The SEC’s Rick Bookstaber can hardly watch as sheep-like investors chase the gold bubble straight off a cliff.
Although his employer doesn’t give market advice, the SEC’s senior policy adviser shows his personal frustration in a post on Roubini Global Economics. First, he drops this great line about how people don’t even pretend that gold isn’t a bubble:
Even if a guy is just after sex, he at least has the decency to act like there is some substance behind his interest.
Second, Bookstaber thinks hedge funds managers like John Paulson have a pump and dump scheme on gold.
Given that “hedge fund” and “highly secretive” are usually said in the same breath, don’t you get suspicious when so many of the top managers are so vocally out there about their gold investments? And when their positions are structured in a way that make them open to view? Paulson and Soros have huge positions in gold ETFs. We know that, because if you buy ETFs, they show up in your 13-F filing. Granted, with an equity investment you can’t help putting that information out into the market, but with an asset there are plenty of ways to take the position without signaling it.
That they are taking a highly visible route to their positions suggests the game that is being played is one of leading the herd. The 13-F reports positions with a big lag, so no one will notice if they quietly slip out the side door while the party is still hopping. And how about when the view is backed up by none other than Goldman Sachs? Will they let everyone know when they think it has gone too far before they get out. Or before they go short? Maybe they already have.
In a teleconference with investors, Nouriel Roubini, professor at the University of New York, says he sees a new wave of losses. He was adamant: "The problems of Greece and the euro area are a sign of things to come." This was reported today by Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo.
Perhaps on a media offensive lately, Roubini adds:
"There was a socialization of the losses of the financial system and housing market, and now there are huge budget deficits and public debt almost doubled, so we see sovereign risk serious not only in Greece but also in Portugal and Spain, and spreading in the future to the United States, Britain and Japan."
The article mentions that, as we know, Roubini is not alone. Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a warning as well stating that Greece is just the beginning of a second wave of bankruptcies. After the financial turmoil of 2008, now it is the excessive indebtedness of the governments of advanced countries that will undermine the economy. Rogoff examined 800 years of financial crisis to write his book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, with Carmen Reinhart. "There are several other countries on the radar: Ireland, Portugal, Spain." Outside the euro zone, Romania, Hungary and the Baltic countries would be other nations that are quite fragile.
He concludes that the pattern is repeated throughout history: after banking crises like the one in the world in 2008, after Lehman Brothers, there is always a wave of sovereign debt crises. To save the financial systems, governments enter into debt. A few years later, there is a wave of crises and sovereign debt defaults. That is, after a crisis in the financial system, there comes a crisis of sovereign debt.
Niall Ferguson, writing in the Financial Times last week, swelled the chorus of pessimists. "It started in Athens. It is spreading to Lisbon and Madrid. But it would be a grave mistake to
The markets are falling hard – again – in great part due to the impending Greece default/bailout.
Nouriel Roubini, Dr. Doom, wrote a piece on Forbes magazine in which he says the credibility of the euro and European institutional arrangements is on the line.
At their Jan. 18, 2009, meeting, eurozone finance ministers kept pressure on Greece to fulfill its commitment to cut its budget deficit below 3% of gross domestic product by 2012. In February the eurozone finance ministers will more fully evaluate the country’s spending plans and recommend a timetable for Greece to trim its deficit, estimated at close to 13% of GDP in 2009.
Since the eurozone is a monetary union with a no-bailout clause rather than a political or fiscal union with the associated fiscal federalism, budget cuts to contain the explosion of Greek public debt are urgently needed. In 2010 a sustainable fiscal adjustment must be delivered to restore policy credibility, market confidence and ECB/EU member-state solidarity.
Roubini says that the current and latest default crisis was triggered by three coinciding events:
1. Greece’s sharp budget deficit revisions from as low as 3.7% of GDP to 12.7% in October,
2. the announcement of the beginning of the ECB’s exit strategies,
3. the Dubai default
While in March spreads were broadly driven by a common systemic risk factor, the latest spike bringing Greek yields and CDS spreads to new highs is mostly a country-specific story, brought to light by a change of government and the revelation of far larger budget deficits than previously known and a severe cyclical and structural deterioration in public finances. In tackling the deficit, Greece faces a Hobson’s Choice: whether to accept social pain with financial and economic stability, or instability. Whatever it chooses, Greece will face economic pain and difficult socio-political fallout. Deep spending cuts or tax hikes, which comprise the bulk of Greece’s current plan, will curb or even derail recovery, perhaps inciting social unrest. But if the debt becomes un-financeable in the primary market or if Greece elects to exit the euro and devalue and re-denominate its liabilities (a la Argentina), this could render its banking system insolvent and tip it into economic and financial isolation and decline, also with dire socio-political
The latest out of the Richmond Fed is a joke of a paper that while analyzing the possibility that the entire stock market and dollar carry trade is one zero cost of capital-funded bubble, skips over this possibility and instead goes on to analyze the "factors that could contribute to a fundamentals-based explanation for the recent rally in certain risky asset markets." Spoiler alert: No bubble – it’s all based in sound reality.
In what is likely a first, the Fed quotes Nouriel Roubini:
The near zero nominal interest rate in the United States, jointly with the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, have created resources available to be lent. Some investors have taken advantage of those resources by borrowing in dollars at very low rates and investing in foreign assets, especially in emerging economies and commodities. The expected profits from this investment strategy have been magnified by the expectation of a weaker dollar: Once it comes time to pay off the dollar-denominated loans, the investors can repay them using dollars that are worth relatively less. In turn, this trading strategy – referred to as “shorting” the dollar – has itself contributed to the decline in the value of the dollar since investors must exchange dollars to purchase foreign-denominated assets.
In explaining what Roubini means to his intellectually subprime colleagues, Richmond Fed analyst Renne Courtois provides this enlightening narrative:
The argument of Roubini and others is that this represents a bubble because the emerging markets and commodities rallies are fueled by easy money and the carry trade, rather than economic fundamentals. Under this view, several likely factors could cause this asset bubble to burst. After appreciating during the height of the financial crisis, the dollar steadily declined for most of 2009 but eventually will likely stabilize at some point. Stabilization of the dollar would reduce returns for investors with short dollar positions. Additionally, economic recovery in the United States will raise expectations of an interest rate increase. This would cause the dollar to appreciate (since higher interest rates raise the expected return of dollar-denominated assets, all else equal), and thus cause significant losses for investors short on the dollar.
The Richmond Fed goes as far as refuting Bernanke’s recent claim that low interest rates have never, NEVER, been responsible for this arcane concept known…
Professor Roubini says that the huge fiscal deficits and public debts are fuelling concerns about sovereign risk in advanced economies, something that used to happen with emerging markets.
In large part, emerging-market economies "improved their fiscal performance by reducing overall deficits, running large primary surpluses, lowering their stock of public debt-to-GDP ratios, and reducing the currency and maturity mismatches in their public debt. As a result, sovereign risk is now a greater problem in advanced economies than in most emerging-market ones".
He discussed the critical situation with the United Kingdom, Greece, Ireland and Spain and warns that unless advanced economies start to put their fiscal houses in order, investors, bond-market vigilantes and rating agencies may "turn from friend to foe".
The recession, combined with the financial crisis during 2008-09, worsened developed countries’ fiscal positions, owing to stimulus spending, lower tax revenues and backstopping of their financial sectors.
The impact was greater in countries that had a history of structural fiscal problems, maintained loose fiscal policies and ignored fiscal reforms during the boom years. A weak economic recovery and an aging population are likely to increase the debt burden of many advanced economies, including the U.S., the U.K. and Japan.
More ominously, monetization of these fiscal deficits is becoming a pattern in many advanced economies, as central banks have started to swell the monetary base via massive purchases of short-and long-term government paper. Eventually, large monetized fiscal deficits will lead to a fiscal train wreck and/or a rise in inflation expectations that could sharply increase long-term government bond yields and crowd out a tentative recovery.
Fiscal stimulus is a tricky business. Policy-makers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they remove the stimulus too soon by raising taxes, cutting spending and mopping up the excess liquidity, the economy may fall back into recession and deflation. But if monetized fiscal deficits are allowed to run, the increase in long-term yields will put a chokehold on growth.
Countries with weaker initial fiscal positions – such as Greece, the U.K., Ireland, Spain and
Inflation concerns are driving up gold prices as monetary policy exacerbates fears over the dollar.
A “massive wall of liquidity” is chasing asset prices.
The carry trade and diversification out of the USD.
Global supply of gold can’t keep pace with rising demand.
Sovereign risk is again on the rise.
While these powerful trends are widely considered to continue in 2010 (and help boost gold prices further) Roubini is less optimistic. He sees 5 substantial risks that will keep gold from reaching the $2,000 price target many analysts (see the bullish outlook for gold here) and goldbugs have attached to the yellow metal:
An unwind in the carry trade would be devastating for gold and the reflation trade.
Central banks will be forced to implement an exit strategy soon.
Any bout of economic weakness will send investors fleeing into dollars.
Investors are chasing performance and causing a bubble in gold. All bubbles crash and this bubble in gold will be no different.
Fifth, the effect of rising sovereign risk on gold prices is ambiguous, as the events of recent weeks suggest.
Roubini concludes that gold bugs are “wrong” to assume the price surge will continue. He says gold has no intrinsic value and is therefore not rising on fundamentals. Investors should be wary of chasing the yellow metal at this point.
It’s hard to think of a more controversial — and crucial — subject right now than the dollar carry trade. If indeed, Ben Bernanke’s cheap money is becoming the world’s lead funding currency for all manner of risky bets, then we may be in the greatest bubble the world has ever seen.
If cheap money is only a modest force in the rise of global asset values, and if much of the rise is due to improved fundamentals (which is indisputable, when compared to March), then the recovery may be sustainable.
The connection between Fed liquidity and rising markets has been discussed for awhile, but Nouriel Roubini has been the flag bearer for this idea, ever since he wrote an FT piece on the subject last month.
Over at Roubini.com (formerly RGE Monitor; it’s been rebranded) Heiko Hesse sites IMF research showing that rising correlations between various assets and the dollar are what tell the whole story.
The results indicate that an index for the U.S. dollar has seen an increased negative co-movement with major asset price classes in recent months (here the MSCI Emerging Market index, the EMBI+ bond spread, S&P 500 as well as oil prices). For example, the negative co-movement between the U.S. dollar and oil prices is almost at its highest since the beginning of 2006 with -0.5. Jen (2009) recently provided a number of reasons why the correlation between the dollar and crude oil prices has been so negative.[3]
While the increased co-movement of the U.S. dollar with a range of risky assets does not provide any evidence for the dollar carry trade per se, the fact that the correlations have almost reached the highest magnitude since the beginning of the sample period in 2006 for all the asset classes in figure 2 does suggest that a dollar depreciation has gone hand in hand with a sharp appreciation of higher-yielding emerging market asset classes. This is consistent with a story whereby the unwinding of safe-haven flows has significantly led to the rebound of risky asset classes, and the U.S. dollar, bolstered by U.S. quantitative easing and low interest rates, could have increasingly served as a funding currency. In practice,
Nouriel Roubini believes that a "wall of liquidity" is chasing all kinds of assets, yet once the economy disappoints expectations, it will all come crashing down.
Yet for Dr. Doom, gold isn’t the answer.
According to him, despite the temporarily asset bubbles right now, we’re still in a deflationary world and we’ll realize it soon enough once growth stagnates and all kinds of inflated asset categories come falling down.
IndexUniverse: Roubini: I don’t believe in gold. Gold can go up for only two reasons. [One is] inflation, and we are in a world where there are massive amounts of deflation because of a glut of capacity, and demand is weak, and there’s slack in the labor markets with unemployment peeking above 10 percent in all the advanced economies. So there’s no inflation, and there’s not going to be for the time being.
The only other case in which gold can go higher with deflation is if you have Armageddon, if you have another depression. But we’ve avoided that tail risk as well. So all the gold bugs who say gold is going to go to $1,500, $2,000, they’re just speaking nonsense. Without inflation, or without a depression, there’s nowhere for gold to go. Yeah, it can go above $1,000, but it can’t move up 20-30 percent unless we end up in a world of inflation or another depression. I don’t see either of those being likely for the time being. Maybe three or four years from now, yes. But not anytime soon.
Economist/rock star Nouriel Roubini talks to Fox Business News on the prospects for the U.S. housing market over the next year or so and, with the exception of a few parts of the country where prices can’t go any lower, in his view, the prospects are not good.
It’s the same story that, apparently, homebuyers in Las Vegas and elsewhere don’t seem much interested in – seasonal strength in prices over the summer, an expiring homebuyer tax credit that has drawn in future demand, and persistently high unemployment.
The Federal Reserve is now faced with a challenge that is akin to threading a needle by throwing a spool of thread across a football field.
It is attempting to keep loose money and quantitative easing policies in place long enough not to stymie the nascent recovery while pulling them back in time to avoid massive inflation. It’s a Hail Mary pass with an impossibly small target while facing a blitz.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Nouriel Roubini and Ian Bremmer lay out a series of policy prescriptions for how they think the Fed might be able to avoid creating another dangerous asset bubble without triggering a double-dip recession. They are very clear that this is an enormously difficult task--but even their assessment might be too optimistic.
Here’s the problem. They agree that the operations of the Federal Reserve need to be subject to political review because it is clear that the New York Fed has been captured by Wall Street. The Fed’s worries about its independence being compromised make no sense when it seems that its independence is already compromised to the our powerful financial firms.
But Congressional oversight is likely to result in pressure to keep monetary policy too loose for too long. Pulling back on easy money when the financial system recovers but the real economy is still shaky, will elicit howls of protests from politicians whose constituents are still out of work, loosing their homes and seeing their credit lines closed. There will be intense political pressure to repeat the "fateful mistake" of the last recession, keeping monetary policy too easy for too long.
Roubini and Bremmer’s way out of this trap is to recommend better supervision of banks, including the creating of a new insolvency regime for the most important financial institutions and better capital requirements. This too is harder than it looks. Politicians, especially in Europe, are more attracted to regulating banks through regulating pay than the complex and costly job of reforming capital requirements. And policies that regulate ‘too big to fail’ institutions run the risk of creating the impression of a government guarantee.
Is there are way out? Unfortunately, the way out may be the way back. The government, including the Fed, need to restore the credibility of market processes by letting a…
"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident...And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way."
~ Charles Ferguson, Inside Job
"I know that my retirement will make no difference in its [my newspaper's] ca...
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one – the one we use – which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us co...
The S&P 500 got off to weak start and, after retracing a modest morning rally, spent most of the day in the shallow red with an intraday low of 0.63%. But in the last seven minutes of trading, the index recovered enough to a make a small gain of 0.14%. This is the fourth advance, the first was Monday's 1.60 surge, but the last three have ranged from 0.05% to 0.17% with today's close near the high of the miserly three-day series.
The index is now up 5.02% for 2012, which is 6.93% off the interim closing high.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 95.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 15.6% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.
TIF - Tiffany & Co., Inc. – A surprise earnings miss and a reduced full-year profit and sales forecast from luxury jewelry retailer, Tiffany & Co., took some of the luster out of its shares today, with the stock trading down 8.5% at $56.55 as of 11:50 a.m. in New York. Options activity on Tiffany this morning suggests mixed sentiment on the st...
RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) today announced that it has reached an agreement with the Washington State Attorney General over discontinued e-commerce practices. In accordance with the settlement agreement, RealNetworks has committed to:
Discontinuing the use of pre-checked boxes for purchases of RealNetworks subscription products; Spelling out more clearly the material terms of RealNetworks product offerings; Offering online cancellation of subscription offerings; Enhancing RealNetworks customer support guidelines regarding cancellation. Statement from Thomas Nielsen, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
"About two years ago, the Washington State Attorney General's Office contacted us regarding concerns they had with some of our e-commerce practices.
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
First we'll go to the technicals. Back in mid April I had opined a 'bear flag' formation was being created. [Apr 17, 2012: Potential Bear Flag Forming] But the market being the difficult beast it is, head faked everyone and rather than a break down from said flag it first went UP and nearly touched yearly highs. This caused everyone to think the bear flag had failed…. only to lead to a horrid May in the market. Generally a bear flag will resolve relatively quickly but the longer...
Despite the fact that U.S. equities are well-positioned and well-supported to go up, once again it is the headlines out of Europe—especially Greece—that are scaring off investors. Some are saying that it is now likely (and even desirable) that Greece will default on all its sovereign debt, withdraw from the euro, and severely devalue its domestic currency (Drachma?). This will allow them to operate a balanced budget while pumping cash into growth initiatives, rather than suffer the ravages of Germany-mandated austerity.
Some say, so what? Greece makes up only about 2% of the Eurozone’s overall economy. Nevertheless, you might say that t...
Markets died and then rallied to flat again as European leaders “prepared contingencies” for a possible Grexit
Markets died hard and fast earlier today as major indexes registered as much as 1.5% of losses after news that Euro zone officials were unofficially “preparing contingencies” for a Greek exit from the Euro. Unofficial statements were not enough to keep markets down however, as major indexes rallied back to flat levels by the end of the day.
So the world continues to wait on Europe, as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEACA:SPY) gained .05%, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEARCA:...
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
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In this article, please revisit an article written two years ago titled, "The Calm Before the Storm." This article focused on the patent cliff that was looming in the pharmaceutical industry, that was later picked up by the New York Times and several other bloggers! Subsequent articles were written about big pharma company's revenue streams, and the pros and cons of of their later stage pipelines. Other articles have also attempted to identify smaller biotechs with the potential to reap big reward...
My last weekend update is dated from January 30 so after a long hiatus, here is an update of our virtual portfolio. Since the last update, we have closed the AA Money portfolio due to a lack of enthusiasm (and activity) and I have stopped tracking the FAS strangle as the low VIX makes it hard to get rewarded for the risk! But we have added a small $5KP virtual portfolio which does not use any margin.
FAS Money
We have had to recover from a big move up by FAS and a low VIX which keeps option prices low. But the portfolio has gaine about 10% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $5499.00
IWM Money
Not a lot of activity in this portfolio where the main focus is on the large IWM BCS. But the portfolio has grown over 20% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $1998.00
$5KP Portfolio
This is the virtual portfolio that replaced the AA Money portfolio. It does not use margin and we will keep holdings under $5K.
AAPL $50K P...
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, with Carmen Reinhart. "There are several other countries on the radar: Ireland, Portugal, Spain." Outside the euro zone, Romania, Hungary and the Baltic countries would be other nations that are quite fragile.
The Federal Reserve is now faced with a challenge that is akin to threading a needle by throwing a spool of thread across a football field.
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Chinese
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(