Martes 08/9/15 indice del optimismo de los negocios pequeños

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Germany's Schaeuble Blasts Central Banks: Money Printing Leads To Financial And Debt Crises
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 - 10:56

"We shouldn't pass on the bill for the tasks that are facing us now to future generations. Being in favour of more debt and a further flooding of the markets with central bank money is neither original nor serious."




The Global Credit Supercycle: Full Frontal
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 11:05 -0400


Over the past several years, one of the prevailing, if completely incorrect, conventional wisdom memes was that the US, and especially the private sector, had undergone a deleveraging and was ready to load up on debt again. This was wrong because as we showed over the years, the only deleveraging which US households underwent was due to defaults and nothing to do with voluntary debt reduction.

Furthermore, the compounding effect of soaring student loans - which at $1.1 trillion eclipse the total credit card debt of the US - is one of the reasons why the US labor participation rate is at 38 year lows: millennials are unwilling and unable to enter the labor force opting to rollover student loans instead (until said loans are forgiven), while aged workers, those 55 and over, thanks to ZIRP crushing the income-creating capacity of their savings, don't have the resources to exit the labor force.

As for US banks whose "fortress" balance sheets have supposedly never been more solid due to the collapse in net leverage, here is a chart showing total US commercial bank cash balances when adding the $2.5 trillion in "transitory" Fed excess reserves, and what happens if one were to "pro-forma" the Fed's monetary spigot out of bank balance sheets.



Bottom line: aside from a brief blip just after the financial crisis, the US never actually deleverd. In fact, aside from Europe where since 2010 the peripheral nations have been stuck in a state of constant depression with nearly 50% youth unemployment and ~20% total unemployment, nobody has delevered anywhere!

All of this is quite clearly shown on the chart below, courtesy of RBS, which shows not only the global credit supercycle and the various catalysts (and "crises" which were certainly did not go to waste) that allowed total global debt to hit $200 trillion recently according to McKinsey (excluding the hundreds of trillions in gross derivative notionals of course), but the catalytic events that allowed this unprecedented supercycle to take place.

The chart above warrants the question: if an even modest slowdown in Europe's pace of credit creation resulted in unprecedented economic and social upheavals for the "southern" part of the continent, what happens when deleveraging finally hits one of the other places around the globe, be it the BRICs in particular, the EMs in general, or - heaven forbid - the US itself.

[Fenix]

Criminal Charges Filed Against Nomura Traders For Skimming Off Bid/Ask Spreads, Making Millions In The Process
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 - 11:46

Today, in the first official criminal action following the Litvak bust from 2013, the SEC confirmed that our assessment was indeed spot on after the regulator announced fraud charges against three traders "accused of repeatedly lying to customers relying on them for honest and accurate pricing information about residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS)." In the complaint, the SEC alleges that traders misrepresented the bids and offers being provided to Nomura for RMBS as well as the prices at which Nomura bought and sold RMBS and the spreads the firm earned intermediating RMBS trades. They also trained, coached, and directed junior traders at the firm to engage in the same misconduct.




Turkey Invades Iraq: Two Battalions Launch Ground Incursion In "Hot Pursuit" Of "Terrorists"
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 - 12:10

For the fifth time in two decades, Turkish soldiers have launched a ground incursion into Iraq in pursuit of PKK "terrorists" who have orchestrated a series of deadly attacks on security personnel over the past several days. Of course Turkish soldiers aren't the only ones fighting Kurds in Iraq. So is ISIS. And that means that just like in Syria, Turkey (with Washington's implicit blessing) is at best distracting from and at worst impeding the battle against Islamic State, the same Islamic State which is being used by Ankara as a cover for the PKK crackdown.

[Fenix]

Old Lessons Regarding Markets
09/08/2015 11:20 -0400

Via EconomicNoise.com,

In our day-to-day world, old lessons regarding markets are easily forgotten. Nowhere is this observation more true than in the stock market where people expect stocks to always rise.

Wall Street is dominated by optimistic youth know little about real economics or history. They succeed via optimism, by convincing others that markets always go up. When markets decline, it is always a buying opportunity. That is all they have experienced. The first decade of this century saw two market corrections where the S&P 500 Index dropped more than 50% from its highs. Most investors were told to hang on. In retrospect that was good advice. In another sense it was not.


stockcrashimages (1)


The economy is a mess. The Federal Reserve now only influences one variable — the pricing of financial assets. Arguably, for the last fifteen years financial asset pricing has been the only positive in the economic sphere. An entire generation of financial advisors and stock brokers has never seen a true bear market. Indeed, they have never seen a non-manipulated market.

They never learned the old lessons because they never lived through such times. What are some of the old lessons? Here are a few:

* P/E multiples drop under 10.
* Dividends increase to 5 or 6% (only because stock prices fall).
* There are no bad stocks in a bull market.
* There are no good stocks in a bear market.
* Don’t chase yield too soon.
* All market collapses start with “dips” perceived as buying opportunities.
* Even the impossible has a 20% probability.

Several months back, I called TIAA-CREF to switch all my funds into their safest short-term interest funds. The young man explained to me that I would be getting virtually nothing on my money. When I completely agreed, he asked then why I was making this move. I explained that markets were very overvalued and I expected a serious correction. When he asked how much, I answered: “At least a 50% correction.” He was polite but rather incredulous, believing that to be impossible. I explained that such a correction happened twice in the first decade of this new century. He did not seem to know even this recent history.

This young man has not learned old lessons. Only by studying history and market valuations could he know how overpriced markets now appear. I think he may soon learn experientially, a very expensive way of learning but one rarely forgotten. A couple of generations of Americans grew up with the experience and fear of the Great Depression. Recent generations barely know about this period. For them, life is different. No need to save. Live for the present. If you don’t earn enough, use debt to satisfy your wants. The government will always take care of us!

Welcome to the present where old lessons regarding markets are going to be re-learned and likely scar another couple of generations.



Bye Bye BABA - China's "Amazon" Plunges After Talking Down Numbers
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 - 12:39

BABA Shares stalled once again in their efforts to break back above the IPO price of $68. Following a Citi tech conference which reportedly saw Alibaba investor relations talking down their numbers, BABA has plunged over 6%

[Fenix]

Mystery Buyer Of US Treasurys Revealed
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 08:55 -0400


Back in March 2014, we first revealed something quite stunning: a new, seemingly ravenous, and completely unexpected buyer of US Treasurys had emerged in the face of "Belgium" which was buying tens of billions in US paper at a weekly clip, without any explanation.

One year later, this website first confirmed that the identity of the "Belgian" buyer was none other than China, which had been using Belgian-based clearer Euroclear as an offshore venue for its bond purchases, and which starting in March 2015 had commenced dumping the US paper it accumulated so dramatically in 2013 and 2014, in advance of what has become the biggest story of the summer: China's liquidation of its FX reserves, read US Treasury holdings, in defense of its devaluing currency.

And while we knew that China was selling - and following the record selling of FX reserves in August, so does everyone else - an even more interesting question emerged: who is buying?

Thanks to the WSJ we now have the answer: "A little-known New York hedge fund run by a former Yale University math whiz has been buying tens of billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury debt at recent auctions, drawing attention from the Treasury Department and Wall Street."

The hedge fund in question, Jeffrey Talpins' Element Capital Management, which according to the WSJ has become "the largest purchaser in dozens of government-bond auctions over the past 10 months, people familiar with the matter said. The buying is part of an apparent effort by the fund to use borrowed money to exploit small inefficiencies in the world’s most liquid securities market, a strategy that is delivering sizable profits, said people close to the matter."

Jeffrey Talpins of Element Capital and his wife

For those unfamiliar, and Talpins certainly is not a household hedge fund name, "Mr. Talpins is an intense and reserved trader formerly at Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. He is known for a tenacious style that can grate on rivals and once tested the patience of former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke."

According to the NYT, in 2005, Trader Monthly named Mr. Talpins one of the top 30 traders under 30, when he was still an employee of Vega Asset management. "Youth is not wasted on this crop, any of whom could be a billionaire by 40,” the magazine said. “Or, then again, they could be belly up and bust."

Back in 2010 the FT profiled Element Capital, then at just $1.5 billion, saying that fixed-income relative value trading, "the hedge fund strategy pioneered – and made notorious – by Long Term Capital Management is returning to prominence amid one of its most successful years yet." It added that "fixed-income relative value trading – shunned by investors after the collapse of LTCM in 1998 – has been one of the industry’s few outperformers this year, thanks to massive pricing anomalies caused by fiscal stimulus packages and unconventional central bank monetary policies around the world."

As of the end of June, Element Capital, a $1.5bn relative value fund run by Jeffrey Talpins, was up 10.75 per cent. High returns have been driven by government bond markets flush with arbitrage opportunities, managers said.

By 2014, Element had grown substantially, and according to a Bloomberg note, last July it attracted the head of North America sales at RBS, Richard Tang: "Tang, who has spent almost two decades at the bank, is one of 16 members of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee that the U.S. government consults with on its debt sales. His departure was confirmed by Sarah Lukashok, a Stamford, Connecticut-based spokeswoman for Britain’s largest state-owned lender. He will be joining New York-based Element Capital, which manages about $4.3 billion in its macro fund, said the people, who asked not to be named because the move wasn’t public."

In other words, Element is not only growing its AUM exponentially, it now also employs a member of the TBAC, which we profiled in November 2011 as "The Supercommittee That Really Runs America."

Not only that, but according to a November 2014 presentation to the Wharton Investment and Trading Group, the fund, then already at a $5 billion AUM, boasting it "has delivered exceptional returns to investors over its 9+ year track record, with annualized performance greater than 20% and a Sharpe ratio greater than 2."

Quite an impressive performance for a smallish relative-value hedge fund, one that begs the question: just how much leverage is involved (an important question for later).

So why is this relatively obscrue hedge fund in the news? Well, it appears that the mystery buyer of all China's bond sales is none other than Element:

Element has been the largest bidder in many of the 62 Treasury note and bond auctions between last November and July, these people said. At many recent auctions, some of which involved sales of more than $30 billion of debt, Element purchased about 10% of the issue, these people said. That is an unusually large figure, analysts said.

And while Element may have grown substantially, some wonder how its most recent AUM of $6 billion can sustain this ravenous buying spreed.

Element’s activity has raised questions because the cumulative purchases far exceed the hedge fund’s $6 billion in assets under management. Treasury officials, who frequently meet with large auction participants, have asked Element about its activity, said someone close to the matter.



“Their buying is eyebrow-raising,” said a trader who once worked for a firm that deals in government securities and witnessed Element’s bidding. These primary dealers often know the identity of other auction bidders. Element “never shared its strategy, but we often asked,” the trader said.

And this is where it gets tricky, because as the WSJ admits, the US Treasury "likes to know who is buying its bonds and why, partly because it prefers long-term holders such as pension funds, insurance companies and central banks. Treasury officials fear purchases by trading-oriented funds could result in sales that increase market swings and potentially drive up borrowing costs.

“If you’re issuing debt, your preference is those ‘sticky investors,’” said Scott Skyrm, a managing director at Wedbush Securities.

Which brings us back to the "how much leverage is involved" question, because one bad day for Element and suddenly the fund could be forced to unwind its giant Treasury book into what is already a very illiquid market.

Which leads to the question of just what is Element's strategy: "Element had been shorting, or betting against, bonds in anticipation of higher interest rates but has been exiting from that wager, according to someone close to the matter. That is one reason the fund has been a big buyer of Treasurys lately."

It appears that is not only macro considerations that drive Element's trading strategy, but also market mispricings between the primary and secondary market: "people who have worked with the firm or are close to Mr. Talpins said there is another reason: Element is among the last to embrace “bond-auction strategies,” trading maneuvers that have become less popular since the financial crisis."

These trades aim to take advantage of the effects of supply and demand in the $12.8 trillion Treasury market. Demand for these bonds often fluctuates based on factors including investor perceptions of economic growth and market risk, while supply can be affected by regular auctions of different-maturity Treasury securities. A burst of new supply tends to slightly depress prices for short periods, sometimes for less than an hour.

Element's auction arbing strategy is relatively simple: "In the past, Wall Street dealers and hedge funds scored profits shorting “when-issued” bonds. These are contracts conferring the right to purchase Treasury securities when they are sold days later at auction. Then, these traders would buy bonds during Treasury auctions at the slightly lower prices and use these newly purchased bonds to close out their short sales."

The difference between the higher price at which they sold the Treasurys and the lower price they paid at auction was their profit.

Which incidentally explains our "discovery" earlier this summer why Treasury auctions that took place at a time when the OTR was trading "special" led to dramatic outperformance during the actual auction: it was hedge funds like Element that did all in their power to squeeze the market and send the high yield deep inside the When Issued.

The reason why Element has become the dominant player in this market is because most of its competitors disappeared after 2008:

After the 2008 financial crisis, bank traders pulled back as regulators discouraged trading risks. Some hedge funds also began shying away from bond-auction strategies. Wall Street banks have significantly cut back their lending to hedge funds.



The pullback by rivals has left Element with a large presence in bond auctions to complement strategies such as in foreign-currency derivatives, people close to the matter said. In 2008, the firm gained 35%, these people say, even as financial markets crumbled. The next year, Element was up 79%. Last year it rose just 2.9%.

And with nobody left to compete, and the Treasury market as illiquid as it is, it meant huge potential profits for Element: sure enough, the hedge fund "was up 18.5% through July of this year, an investor said, beating most hedge funds and overall markets. Some recent gains came from bullish wagers on the U.S. dollar, according to the person."

So can anything go wrong with this strategy? Yes, plenty.

Once in a while, the prices of bonds being auctioned jump, rather than fall, for reasons such as bad economic news that prompts an investor flight to safety. Hedges sometimes don’t work out. And the strategy relies on inexpensive borrowing because each trade usually yields minimal profits.



In the 1990s, hedge fund Long Term Capital Management used leverage to profit from small discrepancies in the Treasury market before a market reversal swamped the firm. LTCM used much more leverage than Element does.

Only problem is nobody knows just how much more leverage, and whether Element's leverage isn't slowly but surely creeping up to Merton and Merrywether levels.

Still, luminaries such as Yale professor Robert Schiller vouch for Talpins:

Mr. Talpins graduated in 1997 from Yale, where he was a research assistant for Robert Shiller, the Yale economist who later won a Nobel prize in economics. In a 1996 letter, Mr. Shiller wrote that in terms of overall performance, he “put Jeffrey first out of the 52 Yale undergraduates” who attended his course Economics 252, Finance, Theory and Application.



“I thought he was particularly bright,” recalls Prof. Shiller.

Others, however, were less than enthused about Talpins. Such as former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke:

A year or so ago, Mr. Talpins was among 20 investors invited by a Wall Street firm to a private meeting with Mr. Bernanke, after his departure from the Fed. Mr. Talpins peppered Mr. Bernanke with about 10 successive questions, according to several people in the room.



Mr. Talpins elicited some detailed answers, such as who is in the room during interest-rate discussions. But he also asked questions that exasperated some investors because they seemed irrelevant. Mr. Bernanke looked increasingly weary under Mr. Talpins’s barrage, one participant said. “Jeff was persistent and it got a little uncomfortable,” said another participant. “It was like, ‘Dude, let it go.’”

But the biggest risk by far is that now that the "mystery buyers" has been exposed, it won't take long for the other, much bigger players - i.e., all the central banks who have been desperate to push yields lower to "confirm" the self-fulfilling narrative that the economy, and inflation, are growing - to inflict the proverbial "max pain" upon Element. In fact, if Talpins is indeed very long TSYs, and has lot of leverage embedded in the trade, one may expect a concerted shorting effort to find out just how much leverage is incorporate in the trades, and push it to the point of breaking. After all, hedge funds exposed with massive positions rarely survive an onslaught by their peers who seek to do just that - inflict "max pain" (see Ackman and Herbalife).

If so, China's selling of TSYs may very soon inflict precisely the kind of damage on US paper not because it is selling, but because the biggest "mystery" buyer of US paper has just been revealed and whose continued ability to keep buying unimpeded is now suddenly very much in question.

What's worse, if the result of a coordinated attack on Talpins leads to an LTCM-type blow up, hang on to your hats because the recent volatility in the equity market will be nothing compared to what is coming to the MOVE, TYVIX and US Treasurys...

[Fenix]

Developed Market Stocks & Bonds Have Never (Ever) Been This Expensive
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 12:35 -0400


Thanks to the new normal world of extremely loose monetary policy and extraordinary accumulations of financial assets by Central Banks, Deutsche Bank finds that we live in a period not of selectively expensive global asset prices, but of record "expensiveness" across developed market bonds, stocks, and real estate.


In aggregate, across the three main asset classes, average valuations are close to the highest they’ve ever been relative to their long-term trend. The current reading of just under 80% is similar to that seen at the turn of the twentieth century and during the 1940s when financial markets were artificially repressed around war time.

And, based on Deutsche's valuation metrics, bonds and equities alone are at their highest ever combined valuations when aggregated across these 15 countries.



In addition, 83% of observations are in their top 20% of valuations through history.



Peak Asset Prices?

[admin]

DJIA 16375.26 272.88 1.69%
Nasdaq 4760.66 76.74 1.64%
S&P 500 1951.11 29.89 1.56%
Russell 2000 1157.42 21.25 1.87%
Global Dow 2312.18

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13:10 SG recomienda cortos en la libra/dólar
Los analistas de Société Générale, recomiendan posicionarse cortos en la libra/yen a 182 con un objetivo en los 155 y un stop de pérdidas en los 197.

"La infravaloración del yen limita el potencial alcista en el caso de que el Banco de Inglaterra tensione los tipos más rápido o en mayor cuantía de la esperada", afirman.

Son considerablemente bajistas en el par en estos escenarios:

- Si la economía del Reino Unido se ralentiza.
- Si vuelven los miedos de un Brexit.
- Si aumenta la aversión al riesgo, lo que causaría huida hacia activos seguros.

13:30 El oro está en tierra de nadie
Afirman los analistas de UBS
Los analistas de UBS señalan sobre el oro que: "En cierto sentido, el oro se encuentra actualmente en tierra de nadie, y los inversores son completamente reacios a poner posiciones importantes antes de la reunión del FOMC de la próxima semana".

Los analistas de UBS creen que los datos de empleo de EE.UU. de la semana pasada siguen presentando niveles suficientemente saludables para que la Fed comience su ciclo de alzas de tipos en la reunión del 17 de septiembre.

[admin]

DJIA 16436.69 334.31 2.08%
Nasdaq 4788.46 104.54 2.23%
S&P 500 1960.31 39.09 2.03%
Russell 2000 1158.37 22.20 1.95%
Global Dow 2316.99 34.54 1.51%
Japan: Nikkei 225 17427.08

[admin]

DJIA 16464.26 361.88 2.25%
Nasdaq 4794.94 111.03 2.37%
S&P 500 1963.63 42.41 2.21%
Russell 2000 1159.22 23.05 2.03%
Global Dow 2319.74 37.29 1.63%
Japan: Nikkei 225 17427.08

[admin]

Oil down 45.86

Ag up 14.77

+356

Au up 1,121.80

[admin]

El Dow Jones logra recuperar 390.30 puntos a 16,492.68 puntos.

[Fenix]

14:16 UnitedHealth Group: resistencia principal a corto plazo en 117.8
Trading Central
Punto de rotación se sitúa en 117.8.

Preferencia: la caída se mantiene siempre que la resistencia se sitúe en 117.8.

Escenario alternativo: por encima de 117.8, objetivo 123.8 y 127.4.

Técnicamente, el índice de fuerza relativa (RSI) se encuentra por debajo de su zona de neutralidad de 50. El indicador de convergencia/divergencia de medias móviles (MACD) se sitúa por debajo de su línea de señal y es negativo.

Asimismo, la acción se sitúa por debajo de su media móvil de 20 y 50 días (se sitúa a 117.7 y 120.09 respectivamente).



¿Y si finalmente la Fed aplaza la subida de tipos en septiembre?

Martes, 8 de Setiembre del 2015 - 14:32:00

Claro, son apenas tres meses para tener otra oportunidad de hacerlo en diciembre (entre medias podría, pero sería francamente complicado de justificar). El caso es que una subida de tipos este año frente a la inicial esperada de dos (0.5 puntos) o incluso tres (0.75 puntos) supondría matizar el ritmo de normalización de tipos prevista para los próximos meses.

Y pensemos que 2016 será un año con elecciones presidenciales, que todo lo dificulta. ¿Podría también limitar el ámbito de actuación de la Fed?.

Algunos de mis compañeros opinan que una subida de 0.25 puntos y un discurso posterior matizado sobre el ritmo pendiente de subidas y sobre el nivel final de tipos pretendido, podría reducir los miedos de los inversores sobre sus efectos. Al final, incluso, podría dar lugar a una lectura positiva en términos de confianza. En sentido opuesto, no tomar la decisión ahora cuando los datos macro la avalan dejaría un mensaje negativo sobre el futuro.

Pero el futuro se hace poco a poco, cuando en estos momentos es la estabilidad financiera la principal amanaza para ese futuro mejor que todos buscamos. En mi opinión, sigue sin estar muy claro que decisión final tomará la Fed en el FOMC de septiembre. Pero, sea la que sea, tengo la sensación de que será uno de los principales temas de debate en los meses siguientes.

Por otro lado, mi estratega de equity USA ha rebajado la previsión de resultados empresariales para este ejercicio (los datos del Q2 fueron peores de lo esperado; la caída de los precios de commodities ha hecho el resto) y de forma más moderada para el próximo año. En concreto, espera un EPS de 122.75 $ (125.5 $ antes) y de 132.5 $ (135.5 $) para 2016. Este último dato está aún por encima del consenso del mercado. En definitiva, nuestras previsiones suponen un saludable aumento de los resultados del 8 % para el próximo año.

Sin duda, uno de los factores que más inquietud puede producir en la Fed es precisamente el nivel bajo de la rentabilidad de la deuda. ¿Un factor de confianza? Quizás en algún momento lo fue, pero ahora es más bien una señal de desconfianza. Y hasta miedo. Aunque la propia Yellen lo identificó en el pasado con el elevado ahorro mundial (como opuesto a la baja demanda), lo cierto es que los tipos de interés de la deuda se han acercado en los últimos meses a niveles bajos recientes (de acuerdo: el 2.13 % del 10 años actual está por encima del 1.4 % de septiembre de 2012, pero en aquel momento preocupaba la Crisis europea más que la economía). ¿China? Precisamente la posibilidad de que el gigante asiático tenga que vender parte de sus reservas, probablemente en USD y en treasuries, acentúa mucho más este efecto de tipos de interés bajos. Y tipos de interés bajos, primas de riesgo elevadas en bolsa que pueden acentuar el interés del inversor por la búsqueda de la rentabilidad en un entorno de elevada incertidumbre como el actual….


Pensando en la encrucijada en que se mueve la Fed en estos momentos no podemos olvidarnos de las elecciones presidenciales en 2016….¿hasta qué punto condicionan la gestión de la política monetaria? Nadie está diciendo que la Fed no sea independiente, pero también es evidente que sus decisiones pueden influir de forma involuntaria en la campaña electoral. Y esto sin duda también forma parte del debate sobre las próximas medidas a tomar, especialmente si al final las tomadas este año (por defecto o por exceso) tienen un impacto negativo en la economía y los mercados.

Los dos últimos años del ciclo político USA suelen ser positivos para las bolsas. Esta es la estadística.

Pero, no me cabe ninguna duda de que el actual es uno de los más complicados para la gestión de la política monetaria por la Fed.

José Luis Martínez Campuzano
Estratega de Citi en España

[Fenix]

14:57 Dólar yuan. ¿Cuál es el siguiente nivel?
Todavía parece probable que el dólar yuan (USDCNY) se dirija hacia la zona de 6,80, aunque nos gustaría ver un cierre semanal decisivo por encima de 6.3964 antes de esperar que se materialicen esos niveles-

Si y cuando esto suceda, el USDCNY podría dirigirse hacia la zona de 6.80, donde se encontraba la anterior zona de fijación de cambio. Es probable que esto también sea un catalizador adicional para renovada debilidad en el ADXY (Índice de las divisas asiáticas).



Informe Semanal de Estrategia: Nudo gordiano

Santander Private Banking
Martes, 8 de Setiembre del 2015 - 15:25:00

El cierre del mercado chino en la última parte de la semana pasada permitió dejar de lado temporalmente el ruido cíclico proveniente de China y que el mercado se pudiera centrar en la incertidumbre que rodea al calendario de política monetaria de EEUU.

En este sentido, la creación de empleo estadounidense del mes de agosto alcanzó niveles de 173.000 puestos de trabajo, registro por debajo de lo esperado por el consenso (con unas estimaciones ligeramente superiores a 210.000 puestos de trabajo). A pesar de esta aparente decepción, lo cierto es que se revisó al alza la creación de empleo de los dos meses anteriores (+44.000), lo que deja la media de puestos de trabajo creados en 220.000 en los últimos tres meses. Además, la tasa de desempleo descendió dos décimas, hasta la cota del 5,1% (nivel de pleno empleo si nos atenemos a la reducción del crecimiento potencial experimentada por la economía estadounidense). Adicionalmente, en agosto se produjo un aumento de las horas trabajadas hasta máximos de ciclo (34,6 horas/semanales) así como un incremento algo superior al esperado de los salarios (+0,3% en tasa intermensual). Por tanto, se trata de registros que si bien, por un lado, fueron ligeramente peores de lo esperado, por el otro, en especial en su parte más cualitativa, sorprendieron positivamente. Tras esta publicación, seguimos manteniendo nuestro escenario central, (i) una primera subida de tipos de interés en la reunión de septiembre, con una (ii) senda de subidas más graduales que en otros ciclos de endurecimiento de la política monetaria, y (iii) un nivel de llegada inferior al de otros episodios históricos. Los principales argumentos que harían que la Fed se decantase por una subida temprana (mercado laboral ya normalizado y crecimiento en línea con el potencial en la segunda mitad del ejercicio) siguen estando plenamente vigentes. No obstante, también es preciso señalar que la autoridad monetaria podría escudarse en la holgura existente a nivel de precios (la inflación subyacente se sitúa en niveles ligeramente inferiores al objetivo del banco central) así como en la fortaleza del dólar estadounidense para retrasar la subida de tipos de interés, y postergarla hasta finales de ejercicio. Por tanto, prosigue el dilema de la Fed: subir tipos pronto y de forma gradual -nuestro escenario central- o esperar y asumir el riesgo de tener que subir tipos más rápido más adelante (una vez que los riesgos externos disminuyan y las presiones sobre precios y salarios se aceleren). El desenlace, probablemente el próximo 17 de septiembre.



Renta Variable. Negativo

Continuamos recomendando cierta cautela en materia de posicionamiento, al menos hasta que: (i) el mercado tenga más visibilidad sobre el calendario monetario en EEUU, (ii) las dudas respecto a la fortaleza del ciclo global se vayan despejando, y (iii) en Grecia, el resultado del proceso electoral en marcha ofrezca las garantías suficientes para que no se trunque la implementación del tercer programa de rescate. En paralelo a que veamos que vayan cumpliéndose estas premisas, el mercado ofrecerá buenas oportunidades de entrada con perspectiva estratégica.


Renta Fija. Negativo

La incertidumbre que rodea al calendario de la Reserva Federal nos hace estar algo más cautos en cuanto al posicionamiento en renta fija soberana estadounidense, evitando los tramos medios y largos a la espera de que el banco central se defina. Por su parte, la renta fija emergente es uno de los activos de renta fija más sensible a los cambios de política monetaria estadounidense. A pesar del deterioro que acumula este activo en los últimos meses, que podría ofrecer un punto de entrada óptimo para el activo desde el punto de vista de la valoración, seguimos prefiriendo mantenernos al margen de la misma (como hemos venido haciendo la mayor parte del ejercicio) y esperar a la digestión del próximo tensionamiento de la Fed.


Divisas. Positivo

En la medida en que prevemos que la primera subida de tipos de la Fed tenga lugar en septiembre, el efecto ampliación de diferenciales entre EEUU y la zona Euro iría a más, impactando en mayor medida a favor del USD, por lo que mantenemos nuestra apuesta por la divisa estadounidense en carteras. Recomendamos elevar la prudencia en la aproximación a las divisas emergentes, al menos hasta que la Fed concrete en mayor medida su calendario de tensionamiento monetario.

[Fenix]

¿Están caras las Bolsas?

Martes, 8 de Setiembre del 2015 - 15:53:00

Naturalmente, la respuesta a esta pregunta depende del escenario futuro a que nos enfrentemos. En términos de resultados y de inflación.

Aquí hablamos, claro, de los activos que se negocian en mercados financieros. Y en este email en concreto me voy a centrar en las bolsas.

Vean ahora el primer gráfico.

Desde esta perspectiva, tras las recientes caídas, entraría dentro de la valoración de barato. Siempre desde una perspectiva histórica.


¿Y las perspectivas de resultados? Aquí lo ven con algo más de detalle….

¿Somos optimistas? Siempre se puede discutirlo….

Pero, el atractivo de la bolsa frente a la deuda es innegable….

José Luis Martínez Campuzano
Estratega de Citi en España

[Fenix]

FANG FUBARer - NFLX Tumbles Near Black Monday's Flash-Crash Lows
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 - 13:28

One of the founder members of the so-called FANG stocks has now fallen 7 straight days and is resting Black Monday's flash-crash lows in today's session. With the media darling breaking back below its 100-day moving-average, technical pressure continues to weigh on the share price,. as it is almost down 30% from its record highs...



Retail Sales Slump On Deck: Consumer Spending Slides To Lowest Since March After Worst August Since 2012
Submitted by Tyler D.
09/08/2015 - 13:31

according to the latest Gallup report on US consumer spending, in which a random sample of 15.724 adults were interviewed by phone, Americans' self-reported daily spending averaged just $89 in August, down not only from August in 2014 and 2013 but the fourth month in a row of year-over-year spending declines, as well as was also the lowest monthly spend since March of 2015. And this time there are no "scapegoats" to blame the spending slowdown on: the weather in August was uniformly gorgeous around the US.