China hints at bottom while S&P 500 reverses

10-Year Treasury yields are testing resistance at 2.05/2.10%. Breakout above 2.10% would signal a primary up-trend and possible test of 4.00% in the next few years. Only breakout above 4.00%, however, would end the 31-year secular bear-trend.

10-Year Treasury Yields

The S&P 500 completed a key reversal (or outside reversal), indicating selling pressure. Expect a test of the lower trend channel at 1600.

S&P 500 Index
There is no great movement in the VIX and this so far looks like a normal retracement. A June quarter-end below 1500 looks unlikely, but would present a long-term bear signal.

S&P 500 Index

The UK’s FTSE 100 Index is headed for a test of its year 2000 high at 7000. Expect a correction or consolidation below this level. Breakout remains doubtful but would signal a long-term primary advance.

Penetration of its descending trendline indicates correction on the Shanghai Composite Index has ended and we can expect another test of resistance at 2500. Breakout above 2500 would complete an inverted head and shoulders reversal (as indicated by orange + green arrows), signaling a primary up-trend. That would be good news for Australia’s beleaguered resources stocks.

Shanghai Composite Index

As traders we follow the trend, but in times like this it is important to remain vigilant.

May 22, 2013

Market Insight: Central bankers turn deaf ear on balance sheets – FT.com

John Plender at FT observes:

The sheer size of the move in US Treasuries is striking. From the beginning of May to the end of last week, yields on the 30-year Treasury bond rose by nearly 40 basis points while the 10-year yield rose around 30bp. That is a measure of the market’s sensitivity to assumptions about an exit from the era of central bank balance sheet expansion. It is also an indication of how far we are from a return to normality.

May 21, 2013

Carney Warns Europe Faces Decade of Stagnation Without Key Reforms | WSJ

Nirmala Menon at WSJ quotes Mark Carney, incoming governor of the Bank of England:

Mr. Carney, currently Canada’s top central banker, said Europe can draw lessons from Japan on the dangers of taking half measures……..“Deep challenges persist in its financial system. Without sustained and significant reforms, a decade of stagnation threatens,” Mr. Carney said in his final public address as governor of the Bank of Canada.

May 13, 2013

Forex: Aussie breaks support while Yen soars

The Aussie Dollar broke primary support at $1.015 and is testing parity against the greenback. Parity is not expected to hold and we are likely to see a test of the next major support level at $0.95/$0.96. Narrow fluctuation of 63-day Twiggs Momentum around zero continues to suggest a ranging market.

Aussie Dollar/USD

The euro is retreating, headed for another test of $1.2750. Respect would signal another attempt at $1.37, while failure would indicate a primary down-trend — testing long-term support at $1.20. The failed advance to $1.50 would be bearish; and breach of $1.20 would offer a target of $1.05*.

Euro/USD

* Target calculation: 1.20 – ( 1.35 – 1.20 ) = 1.05

Rapid expansion of the monetary base by the Bank of Japan is fueling inflation fears and weakening the yen. Lars Christensen points out that, with competitive devaluation from all quarters, exports are not likely to play a major part in a Japanese recovery. What is more likely is a consumption and investment boom as households invest in real assets as a hedge against inflation.

The greenback broke resistance at ¥100 against the Japanese Yen — a one-third appreciation from the lows of 2011/2012. Expect retracement to test the new support level, but breach of the long-term declining trendline indicates the 30-year secular bear trend is over. Long-term target for the advance is the 2007 high at ¥125*.

USD/JPY

* Target calculation: 100 – ( 100 – 75 ) = 125

May 12, 2013

The monetary policy revolution

James Alexander, head of Equity Research at UK-based M&G Equities, sums up the evolution of central bank thinking. He describes the traditional problem of inadequate response by central banks to market shocks like the collapse of Lehman Brothers:

Although wages hold steady when nominal income falls, unemployment tends to rise as companies scramble to cut costs. In the wake of the crash, rising joblessness created a vicious circle of declining consumption and investment that proved very difficult to reverse, particularly as central banks remained preoccupied with inflation.

Failure of both austerity and quantitative easing has left central bankers looking for new alternatives:

…..Economist Michael Woodford presented a paper [at Jackson Hole last August] suggesting that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) should give markets and businesses a bigger steer about where the economy was headed by adopting a nominal economic growth target. In September, the Fed announced its third round of QE, which it has indicated will continue until unemployment falls below 6.5% – the first time US monetary policy has been explicitly tied to an unemployment rate. US stocks have since soared, shrugging off continued inaction surrounding the country’s ongoing debt crisis.

While targeting unemployment is preferable to targeting inflation, it is still a subjective measure that can be influenced by rises or falls in labor participation rates and exclusion of casual workers seeking full-time employment. Market Monetarists such as Scott Sumner and Lars Christensen advocate targeting nominal GDP growth instead — a hard, objective number that can be forecast with greater accuracy. Mark Carney, due to take over as governor of the BOE in July, seems to be on a similar path:

Echoing Michael Woodford’s comments at Jackson Hole, he advocated dropping inflation targets if economies were struggling to grow. He has since proposed easing UK monetary policy, adopting a nominal growth target and boosting recovery by convincing households and businesses that rates will remain low until growth resumes.

While NGDP targeting has been criticized as a “recipe for runaway inflation”, experiences so far have not borne this out. In fact NGDP targeting would have the opposite effect when growth has resumed, curbing inflation and credit growth and preventing a repeat of recent housing and stock bubbles.

April 30, 2013

Eurozone risks Japan-style trap as deflation grinds closer | Telegraph

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports:

The region’s core inflation rate – which strips out food and energy – fell to 1pc in March. This is far below expectations and leaves monetary union with a diminishing safety buffer. “The eurozone is tracking the experience in Japan in mid-1990s. There is a very high risk of a slide into deflation,” said Lars Christensen, a monetary theorist at Danske Bank.

April 29, 2013

Deutsche Bank Plans Capital Boost | WSJ.com

A welcome development reported by LAURA STEVENS , DAVID ENRICH and ULRIKE DAUER at the Wall Street Journal:

FRANKFURT–Deutsche Bank AG [DBK.XE] said Monday it will raise €2.8 billion ($3.65 billion) in fresh capital in a dramatic about-face for the bank, which has repeatedly said it won’t turn to shareholders for help boosting its capital cushion.

The bank, Europe’s second-largest by assets, has long faced doubts from investors and analysts about whether it has enough capital to absorb potential future losses and to meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements……

Deutsche Bank has long been considered thinly capitalized but have always countered with the argument that the leverage is justified by the quality of the assets on their balance sheet. Low risk-weightings provided a false sense of security, with Greek and other PIIGS government bonds rated as zero-risk in the past, encouraging banks to leverage up on precisely the wrong kind of assets. It is time for risk weightings to be removed from bank capital ratios. The bipartisan bill sponsored by US senators Sherrod Brown and David Vitter is a step in the right direction.

April 29, 2013

Europe: Dax faces selling pressure while UK and Italy rally

Germany’s DAX found support at 7500 and is again testing long-term resistance at 8000 (shown on the quarterly chart below). 13-Week Twiggs Momentum and Twiggs Money Flow both display bearish divergences, warning of selling pressure. Reversal below 7500 remains likely and would signal a correction to test the rising trendline.
DAX Index

* Target calculation: 7500 – ( 8000 – 7500 ) = 7000

Italy’s MIB index found support at 15000. Follow-through above 17000 would indicate a primary advance and penetration of resistance at 18000 would confirm the primary up-trend signaled earlier by bullish divergence on 13-week Twiggs Momentum.
FTSE MIB Index

* Target calculation: 18 + ( 18 – 15 ) = 21

The FTSE 100 is testing resistance at 6500. Rising 13-week Twiggs Money Flow and Twiggs Momentum both suggest that breakout is likely — which would signal an advance to 7000.
FTSE 100 Index

* Target calculation: 6500 + ( 6500 – 6000 ) = 7000

April 28, 2013

Richard Koo: Why government has to act as “borrower of last resort” during a financial crisis [video]

Richard Koo is the first speaker on this video

Click [ ] to view full screen.

April 26, 2013

What Europe could learn from Scandinavia in the 1920s | Lars Christensen

Danish and Norwegian monetary policy failure in 1920s – lessons for today

Reproduced with kind permission from Lars Christensen at The Market Monetarist:

History is fully of examples of massive monetary policy failure and today’s policy makers can learn a lot from studying these events and no one is better to learn from than Swedish monetary guru Gustav Cassel. In the 1920s Cassel tried – unfortunately without luck – to advise Danish and Norwegian policy makers from making a massive monetary policy mistake.

After the First World War policy makers across Europe wanted to return to the gold standard and in many countries it became official policy to return to the pre-war gold parity despite massive inflation during the war. This was also the case in Denmark and Norway where policy makers decided to return the Norwegian and the Danish krone to the pre-war parity.

The decision to bring back the currencies to the pre-war gold-parity brought massive economic and social hardship to Denmark and Norway in the 1920s and probably also killed of the traditionally strong support for laissez faire capitalism in the two countries. Paradoxically one can say that government failure opened the door for a massive expansion of the role of government in both countries’ economies. No one understood the political dangers of monetary policy failure better than Gustav Cassel.

Here you see the impact of the Price Level (Index 1924=100) of the deflation policies in Denmark and Norway. Sweden did not go back to pre-war gold-parity.

While most of the world was enjoying relatively high growth in the second half of the 1920s the Danish and the Norwegian authorities brought hardship to their nations through a deliberate policy of deflation. As a result both nations saw a sharp rise in unemployment and a steep decline in economic activity. So when anybody tells you about how a country can go through “internal devaluation” please remind them of the Denmark and Norway in the 1920s. The polices were hardly successful, but despite the clear negative consequences policy makers and many economists in the Denmark and Norway insisted that it was the right policy to return to the pre-war gold-parity.

Here is what happened to unemployment (%).

Nobody listened to Cassel. As a result both the Danish and the Norwegian economies went into depression in the second half of the 1920s and unemployment skyrocketed. At the same time Finland and Sweden – which did not return to the pre-war gold-partiy – enjoyed strong post-war growth and low unemployment.

Gustav Cassel strongly warned against this policy as he today would have warned against the calls for “internal devaluation” in the euro zone. In 1924 Cassel at a speech in the Student Union in Copenhagen strongly advocated a devaluation of the Danish krone. The Danish central bank was not exactly pleased with Cassel’s message. However, the Danish central bank really had little to fear. Cassel’s message was overshadowed by the popular demand for what was called “Our old, honest krone”.

To force the policy of revaluation and return to the old gold-parity the Danish central bank tightened monetary policy dramatically and the bank’s discount rate was hiked to 7% (this is more or less today’s level for Spanish bond yields). From 1924 to 1924 to 1927 both the Norwegian and the Danish krone were basically doubled in value against gold by deliberate actions of the two Scandinavian nation’s central bank.

The gold-insanity was as widespread in Norway as in Denmark and also here Cassel was a lone voice of sanity. In a speech in Christiania (today’s Oslo) Cassel in November 1923 warned against the foolish idea of returning the Norwegian krone to the pre-war parity. The speech deeply upset Norwegian central bank governor Nicolai Rygg who was present at Cassel’s speech.

After Cassel’s speech Rygg rose and told the audience that the Norwegian krone had been brought back to parity a 100 years before and that it could and should be done again. He said: “We must and we will go back and we will not give up”. Next day the Norwegian Prime Minister Abraham Berge in an public interview gave his full support to Rygg’s statement. It was clear the Norwegian central bank and the Norwegian government were determined to return to the pre-war gold-parity.

This is the impact on the real GDP level of the gold-insanity in Denmark and Norway. Sweden did not suffer from gold-insanity and grew nicely in the 1920s.

The lack of reason among Danish and Norwegian central bankers in the 1920s is a reminder what happens once the “project” – whether the euro or the gold standard – becomes more important than economic reason and it shows that countries will suffer dire economic, social and political consequences when they are forced through “internal devaluation”. In both Denmark and Norway the deflation of the 1920s strengthened the Socialists parties and both the Norwegian and the Danish economies as a consequence moved away from the otherwise successful laissez faire model. That should be a reminder to any free market oriented commentators, policy makers and economists that a deliberate attempt of forcing countries through internal devaluation is likely to bring more socialism and less free markets. Gustav Cassel knew that – as do the Market Monetarists today.

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My account of these events is based on Richard Lester’s paper “Gold-Parity Depression in Denmark and Norway, 1925-1928″ (Journal of Political Economy, August 1937)