Martes 04/03/15 ventas de autos, habla Yellen

[Fenix]

Time For The Market To Break Again?
03/03/2015 09:53 -0500

* CBOE

The S&P 500 has given back all the gains from the US Open yesterday... when the CBOE "broke" and stocks went vertical... it seems it is time for the market to break again...

Small Caps are now red for the week and S&P close...

WTF!!! Are you serious?

TruthInSunshine: If the rate of stock buybacks continues, publicly traded companies will own 100% of their own shares of stock, thus becoming closely held corporations yet again.

Mind Blown! Boom!

walküre:Market is always open to take your money but God forbid, you would try and sell. Unless you're Warren Buffet or similar who can put enough pressure on to get his positions filled each and every time. When he liquidated his XOM position late last year, it did cause the market to decline for a few days.

That's how they roll folks. It's an exclusive club and you're not in it.

Unless you are an INSIDER do not buy stocks - EVER

Kaiser Sousa: (Reuters) - Barclays has been providing information to an investigation into precious metals by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), the bank said in its 2014 annual report on Tuesday, a week after a similar statement by HSBC.

The DoJ and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating at least 10 banks for possible rigging of precious metals markets, the Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing people close to the inquiries.

Tuesday's acknowledgment of its involvement in the investigation comes after HSBC said in its annual report on Feb. 23 that the DoJ had issued a request to HSBC Holdings in November seeking documents related to a criminal antitrust investigation it was conducting.

The latest investigation is a further distraction for a bank battling to cut costs and boost profit even as it prepares to settle allegations that its traders manipulated foreign exchange markets. Taking into account charges, provisions and restructuring costs, the bank suffered a 21 percent drop in full-year net profit, it said on Tuesday.

Regulatory scrutiny of precious metals trading and benchmarking has increased since the Libor rigging scandal exposed widespread manipulation of interest rates in the foreign exchange market.

Swiss regulator FINMA said in November that it found a clear attempt to manipulate precious metals benchmarks during its investigation of precious metals and foreign exchange trading at UBS.

"The behavior patterns in precious metals were somewhat similar to the behavior patterns in foreign exchange," FINMA director Mark Branson said in a conference call with journalists."

[Fenix]

LawsofPhysics:
Yes, and now that every government on the planet is funding their liabilities through direct monetization treasury yields are now irrelevant.

Interesting times. Accountability? Price discovery? Who cares? Rally on!

gcjohns1971:
What is interesting to me is that both the symbols listed in the delayed opening are energy-related:

IVANF = Ivanhoe Energy Inc.

BPZR = BPZ Energy Resources




Campaign finance experts say Goldman is hoping another President Bush or President Clinton would both push for Wall Street-friendly policies and draw on Goldman’s executive ranks for expertise, a practice that has fallen out of favor in the years following the financial crisis.


“Goldman is a behemoth that invests in everything and advises every industry and what it wants is literally everything,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “It’s concerned about tax reform, Dodd-Frank implementation, energy and nuclear power and everything else.



BoJ Is Losing Control As Demand Wanes For JGBs
Well that didn’t take long. Just yesterday we noted that Japanese policy makers were starting to get wise to the fact that rampant monetization of government bonds can (and will) foster extreme volatility by robbing the market of liquidity and inhibiting price discovery. We went on to warn that with the BOJ greedily sucking up all gross JGB issuance (and in the process driving historical volatility to near two-year highs last month), all it will take are a couple of more weak auctions (like the 10- and 5-year debt sales from February) for things to go awry and that’s just what happened overnight.

Yields on JGB 10s rose 4 bps and the 30-year yield tacked on 6 bps after demand was tepid at the monthly 10-year sale. While down from last month’s 12-year high, the tail, at 0.33, was still some three standard deviations outside of the historical norm (not good). Allow us to reiterate (although this should, by now, be self-evident to anyone with a pulse) that Japan simply cannot afford for yields to spike as the entire ponzi scheme rests solely on there being a constant bid (from somewhere) for JGBs. The next test is Thursday’s 30-year auction which, according to Bloomberg, traders are already worried about.

We’re starting to notice a pattern here:

Meanwhile, another government adviser (this makes the second in two days) expressed skepticism about Japan’s ability to manipulate markets in perpetuity. Further easing “shouldn’t be undertaken,” Etsuro Honda, an adviser to PM Abe told WSJ, adding that the dollar likely can’t go much higher against the yen as we’ve probably reached the “upper limit in the exchange rate’s comfort zone.”

We’re reminded of what we said last month: “The idea that a nation can devalue itself into prosperity on the backs of the rest of the world was total idiocy after all.”

[Fenix]

Peter Schiff Warns "Don't Be Fooled By The Madness Of Crowds"
03/03/2015 - 11:46

Going into 2015 the economic outlook held by the U.S. investment establishment could not have been much more positive, and more unified. Pundits saw all the variables aligning to create the best of all investment worlds, a virtual "no-brainer" of optimism. High degrees of certainty can be dangerous. Herd mentality can cause investors to chase returns en masse and pile into positions that may already be overvalued. But herds can be spooked, most often by unexpected developments which can catch the herd wrong-footed and spark major movements when the masses scatter at the same time. When that occurs, those who resisted the herd may find themselves rewarded. We believe that we are approaching such a point.


GDP Shocker: Atlanta Fed Calculates Q1 Growth Of Only 1.2%
03/03/2015 - 14:35
While every other word from talking-heads and policy-makers relates various anecdotes (or simple lies) about US economic growth, The Atlanta Fed appears to have taken a 'data-dependent' perspective on the real economy (as opposed to smoke and mirrors). Based on their GDPNow "nowcasting" model, The Atlanta Fed projects Q1 2015 GDP growth os just 1.2% (less than half current sell-side economist consensus) and getting weaker...



Only 17% Of Americans See The US As The World's Economic Superpower
03/03/2015 - 14:52
Echoing former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ quip, “There is surely something odd about the world’s greatest power being the world’s greatest debtor,” it appears that economic reality is finally beginning to set in for Americans... Only hours ago, Gallup released a new poll showing that only a small minority (just 17%) of Americans still view the US as the world’s economic superpower.



Treasury 'Short Overhang' Lifts After Actavis Prices 2nd Largest Bond Issue Ever
03/03/2015 - 15:10
Just a day after Blackrock saw its biggest Bond ETF outflows in history ($525.8 million pulled on Monday), Actavis sold $21 billion of almost-junk 'BBB-' rated debt (at a minsicule yield of only 3.5%) in the 2nd largest bond issuance ever (2nd only to Verizon's massive $49 billion deal in 2013). The issue was oversubscribed 4.5x (around $90bn in the order book) as a ten-part offering varying from 18-month floaters to 30Y fixeds all went off below guidance. With Treasury liquidty disappearing fast, one wonders just how much rate-locking on this massive deal was responsible for a net short overhang on the Treasury complex the last few days...

Record ETF outflows on Monday...

Investors pulled $525.8 million from BlackRock Inc's iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF on Monday, the company said on Tuesday.


Monday's outflow was the biggest in the history of the exchange-traded fund, which launched in 2003 and has about $24 billion in assets.

Didn't stymie professional demand for the Actavis deal...as Bloomberg reports,

Actavis sold debt in a ten-part offering. Order book said to have been about $90b

* $500m 18-month FRN priced at 3ml+87.5; launch at 3ml+87.5; guid 3ml+90 area; IPT 3ml+100 area
* $1b 2Y priced at +120; launch at +120; guid +120/125; IPT +135/140
* $3b 3Y priced at +130; launch at +130; guid +130/135; IPT +145/150
* $500m 3Y FRN priced at 3ml+108; launch at 3ml+108; guid 3ml equivalent; IPT 3ml equiv
* $3.5b 5Y priced at +140; launch at +140; guid +140/145; IPT +160/165
* $500m 5Y FRN priced at 3ml+125.5; launch at 3ml+125.5; guid 3ml equivalent
* $3b 7Y priced at +155; launch at +155; guid +160 area; IPT +180/185
* $4b 10Y priced at +175; launch at +175; guid +180 area; IPT +200 area
* $2.5b 20Y priced at +190; launch at +190; guid +195 area; IPT +220 area
* $2.5b 30Y priced at +210; launch at +210; guid +215 area; IPT +240 area

Ratings: Baa3/BBB-/BBB-

M&A Call: 101% M&A call on all tranches until Nov. 30, 2015

UOP: Financing part of Allergan acquisition


Bookrunners: JPM, MIZ, WFS (active); BOTM/SMBC (passive, 18-month); RBS, SMBC (passive, 2Y); RBS/TD (passive, 3Y); BNP, SMBC (passive, 5Y); BNP, BTMU (passive, 7Y); Barclays, HSBC (passive, 10Y); Barclays, TD (passive, 20Y); BTMU, HSBC (passive, 30Y)

The deal is thesecond-largest on record behind Verizon’s $49b, 8-part sale in 2013, surpassing Apple’s $17b, 6-part offering in 2013 and Medtronic’s $17b sale from 2014. The Actavis deal tops 2015's largest deal - Microsoft’s $10.75b, 6-part offering from Feb. 9.

While officials note:

“The Treasury Department is constantly monitoring liquidity across all financial markets,” spokesman Adam Hodge said in an e-mail. “The Treasury market is the deepest and most-liquid market in the world and we are committed to ensuring that it remains that way.”

But as Bloomberg notes, however, Treasury market liquidity is disappearing fast...

For decades, the $12.5 trillion market for U.S. government debt was renowned for its “depth,” Wall Street’s way of talking about a market’s ability to handle large trades without big moves in prices. But lately, that resiliency has practically vanished -- and that’s a big worry.


Less depth has meant greater volatility. So Treasuries -- the world’s haven asset during turmoil -- may be prone to more disruptions, particularly as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates. And if investors begin to doubt whether they’ll still be able to buy and sell on a moment’s notice, that has the potential to elevate the U.S.’s cost to borrow.


How much depth has the market lost?


A year ago, you could trade about $280 million of Treasuries without causing prices to move, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Now, it’s $80 million.


“There aren’t enough bonds on the planet to satisfy all the buying,” said Charles Comiskey, the New York-based head of Treasury trading at Bank of Nova Scotia, a primary dealer.

Leaving one to wonder just how much of the Treasy yield complex weakness of the last 3 days was due to underwriters locking in interest rates on $21 billion debt issuance...

[Fenix]

Loucleve:
OK, so treasury liquidity is evaporating.

What is my takeaway? I guess it would be to buy long treasuries.

Thoughts?

madbraz:
just be careful with the FED and NY FED on the other side of the trade. i mean, c'mon, they put the FOMC meeting right before quadruple witching options/futures expiration and they do $20 billion in treasury securities lending to primary dealers and $130 billion a day in reverse repo treasury collateral so that players don't have to buy treasuries and instead can pretty much naked-short them.

sh*tshow if you ask me, but yields in theory should go lower. not what the FED wants.

The Most Interesting Frog:"not what the FED wants"

Not what the Fed says it wants!

The Most Interesting Frog: Agree, my guess is yields go negative at least out to 10yrs. Maybe by end of 2015.




By now, everybody knows that the primary consequence (which we originally predicted back in 2009 − and many have since agreed − was completely intended) of the past 6 years of unprecedented monetary policy has been to push wealth inequality to record levels… not just in the U.S., but across the world.

What may not be so clear is precisely when this period of unprecedented wealth disparity started.

The answer, as the following handy chart from NPR shows, is that long before QE, the wealth gap for the 1% really started in the early 1980s, courtesy of none other than Greenspan’s “great moderation.”

More importantly, and what is certainly not known, is that between 1930 and 1970, it was only the “bottom 90%” that saw their incomes rise, as can be seen on the next chart.

This is how the NPR qualified this dramatic variance in wealth gaps, the first of which benefited most Americans, especially the middle-class, and which ended with a thud in the early 1970s, and the second which was unleashed in the early 1980s:

In the first phase, known as the great compression, inequality fell. Incomes rose for people in the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution, as the postwar boom led to high demand for workers with low and moderate skills.

At the same time, income was basically stagnant for the top 1 percent of earners. A combination of high marginal tax rates (around 80 percent) for the wealthy, and social norms, may have kept a lid on wages at the top, according to the economists who gathered the data we used to make the graphs.
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In the last 35 years, the reverse occurred. Top marginal tax rates fell sharply. Incomes rose for those in the top 1 percent, largely driven by rapidly rising pay for top executives.

And this is how NPR tries to describe the transformation that took place: “a combination of global competition, automation, and declining union membership, among other factors, led to stagnant wages for most workers.”

Sure, why not.

But while we are all speculating, there is one far more important and very critical event on the calendar that happened just as the ascent of the non-1% peaked.

This:

Which should also clarify just why to the “1%” − including their protectors in the “developed market” central banking system, their tenured economist lackeys, their purchased politicians, and their captured media outlets − the topic of a return to a gold standard is the biggest threat conceivable.

[Fenix]

The Most Interesting Frog: “There aren’t enough bonds on the planet to satisfy all the buying,” said Charles Comiskey, the New York-based head of Treasury trading at Bank of Nova Scotia, a primary dealer

Gotta call BS on this. Central Banks currently "own" $13 trillion (US) worth of Soverigns and other related junk. So, if CBs wanted to sell, there would be plenty available. Also, if there is less supply of bonds and this dumb issuance is 4.5X subscribed, then bond prices should be rocketing skyward. Doesn't make sense...

LawsofPhysics:
makes perfect sense if the major buyer and seller are the same entity and control the government for which those bonds are being issued.

How many people do you know that hold treasuries to expiration as an investment?



This Is What Happens When The Government Cracks Down On Subprime Auto Loans
03/03/2015 - 15:31

A running theme here has been the great rotation of bubble-blowing credit from subprime housing to subprime auto-loans. Amid government probes of underwriting standards and soaring delinquencies, it appears when the least-creditworthy Americans are cut off from debt servitude, bad things happen in car sales...


* *FORD FEB. U.S. LIGHT-VEHICLE SALES FALL 2.0%, EST. UP 5.8% (miss!)
* *GM FEB. U.S. AUTO SALES UP 4.2%, EST. UP 5.9% (miss!)
* *NISSAN FEB. U.S. AUTO SALES UP 2.7%, EST. UP 3.8% (miss!)
* *FIAT CHRYSLER FEB. U.S. AUTO SALES UP 5.6%, EST. UP 8.2% (miss!)
* *HONDA FEB. U.S. AUTO SALES RISE 5%, EST. UP 11% (miss!)
* *TOYOTA FEB. U.S. AUTO SALES RISE 13.3%, EST. UP 15%( miss!)

Of course, the real blame - as we will be told - is the weather... It seems Obama's new American Dream of a brand new Ford or GM (or Maserati) in every driveway may be another broken promise.

* *FORD SAYS WEAK TEXAS SALES MAY HAVE BEEN WEATHER RELATED

So did the analysts that forecast sales not know that there was weather? not know the seasonals in fleet sales?

This won't end well...

as the delinquencies are already surging...

The details are even worse:

* *FORD FEB. U.S. F-SERIES SALES DOWN 1.2%
* *FORD FEB. U.S. ESCAPE SALES DOWN 9.6%
* *FORD FEB. U.S. FUSION SALES DOWN 4.9%
* *JAGUAR LAND ROVER CEO SEES 2015/2016 PROFIT MARGIN DECLINING

This really should not be a total surprise as auto sales have fallen and missed for 3 months in a row... to 10-month lows

This is the biggest 3 month drop since June 2011 and on par with the drop into Lehman...

* *AUTODATA: FEB. LIGHT VEHICLE SAAR 16.23M UNITS, EST. 16.6M

Even Phil LeBeau could only muster "lacklustre" as a response to this data...

But finally...

* *LAMBORGHINI CEO SEES HIGHER SALES IN 2015 THAN 2014

We leave you with this...

Sergio Marchionne, chief executive officer of Fiat Chrysler, said in an interview. “Full employment, low interest rates, stock prices up. It’s like dreamland.”

[Fenix]

As The Battle For Tikrit Begins, A Map Of Who Controls What
03/03/2015 - 15:48

As the world awaits to see if following his speech, Israel's PM will now proceed with launching a full on assault on Iran just to show he means business, or at least stage yet another false flag intervention to greenlight war in the middle east, several hundred kilometers to the northeast, the biggest offensive in the "war on ISIS" is now taking place after thousands of Iraqi soldiers and Shi'ite militiamen seek to retake the northern Iraqi town and birthplace of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit. And since there is much confusion all around since pretty much everyone in the middle east is now involved in this war on Iraqi/ISIS soil


Hubris Hangover? Stocks, Bonds, & Bullion All Red
Tyler Durden's picture
03/03/2015 16:08 -0500
For those who bought the breakout to 5,000 in the Nasdaq...

Today's weakness started in the European session as selling the QE news and Greek funding issues, extended when US opened (unusually) and then extended losses as Bibi spoke... the lows were put in as Europe closed...

VIX jumped the most in 3 weeks back above 13 once again... (toipping 14.6 intrday)Hubris Hangover?

Bonds and stocks have recoupled from the Yellen dovishness and Actavis rate-lock pressure...

Treasury yields trod water for most of the day but pushed higher in the afternoon - now up a notable 12-14bps on the week (2Y +6bps) and steeper...

The USDollar ended the day modestly lower, following a similar SELL EUROPE, BUY US pattern to unchanged for the week... Swissy is being sold this week and SEK notably bid...

The Brazilian real was monkey-hammered once again - now down 3.2% in the last 2 days to fresh 11-year lows over 2.9330

Commodities were mixed with prices charts looking more and more like EKGs than ever... Note the drop as China opened in all commodities... Silver and oil are now anti-correlated once again...

Crude did what it does - this time was a dump-and-pump as we await the API inventory data (dump if history is right)...

[Fenix]

Crude Jumps After API Inventories Build Less Than Expected
03/03/2015 - 16:35

The last three times that API inventories reported (each notably greater than expected), crude prices tumbled (only to ramp hilariously the next day following DOE inventory data). Against Bloomberg estimates of a 3.95 million barrel build, API printed only a 2.89 million barrel build; and WTI crude prices surged to the day's highs.


The Water Wars Are Coming
03/03/2015 - 16:59

A century of government meddling has turned the issue of water rights on its head, and further centralized control of waterways in local, state, and federal governments. Just as the residents of Los Angeles fought over water with local farmers, the residents of Las Vegas will soon find themselves fighting with surrounding states over what’s left of Lake Mead. None of the power players seem to care that the current population settlements of the southwestern United States cannot last. One day the water will run out. The sooner this reality is confronted, the better.


How Mario Draghi Is Putting Pensioners At Risk
03/03/2015 17:30 -0500

Earlier today, we laid out all of the myriad reasons why Draghi-style QE won’t (indeed can’t) work. Some of these reasons are logistical (euro fixed income supply/demand imbalance) and some are structural (former easing efforts impeding current accommodation). We’ve also taken a hard look at the deleterious effects CB asset purchases have had on market liquidity and, by extension, price discovery, and volatility. Here, we present yet another unintended (we hope) consequence of monetization gone wild: underfunded pension plans.

Of course anyone with a basic understanding of the time value of money could have predicted this, so we’re sure it was in the back of more than a few peoples’ minds, but apparently the situation worsened materially over the past 12 months or so as the market began to try and front run the ECB.

Via FT:

[S&P] blames the sharp fall in long-term bond yields ahead of the imminent start of the European Central Bank’s €60bn-per-month asset-buying programme.

Such yields determine the “discount rate” that pension funds must use to calculate the present value of their liabilities: the lower the rate, the higher the liabilities.

S&P estimates that defined-benefit scheme liabilities will have increased 11-18 per cent, equivalent to €58bn- €92bn, in 2014, driven by the sharp fall in long-term corporate bond yields and only partly offset by the fall in long-term inflation expectations.

… and more from Bloomberg:

Among the measures S&P says companies may have to take to adjust to this new low-yield world are freezes on pensionable salaries, raising the retirement age, and closing plans to new or even to existing members.


So accommodative monetary policy, which is ostensibly supposed to stimulate aggregate demand thereby encouraging businesses to spend and hire, is now perversely causing people to work longer and preventing new employees from having access to a secure retirement. About the only thing worse (and more sadly ironic) than this would be if international loans designed to prevent insolvent eurozone countries from descending into Third World status were being repaid out of pensioners’ pockets — oh wait, that’s happening too.

Meanwhile, commentators seem to be gradually catching up to what we’ve been saying for years. Namely, that this isn’t working.

From BlackRock’s Peter Fisher, via Bloomberg:

“Quantitative easing, which is supposed to push investors into riskier assets, instead is driving up prices of low-risk assets “as we’ve seen in Europe today,”


“The Fed’s bond-buying program wasn’t much more successful.”


“It didn’t really work here, it worked at the margin as a little chase for yield. People want to hoard the best assets”

[Fenix]

Howard Marks On Luck And Skill In Investing
03/03/2015 - 18:00

The person who successfully predicts the decline of the price of oil or gets the highest return in a given year is lionized by The Wall Street Journal. In the short term, it is impossible to know whether this success was due to luck or skill, but it will come out in the long term because it is hard to be lucky for 20 years. Marks said he has been successful by not taking bets that could lose dramatically, by mitigating loss, and by being consistent rather than having brilliant successes outweighed by dismal failures. Successful investing comes from “variant perception,” Marks said, where the consensus view is incorporated into the price of the asset and you have a different view from the consensus. If your variant view is correct, then eventually the consensus comes to agree with you and the price moves favorably in your direction. Marks said if you think investing is easy and you do not see the complexities, you will not be successful.



ThirdCoastSurfer:Good thing I'm not in Congress and able to question the Chairman. I'd ask:

1. What is more predicatble, the economy or the weather?

2. To read or listen to your statement, why do I not hear or read one declarative statement?

Is trust or faith in a prediction really just a matter of the proper use of adverbs; and if so, what do you really contribute to the conversation if you are too afraid to make an educated guess?

3. What is the total amount of stimulus injected into the economy since 2008?

4. What is that in per capita terms?

5. Who has benefited most from these capital injections? The banks? What has providing them with 7 years of free money produced?

6. Are you familiar with "r>g"? Applied to banks, what would this formula produce?

5. Would you say the QE experiment is complete? What % towards completion would you assign it? If it fails, what will your (the Feds) mia culpa sound like?

orangegeek:And here's the 3 month T-Bill Rate

http://bullandbearmash.com/chart/monthl ... lat-pers...

The Fed Funds rate is taken from the 3-month T-bill rate - kinda like copying someone's homework and calling it your own.



03/03/2015 18:45
Over the past several months, with the price of crude plummeting to half where it was compared to a year ago, we have written much about the monetary reality of the Petrodollar (and more importantly, its recent disappearance), the socioeconomic implications for oil/commodity exporters, the liquidity considerations for the those who create the "recycled" currency in question, and the resultant demand for assets created by public and private entities sold by the currency creator, in the process boosting the "value" of both the commodity, the demand for the currency (usually the world's reserve at any given moment), and the assets of the currency host.

We have explained this cycle and more importantly, what happens when this cycle goes into reverse, in "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed" and "The Death Of The Petrodollar Was Finally Noticed" (not to mention "Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar").

Still, the underlying concept of how Petrodollar recycling, or as some call it, petrocurrency mercantilism works, leaves some confusion. So in order to alleviate that, here courtesy of Cult State, is a quick and simple primer that should hopefully answer all questions.

From CultState:

So what is petrocurrency mercantilism?

It’s when a national bank and an energy producer collude to generate artificial demand for a currency at the expense of the purchasing power of other currencies.

[Fenix]

CrazyCooter:I bet the apex of global oil production is approximately now. All those oil companies are going to hit the brakes on capital spending with all these low prices and after that works through the system for a few years they will never be able to get production back up to today levels given the natural decline rate of conventional fields.

That probably isn't good for the petro dollar either, but on a different timeline too I suppose.

sunaJ:Don't forget that malinvestment (ie. hyperinflated credit) has been extended to the industry, which is a compounding magnifier of bubble collapse. When credit comes due to infrastructure malinvestment, well, nobody will be there to run the companies, they will just part-out the assets and walk away. Though, I think those giant dump trucks that they built are as big as houses, so maybe you can make an affordable residence of one on a fire sale.

Yen Cross: Let's go back to the Johnson & Nixon administrations. ( Gerald Ford was never qualified to make the decisions that set current precedent in fiscal policy)

JFK assassinated just before Nixon get's inpeached?

Every leadership makes changes abruptly? They call it transitory.

[admin]

La caída del petróleo perturba la transformación de General Electric



Después de pasar una década transformando General Electric Co. GE -0.96% en un grupo industrial más sencillo, Jeff Immelt se encuentra con un nuevo problema: demasiado petróleo.

Los inversionistas presionan desde hace tiempo al presidente ejecutivo del conglomerado para que escinda la división financiera y ajuste el enfoque de sus negocios industriales. El año pasado, se deshizo de segmentos como los electrodomésticos y las tarjetas de crédito de minoristas. Las desinversiones culminaron una prolongada reestructuración en la que Immelt estima que vendió 65% de la empresa cuyo liderazgo heredó de Jack Welch hace 13 años.

Se suponía que ahora empezaría a recoger los frutos. Pero la caída de los precios del petróleo ha planteado un nuevo obstáculo para el crecimiento del grupo y ha generado renovadas preguntas sobre su legado. Algunos inversionistas y ejecutivos temen que ahora habría que esperar más tiempo antes de que las acciones de GE pongan fin a su racha bajista —han retrocedido 35% desde que Immelt tomó las riendas, en septiembre de 2001, y 7,7% desde el cierre de 2013—, lo que profundizaría sus frustraciones en momentos en que el presidente ejecutivo ingresa a las etapas finales de su gestión.

Los resultados del cuarto trimestre de 2014 superaron las expectativas de Wall Street, con US$5.200 millones en ganancias sobre US$42.000 millones en ingresos. No obstante, en el mismo período de 2007, las utilidades de GE llegaron a US$6.700 millones sobre una facturación de US$48.500 millones.

Ahora, el derrumbre del crudo ha oscurecido el panorama. La acción del conglomerado ha caído 4% desde que comenzó el declive del petróleo en junio, comparado con un alza de 7,6% del índice bursátil S&P 500. Analistas de J.P. Morgan Chase JPM +0.32% indicaron que los resultados de GE empeorarían debido al impacto del crudo.

Esto pone a Immelt, de 59 años, en una situación que ya conoce: tener que demostrar su capacidad. “Creo que lo que han hecho con estas medidas es muy audaz”, dice Robert Spremulli, analista de la gestora de fondos TIAA-CREF, el decimonoveno mayor accionista de GE según FactSet. “Necesita demostrar su éxito”.


Jeff Immelt, presidente ejecutivo de General Electric, en una conferencia en diciembre en París. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

GE no parecería ser la víctima más obvia de una caída del mercado petrolero. La compañía fundada por Thomas Edison es conocida por sus turbinas eléctricas, motores de aviones y equipos para realizar tomografías computarizadas. Su filial GE Capital es esencialmente uno de los mayores bancos de Estados Unidos.

Sin embargo, Immelt también apostó al auge energético, al invertir US$14.000 millones en empresas que ayudan a perforadores de petróleo y gas a extraerlos y transportarlos. Los hidrocarburos generaron directa o indirectamente un cuarto de los US$100.000 millones en ingresos industriales de GE en 2014.

En la asamblea anual de accionistas en diciembre, Immelt advirtió que el negocio de petróleo y gas podría provocar caídas de hasta 5% en los ingresos y las ganancias en 2015.

Estas perspectivas han reforzado la opinión de algunos en Wall Street de que Immelt no actuó lo suficientemente rápido para reorganizar el portafolio de GE incluso antes de la caída del crudo. “La idea más atemorizante es que esta es una compañía que podría demorarse dos décadas en volver a su máximo anterior de US$60” por acción, en 2000, dice Nick Heymann, analista de William Blair & Co. “Es como las décadas perdidas en Japón”.

En declaraciones públicas desde diciembre, Immelt y otros ejecutivos han dicho que siguen comprometidos con el petróleo a largo plazo. El director financiero, Jeffrey Bornstein, dijo en una entrevista en enero que GE usará el declive del mercado como “una oportunidad” para racionalizar las operaciones y superar a rivales en problemas.

Immelt está acostumbrado a las críticas a su gestión, entre ellas que tardó demasiado en reducir la dependencia en GE Capital, que ha sido la mayor preocupación de sus inversionistas. El cambio profundo lleva tiempo, dijo en una entrevista en septiembre, en la que también señaló que ha realizado inversiones en productos como motores de aviones y turbinas de gas que darán frutos durante décadas.

“A mi parecer, a medida que crezcan nuestras ganancias (...) si llevamos a cabo las cosas que hemos delineado a los inversionistas, la acción va a subir”, afirmó.

Immelt sucedió a un presidente ejecutivo cuyo desempeño era difícil de igualar. Welch construyó un imperio que aumentó sus ganancias de forma constante y cuyas acciones se dispararon en los años 90. Cuatro días después de que Immelt asumiera el mando, en 2001, los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre golpearon su negocio de aviación. Luego, la crisis financiera convirtió su gigantesca división bancaria en un riesgo, lo que obligó a GE a recortar su dividendo por primera vez desde la Gran Depresión.

Durante gran parte de la última década, la estrategia de Immelt fue enfocarse en el suministro de equipamientos de infraestructura que necesitaban los países desarrollados —motores, turbinas, tecnología médica— y retirarse de otros segmentos, en particular de los mercados de consumo.

Se deshizo de NBCUniversal, diciendo que distraía la misión principal de GE. Welch había adquirido aseguradoras; Immelt salió de ese sector en 2005. Se desprendió de GE Plastics y GE Appliances, unas de las últimas conexiones que tenía con los consumidores, y compró activos industriales como la división de energía eólica de Enron Corp. y la firma de ciencias biológicas Amersham PLC.

Algunas apuestas salieron mal. Después de los atentados del 11 de septiembre compró varias empresas de seguridad que no dieron frutos. También invirtió fuerte en edificios de oficinas y otras propiedades comerciales a través de GE Capital antes del colapso del mercado inmobiliario estadounidense.

En 2010, la energía parecía encajar bien con la visión que tenía Immelt de la cartera de GE: una creciente industria global en la cual podría vender equipamientos de infraestructura. Supervisó una serie de compras a partir de ese año, cuando el crudo Brent se cotizaba entre US$80 y US$100 el barril. En septiembre de 2014, la apuesta petrolera aún parecía sólida con buenas posibilidades en las operaciones de fracturación hidráulica en EE.UU. y en proyectos de exploración en Noruega y Escocia.

A fin de año, Immelt adoptó un tono de despedida. Los cambios en el portafolio finalmente permitirían a GE dar un giro y enfocarse en el crecimiento orgánico de sus divisiones industriales. Sólo necesitaba que los inversionistas compartieran su visión.

Desde 2008, la acción de GE no ha superado el umbral de US$30, frente a su récord de US$60 en 2000. Durante la recesión, se ubicó por debajo de US$7.

Hoy en día, el Brent se cotiza en torno a US$60, lo que ha dado lugar a una contracción en toda la industria. Los ejecutivos de GE dicen que 60% del negocio de petróleo y gas ya está bajo contrato y que la dificultad de algunos clientes para detener sus operaciones ayudará a la división. Immelt dijo en enero que recibe llamadas de clientes que buscan modificar los términos y una fuente indicó que probablemente pedirán descuentos.

“De una forma, yo creé todos estos problemas”, afirmó Immelt en septiembre al hablar sobre medidas para reducir capas de burocracia empresarial que se han formado durante su gestión. “No es como si pudiera decir (...) esto fue culpa de Jack Welch. Es nuestra culpa, y mi culpa”, sentenció.