Category: Market Action

Our Government Motors investment has a long way to go:

But for the U.S. to break even through sales of the rest of its stake, the share price may need to rise more than 60% from its initial level, to about $50.

The initial public offering plan envisions the shares would be priced at $26 to $29 each, these people said. The actual price of the stock to be sold in the IPO would be set about Nov. 17, and the sale would take place the following day.

More subsidies urgently required!

Merkel is stepping up calls for an EU default mechanism:

Measures being drafted by the European Union will result in rules with “more bite” to protect the euro, Merkel said in a speech today in Bruges, Belgium. Along with steps to prevent EU members running up excessive debt, a crisis mechanism enshrined in EU treaties is necessary for the longer term, she said.

“We will set it up in such a way that European taxpayers will no longer be on the hook for possible new mistakes and turmoil on the financial markets,” Merkel said. “Private investors must also make a contribution.”

European officials including Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero are concerned that announcing bond investors will have to shoulder a greater part of any future bailout will spook traders at a time when Ireland and Portugal are struggling to cut their budget deficits.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet told EU leaders last week he’s concerned that talk of a debt restructuring mechanism from 2013 would hurt the bonds of the euro-region’s so-called periphery nations, according to an EU official familiar with the talks.

Irish bonds fell for a sixth day, sending the 10-year yield to a record, and Greek bonds dropped for a seventh day, the longest losing streak since April.

Rules, schmules. They’re only as effective as the political will to enforce them – Germany and France both demanded exemptions from the 3% deficit cap; turned a willful blind eye to the Greek crisis as it was developing; and participated in the Greek bail-out contrary to the EU’s no-bailout rules.

The Depositary Trust Company is now publishing average daily General Collateral repo rates. The Treasury Market Practices Group applauds the move:

The Treasury Market Practices Group (“TMPG”) today applauded the announcement by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (“DTCC”) to introduce the publication of three overnight general collateral repo rate indices and corresponding transaction volumes.

These new data, which will be published daily, reflect activity on DTCC’s GCF Repo dealer-to-dealer trading platform for the three most active collateral categories traded: Treasury securities, agency debt securities, and agency mortgage-backed securities. Publication of these data, made at the request of the TMPG, provides useful information in a form that has not been available to market participants until now.

“The publication of these indices by DTCC is a major step on the critical path of enhanced transparency in the secured funding markets,” said Tom Wipf, the chairman of the TMPG. “This collaboration demonstrates the shared commitment of TMPG and DTCC in support of the integrity and efficiency of the Treasury, agency debt, and mortgage-backed securities markets.”

God knows why. Greater transparency leads to fairer markets for the little guys, which leads to less profit for the well capitalized big guys, which leads to … surprise! a withdrawal of capital from the market. We’ve seen this countless times and every single time the market in question becomes a little thinner and a little more brittle. If that’s what we want, fine … but not once have I seen a regulatory decision take explicit account of the trade-off.

It will soon be easier to confine people who look at you funny, given all the complaints that private citizens can get in trouble for shooting people who are running away. While worried, I am also entertained by the slow oscillations of the pendulum … how long will it be before some looney-tune exercises his new citizen’s arrest rights in a manner that is unpopular?

It was yet another good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 28bp and FixedResets gaining 19bp, taking the median weighted average yield on the latter index back down to 2.93%. The all-time low yield for this index was 2.89%, set on September 23; today’s level ranks #3 all-time. Volume returned to very strong levels.

And how about that BMO.PR.N, eh? Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 2.23%, based on a bid of 28.34 and a call 2014-3-27 at 25.00. I note that the BMO Capital Trust BOATS Series D, 5.474%, (prospectus on SEDAR dated September 23, 2004) are indicated at 108.97 to yield 3.15% to a presumed call December 31, 2014. Note that given current market conditions the call would not be in the economic best interests of BMO; but there is also the thought that OSFI will demand redemption due to concerns over the loss-absorption potential of the issue (this issue can convert into 5% preferred shares, but only if Very Bad Things happen). One way or another, BMO.PR.N is yielding at an interest-equivalent rate of 3.12% at the standard conversion factor of 1.4x.

Fabulous Fab’s trial is progressing … slowly:

U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones today dismissed Tourre’s motion seeking a judgment in the case. He had argued that the SEC can’t sue him over a Goldman Sachs deal involving collateralized debt obligations because the transaction didn’t take place in the U.S.

In the same order, Jones said the SEC can file an amended complaint by Nov. 22.

“Defendant Tourre’s motion for judgment on the pleadings is dismissed without prejudice and with leave to renew after plaintiff has filed its amended complaint,” Jones wrote.
…
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that U.S. securities laws don’t apply to claims of foreign buyers of non-U.S. securities on foreign exchanges, lawyers for the Goldman executive director said in a court filing in September. The collateralized debt obligations, known as Abacus, at issue in the SEC’s complaint weren’t listed on any exchange and the sole investor in the notes was a foreign bank that bought them overseas, according to the filing.

Never waste a crisis – even if it wasn’t really a crisis:

In a speech at Notre Dame University, CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said the agency already has the authority to impose limits on how many financial futures contracts any one market player can hold, although he didn’t offer any details on what kind of limits might be appropriate.

“I think we need some sort of boundary on financial futures as well as futures on commodities of finite supply like energy, metals and agriculture,” he said in prepared remarks. “How and what those confines are I don’t know at this time, but it seems only prudent to institute some type of restrictions to ensure we don’t again see another flash crash, or even a miniflash crash.”
…
“I’m talking about sensible, well-calibrated limits to give us a handle on these markets,” he said.

He said he would like to see limits imposed on “robotic algo-trading” and “high-frequency trading,” although he noted that “like financial futures, it isn’t clear how it would be best achieved.”

Meanwhile, on Friday, a joint advisory committee to the SEC and CFTC will meet to discuss the flash-crash report and come up with some recommendations. Mr. Gensler previously has outlined some areas he would like to explore, including new obligations for brokers executing algorithms for their clients and greater transparency in the public listing at exchanges of bids and offers.

Hurray! All we have to do is support the regulators and investors will never, ever have to worry about losing money again!

The Lancet has taken a strong stand against candy:

One of the world’s most influential medical journals is accusing UNICEF Canada of selling out its values by allowing candy giant Cadbury to use its logo to sell Halloween candy.

In an editorial published online Saturday, the Lancet slammed UNICEF Canada for accepting $500,000 from Cadbury Adams Canada Inc. over a three-year period for construction of schools in Africa in exchange for allowing the company to plaster the iconic – and valuable – UNICEF logo on millions of product packages a year.
…
UNICEF Canada has made a serious error in judgment by allowing a candy company to use its name to sell high-fat, high-sugar and overall unhealthy products under the guise of raising money for African programs, the editorial states.

In Canada, a country with serious health and obesity problems, “encouraging products which are undeniably unhealthy is irresponsible,” the editorial says.

I was about to buy a bag of Cadbury stuff until I saw the logo, at which point I replaced it on the shelf; but that was because UNICEF is a sleazy organization, not because I’m a precious little doorknob. I bought other brands of chocolate instead; for next year I’m considering cigarettes.

The Canadian preferred share market had yet another good day today, wth PerpetualDiscounts gaining 24bp and FixedResets winning 17bp. Volume continued to be quite good.

The EU is now openly discussing mechanisms for sovereign default:

European Union leaders endorsed German calls for a rewrite of EU treaties to create a permanent debt-crisis mechanism, while sparring over whether to force bondholders to help pay the bill for rescuing financially distressed states.

As the biggest contributor to this year’s hastily arranged 860 billion euros ($1.2 trillion) in loans and pledges to stem the debt crisis, Germany won backing to set up a permanent system by 2013. Deficit-strapped Spain warned that provisions to reschedule or cancel some debts would expose its markets to renewed selling pressure.

“We won’t allow only the taxpayers to bear all the costs of a future crisis,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a press conference in Brussels today after a summit of EU leaders. There is “a justified desire to see that it’s not just taxpayers who are on the hook, but also private investors.”
…
Germany rules out extending this year’s emergency taxpayer- funded financial assistance mechanisms when they expire in 2013. Merkel’s follow-up system would extend debt maturities, suspend interest payments and waive creditor claims, Handelsblatt newspaper reported yesterday, citing an unidentified government official.

Assiduous Readers will remember that on July 23 I reported:

But the best line in the farce comes from a central banker:

ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio called the tests “severe” and explained they didn’t include a scenario of a national default because “we don’t believe there will be a default.”

That’s just great, Vitor! Maybe you’ll be put in charge of the government run credit rating agency the Europeans are thinking about, you know, the ones that will be much nicer to sovereigns than those mean old-style CRAs!

There is no word yet regarding whether Vitor Constancio has resigned.

The Bank of Canada has released a working paper by Ali Dib titled Capital Requirement and Financial Frictions in Banking: Macroeconomic Implications:

The author develops a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking sector, a financial accelerator, and financial frictions in the interbank and bank capital markets. He investigates the importance of banking sector frictions on business cycle fluctuations and assesses the role of a regulatory capital requirement in propagating the effects of shocks in the real economy. Bank capital is introduced to satisfy the regulatory capital requirement, and serves as collateral for borrowing in the interbank market. Financial frictions are introduced by assuming asymmetric information between lenders and borrowers that creates moral hazard and adverse selection problems in the interbank and bank capital markets, respectively. Highly leveraged banks are vulnerable and therefore pay higher costs when raising funds. The author finds that financial frictions in the interbank and bank capital markets amplify and propagate the effects of shocks; however, the capital requirement attenuates the real impacts of aggregate shocks (including financial shocks), reduces macroeconomic volatilities, and stabilizes the economy.

Commissioner Elisse B. Walter of the SEC delivered an interesting speech regarding the SEC review of the US Municipal market. A lot of familiar cross currents – exchanges for bonds! the Credit Rating Agencies are no good! brokers should tell us what to buy! – and discussion of the move from the Municipal rating scale to the global scale:

Three participants endorsed the principle of a global rating scale. However, one pointed out that during this time — where some rating agencies are moving to a global scale — investors may find it increasingly difficult to compare municipal credits against each other. Further, he thinks that despite recalibration, investors will continue to have a hard time comparing munis to corporates because municipal risk remains overstated relative to corporate risk.

Several others were critical of the notion of a global rating scale, arguing that municipal bonds and corporate securities are just not comparable. One panelist stated that munis should not be rated on a scale that focuses on default risk and recovery, since governments rarely default. Some of the participants would prefer a new rating scale for governments that could be tailored to the unique characteristics of governmental entities. We heard suggestions for a simple pass/fail scale, a three-part scale or a scale of 1-100.

Another area of concern was the impact of ratings on the cost of issuance. One panelist pointed out that higher ratings lead to lower borrowing costs and lower ratings lead to higher borrowing costs. He and a co-panelist highlighted the consequence of lower ratings: increased costs to taxpayers for financing critical infrastructure projects.

That last panelist should take a tip from the Europeans: set up a new rating agency with a mandate to be chipper and upbeat at all times.

Themis Trading points out signs of a high-level regulatory battle, with the NYSE opining:

NYSE Euronext Chief Executive Officer Duncan Niederauer said regulators will probably respond to the May 6 stock-market crash by extending obligations to buy and sell shares to more traders.

Niederauer, speaking in Washington today, said too many traders reap the benefits of making markets without responsibilities to keep providing liquidity when stocks are plunging. New rules may be in place as soon as January, he said.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro called on the agency in September to examine whether the loss of “old specialist obligations” has hurt investors after measures such as trading stocks in penny increments cut the number of market makers. With the facilitation of trading now dominated by hundreds of automated firms with few rules for when they must buy and sell, the SEC is considering ways to keep the biggest from abandoning the market at the first sign of trouble.

The astonishing part is in the third paragraph. Imagine! The regulators made it less profitable to be a specialist … and fewer firms wanted to be specialists. Well, who woulda thunk it?

NASDAQ takes the other view:

The head of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc (NasdaqGS:NDAQ – News) said on Friday he does not expect any new obligations or privileges for U.S. “market-makers” until 2012 at the earliest, calling any regulatory change “a slippery slope.”
…
“I don’t think something will happen in 2011,” Nasdaq OMX Chief Executive Officer Robert Greifeld said on a conference call, adding it would be “a difficult road to try to properly define what responsibility and privileges to give participants.”

Mervyn King made an excellent point in a speech at the Second Bagehot Lecture:

Second, the Basel approach calculates the amount of capital required by using a measure of “risk-weighted” assets. Those risk weights are computed from past experience. Yet the circumstances in which capital needs to be available to absorb potential losses are precisely those when earlier judgements about the risk of different assets and their correlation are shown to be wrong. One might well say that a financial crisis occurs when the Basel risk weights turn out to be poor estimates of underlying risk. And that is not because investors, banks or regulators are incompetent. It is because the relevant risks are often impossible to assess in terms of fixed probabilities. Events can take place that we could not have envisaged, let alone to which we could attach probabilities. If only banks were playing in a casino then we probably could calculate appropriate risk weights. Unfortunately, the world is more complicated. So the regulatory framework needs to contain elements that are robust with respect to changes in the appropriate risk weights, and that is why the Bank of England advocated a simple leverage ratio as a key backstop to capital requirements.

He also mentioned the Too Big To Fail problem:

But in most other countries, identifying in advance a group of financial institutions whose failure would be intolerable, and so are “too important to fail”, is a hazardous undertaking. In itself it would simply increase the subsidy by making it explicit. And it is hard to see why institutions whose failure cannot be contemplated should be in the private sector in the first place. But if international regulators failed to agree on higher capital requirements in general, adding to the loss-absorbing capacity of large institutions could be a second-best outcome.

… which has been a hot issue lately:

“Are we a systemically important bank in the world? I think (we’re) not. Nothing in my strategy is trying to make us that,” Toronto-Dominion Bank CEO Ed Clark said last week, although he also acknowledged that regulators may not agree with him.

“It’s not obvious that there will be no impact on us, and I don’t know that and I can’t get any assurance on that,” he said at a presentation in Toronto. TD is Canada’s No. 2 bank.

Rick Waugh, CEO of third-ranked Bank of Nova Scotia , has also said his bank is not systemically important.

Gord Nixon, head of Royal Bank of Canada , which is considered the Canadian bank most likely to be deemed “too big to fail,” said at a presentation Wednesday that the whole debate was “ridiculous” and suggested labeling a bank “too big” might compel it to shed assets to shrink.

It’s so far unclear how many banks will fit the bill, with some speculating regulators could name 30 or more lenders.

Canada’s bank regulator, which has objected to the idea of singling out large banks, is also pushing the point that Canadian banks should be left off the list.

“I’d say that 80 per cent of global financial intermediation goes through 20 institutions … and no Canadian financial institutions fit that bill,” said Julie Dickson, Canada’s Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

It is precisely to avoid such irresolvable arguments that I propose that regulation eschew the TBTF label; what should happen is that there should be a progressive surcharge on Risk-Weighted-Assets, so that the first 100-billion is requires less capital than the next 100-billion and so on.

The SEC has $450-million available for paid informers! Denounce your neighbor today!

Alackaday! TMX DataLinx has advised:

The daily Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange Trades & Quotes files for Friday October 29, 2010 will be delayed due to systems testing and are expected to be available by 5:00 AM, Sunday October 31, 2010. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

They like to do this on PrefLetter weekends and monthends. So we’re all gonna hafta wait. I will update with the day’s action when I can.

Update, 2010-10-31: The Canadian preferred share market closed the month with a small gain, PerpetualDiscounts up 3bp and FixedResets winning 2bp. Volume continued at elevated levels.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.41%, equivalent to 7.57% at the standard equivalency factor of 1.4x. Long Corporates now yield about … oh, call it a hair over 5.2%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now about 235bp, a slight (and perhaps meaningless) increase from the 230bp reported on October 27, but a sharp decline from the 260bp reported on September 30. The tightening was driven on both sides, as PerpetualDiscount yields fell while long corporate yields rose modestly; the performance of the BMO Long Corporate ETF shows how returns on the asset class plateaued in October.

Click for Big

Econbrowser‘s James Hamilton discusses Negative real interest rates:

In terms of the Fed’s policy objectives at the moment, one of the problems with deflation is that it guarantees a positive real return just from stuffing cash under your mattress. A primary purpose of the Fed’s contemplated QE2 is to prevent this and spur consumers and firms to invest funds productively rather than hoard cash. Insofar as the recent moves in TIPS and other yields represent the market already pricing in the Fed’s next steps, one might conclude from the latest TIPS readings that this aspect of the Fed’s strategy is already working.

He attaches a good graph:

Click for Big

Although this appears to be the first time that newly issued TIPS have locked in a negative real return, that’s because TIPS have only been offered to U.S. investors since 1997. You can get a longer time series by comparing the yield on a 6-month T-bill at any date with what the CPI inflation rate actually turned out to be over the subsequent 6 months for which investors held that bill, a magnitude sometimes described as the “ex-post real interest rate.” That series is plotted below. We’ve actually been in a period for several years in which short-term loans to the government were a losing proposition in real terms, and the longer-term real yields such as the 5-year TIPS are only now coming down to join them. The recent era of negative real yields was briefly (if spectacularly) interrupted in the fall of 2008, when a sharp deflation in the CPI made short-term loans to the government an excellent deal for the lender in ex-post real terms.

The Canadian preferred share market continued its recent (boring) pattern with a good day on elevated, if somewhat lower than recent norms, volume. PerpetualDiscounts gained 10bp and FixedResets squeaked out a win of 2bp. It should be noted that, given about 250 trading days in a year, a daily win of just over 1bp is expected.

Forbes has an unusual perspective on the flash-crash:

In a talk at Columbia University’s sociology department, renowned social scientist Donald MacKenzie gave some words of warning and advice about the financial markets. MacKenzie, a professor of science and technological studies at the University of Edinburgh, compared the flash crash with Black Monday crisis of October 19, 1987.
…
“Computer systems don’t have a sense of morality,” exclaims MacKenzie, noting the take-one-for-the-team role played by floor specialists in keeping an orderly market–a role that’s been marginalized with trading so widely dispersed. A specialist’s duty was to keep price continuity and to intervene when they found imbalances, “and they did so at a certain risk to themselves,” remembered MacKenzie, “In ’87, on aggregate these specialists lost about two-thirds of their capital” to save the markets, he says. The intervention of specialists becomes harder today because high-frequency trading algorithms are extremely explicit and are largely devoid of such considerations of civic duty.

I haven’t met a trader yet with a sense of civic duty, quite frankly, but what I found most interesting was the claim that specialists took large losses in the Crash of ’87. I don’t have any such recollection, and I would very much like to see MacKenzie’s source for this statement.

There is this, from the Brady Report:

According to a rough survey conducted by the NYSE, specialists’ buying power fell by more than 60 percent from $2,308 million at the close of business on October 16 to $852 million at the close of business on October 19. Whatever the cause for the reduced extent of specialist intervention later on October 19, the road picture that emerges from the analysis of half hourly activity is one of significant intervention to support the market early in the day, net sales during the midday decline and much less extensive (and less effective) support of the market in the sharp decline in the last hour of trading.

However, loss of buying power is not equivalent to loss of capital – it simply means that a good chunk of their capital was committed. However, one point in favour of the specialist system is that the figures mean they were willing to hold their position overnight (although, as the report shows, they squared their books the next day).

So here’s yet another idea for a MBA thesis, assuming those guys have theses: is there any way of telling how much hot money is out there? I mean, really really hot money, for which “overnight” is a lengthy hold. Has this amount increased or decreased (relative to market value, or even relative to market fluctuations) since the Crash of ’87. We can be sure that the amount of formal market-maker capital has decreased, but how about hedge funds and HFT?

My guess is that the total capital has increased, but the amount of capital prepared to hold a position overnight has decreased. Prove me wrong!

Meanwhile, emerging markets are choosing survival over altruism:

Finance chiefs from South Korea to South Africa signaled they may act to slow gains in their currencies, just four days after the Group of 20 vowed to soothe trade tensions in the $4 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market.

Asian currencies fell to a one-week low after Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong Soo said today that measures to mitigate capital flows could be “useful.” Hours later, the rand dropped as South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said his government will use part of higher-than-expected tax revenue to build foreign reserves as it attempts to weaken the currency.

The shifts suggest G-20 members will keep trying to defend their economies from the slide of the dollar and capital inflows even after the group promised Oct. 23 to refrain from “competitive devaluation” and to increasingly embrace market- determined currencies.

Gee … I suppose those guys take their responsibilities to their own citizens more seriously than their responsibilities to me! How odd! How thoroughly unmutual!

BIS has released a paper titled Calibrating regulatory minimum capital requirements and capital buffers: a topdown approach.

BIS has also released a working paper by Stefan Avdjiev and Nathan S Balke titled Stochastic Volatility, Long Run Risks, and Aggregate Stock Market Fluctuations:

What are the main drivers of ‡uctuations in the aggregate US stock market? In this paper, we attempt to resolve the long-lasting debate surrounding this question by designing and solving a consumption-based asset pricing model which incorporates stochastic volatility, long-run risks in consumption and dividends, and Epstein-Zin preferences. Utilizing Bayesian MCMC techniques, we estimate the model by …tting it to US data on the level of the aggregate US stock market, the short-term real risk-free interest rate, real consumption growth, and real dividend growth. Our results indicate that, over short and medium horizons, ‡uctuations in the level of the aggregate US stock market are mainly driven by changes in expected excess returns. Conversely, low frequency movements in the aggregate stock market are primarily driven by changes in the expected long-run growth rate of real dividends.

The SEC is planning to ban one-third of the market and encourage paid informers:

SEC commissioners will vote Nov. 3 on a rule that would require brokerages to implement risk controls to monitor client trades, the agency said today in a statement on its website. SEC officials first proposed the regulation in January, saying they were concerned that a computer malfunction or human error might trigger an order that could erode a firm’s capital.
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The proposed rule would “effectively prohibit broker dealers from providing” so-called naked-sponsored access, in which a customer bypasses pre-trade risk controls, according to the agency’s statement. Naked access accounts for about 38 percent of U.S. equities trading, according to a December study by Aite Group LLC.

Commissioners will also vote next week on a proposal to expand the SEC’s ability to reward whistleblowers who provide tips on fraud.

Ah, the good old paid informers! They made the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union and East Germany what they are today!

Julie Dickson gave a remarkably unimportant speech today, titled Changing Times: The Regulatory Future and Canada’s Banking Sector:

In sum, there is no silver bullet to achieving a safe and sound financial sector. Rather, it is multi-dimensional – all parties that touch the sector have a role – bank management and boards, regulators and supervisors, governments, central banks, markets (investors, analyst and rating agencies), and auditors. Emphasis cannot be placed on one area to the exclusion of others.

Human nature trumps all of these. In an effort to save us all from ourselves, policies aimed at our own weaknesses and biases may be the most important of all.

The Toronto Star advises that the federal government writes Credit Default Swaps with no documentation at all:

The federal government does not know how often the loan program is a victim of fraud. About $1 billion a year is lent in small business loans. The number of defaulted loans is steadily increasing. Last year, $106 million of taxpayers money was paid back to banks for defaulted loans. That’s up from $75 million a year in defaulted loans three years before.
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Under the Canada Small Business Financing Program, Industry Canada gives banks the job of approving applications

It only sees the paperwork if the loan goes into default.

One of the problems the Star uncovered is there is little incentive for the banks to conduct detailed background checks.

That’s because banks get a guarantee that the federal government will refund up to 85 per cent of the money to the banks if the loan goes into default. The banks typically also take a personal guarantee from the borrower for the remaining 15 per cent.

Just one of life’s little mysteries! I can’t cash a cheque for $1.98 without a rectal probe, but that does not apply to everyone!

Another day of good performance on the Canadian preferred share market today, on continued heavy volume. This is getting dull. PerpetualDiscounts gained 11bp while FixedResets eked out a 1bp win.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.41%, equivalent to 7.57% interest at the standard 1.4x equivalency factor. Long Corporates jerked up to about 5.3% (maybe a little under) so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now about 230bp, a significant decline from the 240bp reported on October 20.

UBS is is projecting another massive loss for MFC:

Ongoing low interest rates are making things increasingly difficult for life insurance companies which rely heavily on fixed income investments such as government bonds to cover future policy holder liabilities.

In a note to clients this morning UBS analyst Peter Rozenberg predicted Manulife Financial Corp. will be hardest hit, putting it on track for a loss in the third quarter of $1.48-billion.

CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton has demonstrated his complete ignorance of the market:

Bart Chilton, a commissioner with the futures regulator, said “mini-flash crashes occur all too often” following a surge in high-frequency trading.
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“They don’t cause as much of a disruption as that of May 6, but more than once this year, runaway algos have disrupted markets. By that I mean, cost people money,” Chilton said in prepared remarks for an energy conference in Las Vegas.

“We should explore ways to hold those who set off runaway robotic trades accountable,” he said.

At least one algorithm is know to have disrupted the oil markets this year. Infinium Capital Management said in August it was the company at the center of a six-month probe by CME Group Inc into why a new trading
program malfunctioned, racking up a million-dollar loss in about a second on February 3.

Some might think that Infinium Capital Management was fined a million bucks by the markets – which went directly into the pockets of the not-so-dumb traders – and that that’s accountability enough. But then the regulators wouldn’t have anything to do.

OSFI’s in a little difficulty:

Auditor General Sheila Fraser said in a report that the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) adequately supervised the banks at present.

“However, the growing volume and complexity of its work is increasing the demands on its human resources,” she wrote, noting an ever larger number of complex financial products.

“This challenge, combined with pressures on training and compensation, could affect the office’s ability to attract and retain qualified staff to maintain its capacity and competency to carry out its supervisory mandate.”
…
Ms. Fraser said that, as of March 10 this year, 10% of positions on large bank supervisory teams and 12% of jobs on the specialist groups that support the teams were vacant. Half the positions have been open for a year.

She cited OSFI as saying there “was little flexibility to address unexpected events” and said the time taken to dealing with documents resulted in less time available for detecting and analyzing risks.

A good day overall in the Canadian preferred share market on continued strong volume, with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 13bp, while FixedResets lost 2bp.

A lot of corporate debt is being called for redemption:

Not since 2004 have borrowers had as much incentive to tender for their bonds, prompting companies from mining firm Rio Tinto Plc in London to New York-based television network CBS Corp. to redeem debt.

Companies tendered for $30.5 billion of bonds last month, the most since April, and are on pace to buy an additional $24.3 billion this month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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A measure of company bond yields that takes into account the risk that the debt will be redeemed — the so-called yield- to-worst — has dropped to an average 3.44 percent from 4.49 percent a year ago, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. During that time, the average bond coupon has declined to 5.25 percent from 5.46 percent. The difference between yields and coupons reached as much as 191 basis points on Oct. 11.

“There’s quite an incentive to retire outstanding debt and replace it with lower-coupon newly issued bonds to reduce the cost of debt capital,” said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Capital Markets Group in New York. “The effect of refinancing has been overwhelmingly positive for corporate credit.”

A bit more discussion of the flash crash:

More importantly, in the case of the fateful trade it was not actually Waddell’s own algorithm that executed the trade, as implied by the SEC-CFTC report, but that of its broker, Barclay’s Capital. Further complicating matters, researchers and people close to the trade are disagreeing with the report’s characterization of the algorithm that executed the trade, pointing out that it has been many times for much larger trades with no similar fallout.

“Based on our data, this was actually a very good algorithm,” says Nanex founder Eric Hunsader, who has analyzed the trade data. “It’s portrayed [in the report] as a very simple algorithm, but you can clearly see that it did take into account things like price—if it hadn’t, you could have really seen a market collapse…What really caused the collapse was firms re-selling these contracts incredibly quickly and just drying up all the liquidity.”

There are a number of things wrong with this analysis. First, the fact that the algorithm has been used before is not really a defense. If I’ve managed to cross the street with my eyes closed three times in succession, should this become an acceptable practice? Additionally, the fact that Barclays was the executing broker and algorithm supplier muddies the waters, but is not strictly relevant. Waddell Reed gave the instructions to use it and must have been – or should have been – comfortable with the embedded logic. Finally, it does not make much sense to exonerate Waddell Reed on the basis that their initial counterparties sold off the contracts “incredibly quickly”, although again that complicates matters. How was the stream of orders from WR to the ultimate (or, at least, end of day) buyers affected by passing through this layer? Did the presence of the “HFT Layer” accentuate or attenuate the price effect, or did it have no meaningful impact at all? Some might say it accentuated the effect due to the volume increase due to the “hot potato” trading, and that’s the end of the story … but is it? Nanex clearly considers the effect to be an accellerator:

The algorithm was very well behaved; it was careful not to impact the market by selling at the bid, for example. And when prices moved down sharply, it would stop completely.

The buyer of those contracts, however, was not so careful when it came to selling what they had accumulated. Rather than making sure the sale would not impact the market, they did quite the opposite: they slammed the market with 2,000 or more contracts as fast as they could. The sale was so furious, it would often clear out the entire 10 levels of depth before the offer price could adjust downward. As time passed, the aggressiveness only increased, with these violent selling events occurring more often, until finally the e-Mini circuit breaker kicked in and paused trading for 5 seconds, ending the market slide.

Assuming that we may accept Nanex’ analysis, it may be useful to consider the HFT effect to be – at least in this instance – as of an electrical capacitator, storing up contracts until the limit was reached, then discharging violently.

There was a very interesting TIPS auction today:

The Treasury sold $10 billion of five-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities at a negative yield for the first time at a U.S. debt auction as investors bet the Federal Reserve will be successful in sparking inflation.

The securities drew a yield of negative 0.55 percent, the same as the average forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 7 of the Fed’s 18 primary dealers. The sale was a reopening of an $11 billion offering in April. Conventional Treasury notes erased gains amid speculation on the amount of debt the Fed may buy to spur the economy in a tactic called quantitative easing.

The US mortgage market gets more interesting by the day:

Home lenders are making it tougher to get loans as investors step up demands for refunds on defective mortgages, damaging the housing market, executives said today at an industry conference.

Already beset by billions of dollars in forced buybacks, originators have imposed standards on new loans that are stricter than those set by mortgage buyers and insurers, according to Todd Chamberlain, an executive vice president who oversees mortgage lending at Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions Financial Corp.
…
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and bond insurers such as MBIA Inc. are pressing lenders including Bank of America Corp. to honor promises to buy back mortgages if they’re later found to be based on inaccurate data. Known as representations and warranties, the promises cover defects such as inflated appraisals or inaccurate data about a borrower’s job or income. Bank of America said last week it will resist paying claims.
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The industry needs to be “more united” in dealing with the demands, said William C. Emerson, Chief Executive Officer of Detroit-based Quicken Loans Inc., ranked as the 10th-largest lender in the first half of this year by newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance. Bankers have attributed mortgage defaults to the poor economy rather than defects in the loans.

“We all know we signed up for reps and warranties, but I don’t know if we thought we signed up to be an insurance company,” he said, speaking on the panel with Chamberlain and McCord.

Sorry Charlie! Finance is NOT A COOPERATIVE KIDDIE GAME. There is nothing unethical about jingle mail; there is nothing wrong with ultimate buyers exercising their put option. Next time, try reading the fine print on your own contract, rather than crying that the rules of the game are unfair halfway through.

Rob Ford was elected Toronto Mayor, which I attribute largely to PrefBlog’s endorsement (emphasis added):

Get set for a shakeup at City Hall that includes a tilt to the political right after seven years of Miller’s left-leaning reign, presuming the new mayor is able to heal campaign wounds and convince his council, rich with fresh faces, to approve key elements of his election blueprint.

Even better a good swath of incumbents got cut down, including my guy Saundercook, aka “Mr. Invisible”.

It was a good solid day on the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 9bp and FixedResets gaining 3bp, with continued heavy volume.

The exodus of prop traders to hedge funds continues:

KKR & Co., the buyout firm founded by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, is close to hiring nine members of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s U.S. principal-strategies group for a new hedge fund.

Bob Howard, who heads the Goldman Sachs group in the U.S., will join as managing director and report to William Sonneborn, who heads KKR’s asset-management division, Kristi Huller, a spokeswoman for the New York-based firm, said today in a telephone interview. The hedge fund, which will be able to bet on rising and falling stock prices, is scheduled to start raising money next year.

I discussed the Public/Private Investment Plan (PPIP) about a year ago … a year later, it certainly looks as if liquidity, not value, was the toxin in toxic assets:

A U.S. government program aimed at reviving the mortgage-backed securities market returned more than triple what stocks or bonds gained in the past year.

The eight funds created under the Public-Private Investment Program, or PPIP, reported net internal rates of return averaging 36 percent through Sept. 30, the Treasury Department said in a report this week.
…
The Treasury is an equal equity partner in each of the funds and provided debt financing for the $29.4 billion program. The government has gotten $215 million of interest, dividend and other payments, and the funds have more than $1.5 billion in unrealized gains. Under the wider Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, the government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurers, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The OSC has released its 2010 Compliance and Registrant Regulation Branch Annual Report and its 2010 Investment Funds Branch Annual Report.

The Kansas City Fed has released the October 2010 edition of Economic Trends.

There are rumours of a Canadian bank making a US acquisition:

Wilmington Trust Corp., the Delaware bank founded by the du Pont family, has been contacting bigger lenders in recent weeks to gauge their interest in buying the company, said people with knowledge of the matter.

The bank has told potential buyers it is aiming to reach a deal by the end of the month, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private. Canada’s Bank of Montreal is among banks that have held talks with Wilmington Trust, and Toronto-Dominion Bank has also been approached, these people said. Lazard Ltd. is advising Wilmington Trust, the people said.
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The company has plunged 75 percent in the past three years, giving the bank a market value of $834.9 million. The 107-year- old lender has reported five straight quarterly losses, driven in part by soured commercial real estate loans and investments in pools of trust-preferred securities.

Meanwhile, RY is taking a loss to get out of US life & health insurance:

Royal Bank of Canada agreed to sell its U.S. life insurance business to an entity with ties to Apollo Global Management LLC for $628.1 million, taking a loss on a purchase the Canadian lender made a decade ago.

Royal Bank, Canada’s biggest bank, is exiting the U.S. life and health business by selling Liberty Life Insurance to Athene Holding Ltd., the Toronto-based bank said today in a statement. Royal Bank expects to complete the sale by early 2011 and record a loss of about $115 million under Canadian accounting rules, or $405 million under U.S. rules.

Ontario’s Eggfare bums are running a new advertising campaign, which appears aimed at the naifs who place “Farmers Feed Cities” posters in their windows. No purpose in sight at the moment, but when over a third of your gross revenue is a welfare cheque, you have to keep the feel-good drums working.

Click for big

It feeds into retail prices, too:

For eggs, the difference between prices in Montreal and prices in the United States for Grade A large eggs is 55%.

Toronto will be electing a new mayor on Monday as well as the usual crowd of non-entities. We are face with the dreary choice between an incompetent and a buffoon. Smitherman is incompetent: as health minister for over four years, he wears a great deal of the eHealth fiasco; perhaps not as much as Ford tries to make out, but he was responsible for the Health Ministry’s culture. Then, as energy minister, he decided that paying ten times market rate for solar power was a fine idea. What’s more, he wants to throw some city money down that rathole. He is now talking about tax freezes and cuts – but only since Ford made it fashionable to do so. His words would have more credibility if he had said them while he was the clear front-runner … but now? It’s mere fashion. Vote for Smitherman and you’re voting for whatever tomorrow’s fashion is, irrespective of what it might be.

Ford is simply a buffoon. Railing away at councillors’ expense budgets … it’s a trivial non-issue, considering Toronto’s spending mess. I don’t want them to steal the money, obviously, but the budgets are, if anything, skimpy considering the ideal work-load of a councillor and in any case cost me about a buck. I’m also worried about his oft-expressed unconditional support for the police – nobody ever deserves unconditional support, least of all the police after the G-20 abomination. Vote for Ford and you’re voting for a term of chaos, with contracting out garbage likely to be an extremely divisive flashpoint.

But maybe we need chaos. My girlfriend is a nurse who was seriously considering applying for a job driving a school bus – not out of any work satisfaction issues, but because the pay is so much better. Is there anybody other than city council members and school bus drivers who thinks this makes any sense at all? The city’s infrastructure is crumbling and gridlock … well, I won’t say it costs a whole pile of money because those calculations assume that time spent getting to work is paid and otherwise productive. I will say that gridlock is significantly detrimental to the quality of life in Toronto. Meanwhile the TTC can’t even figure out how to run a string of vending machines.

Incompetence costs a lot more money than any ideology. Vote Ford.

It was a strong day in the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 16bp and FixedResets up 20bp. Volume was off its peak, but still quite high.

OSFI’s Jean-Claude Ménard, Chief Actuary, has given a presentation titled Actuarial Valuation of the Canada Pension Plan – Modeling Uncertainty and Properly Disclosing the Results. They’re estimating a real rate of return of 4.2%, but I would have liked to have seen more discussion of the valuation of private equity.

The BoC has released a working paper by Ali Dib titled Banks, Credit Market Frictions, and Business Cycles:

The author proposes a micro-founded framework that incorporates an active banking sector into a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with a financial accelerator. He evaluates the role of the banking sector in the transmission and propagation of the real effects of aggregate shocks, and assesses the importance of financial shocks in U.S. business cycle fluctuations. The banking sector consists of two types of profit maximizing banks that offer different banking services and transact in an interbank market. Loans are produced using interbank borrowing and bank capital subject to a regulatory capital requirement. Banks have monopoly power, set nominal deposit and prime lending rates, choose their leverage ratio and their portfolio composition, and can endogenously default on a fraction of their interbank borrowing. Because it is costly to raise capital to satisfy the regulatory capital requirement, the banking sector attenuates the real effects of financial shocks, reduces macroeconomic volatilities, and helps stabilize the economy. The model also includes two unconventional monetary policies (quantitative and qualitative easing) that reduce the negative impacts of financial crises

Instinet has joined the crowd of SEC Flash Crash conclusion skeptics:

In our opinion, given the facts stated by both the SEC report and the CME, the sell order could not be the singular cause of the crash. However, the interconnection among markets, the order and the method with which it was executed likely served as a catalyst for the reduction in liquidity and the “erroneous” stock trades experienced seconds later.
…
Had the market been less fragile or the futures algorithm less aggressive, the HFT method of transferring risk into stocks by offsetting futures purchases with SPY sales would have helped absorb this E-mini futures sale and moved liquidity between asset classes.
…
Without circuit breakers in individual stocks and because the lateness of the day prevented market- wide circuit breakers from triggering, there was nothing to stem the tide of falling equity prices in these order-driven markets.
…
While we don’t think that the initial E-mini order should be attributed as the singular force creating the sell-off, it is worth noting that the first “lesson learned” cited by the report could be read as a warning against using algorithms that send orders based only on volume without price controls. An algorithm that adjusts its aggressiveness based on price level and/or has a price limit provides an important layer of intelligence and protection. More advanced logic to address message traffic and short term price movements may have allowed detection of the “hot potato” volume situation referenced in the report, where HFTs traded more volume than usual with each other and could have signalled abnormal market conditions. If the algorithms contributing to the problem on May 6th had been more sensitive to market conditions and aware of the type of volume being traded, they would likely not have been so aggressive.

There was a good piece in the Globe by former HSBC economist Dr. David E. Bond titled How dairy farmers milk Canada’s taxpayers:

Canada’s government sanctioned National Dairy Policy offers just such a deal, and results in a wealth transfer of more than $2.4-billion annually from consumers and food processors to diary farmers. That’s more than $175,000 for each dairy farmer.

Because of this policy, consumers pay 60 cents more in Canada than in the United States for a one-litre carton of whole milk and 94 cents more for a pound of butter.

A farmer once started railing against welfare recipients in my hearing … I told him that each farmer costs me as much as half a dozen welfare bums, but my number might have been a little low. I eagerly await the next baffled speech from Spend-Every-Penny (or his lap-dog), wondering why Canadian productivity isn’t any higher.

It was a day of mixed results on continued heavy volume in the Canadian preferred share market today, with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 12bp, while FixedResets lost 12bp. Volatility continued to be relatively low, with only two entries on the performance highlights table.

The offshore yuan market seems to be a success:

Banks are paying about 30 percent less interest on yuan-denominated debt sold in Hong Kong than they pay in Shanghai as faster currency appreciation fuels overseas demand for the securities.

The average yield in the city is 1.77 percent, according to data from the Treasury Markets Association, which tracks 19 outstanding issues that have maturities of no more than four years. That includes bonds sold by state-controlled lenders including China Development Bank and Bank of China Ltd. The average rate in China for one- to three-year bonds issued by government-linked companies is 2.60 percent, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s China Quasi-Government Index.

China is encouraging domestic lenders to sell debt in Hong Kong to broaden the appeal of holding its currency overseas as it seeks to reduce reliance on the dollar for international trade and finance. Yuan deposits in the city more than doubled to a record 130 billion yuan ($20 billion) in the first eight months of 2010.
…
In the same way that yuan bonds command a premium in Hong Kong, so too does the currency. The spot rate in the city’s offshore market was 6.4745 yesterday, 2.6 percent more than the onshore rate. That’s the biggest gap since Bloomberg began tracking the rate two months ago. Overseas entities can only buy yuan on the mainland if they have investment proposals or trade transactions approved by Chinese regulators.

There’s a draconian budget in the UK:

“Today’s the day when Britain steps back from the brink,” Osborne told lawmakers in the House of Commons in London today as he outlined plans to virtually eliminate a 156 billion-pound ($245 billion) budget deficit with average cuts in government departments of 19 percent.
…
Total spending would fall by 0.7 percent a year after inflation, according to a June outline. Under Margaret Thatcher, 85, who was known as the Iron Lady during her 11 years as premier that ended in 1990, spending rose by an annual 1.2 percent.

Legislation to impose a permanent levy on banks will be published tomorrow, Osborne said.

“We neither want to let banks off making their fair contribution, nor do we want to drive them abroad,” he said. “Our aim will be to extract the maximum sustainable tax revenues from financial services. We will assess what those maximum revenues could be — not just in one year, but over a period of years.”

Now that simplified prospectuses have been bloated to the point where they are no longer read, and the summary of terms at the beginning of the simplified prospectus has become so detailed that it’s no longer read either, the Canadian Securities Administrators have taken the next logical step and released the 145 page Notice of Amendments to National Instrument 81-101 Mutual Fund Prospectus Disclosure, Form 81-101F1 and 81-101F2 and Companion Policy 81-101CP Mutual Fund Prospectus Disclosure and Related Amendments:

We have not carried forward the requirement that the Fund Facts be written at a grade level of 6.0 or less on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale because we were told there is no French language equivalent to the scale. However, the Fund Facts is still required to be prepared using plain language and in a format that assists in readability and comprehension.

We have added guidance in the Companion Policy that the CSA will generally consider a grade level of 6.0 or less on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale to demonstrate that the Fund Facts is written in plain language.

Should I ever start a public bond index-plus fund, I may require some help explaining convexity-matching at the grade 6 level in under four pages. Note, however, that the document specifies only the number of double-sided pages; it does not specify font size, so I may use a 1-point font. One way or another, if you consider yourself gifted at technical writing and are looking for work, watch this space! I’m considering making book on how long it will be until it becomes a requirement to prepare and distribute the “Simplified Fund Facts” … do you think this works better if I allow betting by individual year in a parimutual system, or an over/under setup? Maybe both?

Those of an academic bent might be interested to learn that this post so far, when analyzed by MS-Office 2003 from the beginning to “Maybe both?” in the paragraph above, with HTML formatting removed, has a Flesch Reading Ease of 36.3 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 15.0. This will be gratifying news for any hard-core indexers out there … when you reach the point in your sermon at which you claim that “People who buy mutual funds are retarded!”, you may now also note that the Canadian Securities Administrators agree with you.

The Canadian preferred share market bounced back today on continued heavy volume with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 25bp and FixedResets winning 9bp. The market was very well-behaved, with only one entry in the performance highlights.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.45%, equivalent to 7.63% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.4x. Long corporates now yield 5.2% – maybe a hair over – so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (also called the Seniority Spread) is now at about 240bp, about the same as reported October 13.