lot tighter than mainstream analysts were predicting just a few months ago.

“Consider that in November, the US government was predicting that global sugar production this year would be just 4.6% lower this year than in 2008. Last week they revised that dramatically to an 11% drop in global production. But they are still behind the curve. The US government is basing its estimate on the assumption that India will produce 16.8 million tonnes of sugar this year. That’s far higher than anything the Indians themselves believe will happen. You can bet that the price of the sweet stuff is going up.

“Speculators are now waking-up to opportunity here in a big way. Hedge funds are now making their biggest bet in nine months that commodity prices will rise. And their biggest bets right now are on sugar and corn. The faster they pile-in, the better for the sugar price.”

Yes Manraaj, but how do we play it?

“Your readers will get my new, updated in-depth report on the best way to play the coming sugar price boom in the next couple of weeks. Tell them to look out for details… or to join up for a trial of my Profit Hunter service today, and the name of the company I’m recommending will be revealed.”

Click here if you’d like to take a no-obligation trial to Manraaj’s service and get access to all his current recommendations.

And more thoughts…

*** What’s the nuclear option? It’s the Zimbabwe Solution… pioneered by Gideon Gono, head of Zimbabwe’s central bank… and recently proposed for the US by Harvard professors Rogoff and Mankiw. And they’re not the only ones.

Of course, there is no need to exaggerate. The facts are outrageous enough. So, let’s calmly look at what has happened so far… and where it is likely to lead.

As you know, the battle between inflation and deflation is going badly for the feds. Deflation is winning. And yesterday, the Eastern Front collapsed.

Germany announced that consumer prices are now 0.1% lower than they were a year ago. Germany is in outright deflation. The rest of Europe is probably not far behind.

In America, the trend is probably in the same direction. The money supply – M-1 – grew at an 18% rate over the last 6 months. But taking just the last 3 months, the rate of growth has fallen to only 1.8%.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury is borrowing 100s of billions of dollars in order to close the gap between what the US spends and what it receives in taxes. Even if the Chinese are willing to fund that borrowing in the very short term, it just pushes forward the inevitable day when the list of willing lenders is shorter than the list of US Treasury bonds to be sold.

When that happens, the Chinese can bend over and kiss their reserves goodbye. Because there is no way the US government is going to forego spending money just to protect foreign bondholders. Instead, to raise money, it is going to turn to its very own bond buyer of last resort – the Fed.

The Fed will “monetize the debt” – by buying Treasury debt and converting it to dollars in circulation. At least, that’s the plan. The risk is that it will cause consumer price inflation. Everyone is aware of the risk. Few doubt that it would happen.

But that’s where Gono, Rogoff, Mankiw and many others, come in.

Caroline Baum reports:

“Harvard University’s Ken Rogoff and Greg Mankiw think more is better when it comes to inflation.

“Rogoff said he advocates 6 percent inflation “for at least a couple of years.”

That would alleviate the strain deflation imposes on debtors, including the U.S. government, who have to pay back their loans in appreciated dollars.

“In the Middle Ages, they threw people who failed to repay their debts into debtors’ prisons. Today debtors are rewarded with all kinds of government perks. Look how far we’ve come!

“Borrowers took out mortgages they couldn’t qualify for to buy homes they couldn’t afford. When the housing market collapsed, they were rewarded with government-subsidized mortgage modifications and, in some cases, partial forgiveness on their loan balances. And now, under Rogoff’s 6 percent solution, debtors would see more of their burden lifted.

“And we, the savers, get screwed again.

“And who says the Fed can orchestrate 6 percent inflation and not let it get out of hand? You know what would happen to those well-anchored inflation expectations: Ahoy, matey, it’s out to sea with you.

“Trying to manage a slight increase in the rate of inflation in a discretionary way is not practical,” says Marvin Goodfriend, professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh.

“Mankiw didn’t specify his preferred inflation rate in the Bloomberg story. He was too busy to give me an interview, directing me instead to his New York Times column from last month where he proposed the idea of negative interest rates: not negative real rates, adjusted for inflation; negative nominal rates. The idea is “to make holding money less attractive” so people will spend it.”

Needless to say, we can’t wait to see what happens. The Chinese already seem to think that holding dollars is less attractive than it used to be. But Geithner and Bernanke assured Wen Jiabao that his money was safe. We wonder what he’ll do when he realizes they played him for a fool.

Source: Financial Horror Movie

Platinum spent nearly the whole day rangebound between $1130 and $1140, before ending near the low end at $1133, unchanged. Overnight, platinum is slightly lower.

Silver noodled around the $14.50 mark from Hong Kong to the New York open, then followed gold strongly higher but outdid its sister metal, adding 50 cents to nudge the $15 mark before subsiding and coasting to a close at $14.75, up 14 cents. Overnight, silver is trending higher. (Click here for charts)

The precious metals were quite a mixed bag yesterday, with gold finishing lower, platinum flat, and silver solidly in the green. Again, the dollar was the primary driver among the usual suspects, with its strength undercutting gold’s appeal.

But the downtrend was likely tempered a bit by rising oil prices.

Kitco’s Jon Nadler, who tends toward the negative, stated flatly that, “The market is overbought,” then asked, “Where are the jitters? North Korea did not do the trick … Add it all up, and we see profit-taking as imminent.”

But in an interview from Hong Kong, noted market analyst Marc Faber went way out on a limb and said he sees the U.S. entering a “hyperinflation” that will be “close to” Zimbabwe.

“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation,” Faber said. “The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.”

Faber added that, “I don’t think that gold will run up right away. I never sold gold and I’m still buying gold … [because it] has been an adequate hedge against inflation … If you bought it in 1980 at the price of $850, then it hasn’t been a good hedge against inflation, but if you bought it in 1999 at $251, then it has done very well.”

Inflation? No way, Nadler says. He might as well have been responding to Faber when he said: “Where is inflation? A speck on the horizon.”

Nevertheless, the funds continue to pile into metal. Hedge funds and other large speculators increased their net-long position in New York gold futures last week, by 7.7% over the previous week, according to CFTC data.

Source: Precious Metals Mixed

• The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence jumped to 54.9 in May, up from a revised 40.8 in April. The leap marks the biggest one-month gain since April 2003, and was set in motion by tighter credit and oversupply of homes pushing down prices, Reuters reported.

• Hong Kong’s government will inject another HK$16.8 billion ($2.2 billion) into the economy via tax cuts, fee waivers and spending, Bloomberg reported. Added to previous stimulus measures, Hong Kong’s government has pumped HK$87.6 billion, or 5.2% of the country’s gross domestic product, into the economy.

• Virgin Atlantic said its annual profits nearly doubled, but gave a grim assessment the current fiscal year. “We have not seen conditions as tough as this, and we do not see any signs of recovery … for airlines to make a profit this year is almost impossible,” Chief Executive Steve Ridgeway told Reuters. “The key now is to slow down capital expenditure and preserve cash.”

• South Africa has slipped into its first recession in 17 years, as its gross domestic product fell an annualized 6.4% in the first quarter. Manufactures and miners have been scaling back output and letting workers go, as a result of tightening global demand, Bloomberg reported.

• Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, does not appear to be either particularly liberal or conservative on business issues, but four of her rulings have been overturned by the high court, according to legal experts interviewed by Reuters. Sotomayor has a lengthy record of rulings in business cases as a federal judge in New York, but her rulings appear to present a patchwork of decisions based more on the merits and facts of the cases than an ideological approach to the law, the experts said.

• Hedge funds are making big bets that commodity prices will rise as the global economy rebounds from its steepest slump since World War II, according to Bloomberg. An index of the net long positions in U.S. commodity futures held by hedge funds and other large speculators rose to a nine-month high. The index consists of 20 raw materials and is monitored by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

• General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) received approval from its Canadian Auto Workers union to freeze pension payments until 2015 and cut new hires’ pay to protect jobs, as it works on labor agreements to help speed its exit from a probable bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported. The union, representing about 9,000 hourly employees, ratified the accord yesterday (Tuesday) with 86% of the vote. The United Auto Workers (UAW) presented a tentative U.S. contract to plant-level leaders in Detroit yesterday as well.

• A Russian Internet investment firm has invested $200 million in Facebook, as the social networking site builds a cash buffer.  The investment by Digital Sky Technologies, which has invested in leading Russian web properties like Mail.ru and Vkontakte.ru, values the social networking site at $10 billion.  The Russian company took a 1.96% stake in Facebook in preferred stock in exchange for its investment, Reuters reported.

Source: Investment News Briefs Wednesday May 27, 2009

Yesterday was a holiday in the US. Little news from that quarter.

But while Americans were enjoying their backyard barbecues, the rest of the world turned.

“Obama plans ‘leaner’ car industry,” says the BBC.

While most readers will focus on the last three words of that sentence, we direct your attention to the first two. The subject is the important part… not the predicate.

That the car industry may or may not get ‘leaner’ is of little interest to us. It will do what it needs to do. But that the president of the United States of America is now creating the business plan for an automobile company is surely a sign of something big. The world has already turned… perhaps more than we realize.

It was only a few months ago, we’re almost sure, that a private company figured out for itself how it would compete. If it was well-managed, and lucky, it would grow. If it made a serious mistake, it would go out of business… leaving the premises vacant for another entrepreneur.

Americans not only accepted this model, they applauded it. They thought the “free enterprise” system was the best in the world. They believed it was responsible for their wealth, their progress and their place in the world.

Now, they seem to have come to believe something else: that the president of the United States – an elected politician – should have a direct say in how individual private enterprises are organized and run.

But these are the same people who elected Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – twice! They’ll believe anything…

“Power Pendulum Swings Toward Washington,” says another paper.

People think capitalism has failed them. They never understood what capitalism was – and wouldn’t have wanted it at all if they had known what it was all about. Still, that doesn’t mean they won’t come up with something worse…

Capitalism is full of what Galbraith called “innocent frauds.” The capitalists try to exploit the workers. The workers try to take advantage of the capitalists. And the managers try to put one over on them both.

But now, the innocent frauds of capitalism are being replaced by the brute force of government. Now, the Obama team is calling the shots itself.

What does Barack Obama know about the car business? Ha… ha… ha…

Oh, you and your silly questions…

The role of government is commonly misunderstood. It is thought to be an impartial judge, an objective arbiter between competing interests, always asserting the common interest over the narrow interests of the competitors themselves. It is nothing of the sort. It has its own interests… its own delusions of competence… its own lusts for power and money. When the pendulum swings towards Washington, it is always bad news.

For no matter how big a mess GM’s owners, managers and workers made of the auto business, Washington is sure to make a bigger one.

More news:

Tom Bulford has been looking closely at the oil sector to find profitable opportunities for investors. He has some observations on the situation in Kurdistan.

“The Oil Ministry of Baghdad recently quit arguing with the Kurdish government and agreed to permit the export of 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Kurdistan. While Baghdad has been stalling, the Kurds have got on with the job of granting licenses to bold, foreign oil prospectors. And now, the latter seem to have the upper hand.

“While Baghdad may still be refusing to acknowledge the legality of these arrangements, the awkward truth is that Iraq is seeing its oil revenues fall through a combination of lower world prices and its failure to develop its own industry. In short, it needs the money.”

Editor’s note: Tom has found a small oil company, currently drilling in Kurdistan, which could hit the big time. He remembers it growing from nothing into a significant oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico. As Editor of Red Hot Penny Shares, Tom Bulford also writes a twice weekly free e-letter called Penny Sleuth. Click here to read more about the above-mentioned opportunity that he’s covered in his latest edition.

And more thoughts:

*** A hedge fund manager came by the office yesterday.

“There’s a new theory making its way around Wall Street,” he explained. “Some people think that the government will succeed in reflating the bubble. They’re putting so much money into it that they’re going to be able to create one last super-bubble… a little like the 2004-2007 period.”

Anything is possible. We were surprised the feds were able to inflate the last bubble. Back in 2002, we thought the bubble days were over – instead, the biggest bubble of all was still ahead.

The dot.com bubble had exploded. Stocks were going down. The economy was in recession. But the recession turned out to be very, very mild. Most people seemed unaware that there was a recession at all. Spending never went backwards… not an inch. In fact, all the trends already in place continued… and got much, much larger.

It is very different now.

“There’s a major change going on; most people have not noticed,” said our new friend. “People are spending money differently. First, it is obvious that they are forsaking the higher priced stores. Our fund is taking advantage of this in a very simple way. We’re short the luxury retailers and long the discount stores. Because people are changing their shopping habits. And we expect this to go on for a long, long time.

“They’re also buying different things. Everyone knows that sales of guns and ammunition are going through the roof. There are actual shortages of some items. But people are also stocking up on gardening supplies. They’re planting gardens in order to grow some of their own food. And they’re buying home entertainment systems – videos… sound systems and so forth. Instead of going out to the restaurants or the movies… they’re staying home. So, they’re making their homes more comfortable… and safer.

“Speaking of safer… sales of home safes are also taking off. They want to protect what they’ve got.

“And speaking of restaurants… have you looked at what is happening? Same phenomenon as in the retail sector. The lower priced, fast-food places, such as MacDonalds’ (NYSE:MCD), are doing fine. But just look at the ‘casual’ dining places – the places where middle class people go to eat… places like Appleby’s and Friday’s. They’re losing a lot of business.

“What I think is happening is this: people are reorganizing themselves for a different, less expensive lifestyle. They’re spending less already… but they’re preparing to spend even less in the future. Instead of going out to the mall or to a restaurant… they’re going to stay home.”

Whence cometh this desire to stay home? Remember, this is not a recession… and not even a phony recession such as we had in 2001-2002. This is different. It’s a balance-sheet depression. People are cutting back in order to repair balance sheets.

How do your repair a balance sheet? It’s not as easy at taking it in to the Pep Boys… or the muffler shop. Instead, you have to pay down debt and increase equity. You have to become wealthier by saving money, rather than spending it. That’s what companies are doing. That’s what individuals are doing. And that’s what the government ought to do.

Americans were saving almost nothing a couple years ago. But in the first quarter of this year, they saved 4.2% of disposable income – or $453 billion (annualised). That’s up from just $20 billion a year before.

Saving money is the wrench you need to repair a balance sheet. After a very long time, finally, American grease monkeys are getting to work.

“Americans are making big structural changes in the way they live. These changes are going to have a big impact on the economy for many years to come,” our friend concluded.

Source: Washington Will Make a Bigger Mess of the Auto Industry

Grantham sounded the alarm on the credit crisis all the way back in 2006. And in a 2007 article in Fortune magazine, he warned: “In five years, I expect that at least one major bank (broadly defined) will have failed and that up to half the hedge funds and a substantial percentage of the private equity firms in existence today will have simply ceased to exist.”

What caught our eye in Grantham’s recent letter were his comments on what he terms the “Presidential Cycle.” Loyal readers will know that here at Notes we believe Washington is now the prime mover in the US economy and financial markets. Grantham offers interesting proof of our theory (emphasis added):

This Presidential Cycle effect is dismissed as an artifact by the great majority of financial academics, but they have a stalwart record of dismissing any data that implies even modest market inefficiency, and this effect implies great dollops of inefficiency. Simply summarized: since 1932, in the third year of the Presidential Cycle, the average S&P 500 return (from October 1 to October 1) is 22 percentage points ahead of the average of years one and two! And this is statistical noise? Year three is the time when, driven by politics, financial stimulus and moral hazard are applied so that the economy – particularly increases in employment – can be a little stronger in the run-up to the election in year four. In years one and two, in contrast, the system is tightened in order to leave some room for re-stimulus in the next year three (except during Greenspan’s era, when he basically could never stop stimulating and so periodically upset the applecart). It is all pretty understandable. All we have to believe is that politicians like to be re-elected and that completely independent Fed chairmen like to play ball with politicians. (Volcker of course, unlike the others, was never a ball player.) There have been no serious bear markets in year three, and many in years one and two.

Grantham, a well-known bear, says his familiarity with the Presidential Cycle has caused him to “part company” with many of his bearish allies for a while. That’s because the Presidential Cycle teaches us that fiscal stimulus and moral hazard have the power to “move the stock market many multiples of their modest effects on the real economy.”

Grantham’s central argument is that investors should never underestimate the power the Fed wields over the market through its ability to 1) boost liquidity 2) bailout speculators. This is borne out by empirical evidence. Britain has shown a bigger year-three jump on the US Presidential cycle since 1932 than the US itself. Europe and Japan have also historically shown sympathy with the cycle.

The implications of Grantham’s argument on the current market rally are huge. If relatively small liquidity injections and bailouts have had such a large effect on previous market cycles, then the unprecedented interventions by the Fed in the current case are likely to have unprecedented effects.

If the stock market is many times more sensitive to financial stimulus in the short term than the economy is, then we could easily get a prodigious response to the greatest monetary and fiscal stimulus by far in U.S. history. Second, if you don’t think there is a special, one-off, super colossal dose of moral hazard out there today, you are sadly uninformed. The moral hazard in play today is of a massively larger order than any we have ever seen.

This heady cocktail of two fingers of moral hazard plus more than a dash of liquidity could send the S&P 500 to the 1,000 – 1,100 level before the end of the year, says Grantham. But this hasn’t changed his overall bearish stance.

In a rally to 1000 or so, the normal commercial bullish bias of the market will of course reassert itself, and everyone and his dog will be claiming it as the next major multi-year bull market. But such an event – a true lasting bull market – is most unlikely. A large rally here is far more likely to prove a last hurrah … a codicil on the great bullishness we have had since the early 90s or, even in some respects, since the early 80s. The rally, if it occurs, will set us up for a long, drawn-out disappointment not only in the economy, but also in the stock markets of the developed world.