Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Market Update 12 14 10 _ Let's blow of the FOMC statement

Let’s blow off the Fed today

The short story from the Fed is this…“nothing has changed.”  Fed Funds will stay where it is and they continue to see the rate staying “exceptionally low for an extended period.”  They will also continue the QE2 program as originally announced.  By all rights today’s Fed statement should have sparked a rally in the Treasury market.  Ironically…the market sold off a bit more.

There is nothing new in today’s statement…it basically provides a short list of modest positives and then offsets each of them with a longer list of significant negatives.  See if you can find something in the following statements from today’s release that gets you fired up on the economy:

-          “…recovery is continuing, though at a rate that has been insufficient to bring down unemployment”

-          “household spending increasing at moderate pace, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit.”  This one might be my favorite part of the statement…it’s like someone saying you’re kind of nice, but ugly, boring, short tempered and vain at the same time.  This is not glowing praise for the economy.

-          “business spending on equipment and software rising, though less rapidly than earlier in the year.”

-          “Long term inflation expectations remain stable but measures of underlying inflation have continued to trend downward.”

This is a pretty dim report on the economy that offers no light at the end of the tunnel.

The Fed has two jobs: maximize employment and keep inflation in check.  They are nowhere close to achieving either of those goals currently.  As they look ahead they don’t see that they will be close to those goals anytime soon. 

Going forward the Fed will keep rates at zero and they will continue the QE2 purchase program.

Frustration ahead for the Fed

So far the Fed has gotten nothing they wanted from the QE2 program.  We are at a point where the Fed sees the economy still in a bad spot…but they now have borrowing costs rising.  This will undoubtedly be viewed by the Fed as a threat that will choke off what little headway the recovery has.  To their end they’ve said they will continue the QE2 program…but given the results they’ve had so far with QE2 it wouldn’t surprise me to see them try to pull another rabbit out of their hat.  I have no idea what it might be…but I know they can’t be watching borrowing costs rising without wringing their collective hands.   

If you have any questions on this material just let me know.

 

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Market Update _ 12 9 10 _ Whoa Nelly

Whoa Nelly!

I was watching cartoons with my kids the other day…OK…they were actually watching them with ME but the point is still the same.  There is an old Loony Tunes episode where Yosemite Sam is riding a camel through the desert chasing Bugs Bunny.  The camel is running at full speed when Yosemite Sam pulls back on the reigns and yells “Whoa!”  The camel completely ignores the command and continues charging across the sands.  Again our lovable loser yanks on the reigns and shouts even louder “I said WHOA!”  Still he runs.  Ultimately, he takes out a rifle and clobbers the camel hard over the head, knocking him unconscious and dropping him to the ground as he screams “when I saaaay Whoa…I meeeeean WHOA!!!”  This episode reminds me of how the Fed must be feeling today.

They’ve taken a lot of steps to keep rates low, yet the market is charging to the upside.  I envision a scenario in the not too distant future where Bernanke breaks out some serious QE2 funds, clobbers the market on the head, and screams screams “when I saaay low…I meeeean LOW!”

Frustrating at best

I can only imagine the frustration at the Bernanke household.  He has been working diligently to solve some very serious problems and he’s spending hundreds of billions of dollars and taking criticism from every corner of the world in the process.  Ben probably comes home at night, doesn’t say a word to anyone through dinner, sulks on the couch watching sports center until everyone else falls asleep, then he gets online and starts making angry posts in economic forums in support of QE2.  It’s got to be a tough existence right about now.

What’s up with the selloff?

Most of the ideas being offered for this week’s pullback revolve around the general theme of increased expectations for future economic growth. 

I don’t agree that it’s the sole (or even predominant) explanation for this week’s activity.  If you were selling Treasuries to position yourself for an economic expansion you’d be moving into things that would directly benefit from the expansion…stocks and commodities.  To date that hasn’t happened.  The Dow is basically unchanged from the 11/4/10 announcement of QE2 and from the recent announcement of the new tax initiatives.  Additionally, commodities as measured by the Bloomberg Commodities Composite curve are also unchanged over the same time periods.

Dow Jones on:

11/4/10 - 11,434

12/6/10 – 11,362

12/10/10 – 11,349

This doesn’t have the look of a market being fueled by investors betting on an economic recovery.

Bloomberg Commodities Index:

11/4/10 – 1,534

12/6/10 – 1,530

12/9/10 - 1,537

Commodities also unchanged over this period. 

So where is the money going?  It would seem that it’s being parked in cash for the time being…and cash isn’t where you go if you want to bet on a comeback.

Potential sources for this week’s volatility include but are not limited to:

-          Speculation that tax initiatives will boost the economy

-          European worries continue to reverberate through Treasury market

-          Bond Vigilantes punishing Fed and Congress for poor policy decisions

-          Portfolio Duration rebalancing

-          Unwinding of the deflation trade by various parties

-          Year end liquidity concerns

-          People taking gains before they disappear

There is no shortage of potential sources of explanation…whether this pullback lasts is another story.

Who would have thought you could make money by shorting the Treasury right after the Unemployment Rate jumped from 9.60% to 9.80%?

Despite the pullback in prices and the higher yields they’ve brought us…the underlying economic data are still fairly poor.  The Fed is still looking at 9.80% unemployment and inflation running at a lower level than they’d like.  The Fed is just starting to spend their QE2 money, they’ve got a lot left to spend, and they are already talking openly about increasing the size of the program if necessary.

It would seem that we have some potential for a street brawl between the bond vigilantes and the Fed.  Every time I think this market is getting boring it comes up with something new.

Unemployment Benefits…or the benefits of being unemployed

One of the benefits of my job is that I get to speak with a lot of people who are “on the front lines” so to speak.  Bankers are in the heart of every community in this country and they have a very good idea of how the local economy is doing. 

This morning I was having a conversation with an old banker friend of mine and he gave me some remarkable insight on the unemployment situation.  I’ll preface this story by saying that when I look at the size of the average unemployment check…$302 per week…I see an incentive to not be unemployed.  In my mind I can’t picture a person who would want to live on the government dime rather than make their own way.  I figure most people will try to get off of the unemployment rolls as quickly as possible, get back to work, and take command of their own destiny.  That’s my perspective because that’s how I think…it’s how I view the world…it’s how everyone reading this e-mail views the world.

My friend on the other hand has some very direct experience with this unemployment program that we have in place.  He told me several stories but the best might be of his friend that runs a manufacturing plant.  This guy needs to expand his production schedule because he just got some new contracts.  Keep in mind he resides in a county that carries the highest rate of unemployment in his state…there are literally people sitting around everywhere with nothing to do.  So he needs to add a bunch of jobs that pay nearly $20/hr.  He warns everyone to get to the plant early because these jobs are going to go quickly.  Several weeks later he still doesn’t have the positions filled.  In the words of Jerry Seinfeld…WHAT is the DEAL with THAT?

Apparently the people that came and looked at the jobs didn’t like the hours.  They’d rather get paid by the government to not work 24 hours a day than to get $20/hr to work when they are needed.

You can imagine how frustrated this guy is every night when he goes home…he’s surrounded by unemployed people and he can’t fill the jobs he needs to grow his business.  So he goes home one night and his neighbor yells over to him to come have a beer.  Great…he could use one.  He walks over to the neighbor’s house and the neighbor tells him to check out his new lawn tractor.  Our man’s jaw hits the floor.  The neighbor has been on unemployment for 80 weeks.  This guy can’t fill jobs at the factory…and the unemployed guy is buying new lawn tractors.  He feels sick…he no longer wants a beer…he goes home.

While I certainly understand the good that unemployment insurance can do…some of the examples you see in practice point out that there is a lot of room for improvement in this program.  It would seem that with adequate oversight we might be able to make this a much more productive…and less expensive program. 

If you have any questions or if there is anything I can be doing for you just let me know.

Regards,

Steve Scaramastro, SVP

800-311-0707

 

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Market Update 12 1 10 _ Employment figures

 

The ADP Employment data this morning is putting the market in an optimistic mood.  The ADP Employment Report is derived from a database of 500,000 US businesses that employ roughly 24 million people across all 19 of the major NAICS (North American Industrial Classifications).  Each month they survey 365,000 of these businesses to determine how many jobs they’ve added.  This month the Bloomberg Survey expected the ADP Employment Change to show that 70k jobs were added when in fact it came in at 93k jobs.  Additionally the prior month level was revised upward from 43K to 82K. 

 

Stock futures are up on the data and the 10-year is trading off.  The 10-year Treasury is currently off almost a point to trade at a 2.90% yield.  Tomorrow we have Initial Jobless Claims and Continuing Claims...these are generally bigger market movers than the ADP figure so if they disappoint we should see this 2.90% level on the 10-year drop. 

 

Last month we saw that 407k people filed for Initial Jobless Claims.  This month the forecast is for 424K to get in that line.  Continuing Claims last month stood at 4.182 million…the estimate for this month is slightly higher at 4.2 million.  A word of caution is needed here…as jobless benefits expire for millions of people going forward the Continuing Claims figures will become less reliable as an indicator of the state of the employment market. 

 

Some interesting figures on Unemployment

 

Estimates from the Labor Department are that without another extension roughly 2 million people will lose benefits by the end of December.  The average unemployment benefit check in the US is currently $302.90 per week.  Multiply that by the 2 million people losing benefits this month and you’re looking at $618 million that won’t be fed into the economy each week through this program ($2.5 billion per month).  It’s also interesting to note that if you annualize the average unemployment check it puts you right about at the Federal Poverty Line if you have 2 people in your family.   

 

That’s all the data for today.  If you have any questions or if there is anything I can be doing for you just let me know.

 

Steve Scaramastro, SVP

800-311-0707