The Depression came to be as a function of “the lack of honor of men in high places.”
-Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the DNC in 1932
In his famous Democratic National Convention speech that was ironically held in Chicago, Roosevelt also described these “men in high places” as “crooks”… and I guess that makes sense, because that’s what they were. I’d like to say that sometimes Wall Street’s narrative fallacy leads people to believe that everything that happens in this business is on the up and up… but, unfortunately, I have to say that most of the time it is not. It’s all about storytelling.
Our head of compliance, Moshe Silver, who joined Research Edge LLC after working with me at Carlyle’s hedge fund submitted the following observation: “We recognize that market manipulation is not an exact science. That being said, there are people out there who are recognized pros, and it would have made more sense to bring them in – the same line of reasoning that led FDR to appoint Joseph Kennedy to head the newly-created SEC. We’d have been much more comfortable with Ace Greenberg or Jimmy Caine. Or, for that matter, Mike Milken or John Guttfreund, on the premise of Been There, Stole That…”
Moshe was expanding upon my ‘Weekend Edge’ “Quote of the Week” that ‘You Tubed’, Paulson’s “yes man”, Neel Kashkari, for saying “we’re not day traders, and we’re not looking for a return tomorrow.” Poor Paulson and his junior banker from Goldman (Kashkari) have t-minus a few weeks left until we get them off of team USA and back into the unemployment line where they belong. They’ve already lost almost $9B, or one-third of the value, of the “preferred investments” they’ve made in their favorite cronies banking schemes. Clearly, they weren’t proactively managing risk or “looking for a return” – we could have paid for this ridiculous big auto bailout with their trading losses.
These aren’t the only sell side bankers who have a hard time making money on the downside of the cycle. This week, we’ll have both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley report their version of the numbers. “Ex” everything, be certain that there will be some serious storytelling on these conference calls. After putting an “outperform” on it somewhere close to $175/share in July, Goldman’s depleting research department is downgrading Apple this morning at $98/share. They apparently did some “channel checking” and set the table for their public parent’s finger pointing session on Tuesday – I’ll bet you a “Made-Off” buck that GS gets on that call and blames “the slowdown in the economy”… what’s a made up bet on a made up story with a made up buck anyway? Let’s roll the bones and lever up some bets!
Anyone can sit down in their year-end review and make things up. That’s what Wall Street does. Not all bankers are in on it – but Bruce Wasserstein knows a thing or two about banking, and he said that “accounting has now become an exercise in creative fiction… saying assets are worth a lot doesn’t make them worth a lot.” I think he was alluding to Steve Schwarzman’s argument for “marked to model” pricing of private equity investments, but heh, who’s keeping track of this stuff.
It wasn’t hard to keep track of how many shoes that Iraqi reporter gunned at ole Bushy’s head this weekend – both! If this wasn’t a metaphor for the bottom of the barrel of ‘You Tubing’ global confidence in the departing leadership of America, I don’t know what is. Between “Made-Off”, Bush, and Kashkari, I don’t think confidence in the American financial system can get worse. This is a very good thing.
Good thing? Yessir – very good. Stock market confidence isn’t built on nominal expectations – it’s built on what happens on the margin, relative to those expectations. Friday’s 500 basis point intraday rally from the thralls of the “made-up” Madoff lows was a significant one on this score. The ingenious bears who are figuring out things in the global economy are bad can choose to ignore it at their own risk. China just printed their slowest monthly Industrial Production growth number in a decade, and the Chinese stock market closed UP on the day. Markets don’t trade on yesterday’s news – they are leading indicators for tomorrow, and they don’t make stuff up!
In the USA, Friday’s University of Michigan consumer confidence report had me put up a note on the portal titled “Has American Confidence Bottomed” (see www.researchedgellc.com, under the North America tab). This report rhymed with the American confidence poll for the President elect moving to greater than 70%. You can call Obama “too young”, but he’s at least a good decade older than who Paulson, in his poor judgment, appointed to head up America’s “Financial Stability” program. Since Wall Street loves to compare performance on a relative basis, Obama and his team of Volcker and Summers are grey beards!
I am not into grey. I am more of a black and white guy, and as sure as I ran that NFL Sunday ball up the middle with our newly initiated long USA stock positioning on Friday morning is right back to where I am sitting here for you today.
I am here to stand on our investment process and be held accountable. There are many men and women “of honor” looking to lead in The New Reality, so let’s get the storytellers out the door and get on with it. I have an immediate term upside target for the SP500 of 916. And no, that number wasn’t just “Made-Up.”
Best of luck out there today,
KM
Long ETFs
SPY-S&P 500 Depository Receipts – CME front month contracts traded as low as 876.4 this morning before 7AM.
DIA –DIAMONDS Trust Series –CBOT front month contract traded as high as 8,756 early this morning before pulling back.
XLV Health Care Select Sector SPDR – Bristol-Myers Squibb (XLV: 4.07%) and Sanofi- Aventis won an appeals court ruling vs. Apotex to block generic competition to the blood-thinner Plavix in the U.S. until 2011.
OIL iPath ETN Crude Oil –Front month NYMEX light sweet contracts traded as high as 49 before 7AM this morning as the market reacted to comments regarding production cuts from OPEC Secretary-General El-Badri before the meeting scheduled in Oran this Wednesday.
EWG – iShares Germany – The DAX is trading up this morning 1.72% to 4743.42, a gained for the first time in three days as European Union regulators approved the country’s revised bank-rescue plan and on expectations for a swift US bailout for carmakers. Arcandor AG, the German retailer that controls tour operator Thomas Cook Group Plc, posted an annual net loss of €745.7 million ($1 billion), or €3.35 a share, in the year through September.
EWH –iShares Hong Kong –The Hang Seng closed up 288.56, or 1.96%, to 15046.95.
FXI –iShares China – China’s industrial production grew at the weakest pace in almost a decade as export growth totaled 5.4% in November Y/Y as compared to 8.2% in October. CSI300 closed this morning up just slightly to 1975.03, or 0.75%.
Short ETFs
FXY – CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust –The Yen fell slightly to 90.9230 against the USD.
IFN The India Fund—India’s rupee rebounded more than 5% from a record low touched on Dec. 2 on speculation the US will bail out its automakers. India’s 10-year bonds rose for a sixth day, pushing yields to the lowest level since September 2004, on speculation the central bank will cut borrowing costs as economic growth and inflation slow.
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