RBS issues global stock alert – The S&P 500 to slump by more than 300 points by September

Today RBS issued a global credit and stock alert as inflation paralyses the major central banks. In the interview for UK daily telegraph Bob Janjuah the bank’s credit strategist said “ A very nasty period is soon be upon us”

I haven’t seen the RBS report but judging from the interview I suspect that the main argument for issuing the alert is stagflation story.
The RBS prediction is going along my own expectations. However main argument for nasty drop of the global indexes is the interplay between investors ( a negative feedback loop). In coming days I plan to publish here several articles explaining how the negative feedback loop is now present in stock markets and how it is likely to trigger selloff within several next week s

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US equity markets are in negative feedback loop – in July S&P 500 is likely to plunge to 1150points

The current financial crises will have more serve and longer lasting-consequences than similar crises in the past. Credit contraction which is highly correlated with real economy cycle may be prolonged as the

1) FED ability to keep interest rates low may be limited

2) some mayor financial institution may prove yet to be insolvent

3) The banking sector regulation liberalization process is over as tax payers funds were involved to bail out troubled financial sector . Now regulators are likely to tighten control over the investment banking activities which could dampen further dampen credit expansion.

But this is not my main argument for steep market correction in the near term. To be correctly understood I’m not calling for master of disaster global scenario because there are countervailing forces at work. China, India and Oil producing countries economic growth remains strong. More importantly emerging markets governments have continued to acquire US assets even as the US yields has fallen which may be support for Bretton Woods II believers (here you can read the newest David Folkerts-Landau paper on Bretton Woods II and subprime crises)

My judgment on US equity market is based on macroeconomic logic and the Log Periodic Power Law (LPPL) developed by D.Sornette in series of articles. Based on models of imitation between traders and cooperative heading behavior Sornette showed that imitation leads in finite time to very large market highs followed by the crash.

In later papers it was realized that speculation and imitation also occur during bearish markets, leading to price trajectories that seem approximately symmetric to the accelerating speculative bubbles ending in crashes. “antibubbles” are characterized with a power law decrease of the price decelerating log periodic oscillations.

Anti-bubbles concept has been successfully implemented to Nikkei, S&P and gold markets descents (papers are available here S&P , Nikkei & Gold , Chinese equities& real estate )

I implemented Sornette methodology to the present S&P 500 data and I got very stable firt for first and second order log periodic oscillations. Lomb spectral analysis showed very strong log periodic oscillations amid descending trend.

The best fit with second order Landau Formula suggest that next local minimum S&P 500 index will reach close to the end of July 2008 when the index is likely to fall as low as 1150 points.

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The 2006-2008 Oil Bubble and Beyond

D.Sornete R.Woodart and W-X Zohu published today a short paper that concludes that recent oil behavior has the quantitative signature of bubble. It basically supports the my own view presented here few days earlier.

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BP statistical review for world energy, IEA cut its forecast for oil consumption (again)

Today International Energy Agency cut its forecast for global oil demand for a fifth month as record prices dented consumption. The IEA reduced its 2008 forecast by about 70,000 barrels a day to 86.77 million barrels. For me this is another sign that although oil supply remains tight the recent “superexponential” oil price growth is increasingly driven by speculation.

Earlier today BP released its 2008 world energy review. Key points of the report are as follows:

• World primary energy consumption increased by 2.4% in 2007 – down from 2.7% in 2006,but still the fifth consecutive year of above-average growth. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for two-thirds of global energy consumption growth. In 2007 Chinese growth in world energy consumption was 52%. Chinese energy consumption was up 7.7%YoY
• In 2007 global output of gas and coal grew , but oil output fell by 300k bbl per day
• Oil consumption growth is now concentrated in countries that subsidize consumer prices, primarily oil-exporting nations and rapidly growing non-OECD economies such as China and India.
  
  
  

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OIL - emerging BUBBLE

Last Thursday Brat Stupak chairman of Congressional energy panel said that oil products markets were being “manipulated” by the biggest trading houses in the futures market, through he said a probe hasn’t uncover illegal activity.

I must say that I don’t understand what congressmen Stupak wanted to communicate by his comment.

Earlier this week Gerorge Soros testified before US congressional committee on manipulation in the energy markets . He said the record oil prices weighing on the economy are the result of a ``bubble'' caused by speculation from index funds and a tight balance between supply and demand. Few days earlier in the interview for Daily Telegraph Mr Soros highlighted 4 main factors behind soaring oil prices

1) Peak oil – Meaning increasing costs of developing new oil reserves and aging of the existing oil fields

2) The backward sloping oil supply curve –the higher the oil price goes the less incentive oil producing countries has to convert their oil reserves into depreciating currencies (mainly US dollars). In other words the OPEC grew richer and less in need of current income, while negative real interest rates made it more attractive to keep oil in the ground than cash it at bank

3) The mayor of growing areas of growing demand subsidizes the energy prices so the higher oil prices does not affect oil consumption in those areas.

4) Trend following speculation which possibly will end up with the bubble.

I think his analysis is correct and the 4th factor is increasingly affecting the oil prices. Let’s start with the definition of the bubble

The term “bubble” is widely used but rarely clearly defined. Following investopedia “bubble” is defined as

“A spike in asset values within a particular industry, commodity, or asset class. A speculative bubble is usually caused by exaggerated expectations of future growth, price appreciation, or other events that could cause an increase in asset values. This drives trading volumes higher, and as more investors rally around the heightened expectation, buyers outnumber sellers, pushing prices beyond what an objective analysis of intrinsic value would suggest.”

This definition as all others contain flaw. Indeed defining bubble is very tricky because acceptance or rejection of the bubble is depends on the model of fundamentals one uses. The concept of a fundamental price reference does not necessarily exist, nor is it necessarily unique. A major problem is that apparent evidence for bubbles can be reinterpreted in terms of market fundamentals that are unobserved by the researcher A key problem is that bubbles are usually defined as exponentially explosive growth phases, but how can one then distinguish them from the growth of a fundamental valuation process which is also generically expected to follow an exponential growth path?

This problem can be solved by defining a bubble as a faster-than-exponential accelerating price, which may be refed to as “superexponential.” Being faster than exponential, i.e., the growth rate is itself growing; it is necessarily unsustainable if we assume a standard geometric growth for the global economy. Why then the prices start to grow at unsustainable “superexponential” rate? Soros explain it by his reflexivity theory which says that market participants are trying to discount a future that is itself shaped by market expectations. This is self reinforcing “rational” process which is a seed for rational bubble.

In recent years prof. Didier Sornette developed a new methodology to test fingerprints of speculative bubbles called Log Periodic Power Law (LPPL). In a series of works, financial bubbles have been defined as regimes in which the market exhibits an unsustainable super-exponential growth, that can be characterized quantitatively as a genuine critical phenomenon with specific log-periodic power-law signatures. The main ingredient of the theory is the existence of positive feedbacks, that is, self-reinforcements, which leads to cooperative herding and imitation between investors. As a consequence, the actions of investors tend to produce waves of contrariant and imitative behaviors leading to self-reinforcing bullish or bearish phases, themselves decorated by the opposite regimes in a hierarchical fashion. Positive feedbacks, when unchecked, can produce runaways until the deviation from the fundamental price is so large that other effects can be abruptly triggered and lead to rupture or crashes. Alternatively, it can lead to prolonged depressive bearish markets

Mathematically, the LPPL model is represented by the equation giving the anticipated expected trajectory of the log-price I(t) ≡ ln p(t) of a given asset as a function of time, expressed in terms of the distance τ = tc − t (respectively τ = t − tc) to the critical time tc for bubbles:

I (t) = A + Bτ^α + Cτ^α cos [ω ln (τ )]

A is the log-price at tc (since τ = 0 at t = tc, all the other terms are vanishing at t = tc), B (respectively) controls the amplitude of the power law acceleration (respectively the log-periodic component) of the log-price. The exponent α encodes the structural shape of the acceleration. It is usually found between 0 and 1, which ensures a finite price at tc together with an asymptotic infinite rate of change close to tc. The parameter ω is the log-periodic angular frequency of the log-periodic oscillations. It should be stressed that ω is not the inverse of a time scale, but rather it is proportional to the inverse of the logarithm of a scale factor λ, where λ is roughly speaking the ratio of the distances between successive peaks of the log periodic oscillations.

LPPL formula (chart) when fitted to the oil data shows 1) very low alfas which confirms acceleration of the underlying trend 2) superexponential growth is accompanied with stable log periodic oscillations which confirms an existence of positive speculative price to price feedback. This is an initial confirmation that oil price incresingly depends on speculation

The initial estimation suggest that oil price within next two weeks will spike to around 150 dollars per bbl.

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How much worse will get before they will get better?

Bonds issuers spark a new credit concerns. On Thursday Ambac and MBIA shares, the one of the biggest bond insurers drop as Moody’s highlighted possibility that both will lose AAA rating on which they depend. The AAA financial strength rating is important to bond insurers because they effectively transfer their ratings to bond issuers. Any credit rating cut may lead to the downgrade of the USD2.4tr of structured bonds which they guarantee. It might also force the monolines’ counterparties to take big writedowns, as Merrill Lynch did on hedges with below-investment grade bond insurer ACA on Thursday.

Late Friday Ambac lost its AAA rating after Fich downgraded the company and it is highly likely that others will follow which means that another wave of write downs is possible

Forbes brings a story that now these problems are spreading overseas to Europe as well.

Another confirmation the credit crunch is spreading to Europe brings ECB banking survey released on Friday.

The ECB survey points to sharp tightening in the credit standards and significant decline in demand for credit which confirms that both business and consumers is being hit badly by us credit turmoil.

The chart which I attached shows that global high yield defaults tend to raise 12 month after the willingness to lend (tightening in credit standards) turns back.
So far the global speculative grade defaults rates remains low, around 26 lows but in tight financing conditions they are set to raise.

It shows the credit crunch is spreading out. Credit supply contraction is likely to cause a further downward shift in growth expectations including emerging markets economies. I doubt that smooth transition form high growth scenario to low growth scenario is possible without triggering a volatility shock.

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More evidence for “recouping”

I just read IMF paper “Spillovers Across NAFTA” which has been released last week. Let me quote a part of the summary:

“This paper examines linkages across North America by estimating the size of spillovers from the major regions of the world—the United States, euro area, Japan, and the rest of the world—to Canada and Mexico, For Canada, a one percent shock to U.S. real GDP shifts Canadian real GDP by some ¾ of a percentage point in the same direction— with financial spillovers more important than trade in recent decades….After 1996, the response of Mexican GDP is 1½ times the size of the U.S. shock—“when the U.S. sneezes, Mexico catches a cold”. These spillovers are transmitted through both trade and financial channels.”

Basically this paper brings a another evidence that higher levels of globalization have brought about increased synchronization of business cycles across countries and rising sensitivity to external shocks.

It also raises question how long CAD and MXN will remain resilient to US slowdown. In 2007 CAD was best performing G10 currency which may be explained by 1) strong domestic demand 2) high commodity prices. Now amid weaker growth in the US domestic demand is unlikely to fully compensate for the negative contribution to growth coming from net exports. Also terms-of-trade gains enjoyed by Canada over 2007 are likely to be reduced this year as weaker in US and the likely spillover to the world economy will likely mean lower commodity prices.

Another recouping story I found in EIU. EIU is getting skeptical on Asia decoupling from US slowdown. A quote:“Asian exports still predominately go to G3 marketsThere is, however, a caveat. Although Asia is certainly in a better position to withstand a US slowdown than it was in 2001, it would be a mistake to assume that the region has fully decoupled from the US. Although the Asia 8 have diversified their export markets over the past two decades, the G3 (and the US in particular) remains important in terms of final demand for Asian exports. According to calculations from the ADB, 70% of trade within the Asia 8 (excluding Taiwan but including China) consists of intermediate goods used in manufacturing production processes. This is mostly a reflection of changes in Asia's supply chains that have led to different production stages being parcelled out between different countries. In particular, China's export juggernaut now imports components from the rest of Asia and assembles them, before shipping them off to their final destination--which is usually still in the G3. As a result, in 2005 around 61% of Asian exports were still consumed in G3 countries.The argument that China can provide a back-up source of demand if the US falters is especially fragile. Soaring Asian exports to China do mean that China is now the largest Asian recipient of imports from the region (excluding Japan). However, most of this is the component trade. According to the ADB's calculations, China still only accounts for just 6.4% of total Asian final demand. This is under one-half of the contribution from Japan, and less than one-quarter of the contribution from the US. This clearly suggests that China's booming economy would be unlikely to prove much of a back-up if the US economy were to falter significantly.Indeed, by some measures, Asia's dependence on exports has actually increased since 2001, arguably making it more exposed to a slowdown in foreign demand. The exports/GDP ratio (measured in US dollars) increased for most Asia 8 economies between 2001 and 2006 (Indonesia and the Philippines being the two exceptions). The combined exports/GDP ratio for all eight economies increased from 57% in 2001 to 66% in 2006. Since the region as a whole is more export-exposed than in 2001, and with a large proportion of these exports still going to the US and other G3 economies, it could be argued that the Asia 8 are even more vulnerable than in 2001 to a slowdown in their main end-markets.”

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