Martes 08/03/16 Indice del optimismo pequenios negocios

[Fenix]

Bears Exit Hibernation As Rally Fizzles On Dismal Chinese Trade Data; Commodities Slide; Gold Higher
Tyler D.
03/08/2016 06:49 -0500

Those algos who scrambled to paint yesterday's closing tape with that last second VIX slam sending the S&P back over 2,000, forgot one thing - the same thing that China also ignored - central bankers can not print trade, something we have repeated since 2011. The world got a harsh reminder of this last night when China reported the third largest drop in exports in history, which crashed by over 25%, the third biggest drop on record, and no, it was not just the base effect from last February's spike, as otherwise the combined January-February data would offset each other, instead it was a joint disaster, meaning one can't blame the Lunar New Year either. In short, one can't really blame anything aside from the real culprit: despite all the lipstick that has been put on it, global trade is grinding to a halt.

This, together with fresh record low (and mostly negative) yields along Japan's JGB curve, brought the risk off sentiment out of hibernation, and have sent the USDJPY sliding in overnight trading, and dragging European stocks and U.S. equity futures down with it.

Furthermore, after Goldman doubled-down on its bearish call on commodities, the sector has taken a deep breather after yesterday's surge, and while crude oil has dipped by about 1%,iIron-ore futures on the Singapore Exchange fell 8.8% after yesterday's record 19% jump on Monday. Citigroup Inc. said it’s still bearish as supply and demand fundamentals remain weak, while Axiom Capital Management Inc. said the price surge was probably just a “blip.”

Promptly bearish commentators came out of the woodwork, first in Asia...

"If they can’t get stocks right, how are they going to get the trickier puzzle of SOE reform right?” Michael Every, the head of financial markets research at Rabobank Group in Hong Kong, who correctly predicted the tumble in Chinese equities told Bloomberg. "The government’s attempts have been a total failure, leading to a huge drop in confidence among investors.”
... and then in Europe:

"We are still in the process where we’re trying to find the bottom and I don’t think we are there yet,” said Ralf Zimmermann, a strategist at Bankhaus Lampe in Dusseldorf, Germany. “There had been, with the recent rebound, some optimism that we were out of the woods. The Chinese trade data is a reminder that the path for the business cycle ahead is pretty rocky and bumpy."
As a result, global equities’ five-day winning streak has, as of this moment, come to a halt. Japanese government bonds surged in a haven-asset rally that also lifted the yen, gold and Treasuries.

In summary, the Stoxx Europe 600 Index extended its decline from a five-week high as investors sold equities that had led the recent rebound, while Brent crude slid after closing on Monday above $40 a barrel for the first time this year. Industrial metals sank and iron ore fell as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicted gains in commodities would falter. A jump in Japanese bonds that sent yields to record lows helped boost Treasuries and European debt. The yen strengthened against all of its 31 major peers and gold climbed to a 13-month high.

However one bearish commodity which never went into hibernation and which has been rising even alongside stocks, has been gold, and as the following Bloomberg chart shows, "gold rally belies confidence in stocks" having outperformed global equities.

Perhaps "gold vigilantes" are the new bond vigilantes?


"I'll Go Full Power If There's No Agreement" - Kuwait Breaks OPEC Production Freeze
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 08:03
Kuwait's oil minister said on Tuesday that his country's participation in an output freeze would require all major oil producers, including Iran, to be on board. "I'll go full power if there's no agreement. Every barrel I produce I'll sell," Anas al-Saleh told reporters in Kuwait City. And since Iran has made it very, very clear it will not join the production freeze at its current mothballed output, and will need at least 9-12 months before it regains its pre-embargo capacity levels, one can forget about a production freeze well into 2017 if not for ever since by then at least one if not more OPEC members will be bankrupt.




Oil Fundamentals Could Cause Oil Prices To Fall, Fast!
03/08/2016 09:42 -0500
Submitted by Arthur Berman

Oil prices should fall, possibly hard, in coming weeks. That is because fundamentals do not support the present price.

Prices should fall to around $30 once the empty nature of an OPEC-plus-Russia production freeze is understood. A return to the grim reality of over-supply and the weakness of the world economy could push prices well into the $20s.





A Production Freeze Will Not Reduce The Supply Surplus

An OPEC-plus-Russia production cut would be a great step toward re-establishing oil-market balance. I believe that will happen later in 2016 but is not on the table today.

In late February, Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi stated categorically, “There is no sense in wasting our time in seeking production cuts. That will not happen.”

Instead, Russia and Saudi Arabia have apparently agreed to a production freeze. This is meaningless theater but it helped lift oil prices 37 percent from just more than $26 in mid-February to almost $36 per barrel last week. That is a lot of added revenue for Saudi Arabia and Russia but it will do nothing to balance the over-supplied world oil market.

The problem is that neither Saudi Arabia nor Russia has greatly increased production since the oil-price collapse began in 2014 (Figure 1). A freeze by those countries, therefore, will only ensure that the supply surplus will not get worse because of them. It is, moreover, doubtful that Saudi Arabia or Russia have the spare capacity to increase production much beyond present levels making the proposal of a freeze cynical rather than helpful.



(Click to enlarge)

Figure 1. Incremental liquids production since January 2014 by the United States plus Canada, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Source: EIA & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (click image to enlarge)

Saudi Arabia and Russia are two of the world’s largest oil-producing countries. Yet in January 2016, Saudi liquids output was only ~110,000 bpd more than in January 2014 and Russia was actually producing ~50,000 bpd less than in January 2014. The present world production surplus is more than 2 mmbpd.

By contrast, the U.S. plus Canada are producing ~1.9 mmbpd more than in January 2014 and Iraq’s crude oil production has increased ~1.7 mmbpd. Also, Iran has potential to increase its production by as much as ~1 mmbpd during 2016. Yet, none of these countries have agreed to the production freeze. Iran, in fact, called the idea “ridiculous.”

Growing Storage Means Lower Oil Prices

U.S. crude oil stocks increased by a remarkable 10.4 mmb in the week ending February 26, the largest addition since early April 2015. That brought inventories to an astonishing 162 mmb more than the 2010-2014 average and 74 mmb above the bloated levels of 2015 (Figure 2).



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Figure 2. U.S. crude oil stocks. Source: EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (click image to enlarge)

The correlation between U.S. crude oil stocks and world oil prices is strong. Tank farms at Cushing, Oklahoma (PADD 2) and storage facilities in the Gulf Coast region (PADD 3) account for almost 70 percent of total U.S. storage and are critical in WTI price formation. When storage exceeds about 80 percent of capacity, oil prices generally fall hard. Current Cushing storage is at 91 percent of capacity, the Gulf Coast is at 87 percent and combined, they are at a whopping 88 percent of capacity (Figure 3).



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Figure 3. Cushing and Gulf Coast crude oil storage. Source: EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (click image to enlarge)

Prices have fallen hard in step with growing storage throughout 2015 and early 2016. Since talk of a production freeze first surfaced, however, intoxicated investors have ignored storage builds and traders are testing new thresholds before they fall again.

The truth is that prices will not increase sustainably until storage volumes fall, and that cannot happen until U.S. production declines by about 1 mmbpd.

Despite extreme reductions in rig count and catastrophic financial losses by E&P companies, production decline has been painfully slow. The latest data from EIA indicates that February 2016 production will fall approximately 100,000 bpd compared to January (Figure 4).




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Figure 4. U.S. crude oil production and forecast. Source: EIA STEO, EIA This Week In Petroleum, and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (click image to enlarge)

That is an improvement over the average 60,000 bpd monthly decline since the April 2015 peak. It is not enough, however, to make a difference in storage and storage controls price.

EIA and IEA will publish updates this week on the world oil market balance and I doubt that the news will be very good. IEA indicated last month that the world over-supply had increased almost 750,000 bpd in the 4th quarter of 2015 compared with the previous quarter. EIA data corroborated those findings and showed that the surplus in January 2016 had increased 650,000 bpd from December 2015.

Oil Prices and The Value of the Dollar

Why, then, have oil prices increased? Partly, it is because of hope for an OPEC production freeze and that sentiment is expressed in the OVX crude oil-price volatility index (Figure 5).



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Figure 5. Crude oil volatility index (OVX) and WTI price. Source: EIA, CBOE and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (click image to enlarge)

The OVX reflects how investors feel about where oil prices are going. It is sometimes called the “fear index.” That suggests that investors are feeling pretty good and less fearful about the oil markets than in the last quarter of 2015 when oil prices fell 47 percent. Since mid-February, prices have increased 37 percent.

But there is more to it than just hope and that may be found in the strength of the U.S. dollar. The negative correlation between the value of the dollar and world oil prices is well-established. The oil-price increase in February was accompanied by a decrease in the trade-weighted value of the dollar (Figure 6).



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Figure 6. U.S. Dollar value vs. WTI NYMEX futures price. Source: EIA, U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (click to enlarge)

Now, that trend has reversed. The U.S. jobs report last week was positive so continued strength of the dollar is reasonable for a while. Assuming the usual correlation, that means that oil prices should fall.

Oil Prices Should Fall Hard

It is a sign of how bad things have gotten in oil markets that we feel optimistic about $35 oil prices. It should also be a warning that the over-supply that got us here has not gone away.

Oil storage volumes continue to grow and that is the surest indication that production has not declined enough yet to make a difference. It is impossible to imagine oil prices rising much beyond present levels until storage starts to fall. In fact, it is difficult to understand $35 per barrel prices based on any measure of oil-market fundamentals.

The OPEC-plus-Russia production freeze is a cynical joke designed to increase their short-term revenues without doing anything about production levels. An output cut would make a difference but a freeze on current Saudi and Russian production levels means nothing. It apparently made some investors feel better but it didn’t do anything for me. Iran got this one right by calling it ridiculous.

No terrible economic news has surfaced in recent weeks but that does not change the profound weakness of a global economy that is burdened with debt and weak demand. The announcement last week by the People’s Bank of China that it sees room for more quantitative easing may have comforted stock markets but it only added to my anxiety about reduced oil consumption and future downward shocks in oil prices.

I hope that oil prices increase but cannot find any substantive reason why they should do anything but fall. As market balance reality re-emerges in investor consciousness and the false euphoria of a production freeze recedes, prices should correct to around $30. A little bad economic or political news could send prices much lower.

[Fenix]

The Price Isn't Right - How Central Banks Are Fixing To Ambush The Casino
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 11:45
Indeed, what party other than the BOJ could be buying negative coupon debt? The answer is exactly why the coming financial crash will be so severe and long-lasting. To wit, it is front-runners expecting to cop a capital gain, and then get out before the house of cards collapses. That’s what might otherwise be called an ambush. The trillions of speculator dollars crowded into trades of this type throughout the global financial markets will never get through the narrow door of liquidity that remains in the casinos. The dotcom and the post-Lehman meltdowns were only the rehearsal.


Citi Slumps After CFO Forecasts Huge Revenue Drop
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 12:51
Just two days ago, everything was awesome - oil was up, stocks were up, financials were 'winning' - and then question started about why credit risk hadn't rallied like stocks. But today we get our slap back to reality as Citi CFO unleashes the following: CITIGROUP SEES INVESTMENT BANKING REVENUE DOWN 25%, FIXED INCOME, EQUITY TRADING REV DOWN 15% YOY. The stock is rapidly giving up its "everything's fine" gains as Citi "hopes" for more rate hikes... but does not expect them.


Bond Bears Bewildered - The Case For US Treasuries
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 13:41
While conventional wisdom suggests that US government bond yields have nowhere to go but up, we believe the economic fundamentals will continue to weigh on interest rates for the foreseeable future.

Which Countries Have The Highest Default Risk: A Global CDS Heatmap
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 14:00
Sweden beats USA and Germany as the least likely to default on its bonds but at the other end of the global sovereign risk spectrum lie two socialist utopias - Venezuela (CDS just shy of 6000bps) and Greece (CDS around 1800bps) are the nations most likely to default.


COMMENTS: 61 32.340 READS TWEET
Why 1980 Matters
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 13:52
The trend is still your friend (for now)...


Gold Screams (But What's It Saying?)
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 15:05
As global stock markets have soared in recent weeks, accelerating most recently after the dud of the G-20 meeting, gold has also rallied, strongly suggesting there is anything but confidence in this ramp.


EIA's Dire Oil Forecast: $34 Crude Due To Far More Resilient Production, Oversupply And Lower Demand
Tyler Durden's pictureSubmitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 15:24 -0500

Now that the massive USO-driven squeeze appears to be over (congratulations to whoever managed to sell equity and their secured lenders) the bad news can return. First, it was Goldman slamming the "unsustainable rally, and then just a few hours ago, the EIA released its latest monthly short-term outlook report in which it brought even more bad news for long-suffering bulls who thought the pain was finally over.

Instead, the pain is only just beginning, after the EIA revised its 2016 supply forecast higher as "production is more resilient to lower prices than previously expected" - why thank you desperate momentum chasing "investors" of other people's money, who can't wait for that secondary offering to repay JPMorgan's credit facility.

The EIA also revised its forecast demand lower as a result of a decline in global economic growth.

Yes, someone finally admitted that demand is lower.

End result: a cut in forecast oil prices for 2016 and 2017 from $37 and $50 to just $34 and $40.

Here is the summary, with the troubling parts highlighted:

Global oil inventories are forecast to increase by an annual average of 1.6 million b/d in 2016 and by an additional 0.6 million b/d in 2017. These inventory builds are larger than previously expected, delaying the rebalancing of the oil market and contributing to lower forecast oil prices. Compared with last month’s STEO, EIA has revised forecast supply growth higher for 2016 and revised forecast demand growth lower for both 2016 and 2017. Higher 2016 supply in this month’s STEO is based on indications that production is more resilient to lower prices than previously expected. Notably, revisions to historical Russian data, which raised the baseline for Russian production, carry through much of the forecast. Additionally, lower expectations for global economic growth contributed to a reduction in the oil demand forecast.
And the details:

Brent crude oil prices are forecast to average $34/b in 2016 and $40/b in 2017, $3/b and $10/b lower than forecast in last month’s STEO, respectively. The lower forecast prices reflect oil production that has been more resilient than expected in a low-price environment and lower expectations for forecast oil demand growth.
Forecast West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices are expected to average the same as Brent in 2016 and 2017. However, the current values of futures and options contracts suggest high uncertainty in the price outlook. For example, EIA’s forecast for the average WTI price in June 2016 of $35/b should be considered in the context of recent Nymex contract values for June 2016 delivery (Market Prices and Uncertainty Report) suggesting that the market expects WTI prices to range from $24/b to $58/b (at the 95% confidence interval).
Global oil inventories are forecast to increase by an annual average of 1.6 million b/d in 2016 and by an additional 0.6 million b/d in 2017. These inventory builds are larger than previously expected, delaying the rebalancing of the oil market and contributing to lower forecast oil prices. Compared with last month’s STEO, EIA has revised forecast supply growth higher for 2016 and revised forecast demand growth lower for both 2016 and 2017. Higher 2016 supply in this month’s STEO is based on indications that production is more resilient to lower prices than previously expected. Notably, revisions to historical Russian data, which raised the baseline for Russian production, carry through much of the forecast. Additionally, lower expectations for global economic growth contributed to a reduction in the oil demand forecast.
U.S. crude oil production averaged an estimated 9.4 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2015, and it is forecast to average 8.7 million b/d in 2016 and 8.2 million b/d in 2017. EIA estimates that crude oil production in February averaged 9.1 million b/d, which was 80,000 b/d below the January level
Breaking it down just for non-OPEC, or mostly shale:

Non?OPEC Petroleum and Other Liquids Supply. EIA estimates that petroleum and other liquid fuels production in countries outside of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) grew by 1.5 million b/d in 2015, with most of the growth occurring in North America. EIA expects non-OPEC production to decline by 0.4 million b/d in 2016, which would be the first decline since 2008. Most of the forecast production decline in 2016 is expected to be in the United States. Non-OPEC production is forecast to decline by 0.5 million b/d in 2017.
Changes in non-OPEC production are driven by changes in U.S. tight oil production, which is characterized by high decline rates and relatively short investment horizons, making it among the most price-sensitive globally. However, increases in production of hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL) from natural gas plants and in crude oil production from the Gulf of Mexico partially offset lower tight oil production. Forecast total U.S. liquid fuels production declines by 0.5 million b/d in 2016 and by 0.2 million b/d in 2017, both less than the decline in crude oil considered separately.
So a 0.9mm b/d decline cumulatively being taken away from non-OPEC. The problem is that Saudi Arabia continues to report, there is a 3 million barrell excess supply every day; it also means that the market will remain oversupplied just purely on the OPEC side for the next 22 months! Basically, anyone hoping for a quick rebalancing in the oil market will be very severly disappointed.

Perhaps the only hope is that the EIA is massively wrong in its forecast. Here is its latest price forecast curve:


... and this is what the EIA "predicted" precisely two years ago.


Just a little bit off.

[Fenix]

Never Go Full-Kuroda: NIRP Plus QE Will Be Contractionary Disaster In Japan, CS Warns
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 15:40
In late January, when Haruhiko Kuroda took Japan into NIRP, he made it official. He was full-everything. Full-Krugman. Full-Keynes. Full-post-crisis-central-banker-retard. Now, he's managed to ease and expand his way into a contractionary tightening.

Jeff Gundlach Explains Why "The Rally Is Ending" - Live Webcast
Submitted by Tyler D.
03/08/2016 - 16:13
At 4:15pm ET, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach who continues to do no wrong in the market (even if it means buying stocks at his most doom and gloomish ahead of a record short squeeze), will hold his latest webcast titled "Connect the Dots" and in which he will explain why, as he told Reuters moments ago, "the rally in risk assets is nearing the end", which in turn explains why when the short covering frenzy had gripped the market last week, Gundlach was cashing out.



This 4,000-Year-Old Financial Indicator Says That A Major Crisis Is Looming
03/08/2016 16:30 -0500
Submitted by Simon Black
Over 4,000 years ago during Sargon the Great’s reign of the Akkadian Empire, it took 8 units of silver to buy one unit of gold.

This was a time long before coins. It would be thousands of years before the Lydians in modern day Turkey would invent gold coins as a form of money.

Back in the Akkadian Empire, gold and silver were still used as a medium of exchange.

But the prices of goods and services were based on the weight of metal, and typically denominated in a unit called a ‘shekel’, about 8.33 grams.

For example, you could have bought 100 quarts of grain in ancient Mesopotamia for about 2 shekels of silver, a weight close to half an ounce in our modern units.

Both gold and silver were used in trade. And at the time the ‘exchange rate’ between the two metals was fixed at 8:1.

Throughout ancient times, the gold/silver ratio kept pretty close to that figure.

During the time of Hamurabbi in ancient Babylon, the ratio was roughly 6:1.

In ancient Egypt, it varied wildly, from 13:1 all the way to 2:1.

In Rome, around 12:1 (though Roman emperors routinely manipulated the ratio to suit their needs).

In the United States, the ratio between silver and gold was fixed at 15:1 in 1792. And throughout the 20th century it averaged about 50:1.

But given that gold is still traditionally seen as a safe haven, the ratio tends to rise dramatically in times of crisis, panic, and economic slowdown.

Just prior to World War II as Hitler rolled into Poland, the gold/silver ratio hit 98:1.

In January 1991 as the first Gulf War kicked off, the ratio once again reached 100:1, twice its normal level.

In nearly every single major recession and panic of the last century, there was a sharp rise in the gold/silver ratio.

The crash of 1987. The Dot-Com bust in the late 1990s. The 2008 financial crisis.

These panics invariably led to a gold/silver ratio in the 70s or higher.

In 2008, in fact, the gold/silver ratio surged from below 50 to a high of roughly 84 in just two months.

We’re seeing another major increase once again. Right now as I write this, the gold/silver ratio is 81.7, nearly as high as the peak of the 2008 financial crisis.

This isn’t normal.

In modern history, the gold/silver ratio has only been this high three other times, all periods of extreme turmoil—the 2008 crisis, Gulf War, and World War II.



This suggests that something is seriously wrong. Or at least that people perceive something is seriously wrong.

There are so many macroeconomic and financial indicators suggesting that a recession is looming, if not an all-out crisis.

In the US, manufacturing data show that the country is already in recession (more on this soon).

Default rates are rising; corporate defaults in the US are actually higher now than when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt back in 2008.

These defaults have put a ton of pressure on banks, whose stock prices are tanking worldwide as they scramble to reinforce their balance sheets against losses.

I just had a meeting with a commercial banker here in Sydney who told me that Australian regulators are forcing the bank to increase its already plentiful capital reserves by over 40% within the next several months.

This is an astonishing (and almost impossible) order.

The regulators wouldn’t be doing that if they weren’t getting ready for a major storm. So even the financial establishment is planning for the worst.

Good times never last forever, especially with governments and central banks engineering artificial prosperity by going into debt and printing money.

These tactics destroy a financial system. And the cracks are visibly expanding.

So while the gold/silver ratio isn’t any kind of smoking gun, it is an obvious symptom alongside many, many others.

Now, the ratio may certainly go even higher in the event of a major banking or financial crisis. We may see it touch 100 again.

But it is reasonable to expect that someday the gold/silver ratio will eventually fall to more ‘normal’ levels.

In other words, today you can trade 1 ounce of gold for 80 ounces of silver.

But perhaps, say, over the next two years the gold/silver ratio returns to a more historic norm of 55. (Remember, it was as low as 30 in 2011)

This means that in the future you’ll be able to trade the 80 ounces of silver you acquired today for 1.45 ounces of gold.

The final result is that, in gold terms, you earn a 45% “profit”. Essentially you end up with 45% more gold than you started with today.

So bottom line, if you’re a speculator in precious metals, now may be a good time to consider trading in some gold for silver.

[Fenix]

Crude Chaos As Cushing Inventories Rise For 6th Straight Week
Tyler D.
03/08/2016 16:38 -0500

Following Genscape's projection that Cushing inventories rose less than expected, various sources on Twitter report that API sees a 4.4mm build (in line with expectations of a 3.9mm build) after EIA's massive build of over 10.3mm barrels last week. Cushing saw a 692k build - the 6th week in a row but gasoline and distillates saw a draw. Crude sold off all day as the short-covering squeeze ended but as the data hit, WTI dipped, ripped, and dipped again... only to rally once more...



API

Crude +4.4mm
Cushing +692k
Gasoline -2.1mm
Distillates -128k
Sixth weekly rise in Cushing Inventories...

And the reaction in crude...