Time to go.

I believe this rally has run its course and a correction is finally at hand. I expect the S&P 500 to move in a trading range between 850 and 1100 for quite a long time, a year at least. I'll write more in a day or so about my reasons for this, but for the time being this article is really interesting.

Checking in on the December 6th portfolio reallocation.

(Click to enlarge)

Above is a performance chart of the portfolio I recommended on December 6th, 2008. The S&P 500 is included only to aid comparison.

One of the reasons I have not posted much recently is that I stand by the December 6th repositioning, and I have not come across any particularly good deals since. The repositioning was intended to be long only, with a "buy on dips" strategy.

Finland continues to underwhelm. In retrospect, there is no real reason to allocate any money to developed nations, and Finland was a bizarre nod to that notion. Agriculture has been flat do to excellent harvests. Other than that I feel pretty good about the whole thing.

Overdue Analysis

Several things disturb me about the recent run up in stock prices.
1) The rally is concentrated in large cap and tech stocks. Small companies are lagging behind.

[First, an aside.... Stock prices are determined by what people will pay for them. Money must flow into (or out of stocks) for the price to change. These money flows are determined solely by fear and greed.]

The majority of investors today have been taught to pursue a buy and hold strategy. Overall, though discipline or ignorance these people refused to sell during the panic and thus set a floor under stock prices in March. Everyone who was inclined to panic, did.

These days the market is being driven by greed. Some people are worried they will miss out on the market rally. I consider these people unsophisticated speculators. For reasons I will lay out below, I believe the out-performance of large cap and tech stocks signifies a broad based lack of trust in the stock market. Buy and hold investors are not, by and large, buying.

In my unscientific analysis over the past two years, tech stocks seems to have exhibited more volatility than the overall market. They gained more on up days and lost more on down days. Therefore, day traders tend speculate in tech stocks because they are interested in making a quick, short term profit. The out-performance of tech stocks over every other market sector is worrying to me because I believe this sector is filled with speculators, looking for a quick buck. These money flows can reverse quickly and are not sustainable.

Unsophisticated speculators, tend to invest in companies that are readily recognizable. These tend to be large cap stocks like Google and Apple. The out-performance in large cap stocks worries me because it signifies that these stocks are being bid up due to the greed of unsophisticated investors. If greed was causing money to flow into lessor known stocks, it would signify a more broadly based participation in the form of disciplined buy and hold investors.

2) Finance stocks in the S&P 500 have not confirmed the rally over the last two weeks. They have been essentially flat since early May, and have stalled over the past week. The economy can not return to health until the banks do, and the banks are still in deep trouble, due to a combination of massive hidden losses on their balance sheets and sharply increasing defaults in their consumer loan portfolio due to rising unemployment. Perhaps even more worrying, the Regional Banks' stock prices have been falling since early May and are starting to approach their March lows.

3) The S&P 500 is approaching the psychologically important level of 1000 and is likely to encounter significant overhead resistance at this point. Around big fat numbers like 1000, people tend to start to worry they will overpay. Think of it like a candy bar. At 99 cents a candy bar seems like a good deal. At $1.10 you instantly feel ripped off. Even though 10 cents may be insignificant to you, you probably will chaff at the store owner for charging more than what you believe to be the fair price. There will be a moment of indecision where you wonder if you should wait till you come across another store, just to teach the store owner a lesson... or more accurately just to assert that you are not a rube.

While this is an extremely unfit analogy, (comparing a consumable to an investment) the principle nevertheless holds true. People will think the S&P 500 dear at 1001 points, realizing they could have gotten it cheaper in the weeks before. They will wait for a cheaper time to purchase it. In the most benign scenario they will wait to invest, stalling stock prices. In the most adverse scenario, the economy will continue to worsen during this period of indecision causing people to lose their nerve.

It is important finally to keep in that the exuberance of the stock market in the past week has been due to earnings being less bad than expected. They are still terrible. And as a final disclaimer, I follow the American Stock market only as an economic indicator. Under no circumstances would I put my money in there. See the post from December 6th 2008, titled "After the Gold Rush..." for details on my investments.

More of the same.

Friday was unusual.  The cost of cash and the price of gold rose together.  Think of a shopkeeper cutting his prices even though his costs are rising.  

The desirability of cash is the yield on the 10 year US Treasury Bond.  If our country's creditors decide we cannot pay our bills the yield we must pay on our debt rises.  If we don't want to buy anything from our foriegn creditors, our anything at all for that matter, prices deflate and causing the price of cash to rise.  Cash becomes more valuable.  And since more people need to store their cash somewhere, they put it in bonds causing the yield on Treasuries to go down.

Now, rising gold signifies a depreciating dollar.  Cash becomes less valuable and people put their money into hard and soft assets like gold and stocks.   

Today, gold rose and Treasury bond yields fell. This is illogical.  I'd like to propose two scenarios.  Either the government intervened in the bond market ("quantitative easing") or the pullback was natural.  Stocks and commodities have risen more or less the same amount since the Thanksgiving bottom.  This rise in asset prices has caused mortgage bond investors to insure themselves against the possibility that inflation could take off and the Fed would have to withdraw some of its support to the market by raising interest rates.   The investors hedge by selling the 7 or 10 year Treasury bonds.  In the last two weeks there has been a rush to do this causing a 0.75% rise in Treasury yields.  This is dramatic.

Some guidance from 1933-37

"Here we find another example of what would today be unthinkable... If you sell [someone Pounds (£) for January delivery] you could find yourself with no means to legally buy back your position. So strange as it might sound, they drove speculators out of the short positions. Government just didn’t want any short bets against them in any market. They sought to have their cake along with a full belly and free rent all at the same time. If it couldn’t be achieved by a free market system, then they would make up their own rules and limit the freedoms of the market to their liking.

"The last four months of 1933 were marked by numerous shocking issues. Many of the steps taken to force the markets to yield to the will of government are steps which will one day soon be reimplemented. Today we are all aware of the G-5 group of central banks and the political consensus around the world that promotes the manipulation of foreign exchange to achieve economic stability. The methods of the present are no different from those attempted by the central banks first in 1925, again in 1927 and finally by Roosevelt in 1933. In the September 25, 1933 edition of Time magazine, we find an interesting comment as to how the stock market was viewed to be a hedge against the currency inflation policies of Roosevelt. This is very important because I seriously doubt that anyone would view the stock market today as a hedge against inflation. Nevertheless, this issue was the primary factor which led the stock market into its rally which eventually peaked during 1937. Time magazine reported upon this aspect as follows:

"'Methods of hedging against inflation within U.S. frontiers have become a favorite coffee-&-cognac topic. Purchase of industrial stocks is, of course, the most popular hedge, but commodities and land have been creeping up fast since the NRA threatened profits with higher labor costs. Some shrewd businessmen with little capital at stake argue that the best thing is to go as deep into debt as the banks (or friends) will allow; eventually they will pay off with cheaper dollars. Carl Snyder, economist for the Federal Reserve Board, was asked lately by a wealthy friend how he could hedge against all possible contingencies including deflation or stabilization so that he would die as rich as he was at that moment. ‘One way,’ snapped Economist Snyder, ‘is to shoot yourself.’"

"The comment of economist Snyder in a very realistic sense was quite true. The only guarantee that one would die with essentially his current assets in this situation was to commit suicide for you never know what tomorrow would bring.

"There is no doubt that during the year 1933, the stock market gained significantly on the prohibition issue which anticipated that the country would turn "wet" as of January 1, 1934. But the entire issue of Roosevelt’s currency inflation had a large impact upon the performance of the market as well.

"The market began to rally finally from the summer of 1933 lows on the perception of a hedge against inflation. After a rally into January 1934, the market fell back and consolidated into a July low during 1934 once again. From there, commodity prices began to rally after the convertibility of gold for U.S. citizens had been officially abandoned in January 1934 and the effects of inflation began to spread throughout the world. Eventually, the inflation scenario continued to drive the markets higher into 1937.

"From March 1933 into 1937, stocks rose largely upon the belief that inflation would raise the price levels of commodities and therefore earnings would rise as well. Stocks were also viewed as a hedge against inflation as we read in the September 25, 1933 edition of Time magazine. Therefore, we find some continuity in the analysis which took the position that stocks would rise in the shadow of commodities. This was largely created by the fact that much of the economy was heavily commodity oriented.
High techs were not exactly the rage of the times. Keep in mind that the automobile was viewed to be a large consumer of commodities. So we do find that there is some logic to the commodity relationship prior to World War II. But as the economy developed over the next several decades, the U.S. industrials and service oriented business sectors began to play a much more dominant role in the GNP of the United States. Thus, the concept of commodity relationships with the stock market has been divided and almost forgotten for the broad market as a whole.

"After inflation spending continued yet commodities and stocks declined from the 1937 high, that scenario of currency inflation disappeared and Roosevelt’s theories appeared to be a total failure."

-- 1933, from "The Greatest Bull Market In History", Martin Armstrong

Phronesis

In America, people consume. 70%, in fact, of our spending (GDP) is consumption. Euphemistically cloaked as aspirational, patriotic, or necessary; we buy to feel.

The problem is not how much we buy. The problem is how consuming makes us feel.

A brief portrait of capitalism: Intellect facilitates cheaper and better products through innovation, cooperation, and competition. Workers cooperate to innovate. Corporations cooperate with their customers to disseminate goods. Competition between corporations for customers inspires innovation.

So we get a lot of cheap staples and low-cost, high-quality products.
Prosperity ensues. Happiness eludes.

The problem is fast fashion. Corporations pursue this calculus to its marginal conclusion. H&M provides the semblance without the substance. And we buy it because it makes us feel good and its cheap.

Cheap is not a bargain. Value is a bargain. And value derives from a feeling of well being. Not contentment! Value is dynamic, kinetic, masculine, and protagonistic. Value derives from agency. Value is subjective truth in the demilitarized cone of objectivity.

Price is the only truth. It is the price of cooperation.

Without haggling, we have no agency. Fast fashion forces us to haggle with ourselves. We derive not the Truth but the subjective truth of the moment. The pleasure priciple.

It gives us no victory because we have bested only ourselves.

They're not all capitalist pigs...

Some are hipster douchebags!
Gerry Pasciucco, head of AIG's Financial Products division (the guys who brought down the firm)

-via Gawker

Hmm...

Regarding a request from AIG to invest last September:

“It’s like taking out a girl -- sometimes you know it isn’t going to happen,” Buffett said “The time pressures, the degree of uncertainty, the depth of the possible hole, the need to get it through a regulatory body,” he said. “It wasn’t going to happen.”

Not quite as pithy as his former aphorisms such as, "When the tide goes out, you get to see whose swimming without their suit," but equally revealing.

Update:

Today's Range on the Dow 6800-7200
The credit markets are extremely stressed, with the price of insurance on the riskiest companies setting records. This partially due to funding pressures at banks before they close their books at the end of the 1st quarter. The but the volatility has been low during the last few weeks as the stock market plunged. This suggests two things, sluggishness and lack of capitulation. This makes me think that everyone who owns stocks has either hedged against a further fall or has already decided to either bail or is resigned to lose more money. Therefore, absent the failure of a big bank, or some grave political uncertainty, the stock markets appear to be due a short term bounce of 20-30%. But the only certainty is that they will eventually have further to fall. We were too clever getting into this mess to get ourselves out so easily. And no one has given up completely yet. Everyone seems to think the stock market can't get any worse. Until everyone despairs, it will keep falling.

In inflation adjusted terms, 6800 marks the peak in 1966 and 4800 marks the peak in 1929. I personally believe that 4800 is where we are heading. (To see this chart click here) Below is a non-inflation adjusted chart showing the century long term trendline. According to this chart there should be support around 4800 as well.

"But the Depression has also been misunderstood. It was not a period of great scarcity, but a period of unparalleled glut. There was too much of everything: too many factories turning out too may cars, radios., washing machines, and refrigerators; too much money around and too much of it into the hands of a few wealthy people who reinvested it in more factories and other means of production and to many people getting too much easy credit, which caused a further overstimulation of production.

The country's ability to produce had outstripped its ability to pay-and the nation paid for the mistake. As Will Rogers said, "America will be the only country that ever went to the poorhouse in an automobile." -Fascinating Facts from American History, By Bill Lawrence

Kinda like now, except our ability to consume has outstripped our ability to pay.

Une "Demode" Portrait du Volatility

a LURID PICTURE of VOLATILITY

From John Murphy, author of "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets" (stockcharts.com)

"This is the most facile portrait of what caused this crisis" ...and other thoughts on the inauguration of Barack Obama

Alan Greenspan is responsible for this crisis. He will be remembered for his tragic combination of ideological stubbornness and hubris. These were compounded by his age. Old age triggered a calcification in his thinking and myopia in his vision which rendered him out of touch and imperceptive to paradigmatic shifts in the world economy. In short, he was a victim of his own success and ego.

While the Federal Reserve's Fed Funds Target Rate played a large role in fomenting this crisis, it is not the whole story. The impact of China's rise, as transmitted through both the Wal-Mart effect on inflation and by China's massive interventions in the currency market, kept interest rate on long term U.S. government debt supernaturally low. This caused the stewards of our economy to fall asleep at their posts and the citizens of our country to become complacent.

Money was made too easy. She slept around, inflating the egos of people and the asset prices of things. Inevitably, we all got the clap.

Equally important is the human story. We, as humans, have a instinctive desire to avoid pain which has been encrypted and inculcated in us over the immense epoch of our genetic history. Often we construe falsehood with pain, when really we should embrace the opposite.

We see ourselves as rational creatures, and avoiding pain appears eminently rational. But this is fallacious. Avoiding pain is actually an emotional decision. Enduring pain in the pursuit of truth and some teleological utopos is truly rational. The ability to endure pain is characteristic of that higher order of thinking which separates us from all other creatures who possess no filter on their actions. Creatures who move before thought stalls in their brain with impulse as quick as synaptic transmission.

We, as a culture, failed in our fiduciary responsibility to ourselves. We allowed ourselves to be deluded. We delayed the tough decisions. We lived like children.

Alan Greenspan failed in his fiduciary responsibility to our nation. He let his desire to be liked, cherished and remembered overwhelm his thinking. This was not a conscious, pseudo-rational decision... its was an emotional one. But nothing is more insidious than the desire for popularity, as it corrupts truth, and posits the ends for the means.

The economy hasn't gotten laid in a long while, and he is frustrated. He lost his game when he slept with some hussy and got the clap. It is time for him to take his medicine.

Ambergris

A financial adviser has a fiduciary responsibility to an individual.

But I feel that an economist, as I conceive of it, is a fiduciary to a community and to the future. He is an artist, who like a musician, is a friendly experiencer in an art that is invisible... conceiving in a reality that is at once terrifying, glorious and profound.

I feel that of all of the art forms... music, architecture and economics are the most abstruse and profound because to practice them involves perceiving, visualizing and inventing structures out of the invisible. time

I see my role as a protector of all of those in my circle, be it my parents, all my friends, or generation mgmt. This is more or less what I've been trying to accomplish here, though gnosis can't be transmitted piecemeal as it is in this media.

It is because of this that I often feel a tremendous burden and responsibility. It often causes deafening pressure and stress and frequently is the source of my (sometimes) erratic behavior. I did not start by seeking this role, but in a sense, I suppose, I have been performing as such my whole life in my desire for community and utopia. As I am the only one so qualified in my extended circle of friends, I feel that it is exigent and indeed requisite.

There are many of my friends who I know feel this existential pressure to express "it" in their art. This art is a reflection of the greater vision of our community and the pressure stems from this tremendous responsibility, nay fiduciary duty, to portray (what I, for lack of a better term, call) generation mgmt in the greatest light.

I wish you all the best, and if I ever appear to be too crazy, please know that I only have the best intentions...

I know that someday, we will all find our ambergris.

-Matty Talty

Czech Modern

With all the hype and speculation surrounding Obama's impending bailout, I'd like to share some words of wisdom my 68 year-old Czech driver shared with me the other evening, “I’ve never seen an-y-thing more per.man.ent than a temp-ory govrn-ment pro-gram.”

Fuck John Galt

Today, completely out of step with the times, the EU ruled that Microsoft could not longer bundle Internet Explorer with their Windows operating system without including their competitor's web browsers. It was deemed anti-competitive.

You know what is anti-competitive... an omnipotent, monopolistic government body.

Given that IE is total crap, many alternatives have sprouted up, and I do not know anyone reasonably intelligent who uses it. Its the equivalent of our moms and their AOL accounts... anachronistic and obsolescent.

So I say this to Microsoft. Rather than including several different browsers in Windows as the EU has forced you to do... include none at all. Then we will not be able even to use your stupid browser to upload a decent one, and we will be forced to drive to a store and pay for a "CD-ROM" containing a browser. Competition facilitates innovation, but the EU seems intent to live in the past and assume its citizens are all unthinking children.

Kinda a shitty metaphor for their monetary and fiscal policies, come to think of it...

Perspective from Satyajit Das

1) Flat is the new up.
2) Debt is the new equity.
3) Dividends are the only return.
4) If you’re looking for the bottom of the market there’s a special offer - buy one you get the next one free.

His full article is very interesting:
http://www.wilmott.com/blogs/satyajitdas/index.cfm/2009/1/16/2008--Look-back-in-Horror

His book, "Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives" is a quite informative and a shockingly hilarious read.

I'd add one correllary to #4.
"Early is the new wrong." -Peter Clarke, CEO, Man Group

Fuck...

a. either the dow is going to go to 3500 or
b. the requisite government bailout is going to make inflation and taxes feel like it did.

???

I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but it certainly looks dramatic. Treasuries are US Government Debt. Agencies refers to the debt of Freddie and Fannie.

Tobin's q

"Tobin's q" is a ratio between:

The Market Value of a Company determined by the price of its Stocks and Bonds
and
The present Cost to replace this company's Assets (such as its factories, etc.)

If we calculate this value for the entire stock market (excluding Financial Companies) over the last 110 years, it looks like this:

When the ratio is below zero, it would cost more to create a company anew than to buy an existing company on the stock market. In Bull markets, Tobin's q is above zero, due to the "greater fool" principle. In Bear markets, Tobin's q is below zero, do to the "holy shit!" principle.