Hosted a solid client call, meaningful takeaways covering political implications for oil prices, Saudi / Russia EM Credit risk and the IMF's heavy load.
*IEA SAYS OPEC+ 10M B/D CUT NOT ENOUGH TO STABILIZE OIL MARKET
Two sides to every story, one large reason why KSA and Russia have had enough. Bottom line, there are lots of debts and leverage on all sides - coupons to be paid. So far, pumping has been the only solution to fend off a large default cycle.
*Last ten years - Gold’s largest drawdown? 21% vs. Bitcoin -82%, -58%, -65%, -75%.
*A store of wealth holds its value. It doesn’t lose half its value or more every few years.
No human being can put large portions of their personal wealth in an asset that drops 50-75% every few years. Gold is a colossal reservoir of liquidity, approaching a $17T market vs. bitcoin at $1.5T.
Chart from @Maverick_Equity
@Maverick_Equity As few as 5% of all BTC addresses own over 62% of all available Bitcoin. Thus, liquidity is far far worse than meets the eye. If one large holder needs to sell, the spread between him and the available liquidity is large (see drawdowns).
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*MAERSK TELLS ALL ITS CONTAINER SHIPS TO PAUSE RED SEA VOYAGES
A large percentage of sea-borne container traffic goes through the Red Sea. Even cargo from Shanghai to New York goes through the Red Sea. All the cargo that goes from China to Europe goes through the Red Sea. Very few go around Africa since it's more costly. Halting this traffic has the potential to disrupt a lot of cargo traffic...
Drought Saps the Panama Canal, Disrupting Global Trade - The number of ships that can travel through the vital route has fallen sharply this year because of a lack of water for the locks, raising costs and slowing deliveries.- NYT
With US Treasuries at 5%, Bank of America is close to 45x levered, at 6-7% infinitely levered.
For all of 2008, as Lehman was failing, the value of their core (safety) capital (US Treasuries) was moving higher, NOT lower.
*As interest rates move down, bond prices move up.
After the banks failed in 2008, they were forced to hold far more "quantity" and "quality" of capital. This - ladies and gentlemen - is sowing the seeds of the next crisis. This high-quality capital (US Treasuries) is in flames, dramatically lower in price.
Orange Juice +45%
Natural Gas +43%
Sugar +41%
Gasoline +33%
Uranium +28%
Oil +24%
Lean Hogs +22%
Soybeans +16%
Iron Ore +15%
Coal +14%
Wheat +14%
*Bloomberg terminal data, lows since Dec.
**ALERT: Inflation expectations, US 5yr BEs, at a nine-year high.
EU Gas Up 22% today
“The likelihood of a repetition of the crisis of last winter has gone down significantly, which can also be seen in the forward market, “But we have to be clear that the structural change ...
due to the Russian war in Ukraine and the drop out of Russian gas in the supply of Europe is going to stay and therefore the crisis is not over.”CEO at EON
E.ON is one of Europe's largest operators of energy networks, with some 51 million customers.
We are looking at the 3-month US Treasury Bill yield vs. the 2-Year US Treasury yield. The Fed is holding up the front-end T-Bill yields with rate hikes and hits of more vs. market participants pushing down 2’s yield betting on recession - future rate cuts.
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3m vs two-year Treasuries are -98bps, back to 1990, have never been this inverted (pre Lehman it got to -55ish, pre dotcom -77ish). But what does OIL know? A -47% drawdown inside of 10 months, -13% since March 3rd.
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“Policymakers consider themselves vindicated after they followed through on their half-percentage-point rate rise last week despite global market volatility” FT
*the ECB hasn’t figured out banks can’t fund them selves with front end rates this high after the AT1 debacle.
The ECB is “smoking on the dynamite shed..”
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*SCHOLZ: DEUTSCHE BANK IS `VERY PROFITABLE,' NO REASON FOR WORRY