Wednesday, February 8, 2012

This post (and employment data) will be revised

The recent employment report has been a great point of contention between the bulls, bears, and the black helicopter crowd. I won't rehash the report but there's something I mentioned in a previous posting about employment seasonality that caught my attention.

The beginning of a new year brings a large number of layoffs as seasonal workers for the holiday shopping rush are released.  As you can see from this first graph the non seasonally adjusted data and adjusted data vary greatly right now.
Total nonfarm payroll 
The difference is rather obvious to see but lets transform the data a bit and look at the difference between the normalized and raw data.


Subtracting one from the other exposes just how much the raw data can vary from the the adjusted data in an attempt to smooth out the seasonality of the data.  As can be seen we are at the peak of this delta and it will most likely be revised in the future due to the fact we are that noisiest point in the data collection period.  Will it be revised up or down? I haven't a clue, but I'm going to watch it and report to you how much these data series change over time.  Stay tuned.

Monday, February 6, 2012

A housing update -- at best a flat market

Over the last few years during conversations with clients I've frequently been asked my opinion about the housing market and whether now is a good time to buy.  Home prices are naturally a point of conversation as they are a large part of most people's net worth and the loss of equity is preventing some people from moving up or refinancing.  So the question of whether we are at the bottom of home prices is an important one.  Unfortunately I don't think we are at the absolute bottom of home prices and we will most likely continue to see a slow decline in prices in the near future.  My non-prediction for 2012 is we will not see a rebound in home prices; at best we'll see a flat to slightly down market.

Home prices have strong local factors so this conversation is about national trends, your local market will vary.

Unfortunately right now home prices are continuing their decline nationwide:
Home prices still dropping - (Source: Paper Money)


Outstanding mortgages still contracting
Mortgage loan balance still declining
There are several headwinds the housing market needs to overcome before it is fully healed. This chart shows the change in mortgage values outstanding since 1975 (Source: Federal ReserveLooking at loan balances to predict home prices may seem counter intuitive but remember a rising total national loan balance means there are more buyers (and borrowers) entering the market.  Some interesting aspects of this chart are how even during other previous recessions (shown in gray) the value of outstanding mortgages continued to rise on a year over year basis; until our most recent recession in 2008/2009.  This was the first time during this entire data series when the total value of all mortgages outstanding declined on a year over year basis. One would not be engaging in hyperbole to call our current decline in home prices exceptional.

An overhang of foreclosed homes
While it appears the primary wave of home foreclosures is past us there still is a large backlog of homes in the foreclosure process. Until this backlog is completely cleared and returns to more 'normal' levels, the amount of housing coming on the market by 3rd parties (not the person who currently lives/owns the home) will put downward pressure on prices.

Single family delinquency rate (Source: CalculatedRisk)

Another negative factor is the hidden inventory of homes out there from people who want to move up or out but are waiting until home prices stabilize before putting the place on the market. I personally know of a few people who are accidental landlords and are hoping and waiting until prices stabilize before putting their rentals on the market.  While this is purely anecdotal I'm sure its not just a local or isolated phenomenon.

Renting versus Owning coming into balance
Fortunately there are some positive factors which should mitigate a continued decline in home prices.  Home prices and mortgage rates have declined to the point where a mortgage now equal to rent.
Rent versus Owning (Source: Soberlook)
As you can see for a very long time it was cheaper to rent versus own. We are approaching a point where this may invert and owning a home would be cheaper than renting. There are other upkeep and time costs associated with home ownership (as a homeowner I can assure you there are many!) but the primary costs are approaching parity.  

Clearing the excess inventory
The number of unsold homes is beginning to stabilize as a percentage of US population.  The hidden inventory is of course hard to measure but at least we are getting closer to 'normal' for this data series
Unsold homes as % of population - (Source: Sober Look)

The long decline in construction spending does appear to be finally over which will help the building trade and stop being a drag on overall GDP growth.
Construction finally bottoming? (Source: Federal Reserve)

Even though the housing market decline appears to be slowing forecasting when we finally reach bottom is not something I'm willing to predict right now. I believe the worst of the declines are behind us so if you are looking for a home now would be a good time to start looking but be picky and drive a hard bargain! There is going to be lots of supply coming on the market over the next few years.

One aspect of the crushing decline in home prices is it has popped the speculative mindset so very prevalent in American thinking a few years ago. (I'll admit to falling a little under that spell myself)  Take your time and find a house to live in, not one for profit.

Additional reading:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/01/fannie-mae-serious-delinquency-rate.html
http://soberlook.com/2012/01/two-data-points-on-us-housing.html
http://paper-money.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-home-sales-december-2011.html
http://soberlook.com/2012/01/five-reasons-2012-will-be-start-of-us.html
http://paper-money.blogspot.com/2012/01/radar-watching-november-2011.html
http://paper-money.blogspot.com/2012/01/fhfa-monthly-home-prices-november-2011.html
http://paper-money.blogspot.com/2012/01/radar-watching-november-2011.html
http://pragcap.com/why-home-prices-have-much-further-to-fall
http://www.tilsonfunds.com/JohnBurnshousing.pdf
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=62720&category_id=4082
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=64527&category_id=4082
Calculated Risk calls a housing bottom
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/02/housing-bottom-is-here.html

Monday, January 23, 2012

Observation of the day: Greeks are not Germans

It may appear an obvious observation but to the euro and (for a while at least) the bonds markets Greeks and Germans were the almost exactly the same. Twins.

Two recent pieces on public radio highlight how very different from the Germans the Greeks can really be.

The first radio spot describes the failed efforts of a Greek computer scientist to make the revenue system (the tax man) more efficient in Greece. All he thought they needed was a little technological help to point them in the right direction.  Heh, not quite.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/05/144747663/how-a-computer-scientist-tried-to-save-greece?ft=1&f=100

This longer piece (nearly an hour) aired this weekend and I caught it on Saturday.  It goes into the desire to create the euro and how Greece basically lied to get into the eurozone and the epic borrowing binge Greeks went on after 'easy money' appeared after the Euro was introduced.  While its long it is a good overview of how Europe got into this mess.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/455/continental-breakup

Greece's credit history is not the best.  Since their independence in the early 1800's they have spent more than 50% of their time in default. (This time is different, 2008, Reinhart & Rogoff, page 99) Do you really think they would adopt the fiscal discipline of Germany after being handed their unlimited gold card?

ht @BarbarianCap

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Baltic Dry Index falls off a cliff

The Baltic Dry Index (spot shipping rate for bulk commodities like iron ore, grain, coal, etc) recently fell off a cliff and has not seen these levels since the dark days of early 2009.
While one can say there are legitimate supply problems (a huge overhang of new ships coming online from the order surge pre financial crisis of 2009); to see such a dramatic drop is impressive and deserving of attention. I have been quite bearish on China for quite a while on this blog (although now that their market has been thrashed and policy changes appear to be taking place I may have to alter that opinion) and the sudden fall in the index may be due to a lack of  import volume into China. We'll see in a little bit if this drop in the Baltic Dry foretells a real slowdown in China...

Source: Stockcharts

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Obama shuts down Keystone pipeline. The oil must flow!

It appears the Obama administration will block approval of the Keystone pipeline.

Your political leanings aside, this will not stop 'dirty oil sands' oil from getting out. I was going to work up a nice post about how Canada can ship the oil east or west but NPR beat me to it:

Philip Verleger, an economist who specializes in oil markets, says even if environmentalists convince Obama to block the Keystone XL pipeline, it won't stop the growth of production in the Canadian oil sands.
"With prices around a hundred dollars a barrel globally, that oil is going to make it to the market somehow," Verleger says. "The development may be slowed for a year or two. But one can move the oil west on the existing Kinder Morgan pipeline. They could expand pipelines east. Those pipelines already exist, and they can be expanded."
In fact, Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, recently asked Canadian regulators for permission to reverse the direction of one of its pipelines in Ontario, which many see as the first step to move more Canadian oil to the American East Coast — and relieve some of the Canadian oil glut in the upper Midwest.
Not only is the oil going to flow east but the article mentions Kinder Morgan planning to increase the flow westward to British Columbia and then down to the Pacific Northwest and out to Asia as well.

The NPR article continues...
But demand is the key, say most economists. If you can get American drivers to buy less gas — by raising fuel efficiency standards, as the Obama administration recently did — then, they say, you stand a much better chance of slowing production in the oil sands.
Sorry but these are economists? American drivers are just one user of energy, don't forget all of Asia, India, South America, etc.  

All is not lost
For those of you worried the end is nigh and we will run out of oil soon and that will be the end of us all I would like to point you to this graph and article from the Economist

Energy used per unit of GDP has been declining in America since the 1920's. For nearly a century America has become more efficient at extracting more value out of each barrel/btu/pound of energy and the trend is to greater and greater efficiency.

Furthermore oil is not the only form of energy we have available in America.  Through new techniques the amount of natural gas in America is at all time highs and current prices are extremely low and production continues to rise. From Sober Look


But I digress from the Keystone pipeline.  Obama may feel the need to stop this project for political purposes but all he will succeed in doing is building more pipelines in Canada going east and west and sending that oil to Asia.   Would it not be better to have the cheaper oil captive in America and depressing our prices relative to the rest of the world? Believe it or not but oil has been cheaper in America than the rest of the world for nearly a year, and some of that is due to the increased production up north in Canada. 

 For those of you concerned about the risk of the Keystone pipeline, there are already skads of them all over America

The Keystone pipeline would not have reduced our energy 'dependence' from external sources but would you rather buy our oil from next door Canada or Saudi Arabia and Venezuela?

Additional Reading


Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Hugh Hendry as the Plasticine Trader

Late last year I highlighted a 5 part video series on Hugh Hendry in one of his steadily declining public appearances. In it he used a key term to describe his trading aspirations; the 'Plasticine Trader'

Here's a few excerpts from that series, completely lifted from a new blog called Chasing the vig. I guess I have a new book to put on my reading queue and a new blog to follow.

I have clipped the blog post down quite a bit so I suggest you click on over and read the entire entry. I have also highlighted and bolded some sections I found interesting

Steve Drobny's book The Invisible Hands includes one of the best interviews of a fund manager/trader. Ever. The chapter is called The Plasticine Macro Trader and it is none other than Hugh Hendry, manager of the hedge fund Eclectica Asset Management. This is how we should be thinking and trading. Also, he's highly entertaining. Read the entire thing, but here's some snippets:
Today’s long-only stars operated during a period of time where investors did not require a macro compass.  Today your average long-only guy does not spend much time looking at interest rates, currencies, debt levels, and other key macro variables. I have even been to conferences where fund managers have boasted, “I don’t know where oil prices are going; I don’t know where interest rates are going; I don’t know anything about the government.”  . . . For the last 30 years they could get away with that nonsense, but now at a historic turning point they are being found out.

Again, remember, I believe there is a degree of predictability to what has been happening in markets for the last 10 years. I believe that our generation is embarking upon a long period of unwinding financial excesses. Stock market returns could be terrible for the foreseeable future. If you believe people like Niall Ferguson, debt deflation eliminates all of the gains from the preceding boom, it purges everything. By 1974, we had eliminated all of the real gains from the American stock market since 1906. If we consider Japan as an example, the Topix would have to trade at 300 (or one third its present level) to be comparable with the lows reached during the 1970s on Wall Street. At this point, all of the real gains since the index was reconfigured in 1969 would have been eliminated. . . . 

Have the courage to be different, the courage to risk the ire of others for the sake of being right; to fight rather than embrace compromises everywhere. We have to encourage rebellious notions such as playfulness and curiosity. There is no one correct way of doing things that is set in stone. Periodically managers should be open to trying different approaches.

George Soros explains a version of this phenomenon when he says, “Invest first, and investigate later.” But this is heresy in the institutional money world. When I suggest stuff like that, the number crunchers and the box tickers write down, “crazy guy” and make their polite goodbyes. But every so often a heretic turns out to be a genius.
. . .
Even a true contrarian is only really contrarian about 20 percent of the time; it’s all about choosing the right moment to fight convention. The rest of the time is spent trend following. So I guess I am a trend-following contrarian. I come back to describing myself as a disciplined deviant. But every description that I have for myself is an oxymoron, and when I present my views, most people just think I’m a moron.

I have Tourette’s syndrome—I say “fuck” at all at the wrong times. One of my mentors taught me how to articulate that Tourette’s and then play the odds, become trend following and recognize when the elasticity becomes so extreme that your Tourette’s becomes valid and has the possibility of profits.

I jokingly claim that my best investment decisions come from being a paranoid schizophrenic. I hear voices in my head. Subconsciously and explicitly I seek to create a macro prejudice. And so there’s an ongoing debate by those voices in my head. But the scary thing is that I make investment decisions based on these voices. And so does everyone else. I just talk about it openly and honestly. When I make such decisions I become very fearful, paranoid like a schizophrenic, that these decisions may jeopardize my investors and my portfolio. I would contend that this fear makes me a better investor.
. . . 
That’s the hook; it is one thing to create the intellectual color but it doesn’t go into the portfolio until it starts to gain the attraction of relative momentum. I need the legitimacy of other curious strangers before I get involved.

Last summer I was on CNBC talking up Potash [Corporation of Saskatchewan], saying it was the best positioned company in the world when I suddenly realized everyone was agreeing with me. So I got out. Thank God I can reject my own advice because from July to October of 2008 its performance was diabolical.

The thing that I’m most fearful of is a focused fund, or a portfolio of 20 best ideas, which is a concept that marketed well a few years ago. The reason this idea can prove disastrous is that “best” is an emotionally charged word. Giving up on your best idea is the same as admitting that you’re wrong, something crucially important but very difficult to do.

I don’t believe that there is any real diversification left in the world today, at least not the kind of diversification to which you refer. And the shocking nature of the results in 2008 demonstrates this fact. We live in a world of binary events. Over the last 10 years, markets have oscillated between inflation and deflation, and people are either all in or all out. What we’re trying to do is make sure that we’re leaning at the right time, correctly anticipating the oscillation.
. . .
The same “upside down” logic prevailed in 1979 when Volcker became chairman of the Fed. You had this new sheriff in town who was honest and tough. He was going to raise interest rates to make the economy very weak in order to parch the system of its inflation. He was a dream come true for a bond bull, and yet bonds got destroyed whilst gold doubled to $800 in three months. (See Figure 13.8.) The problem was that Volcker had to come clean on the Fed’s dirty little secret. In order to have the legitimacy to be so hawkish, he had to admit that the problem was inflation; investors panicked and scrambled to protect themselves with gold. A hawk produced a melt-up in gold. Could the dovish Bernanke produce a similar melt-up at the long end of the bond market?
. . .
We are spending all of our time looking for inflation because the Fed will be slow in raising interest rates while the roof is caving in. The private sector’s desire to unburden itself of debt is so great that debt deflation seems much more likely. And if it rolls over with everyone loaded up on risk again, playing commodities and inflation expectations, bonds could go parabolic. The bull market in government bonds is one of the greatest bull markets of all time, and bull markets of that magnitude do not end with a whimper.

Typically my work is all about creating context to establish an environment where I might want to take risk. The challenge with risk management is finding the appropriate moment to expose yourself to that risk. I don’t think the right moment has come to pass for Japan just yet, but this is an idea that I have fermented for five years. Back then, I said that for the trade to work, we would need an extraneous economic shock which pushes dollar/yen down to around the 80s, and we have essentially been there. I am always in danger of wanting too much, but I am looking for those levels again in any subsequent round of global risk aversion. If that happens, I fear the Japanese will debauch their currency in an attempt to generate inflation to monetize their considerable public sector debts. With the majority of the private sector still invested in post office savings, such a step would cause a panic to buy equities and the Nikkei could go back to 40,000. Typically it requires 25 years to break a previous nominal price high in an asset class that has suffered a bubble. So who knows, maybe this is the trade for next decade? They have covered the place with kerosene, now all they have to do is light the match.

I live an interesting life. I made 50 percent in October 2008 and my biggest investor fired me. He said he had a manager that was down 30 percent on the year, but that manager “gets it,” so he was going to stay invested with him. Meanwhile, I made 30 percent on the year and I get fired because I don’t get it? This is the curse of my life. I seem to collect all sorts of witty dinner party anecdotes from my experiences, but I pray for a less interesting life.

Markets are irrational but they are right at every moment. They are right until they are wrong. You have to marry the notion of being right or wrong with being right with the timing of a given proposition. This is not a business that indulges intellectual prejudice.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Seasonality and initial unemployment claims

Weekly initial unemployment claims were released today and they showed an increase to 399,000, countering the recent downward trend.  Details can be found at the DOL

I would not make much of the current gyrations, up and down. As the graph below shows, right now we are at the highest seasonal peak of layoffs/firings.  Each year you can see a massive increase in initial claims just around the new year. This makes estimating the trend very difficult.  (Translation, put very large error bars on data around the new year)


I wonder how many financial models out there reduce the weight of this data (and other series) when they are less accurate?  

Here's the two data series on a year over year basis.  While initial claims are still declining the rate of decline appears to have leveled off.