Wall Street Hedges

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Do you not know? Have you not heard? Wall Street is an everlasting marketing machine. — Book of GMM

Is The Street now day trading their market strategies? 

Check out the opposing views from America’s largest bank, the eighth largest in the world.  No wonder markets are volatile.

Johnny Whipsaw rules today’s markets. 

My guess is they are practicing the Islamic proverb, whether they know it or not, 

Trust in Allah but tie your camel.  

Hedge your bets, speak cryptically and in double-entendre, claim you were correct whichever way the market turns, and collect the year-end bonus just as the Oracle Of CNBC does. 

“We believe that equities still offer upside, and that the cycle is far from over,” the London-based strategists wrote in a Feb. 7 note. In addition to the VIX signal they look for more gains in earnings, a bottoming in Chinese activity and say investor sentiment has become too negative of late. – Bloomberg

Expectations about corporate earnings growth are quickly diminishing, JPMorgan Chase & Co. quant strategists said, warning that the gloom could spell more trouble for global stock markets after an underwhelming start to the year. – Bloomberg

Secure Your Bonus, Boys And Girls

Discount the cheerleaders, folks.

Moreover, it’s about time we hold them accountable for helping drive stocks into the stratosphere (see chart below), as the extreme valuations are now a significant constraint on the Fed’s ability and willingness to stamp out the inflationary fires. 

The Fed Put, Are You Shitting Me?

Good Gawd, they are now even trying to estimate the level of the Fed put.  No doubt, the Fed should intervene when markets crash (such as 1987, 2008, and 2020) to stave off systemic risk and a financial collapse but, come on, not to prevent markets from regressing to their fair values.

Do not these people realize the accumulation of all “Fed puts” over the years are a significant factor that has painted the economy into this god awful corner?.

 

The timing of this move, known colloquially as the “Fed put”, is of course unclear. But the BoA survey suggests it will occur when the S&P 500 falls below 3700 index points. – Financial Review

Moral Hazard

This type of moral hazard behavior is what blew up some of my trading accounts in 1998, betting Russia was “too nuclear to fail.” and would be bailed out by the IMF and U.S. government.  Bill Clinton and Larry Summers disagreed. 

At least, I was in good company,

Tepper’s Worst Trade

David Tepper said his worst trade was in 1998, as Russia eventually defaulted.

He believed that Russia should devalue its currency, but not default, and Russia wound up doing both. – Benzinga
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The Power Of The Fed (Must View)| Frontline

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This may be the most important and timely video you may very well ever watch.

 If you want to understand today’s markets and economy, it’s your must view, folks. 

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The Parable Of Two Quarterbacks

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Seriously doubt this QB is ever going to win the NFL’s Walter Payton Award, He just doesn’t have the character. Follow the thread, the woman fractured her spine.

 
Disgusting, what a _________!  You can fill in the blanks. 


The True Champion

But, this guy?  Ab-so-fricking-lutely!  Why isn’t this Saint playing for the Saints? 

We know who the real World Champion is.  

A classic example of the two conflicting kingdoms at war in our world today, folks.  

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What Is Your Car Mileage Per 55K Big Macs?

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We are reposting a fun piece we posted back in the day after auditing a clean energy class at UC Berkeley.

Carol K. reminded us after forwarding this cool annual dynamic of the Big Mac index based on purchasing power parity.  When I would travel to a foreign country as a young economist, my first order of business was to visit a local McDonalds to audit Big Mac prices converted at the local exchange rate to get a sense how expensive the currency was relative to the U.S dollar.

Upshot:  One Gallon Of Gas = Energy Equivalent of 54.7k Big Macs (x/ cheese)

Greatest Arb Ever: Cracking Gas into Big Macs

OK, time for a little fun.  You can try this and let us know if it works.

Almost everything today comes down to energy, right?

The rise in food prices is really nothing more than an energy problem.   After all, food consumption is about the digestion of calories — one metric of energy measurement – to fuel the human machine.

Scientists have learned to “crack” the energy of foodstuffs,  mainly corn and sugar, and convert these into transportation fuel.   It gives new meaning to “cracking corn.”

If we could do the reverse and crack highly efficient refined fuels into foodstuffs,  for example, we believe we have found the greatest arbitrage of all time.

The Energy Conversion Table below shows that one British Thermal Unit (BTU) is equivalent to 252 calories and one gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 125K BTUs.   Therefore, one gallon of gasoline is the energy equivalent of 31.5M calories.

The energy component of a Big Mac without cheese, for example, is 576 calories, so one gallon of gasoline is the energy equivalent of 54,688 Big Macs.  Still with us?

We’ve included the following table/matrix to show that if you drove 50 miles today in a car that gets 20 miles per gallon, you consumed the energy equivalent of 137K Big Macs.  Yuck!

The last table, The Greatest Arbitrage Ever, shows the dollar price of a Big Mac in various countries (no wonder the Brazilians are now aligning with U.S. against China ‘s FX policy)  and the Big Mac energy equivalent price of a gallon of gas.  That is, one gallon of gas is the energy equivalent to 54,688 Big Macs and with the price of a Big Mac in Brazil at $5.26, the Big Mac energy equivalent price of a gallon of gas in, say Sao Paulo, is $287,656.25.

What an arb, no?  Buying a gallon of wholesale gasoline in Rio for $2.45, “cracking” it into 54,688 Big Macs, and selling them at $5.26 for $287,656.25 sounds like a “splendid arbitrage” to us!

Fun exercise and we can’t wait for the e-mails from the economists on this one.  Before you waste your time,  remember, we’re not serious!

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The Components That Make Up A Gallon Of Gas

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Here’s a GMM chart blast from the past.  

Still very relevant, especially as the government is considering reducing the gas tax to reduce inflation.  Not a lot of blood in that turnip and the focus should be on short-term energy policy to bring the price of oil down.  

Also note refiners have relatively small and thin margins- think crack spread.  

In most cases, oil prices drive the price of gasoline. 

The Politics Of Gas Prices

Not certain of the following relationship, could be real, could be spurious. The politics of the past may not be the politics of the future.

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Why Is The Stock Market Rallying?

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It’s always a mug’s game attributing short-term market moves to any one factor but we drink from many different mugs, so here it goes. 

We sent this out to some of our subscribers over the weekend:

If no Ukraine invasion today and Bullard tones it down a bit in his CNBC 8:30 ET interview tomorrow, given how offside the fast money is 👇🏽, it should result in a nice short-term pop to buy time to get more defensive.

Mega volatility until the Fed begins to turn the screws. 

The Fed is still pumping liquidity into the markets albeit at a much slower clip until it ends next month. 

The real market test begins on March 16th, when the Fed announces and begins its tightening cyle.  Until then, as we wrote at the beginning of the year,

We have no idea where the market is headed tomorrow but shorts should beware.  There is just too much liquidity and wealth in the global economy.  Earnings for Q4 are going to come in very hot. Moreover, stocks seem the place to be with the new inflation regime and extremely low and negative real interest rates.   

It’s extremely difficult to submerge a beach ball and hold it underwater for any significant time.

To go lower on sustained basis, we suspect the Fed will have to drain a lot of liquidity and destroy mucho wealth before they are done.   

Asset Inflation And Price Inflation Are “Cousins”

Volcker recognized that when he was fighting inflation, he was actually fighting two kinds: asset inflation and price inflation. He called them “cousins,” and acknowledged that they had been created by the Fed. – Politico

GMM, January 6th

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Nonlinear Thinking: How AI Will Transform Healthcare

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AI has the power to transform health care. From more efficient diagnoses to safer treatments, it could remedy some of the ills suffered by patients. – Economist

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One Of The Best Investments Of 2022

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If crypto and NFTs are considered “investments,” I certainly have the liberty to call the following an “investment.”  One of the unintended consequences of our speculative culture: everything and all things morph into an “investment.”

My 30-something in-house nurses after surgery were all long Bitcoin and had no idea what it was.

Shorting Matt Damon and Tom Brady’s cred as they have become shills. They should be asked what are the three main functions that define a currency. I am willing to bet…err…invest they have no clue.

No, I didn’t make the investment but wish I knew one of their friends that knew. Kicking myself.

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TOTD: Monetary Overdrive

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TOTD = Tweet of the Day

 

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Big Inflation In Super Bowl Ads

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The cost of a 30-second Super Bowl LVI is up over 16 percent year-on-year after being flat to down for the past several years.   Blame it on the supply chain?  What supply chain? 

Why is the Super Bowl charging more for ads this year?  Because they can.   

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