China downgrades American credit to "A"

Half a world away from the USA, China's Dagong credit rating agency can afford to be blunter than Standard & Poor.

Their view, shared by many in the West, is that the problems have not been solved but damagingly deferred; $4 trillion needs to be cut from the public budget within 5 years; QE3 is inevitable and "will throw the world economy into an overall crisis". Accordingly, on August 3 Dagong downgraded the US rating further, to "A, with a negative outlook".

If the Western rating agencies dare to echo that view (and some see last week's S&P's re-rating to AA+ as an attempt to break the news gently), it could be the trigger for a more serious selloff in the stock and bond markets. Disaster for many, opportunity for some - perhaps.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

In a nutshell - the investment crisis

A bear market is one where the odds of losing are greater than the odds of winning; they built Las Vegas on the back of it. So the gambling will continue, a few will do well and most will lose their wad. The difference is, Wall Street won't serve you drinks.

Crash? What crash?

The hackneyed news media deadlines are trotted out again: "x billion wiped off shares". How quickly we forget.

Below are the charts for the FTSE and the Dow from their recent low points in March 2009:

The FTSE closed Friday 49.4% higher than 29 months ago; the Dow, 74.8% higher.

I think that ultimately, both will (in real terms) plumb depths significantly deeper than they did in 2009, but it will not happen in one go, and it will take a long time.

The stockmarket is not a store of money: A has already paid B for ownership of the shares, and the money went into B's bank account. The money is not parked on Wall Street or Paternoster Square, it merely passes through it.

On the way, it's purchased either the promise of a future income stream (and how reasonable is that hope in an unravelling world economy?) or the chance to sell on to a bigger fool (in the hope that it hasn't already happened).

Remember, you don't have to be in this game. I should like to know where the traders' and bankers' bonuses are invested at the moment: do they eat where they cook?

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Gold and its correlation to debt and GDP - updated

Jesse offers a chart showing an apparently close relationship with the price of gold and the growth of US official debt, thus:


He wonders how this might look in relation to debt/GDP, and I give below gold's correlation with GDP and with debt in its broadest sense (TCMDO, ignoring intragovernmental lending) in the period 1952 - 2010:



I would suggest that gold's basic correlation is with GDP, but with wild swings reflecting debt-fuelled manias and financial crises. On this showing, and despite what looks like a meteoric rise over the last few years, gold is merely coming home and is not yet overpriced in the long view. This, as I understand him, is what Dr Marc Faber also thinks.

Not having had the money at the right time, I missed the opportunity to climb aboard gold when it was severely underpriced; but may do so soon, merely to preserve some of the value of our savings.

I'm not so much a gold bug as a most-everything-else bear. When the system stops lending cheap money to the riverboat gamblers with dusty top cards on Wall Street, I'll be interested in genuine investment.

UPDATE:

Here's the price of gold compared to the growth in Total Public Debt Outstanding since fiscal year 1929 - this includes intragovernmental debt (please click to enlarge):









INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None - YET. Still in cash (and some inflation-linked government savings certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Banks' final grab: the land

UPDATE: It's happening! Unbelievable!

_________________________________________

Robert Wenzel comments approvingly on a course of action mooted in a meeting of primary dealers and the US Treasury held at midday today. The idea:

"Dealers suggested that the Treasury might be able to repo their MBS portfolio to raise cash."



Yes, I should think banks would like to suggest that: have the government that bailed them out, now sell the MBS (mortgage-backed securities) back to them at fire-sale prices. 31 million mortgages - about half of all the mortgages in the USA - delivered into the hands of the swindlers.



What daring. It is almost Biblical in the scale of its impudence.



For the record, let's list these players:



BNP Paribas Securities Corp.

Barclays Capital Inc.

Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC

Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.

Goldman, Sachs & Co.

HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.

Jefferies & Company, Inc.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

MF Global Inc.

Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated

Mizuho Securities USA Inc.

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC

Nomura Securities International, Inc.

RBC Capital Markets, LLC

RBS Securities Inc.

SG Americas Securities, LLC

UBS Securities LLC.



You'll note that six of them are now Limited Liability Companies (LLC), the latest to convert being Morgan Stanley (as of May 31, 2011). Apparently, this has a tax advantage for derivatives dealers; but I wonder whether not having shareholders while also avoiding personal liability is an equally important consideration, as we approach the endgame, when bank shares may finally burn up.



Imagine what Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson would say, if they could see how in the Land of the Free a tiny elite not only owns most of the cash, bonds and shares, but now aspires to seize the real estate. America is approaching a peak of wealth inequality and mass servitude comparable to the condition of England in the eighteenth century, but without the hopes offered by the Industrial Revolution.



INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

When investing, remember inflation

The lowest point (so far) in the above monthly sequence was February 2009. But we've still lost a third in real terms overall since the start of the Millennium.

And what does this shape suggest to you about future returns?

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

The Stock Market made simple?

A correspondent on Usenet took umbrage recently when I referred to traders as (possibly necessary) parasites on the economic system. That he used to be one probably had something to do with his outrage, but I meant the term in the biological sense, in that traders generate no wealth, nor provide any real service, at least in my simplistic understanding.

Perhaps the illuminati here can shed light on my misunderstanding by considering the following simple scenario:

1. MomandPopCo decide to expand, and so release an IPO of 2,001 shares. They keep 1001 to have majority control, and sell the rest for $100 per share. With a 1% fee charged by the brokers, they realize $99,000, and the latter get $1,000
2. A short time later, Amy sells her 100 shares for $105 per share to Bob. She gets $395 in profit, and the brokers get $105 for their service.

Questions:

1. Where does all of the money come from?
2. Why does Bob pay more for the shares than Amy did?
3. Why was Amy able to charge more than she paid?

The answers are clearly(?):

1. From the investors.
2. Unless Bob is an idiot, he assumes that the stock price will either further increase, or the dividends will cover his costs.
3. Amy must be taking the discounted value of the future dividends of the company, or we are starting yet another bubble. This is easier to see if the company is buying and raising cows for sale, being a transaction of finite duration.

Notice that the company does not benefit at all from the second transaction. Even if their stock goes up, they cannot sell any more without losing control.