Credit - The tourist trap

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for." - Socrates

Looking at the continuous outflows from Emerging Markets funds and in continuation of our recent title analogies relating to the "reverse osmosis" thesis, we thought this time around we would use a simpler analogy in our title reference namely the colloquial "tourist trap". As per the definition of a "tourist trap", a tourist trap is an establishment, or group of establishments, that has been created or re-purposed with the aim of "attracting tourists" and their money.

Our favorite "magician central banker in chief", namely Ben Bernanke, has indeed engineered the "best" of tourist trap when it comes to Emerging Markets. 

In our case, Ben's "tourist trap" involved ZIRP, low volatility and high carry trades in Emerging Markets currencies which, for many years, had the favors of Japanese retail investors in the form of the "double-deckers" (the famous Uridashi funds which particularly favored the Brazilian real). 

Of course if Bernanke is serious about initiating his "tap dancing" following "twist", this might spell out the "last tango" for Emerging Markets, and as we posited in a previous conversation (Singin' in the Rain), we might get another "dollar" crisis on our hands:
"Back in November 2011, we shared our concerns relating to a particular type of rogue wave three sisters that sank the Big Fitz - SS Edmund Fitzgerald, an analogy used by Grant Williams in one of John Mauldin's Outside the Box letter:

"In fact we could go further into the analogy relating to the "three sisters" rogue waves that sank SS Edmund Fitzgerald - Big Fitz, given we are witnessing three sisters rogue waves in our European crisis, namely:

 Wave number 1 - Financial crisis

 Wave number 2 - Sovereign crisis

 Wave number 3 - Currency crisis

If the Fed starts draining liquidity, some "big whales" might turn up belly up. Could it be Chinese banks defaulting? Emerging Markets countries defaulting as well due to lack of access to US dollars?"

"Wave number 3", namely a Currency crisis is still in its infancy and is highly dependent on the "tapering" stance of the US Fed although, as per its members, the fate of Emerging Markets, is not really their "primary" concern...
"An appropriate next step toward normalizing monetary policy could be to reduce the pace of purchases from $85 billion to something around $70 billion per month." - Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George - 6th of September 2013.

So in this week's conversation, and in continuation to our "reverse osmosis" analysis from previous weeks, we will look at the evolution of the "tourist trap" as well as the "Great Rotation" story as far as flows are concerned and the potential evolution in the markets (our own "Forward Guidance" so to speak), which warrants caution we think in this "statistically" bearish month of September ("Over the long haul, September has been the weakest of the 12 calendar months" - Doug Short).

A good illustration of our chosen theme of "tourist trap" can be seen in the slide of India's rupee which saw its dollar denominated external debt swell in recent years courtesy of "hot money" thanks to the "generosity" of our "magician-in-chief" aka Ben Bernanke:

- graph source Thomson Reuters Datastream / Fathom Consulting / Macronomics.

Also, when it comes to India's external debt and as illustrated recently by Bloomberg Chart of the Day, the rise of its external debt burden does complicate the situation for India in defending its currency. We could in fact call it the rupee "tourist trap" we think:

"India’s record foreign debt threatens to undermine the government’s plan to halt the rupee’s biggest slide in more than 20 years by reining in the budget and current-account deficits.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows the rupee weakened to an all-time low this year even as the combined deficits shrank. Previously the currency rose when the shortfalls narrowed and fell when they widened. The rupee dropped 8.1 percent last month to as weak as 68.845 per dollar. The lower panel tracks external debts owed by Indian governments and companies, which swelled to $390 billion as of March 31.
“Until the start of the current sell-off, the rupee had stuck pretty closely within the confines of its combined current-account and budget deficits,” said Philip Wee, a senior currency economist in Singapore at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. “By that measure, the rupee should be between 50 and 60 to the dollar, not 65 and 70.” 
India’s offshore liabilities rose to 21.2 percent of gross domestic product in the year ended March 31, according to official estimates, the highest since 2001. The rupee has plummeted 18 percent since then, the steepest drop among 24 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg. This has made refinancing the debt more expensive as global borrowing costs climb because investors expect the U.S. to pare stimulus thisyear, curtailing flows to emerging-market assets.
Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told the lower house of parliament on Aug. 27 that India’s twin deficits are responsible for the rupee’s fall, and that external debt was manageable.
He announced plans on Aug. 12 to reduce the current-account shortfall to within 3.7 percent of GDP this fiscal year from a record 4.8 percent in the prior period. The government us seeking to contain the budget shortfall to 4.8 percent of GDP from 4.9 percent." - source Bloomberg.

All the investors that piled in "high beta trade", namely our "tourist trap", in the form of Asian High Yield, Emerging Debt Bonds and Equities as well as Emerging Currencies are being hit hard. They thought they were "smart investors", playing "alpha", when it was a pure beta play courtesy of repressed volatility thanks to central bank meddling due to negative real US interest rates.

And, when volatility is not repressed due to "tapering", this is what you get as illustrated by Merrill Lynch MOVE index rising back towards its record high of 118 bps:

We recently added JP Morgan Emerging Markets Currencies Volatility Index to our graph to display the on-going effect US Treasury volatility has on Emerging Market currencies.

MOVE index = ML Yield curve weighted index of the normalized implied volatility on 1 month Treasury options.

CVIX index = DB currency implied volatility index: 3 month implied volatility of 9 major currency pairs.

EM VYX index = JP Morgan EM-VXY tracks volatility in emerging market currencies. The index is based on three-month at-the-money forward options, weighted by market turnover.

With US real interest rates moving into positive territory, it is therefore not really a surprise to read that Asian dollar denominated bonds have dropped below par for the first time since 2011 as reported by David Yong in Bloomberg in his article from the 2nd of September 2013 entitled "Asian Bonds Tumble Below Par in Capital Flight":
"Asia dollar-denominated bonds have dropped below par for the first time since 2011 as investors pull money out of the region amid concerns that growth is slowing and as currencies from the rupee to rupiah plunge.
Average prices of company debentures in the region fell to 98.61 cents on the dollar on Aug. 22, the least since October 2011, Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes show. Dollar bonds globally have held above 100 cents since September 2009. Both investment- and non-investment-grade debt in Asia were below par on Aug. 22. The last time that happened was in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.
Investor sentiment toward Asia is shifting as economic growth in China slows and currencies in India and Indonesia -- the two countries with the biggest external funding needs in the region -- plunge. About $44 billion has been pulled from emerging-market stock and bond funds globally since the end of May, data provider EPFR Global said on Aug. 23." - source Bloomberg

Investors are indeed trying to escape the "tourist trap" while some others are seeing their "tourist clients" finding their debt "less appealing" as witnessed in the recent auction failures for Russia, India and Taiwan, as discussed by Alex Nicholson and Lyubov Pronina in Bloomberg on the 4th of September in their article entitled "Russia joins India to Taiwan as Emerging Debt Sales Miss Targets":
"Russia failed to raise as much money as planned at a government bond auction, joining nations from India to Taiwan in missing borrowing targets as investors keep away from emerging-market assets.
The Finance Ministry in Moscow sold 6.07 billion rubles ($182 million) of its so-called OFZ notes due May 2016 after offering 13.6 billion rubles, according to a statement on its website. Russia canceled an auction last week as only one bidder took part. The ministry issued today’s bonds at a 6.5 percent average yield, the top of its proposed range.
Developing nations are trimming auctions as the prospect of the U.S. paring financial stimulus measures and tensions over Syria curb investor appetite for riskier assets. India’s central bank said it cut the size a debt auction this week to 100 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) from 150 billion rupees. Indonesia scaled back an Islamic debt offering for the first time since July, while Taiwan’s note sale yesterday fell short of the government’s goal for the first time since 2011." - source Bloomberg.

When it comes to the famous "Great Rotation" story from bonds to equities put forward since the beginning of the year, the only "Great Rotation" story as far as equities are concerned appears to be from Emerging Markets to Developed Markets as displayed by the cumulated weekly flows into Developed Markets and Emerging Markets from Nomura's recent Global Equity Fund Flow report from the 6th of September:

- source Nomura.

Of course some would argue that this "Great Rotation" story from bonds to equities, as far as flows are concerned, has been playing out in earnest in 2013 as displayed in Nomura's recent report:

- source Nomura.

So far, so right...but, if one looks at the inflows into bonds versus equities since 2010, then the "Great Rotation" story does seem much ado about nothing as displayed once more in Nomura's recent chart:

- source Nomura.

In fact, what seems to be happening, when it comes to "Great Rotation" for equities is a rotation out of equities except for European equities according to Nomura:
"Equity and bond funds both suffered outflows last week with USD 11bn redemptions from equity funds and a small net outflow of USD 0.8bn from bond funds according to EPFR. Money market funds also saw net sales totalling USD 7.5bn last week. Both developed market and emerging market equity funds suffered net selling and European funds once again outperformed, being the only region that we track to have received net inflows last week. Our global composite flows based equity sentiment indicator has oscillated fairly tightly around 1 standard deviation over the most recent eight weeks and last week dropped marginally to 0.97 standard deviations, a reading that we would consider as bullish but just below extended levels.
-US fund investors sold USD 5bn from equity funds last week. Over the past three weeks they have withdrawn a total net USD 15bn from equity funds, reversing only a fraction of the net USD 141bn invested into equity funds in the 33 weeks of the year to 14 August, according to the Lipper weekly reported dataset. Our US flows based indicator continued to moderate last week and now reads 0.7 standard deviations, signalling moderately bullish sentiment in our view.
-European equity funds bucked the global selling trend as they attracted an additional USD 0.8bn of net inflows last week. This is the 10th consecutive week of net inflows into European equity funds, a major reversal from the persistent selling seen in recent years. However, last week's inflow showed a moderation in the magnitude of money flowing recently into European equity funds. Consequently, our European flows based equity sentiment indicator was unchanged over the week at 2.24 standard deviations but remains close to the historical bullish extremes of sentiment measured over the past nine years.
-Emerging market equity investors continued selling equity funds last week with an additional net USD 2.8bn outflow from GEM equity funds. Although last week's outflow was the most significant since the end of June, our GEM sentiment indicator rose to -1.4 standard deviation but still reflects very depressed sentiment towards EM equities. Furthermore, investors continued to exit from the dedicated regional EM equity funds with net outflows of USD 1.1bn from Asia ex Japan funds, USD 0.1bn from LatAm funds and the highest weekly outflow (USD 0.5bn) from emerging EMEA funds in almost two years." - source Nomura.

"Great Rotation" or "Great Escape" you decide, given Bank of America Merrill Lynch also indicated on a note from the 5th of September entitled "EM Pain trade is up" the following:
Big weekly equity redemptions of $11.4bn. Past 3 weeks equity outflow of $29bn largest in 2 years (Chart 1). 

Investors reduced exposure in run-up to payroll. Big $6.1bn redemptions from EM stock & bond funds. Massive $60bn outflows from EM equity & bond funds over past 3 months = capitulation. Note EM equities outperformed after similar redemptions Jul'04, Aug'06 and Sep'08 (Chart 2).

Tactical bounce in EM equities continues unless a big payroll print (>250K) causes gap higher in treasury yields (>3%).
Inflows to Treasury funds this week despite historic sell-off. Follows 8 weeks of redemptions. Suggests onset of smart short-covering in recent days. Blowout payroll required for clean immediate break of 2%, 3%, 4% levels by 5, 10, 30-year Treasury respectively. No jobs blowout...look for reversals in recent sell-offs in bonds and EM." - source Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Yes, the bounce in Emerging Markets has indeed occurred in the past after similar redemptions, but we disagree with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. We have not seen the bottom yet, and that the rebound could probably materialize at a later stage, maybe in 2014.

Why so?

Because of tightening financial conditions, particular in China following a massive credit growth, which will impact bank lending behavior in a negative way. China is increasing the clampdown on credit and on industrial overcapacity. Given banks are always a leverage play on economic growth, despite record profits at China's largest banks, stock valuations are not benefiting from this surge given the significant rise in nonperforming loans as displayed in the below Bloomberg graph:

"The CHART OF THE DAY shows that while combined net income of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. and Bank of China Ltd. for the three months to June 30 was 72 percent higher than three years ago, their price-to-estimated earnings ratios have fallen since then. The lower panel shows total nonperforming loans in the nation started increasing in September 2011.
Default risk is rising in the world’s second-largest economy, which economists forecast will grow this year at the slowest pace in 23 years. The government has been clamping down on excess capacity in industries including steel and cement as it tries to transition to a more sustainable economic growth model based on consumption rather than export-driven production." - source Bloomberg.

The delicate rebalancing act for the Chinese economy is in fact being put at risk by the aggressive "tapering" stance at the Fed as indicated by Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao comments at the G20 as reported by Bloomberg:
"The U.S. should be mindful of a possible “very significant spillover effect,” said Zhu, who called for greater coordination between nations and added that there’s no need for a rescue plan for developing countries."

He also added:
“Some emerging-market economies are facing difficulties,” Zhu said. “Capital is flowing out of these countries and their currencies are under pressure of depreciation, and the major direct cause of such a phenomenon is the Fed’s announcement that it may exit its unconventional monetary policy. However, on the other hand, there are some structural problems with these emerging market economies as well.” - source Bloomberg, "China Asks U.S. to Cap QE Exit Risk as Indonesia Warns of Impact"

Therefore the impact of a tightening credit channel in China means more pain for the current account of countries exporting to China (including Germany), given that in a Pareto efficient economic allocation, no one can be made better off without making at least one individual worse off.

The tightening credit channel in China and the clampdown on overcapacity will of course hurt Germany.

These were our concluding remarks in our recent conversation "Fears for Tears":
"The CHART OF THE DAY shows that Germany’s factory output as gauged by a manufacturing purchasing-managers’ index has mirrored Chinese bank-lending growth since a credit boom that began in 2008"

No surprise therefore to see German industrial production falling more than expected in July after surging in June, adding to signs that growth in Europe’s biggest economy is moderating:
-Output, adjusted for seasonal swings, fell 1.7 percent from June, when it jumped a revised 2 percent, the Economy Ministry in Berlin said on the 6th of September when economists were only expecting a decline of 0.5%.
-German exports, adjusted for working days and seasonal changes, fell 1.1 percent in July from the prior month, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden. Economists predicted an increase of 0.7 percent in a Bloomberg News survey.

On the impact of current account for countries exporting to China, we agree with our friends at Rcube Global Macro Asset Management:
"Current account of countries exporting to China are turning negative (and will remain so as long as China tighten its flow of credit). FX reserves’ pace of accumulation reverse and with them a host of asset prices that have been tightly correlated with it over the last decade: domestic real estate and equity prices, private consumption, commodity prices etc…"

- source Rcube Global Macro Asset Management

So, due to our Pareto efficient economic allocation, the weakness in Emerging Market equities, which have been simply the victims of currency wars and "Abenomics" mostly, (see our post "Have Emerging Equities been the victims of currency wars?"), will continue further, because the "reverse osmosis" occurring in Emerging Markets as displayed by "funds allocation" is positively correlated to US real rates moving into positive territory, or put it simply, when the risk doesn't match the reward anymore. 

The velocity in the "allocation" is entirely due of course to the speed of rising yields in developed countries as displayed in the chart below from Thomson Reuters Datastream / Fathom Consulting displaying by how many basis points 10 year yields have risen since the 30th of April:

- graph source Thomson Reuters Datastream / Fathom Consulting:

On a side note, those who piled into Apple 30 years, part of their $17 billion bond auctioned on the 30th of April are probably still licking their wounds given these bonds are currently trading around 83 in cash price...But, don't despair, you might get a "second chance" with Verizon which plans a record $25 billion debt offering as it gathers financing to buy Vodafone’s stake in their Verizon Wireless joint venture...

Moving on to our own "Forward Guidance", as we enter the statistically dangerous month of September, some additional signs in the markets, apart from "tapering" noise, Syrian issues, European political jitters in Italy and Emerging Markets tantrums, can be seen in the currency market according to our Rcube friends, in particular in the AUDCHF currency pair:

"The world’s economic momentum is slowing not accelerating, as evidenced by the AUDCHF:

The AUDCHF is a much better leading indicator of global growth than PMIs:

The Australian dollar is a commodity currency, with a high sensitivity to cyclical commodities, and hence to world growth. On the contrary, the CHF is a defensive, safe haven currency; it tends to appreciate when investors become risk averse.

As a result, the AUDCHF usually weakens when global growth economic momentum slows down and/or when financial stress kicks in. When the two happen at the same time (1998, 2001, 2008, 2011) the move is all the more violent. 

Today, the AUD is weakening because of the EM slowdown, but more recently the CHF has strengthened on its own, probably on the back of rising risk aversion due to the FED tapering anxieties (EURCHF peaked on May 22nd)." - source Rcube Global Macro Asset Management

And if you think that the "reverse osmosis" plaguing Emerging Markets has touched a bottom, think again because as our Rcube friends put it, regardless of the incoming chatter surrounding the "debt ceiling" debate, budget balances do matter, but the US budget balance, when it comes to Emerging Markets, it matters A LOT:
"Additionally, the US budget balance is improving faster than at any time in history. In the past this has been associated with a tighter liquidity environment (fewer dollars in circulation) which was particularly negative for emerging markets. As shown in the chart below, when the budget balance improves (deviation from 2yr trend goes up), emerging markets underperform DM equities, and inversely. Given the current expectation for the budget deficit to shrink further (‐2% of GDP in 2015 vs. ‐4.6% today), the relationship will remain negative for EM equities in the foreseeable future."

Another evidence that deflation might be a bigger threat than inflation is the fall of breakeven rates. In that sense, the negative correlation between equities and inflation expectations could be a complacency sign. Japan has won the currency war, it is now exporting deflation through lower export prices, and it is forcing others to do so as well. But because Europe is in a current account surplus and the US is moving towards the neutral zone, the currency war will be much less effective. This is also why inflation expectations are currently falling fast.

This would be worrying enough on its own. The problem is that Europe is deleveraging at the same time. Its credit channel remains weak. As a result, unemployment keeps rising." 
- source Rcube Global Macro Asset Management

On a final note, we would like to provide you with another "out of the box" interesting indicator we follow namely Sotheby's stock price versus World PMIs since 2007 - graph source Bloomberg:

The performance of Sotheby’s, the world’s biggest publicly traded auction house is indeed a good leading indicator and has led many global market crises by three-to-six months.

The recent stellar performance of the art market in general and Sotheby's in particular can also be partly explained by the flood of global liquidity provided by our "omnipotent" central banker at the Fed. Art markets and economic growth tend to be positively correlated we think.

And, when it comes to providing "liquidity" and market backstop, rest assured that Sotheby's has been as involved as any central bank, given it has started again into auction guarantees totaling $166.4 million in a move aimed at winning more consignments. But, more recently the New York-based auction house said last night it’s reducing its exposure by “irrevocable bids” of $23.5 million, which are from undisclosed third-party guarantors. It may further reduce risk by additional “irrevocable bids” before auctions in the fourth quarter, it said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as reported by Bloomberg.

Looks like even auction houses are preparing for "tapering"...
Oh well...

So move along, no risk of financial crisis:
“The probability of it happening again in our lifetime is as close to zero as I could imagine"

“The way these firms are managed, the amount of capital that they have, the amount of liquidity that they have, the changes in their business mix -- it’s dramatic.”

“The largest financial institutions in the U.S. are as healthy now as they have ever been,”

“There’s a difference between incompetence or mismanagement or poor judgment or excessive risk taking from actually breaking the law,”

“There’s nothing I’ve seen that would suggest that any of the major participants in the financial crisis should be in jail for their actions.”
- Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman, on the Charlie Rose show.

Stay tuned!

Guest post - Is Risk Parity a Scam - Rcube Global Macro Research

"We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard." - Voltaire 

Courtesy of our friends at Rcube Global Macro, please find enclosed their latest publication where Paul Buigues looks at Risk Parity strategies:

(for PDF please use the following link: http://www.rcube.com/docs/Rcube_Is_Risk_Parity_a_Scam.pdf)

Risk parity strategies experienced large drawdowns between early May and late June due to a combination of rising government yields and falling equities.

Note: The original and largest fund in the sector (Bridgewater All Weather Fund) does not publish daily NAVs.

This rather significant correction raised quite a few eyebrows, particularly because risk parity strategies are often marketed as being able to withstand a wide range of economic environments (and, unlike 2008, today’s environment is rather benign).

Although it would be preposterous to disparage a strategy based on two months of negative returns, this drawback gave us the impetus to express our thoughts on risk parity as an investment strategy, as it emerged from relative obscurity just a few years ago, only recently becoming fairly popular among investors.

Like other passive asset allocation strategies,1 the basic premise of risk parity is that asset returns are unpredictable, at least in the short] and medium]term. Consequently, investors should only attempt to capture risk premia, without wasting their time and energy trying to forecast the behavior of specific asset classes.

According to the Modern Portfolio Theory (which is, itself, based on a dozen theoretical assumptions), the only rational choice for an investor is consequently to own the gmarket portfolioh which contains every asset available in the market, weighed according to its relative size. Because this is difficult to implement in practice, investors often settle for a (generally more granular) version of the 60/40 allocation between equity and fixed income.

Risk parity is a different viewpoint on how not to exert judgment on any asset class. According to risk

parity proponents, investors should try to own all major investable asset classes on an equal risk basis.

Supposedly, this results in portfolios that have better risk/reward characteristics than traditional asset allocations. Moreover, as mentioned above, some argue that risk parity portfolios can generate quasi-absolute performances, even in the face of stormy markets.

Before going any further, it is worth stating that implementing a portfolio that contains all assets on

an equal-risk basis is even more challenging to implement than implementing the "market portfolio".

This explains the existence of many different variants of risk parity.2

Recap: Portfolios that express a neutral view on future asset class returns

After selecting a specific variant of risk parity, many implementation choices need to be made:

‐ What universe of assets should be used, and how should they be regrouped them in asset classes?

‐ Should asset class correlations be taken into account? And if so, how?

- How should we define risk? In our understanding, most risk parity implementations use volatility,

which obviously exists in many different varieties (historical, implied, predicted, GARCH, etc.) and

calculation horizons.

- What leverage should be applied to the portfolio for it to reach an acceptable rate of return? (Risk

parity generally involves leverage.)

- What frequency should be used for portfolio rebalancing and volatility calibration?

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1 Although risk parity strategies have to be managed actively (if only to equalize risk levels on a regular basis), we consider them to be passive, in the sense that they are not based on trying to forecast future asset returns.

2 Here are just a few implementations of risk parity: the “All weather” portfolio, classical risk parity, cluster risk parity, risk factor parity, and equal risk contribution.

To our understanding, the “All weather” strategy is not risk parity in the strict sense. From the way it has been described in various papers, it basically consists in choosing a set of asset classes, and in leveraging each of them to obtain a common expected return (generally the expected return of equities). In that sense, this strategy should be called return parity, rather than risk parity. Unless we expect all asset classes to have the same Sharpe ratio, these two approaches are not equivalent.

Due to this large number of degrees of freedom and parameters, this paper will present risk parity from a generic viewpoint. It will contain case studies and thought experiments rather than backtests (as we will see, backtests are generally biased towards risk parity strategies).

Although the term “risk parity” was only introduced in 2005, we can trace the origins of the concept

to a strategy that Ray Dalio (3) started using in 1996 to manage his family trust. Despite Bridgewater’s success in generating sizeable alpha for their clients, Dalio wanted to create an investment process that would not depend on his own ability to manage funds or to select managers (as he wouldn’t be able to do so after his death).

The strategy (named the “All Weather portfolio”) also had to deliver returns, regardless of economic

conditions. Dalio therefore concluded that the portfolio should maintain 25% of the portfolio’s risk in

each of the four following quadrants:

This is clearly an excessively simplified portrayal of a strategy that now has $70Bn under management and that has generated an annualized performance of around 8.5% with a volatility of around 10% since 1996, inspiring many fund managers and institutional investors to run the same type of strategies in-house.

However, despite its commercial and financial success, many observers consider risk parity to be an

investment scam. Finding a strategy that might dominate the classical 60/40 portfolio is one thing. Pretending that this strategy is able to produce stable returns (without attempting to predict those returns) sounds a lot like a "get rich steadily and without effort" scheme.

Even though wefre not into passive asset allocation strategies (otherwise, we would look for another

line of work), we will try to contribute to the debate. We will organize our thoughts by looking at

three intertwined dimensions of risk parity: diversification, returns, and risk. In each section, we will

express our opinion on the conceptual merits of risk parity, as well as its prospects in the current

environment.

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(3) Ray Dalio is Bridgewater’s founder and one of risk parity’s pioneers. Despite the criticism against risk parity expressed in this paper, Dalio is at the very top of our pantheon of financial thinkers.

1. Diversification

From a passive asset allocation standpoint, it is hard to argue against diversification, which

constitutes the core of risk parityfs philosophy.

The idea of spreading risk among different asset classes obviously precedes risk parity by a few millennia, as we can find references to it in the Talmud ("One's assets should be divided into thirds: 1/3rd in land, 1/3rd in business, 1/3rd in gold") or in the Ecclesiast ("Divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead").

In the early 1980s, Harry Browne introduced the gpermanent portfolioh, an investment strategy whose aim was to withstand all sorts of economic environments, and which was originally composed of an equally weighted portfolio of four asset classes: 25% US stocks, 25% long-term bonds, 25% cash, and 25% precious metals.

However, it is worth noting that these simple equal]weight approaches only aim at minimizing the risk of ruin from a personal wealth standpoint, which is not the modern view of how portfolios should be managed (i.e., maximizing investment returns for a given level of risk).

In terms of diversification, the major innovation of risk parity over these early approaches resides in

equally weighting risks, instead of allocations.

In that respect, risk parity proponents are indisputably right when they state that traditional 60/40 asset allocations are not truly diversified, as they have had a correlation of 0.90 with equities over the last 40 years.

That being said, we believe that placing diversification above everything else can lead to unpleasant consequences. The main advantage of a passive gmarket portfolioh approach is that, by definition, it does not disturb the market's equilibrium, as every asset class is weighted according to its relative importance in the market. On the opposite side, once it becomes popular, any other passive investment process that significantly deviates from market weights can wreak havoc in market valuations, precisely because passive investment processes entail not caring about valuations.

For example, letfs take a small exotic asset class (public Timber REITS, for instance), which would display nice diversification properties in the eyes of many different diversification]minded managers. Although each individual manager might decide not to own more than 1% of the total float, their combined buying power could very well provoke a bubble in the asset class.

A real-life example of the damage that can be caused by a blind quest for diversification can be found

in the way in which CDOs used to be managed before the credit crisis. In order to increase their contractual Moody's "diversity score", CDO managers were forced to diversify their exposures in terms of industries. As a consequence, some industries that had little outstanding debt became heavily sought after and, therefore, completely mispriced. In the end, a supposedly superior diversification did not help CDO managers, as correlations converged towards 1.00 during the 2008 credit crunch.

To a certain extent, the appeal of diversification might also explain investorsf willingness to buy TIPS

at negative yields (down to around -1% for the 10 years recently). While being a relatively small part of government debt (around 10%), TIPS' characteristics make them very attractive in the eyes of

investors who value diversification far above everything else, including valuation (in this particular

case, however, the jury is still out in determining whether we’re all “turning Japanese”).

One last word about diversification: as we will see in our next section, we’re not convinced that financial markets offer a sufficient number of uncorrelated risk premia in order to be able to reach a “true” diversification.

2. Returns

2.1. Risk premia

Like any other passive asset allocation strategies, risk parity relies on the assumption that some asset

classes should structurally outperform the risk‐free rate. Although there are theoretical justifications and ample empirical evidence for some of these risk premia, their number and their magnitude is ‐ and will always be ‐ subject to intense debate.

To us, the most convincing and economically meaningful risk premium resides in equities. Because of

the high covariance of corporate asset values with the state of the economy, equities have to compensate investors for the risk they take (no one wants to lose his job and experience portfolio losses at the same time). We can obviously only make rough estimates of the forward equity risk premium (letfs settle for 5% on a global basis), but we do have little doubt about its existence.

Even if they might offer some diversification benefits from a marked]to]market perspective, we believe that many asset classes (e.g., high yield bonds, REITS, or private equity) have a risk premium that originates from the same covariance with the state of the economy. Whether they should be considered as completely separate assets classes is, therefore, debatable. In fact, this question is specifically addressed by newer risk parity implementations, such as cluster risk parity and equal risk contribution.

For some asset classes, the very existence of a positive risk premium can be questioned. In the case

of commodities, for instance, the classical justification for a risk premium (i.e., Keynesf "normal backwardation") is nowadays dubious, as an increasing number of investors have been willing to take hedgersf opposite side. Roll yields, which had been the sole source of excess returns for commodities, have been centered on zero for the last 10 years.

For other asset classes, risk premium prospects currently look rather grim, the most obvious example

being Treasuries. If we look at 10]year Treasuries, their historical long-term return over short-term

rates has been around 1.6% since 1920. Since the early 1980s however, 10-year Treasuries have produced far higher excess returns (around 5%), as 10]year yields went from 15.8% to the current 2.5%.

Although there are only a few things about which we can be certain in finance, we can safely proclaim the mathematical impossibility of getting 5% excess returns by rolling 10-year treasuries over the next 10 years.

Therefore, because risk parity strategies always overweigh fixed income assets due to their low volatility, we can ascertain that this source of outperformance against conventional 60/40 allocations has dried up, even without invoking a gbig rotationh that would bring 10-year yields back to a theoretical long]term equilibrium value.

There are obviously many other sources of risk premia. However, most of them (liquidity‐based ones,

for instance) are the “bread and butter” of specialized hedge funds. Therefore, they are outside of the scope of risk parity, which is not a bad thing, as many of these arcane risk premia tend to display a very negative skewness.

Our main point is that, even if we consider a large universe of asset classes, it’s not as if there were dozens of investable and economically meaningful risk premia waiting to be harvested by passive investors. In the end, when we take into account the fact that many risk premia actually originate from the same basic sources, we might end up with just a few investable risk premia. Additionally, as more people reach for diversification, those few risk premia tend to become more correlated over time.

2.2. Leverage

One important point regarding returns resides in the fact that risk parity strategies generally involve

leverage—that is, unless the investor is satisfied with long‐term returns of 2 to 2.5% over the risk-free rate.

Risk parity practitioners generally characterize leverage as a mere “implementation tool”, and they

believe that their superior diversification outweighs the disadvantages of running a levered strategy.

Although a reasonable use of leverage might not be fatal to a portfolio, it can irremediably hurt its

returns. Indeed, as we will see in our section about risk, leverage introduces a path dependency issue.

We can very well imagine a “black swan” situation, in which a supposedly safe asset class experiences a price trajectory that forces a deleveraging of the portfolio and, therefore, wipes out a large chunk of it.

3. Risk

We believe that the subject of risk is the one wherein risk parity is the most open to criticism.

Indeed, to reach the gparityh in risk parity, one has to reduce the risk of an asset to a single number

one way or another (generally a specific variant of the assetfs volatility). Although it is not a very original point of view, we believe that the risk of an asset cannot be quantified in this simplistic way.

Despite the fact that there is a certain level of stickiness in an assetfs risk (or volatility), every now

and then, assets - even supposedly gsafeh ones - have the nasty habit of breaking the parameters of

the equations that are supposed to describe their behavior (especially if these equations do not take

into account skewness).

To illustrate this point with a little story, letfs imagine a situation that could very well have happened

during the last decade:

In the aftermath of the 2000s tech crash, John becomes yet another young unemployed electrical

engineer (as Taleb, the inventor of the Black Swan theory, likes to characterize most quants). He decides to start a new career by getting a masterfs degree in finance. Armed with his solid math skills, John quickly digests modern portfolio theory, basic statistics, and all varieties of volatility calculations. He finds a job at an institutional investor and quickly moves up the corporate ladder.

In 2006, John convinces his board to apply a risk parity strategy to manage the firm's portfolio. Because he has a fresh and open mind about finance, he decides to spice up the asset mix by adding an exposure to mortgage]backed securities in the form of newly-minted ABX indices.

Who could blame him, based on the information available in 2006?

- The total size of the US mortgage debt is huge ($13 trillion in 2006), comparable to US equities, and larger than government debt.

- ABX indices are highly diversified, as each index is based on 20 distinct RMBS transactions. Each RMBS containing a minimum of $500 million worth of homes, an ABX investor is exposed to more than 50,000 homeowners throughout the US. What can possibly go wrong with such a diversified pool of debtors?

- ABX products are rated by respectable institutions, such as Standard & Poorfs (1860) and Moody's (1909), and they offer a wide variety of risk levels (from AAA to BBB).

- The volatility of the underlying financial products that compose the index is minuscule (they always trade around par).

Even if John had opted to buy the safest AAA ABX tranches (with, consequently, a high allocation due to their glowh risk), he would have experienced heavy losses during the 2007-2008 crisis. Additionally, he would have been forced to drastically reduce his allocation to the asset class as the gtrueh risk (or volatility) of ABXs revealed itself, preventing it from benefiting from any subsequent recovery.

Consequently, given that he was running a leveraged portfolio, John would have been forced to crystallize his losses.

This story might sound far]fetched, but we could have invented a similar story about Georgios implementing a risk parity strategy for a Greek institutional investor by leveraging on domestic government debt.

Some might argue that both of these examples involve blatantly asymmetric assets, which could have

easily been filtered out (especially in retrospect) by an experienced risk parity practitioner.

However, we can also imagine a forward‐looking scenario that would involve one of the most respectable assets on earth ‐ US Treasuries ‐ as the main culprit of a risk parity carnage:

Let’s imagine that, a few years down the road, Bernanke’s successor has to manage another “great

recession”. This time, the Fed decides to go beyond QE by pegging long‐term rates at a very low level (let’s say 0.5% for the 10year).4

As the Treasury remains stuck at 0.5%, there is no more volatility on Treasuries.

According to the risk parity playbook, an investor should therefore increase his exposure to Treasuries alongside the Fed. In exchange for a minuscule return, the investor would, thus, face a substantial jump risk if the Fed had to apply a hurried “exit strategy” due to a surge in inflation…

From a broader perspective, we consider risk parity to be the antithesis of Minsky’s “financial instability hypothesis”. According to this view, investors increase their leverage when they believe an asset to be stable, which reinforces their belief that the asset is, indeed, stable (this is a perfect description of how risk parity investors behave in a given asset class). The cycle goes on until we reach the dreadful “Minsky moment”, where investors are forced to deleverage as the real risk of the asset reveals itself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 4 This solution was discussed by the Fed in late 2010, and it has already been experimented with
between 1942 and 1951.

 Conclusion

Due to the fall in government yields over the last 30 years, risk parity strategies have had an easy time compared to traditional asset allocations. We should therefore disregard all the performance]based arguments that are often put forward by the proponents of risk parity.

From a conceptual standpoint, although it might seem unfair to make generalizations about a strategy that exists in many different variants and implementations, we believe that risk parity suffers from many structural flaws:

1) Risk parity requires to make choices between many different implementation options, asset selection, calculation parameters etc. These choices necessarily contain arbitrary components and will have a significant impact on the strategyfs performance under different scenarios.

2) By placing diversification above any other consideration, risk parity portfolios can hold assets at (or even move assets toward) uneconomic prices. This problem is magnified as risk parity - or other approaches focused on diversification - become increasingly popular.

3) After all, risk parity’s quest for diversification might prove fruitless, as risk parity portfolios end up harvesting the same basic risk premia as traditional asset allocation (mostly the equity premium and the term premium), albeit at different dosages.

4) The leverage used by risk parity strategies makes them prone to deleveraging and, therefore, to crystallization of losses.

5) Risk parity’s false premise that risk can be quantified as a single number exposes it to highly 

asymmetric returns, which can happen to any asset class given the right set of circumstances.

If someone wants to run a passive asset allocation, we therefore believe that a market portfolio constitutes a better option from many perspectives: conceptual, foreseeable reward-to-risk and CYA.

For the same reasons, we strongly reject the idea that risk parity portfolios could represent an "all weather", quasi-absolute return strategy (we suspect marketing departments are the ones to blame for these outlandish claims).

There are certainly seasoned risk parity professionals out there who are able to mitigate risk parity's

numerous flaws. However, we have little doubt that when the next gblack swanh terrorizes the financial world (as seems to be the case on an increasingly frequent basis), we will witness the implosion of many risk parity strategies (those that are based on high leverage, overly simplistic assumptions on asset risks, and/or an unfortunate choice of underlying assets). Trusting risk parity to manage onefs life savings is therefore quite perilous, especially if it takes the form of a formula-based risk parity ETF - which should come out any day now.

That being said, the idea of a passive investment strategy that would be able to withstand any kind of financial weather is not unrealistic. However, its goal should be the long]term preservation of capital and not its theoretical maximization under a theoretical risk constraint. Additionally, the strategy should make very little use of leverage, and it should not make too many assumptions on the risk of a given asset (as risk becomes an unpredictable beast every now and then). In the end, we would probably end up with something quite similar to the Talmudic portfolio (N equally-weighted assets).

We realize that, without adhering completely to risk parityfs principles, many institutional investors

are implementing it as a part of their portfolio alongside other "absolute return" strategies. This approach is clearly less dangerous than an all]in commitment to risk parity. At a portfolio level, it simply results in overweighting low]volatility assets, which is obviously far-removed from the original purpose of risk parity.that is, true diversification at a portfolio level.

"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down." - Ray Bradbury 

Stay tuned!

Guest post - Global Financing Gaps and Credit Availability - Rcube Global Macro Research

"Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them." - Henry Ford 

Courtesy of our friends at Rcube Global Macro, please find enclosed their latest publication where Cyril Castelli and Stéphane Alloiteau look at Global Financing Gaps and Credit Availability:

As our readers know, we closely watch corporates financing gaps. To have a better view than the classical capex minus cash flows, we substract the net equity issuance to the formula, since positive equity issuance adds liquidity, and viceversa for shares buybacks. Whereas this changes significantly the picture in the US, where corporate behavior in their own equity is meaningful, it has less of an impact in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, to homogenize the statistical data we are now following it closely in most G10 markets.

In the US, where the data has been available since the 1970s, we have shown how the non-financial

sector financing needs explained with a lead bank lending behavior and thus corporate credit spreads. In the final years before the subprime fiasco, we showed how exploding financing needs (rising capex, massive shares buybacks combined with weaker cash flows) preceded a U-turn in bank lending behavior, which in the end triggered the bust. Very rapidly afterwards, corporates shut down investments, issued equities, while cash flows started to recover. As a result, financing needs collapsed. Banks, reassured by the improved financial health of companies eased their lending standards.

A similar path is visible in the Eurozone.

Currently, Eurozone non-financial corporations financing needs are quite low. Investment has plunged while gross savings have increased.

As a consequence the EU financing gap (adjusted for net equity issuance) is quite low by historical standards, which should, in the end, translate into easier lending standards.

Contrary to the US where the non-financial private sector deleveraging implies an Equity outperformance, in Europe this is not the case.

It is nevertheless important to take into account the fact that financings gaps as we measure them are flow based. And that places where they have improved most significantly recently are also the countries where the stock of non-financial corporate debt remains the highest. France non-financial sector is in a critical situation with the highest financing gap, weakest corporate margins, weakening leverage ratios (debt/operating surplus).

While credit availability is improving for large companies, we all know that SMEs access to capital is much more difficult in southern Europe. Nevertheless, the credit channel in the Eurozone continues to slowly normalize.

In last week’s ECB Lending survey, this normalization process is visible.

On the household front, the same can be said, with demand for real estate loans rising close to turn positive.

In the UK, the credit channel is strengthening further, with credit availability for both households and corporates recently spiking. Demand is also picking up. The BOE survey is by far both in terms of momentum and levels the strongest of all. 

The IIF has just published its quarterly Emerging Markets bank Lending Conditions Survey.

There, the results are more worrying. Following a sharp deterioration in funding conditions, the overall bank lending conditions index moved back below the 50 mark, meaning net tightening.

The sharpest deterioration happened in Asia, where the overall index reached the lowest level since the survey started in Q2 2011. Asia lending index is the lowest of all regions. AFME is now just above emerging Europe in terms of credit availability.

The survey highlights the recent underperformance of EM assets. The credit channel in emerging markets is tightening again. It was our belief earlier in the year that it would improve on the back of easier international funding conditions, monetary easing and stronger global growth momentum. We were wrong.

We are now waiting for the US Senior Loan Officer Survey to be released, but it is unlikely to add significant news flow. It will probably reveal a very healthy credit channel, which has now been the case for a while.

To conclude, it appears to us that, regarding bank lending behavior, we can look at the world in three segmented zones. The US, UK and Japan, where bank lending behavior is strong and strengthening, the Eurozone where it is healing and moving in the right direction and emerging markets (except AFME and emerging Europe) and Asia in particular where it is now tightening again.

"There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems." - Henry Ford 

Stay tuned!

Credit - Every Silver Lining has its Cloud

"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education." - Thomas Jefferson

Following up on our guest post from Rcube Global Macro Research, where our friends looked at the weakening global earnings momentum (except in Japan), we thought this week, we would take the contrarian approach given equities market seem oblivious to the gathering storm ahead, silver lining being the metaphor for optimism in the common English-language.

The origin of the phrase "Every Cloud has a Silver Lining is traced to John Milton's "Comus" (1634) with the lines:

"Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"

Indeed, as John Milton's 1634 Comus, it has all to do with deception we think. 

We touched on the subject of cognitive bias in our "Dunning-Kruger effect" conversation. Like any cognitive behavioral therapist, we tend to watch the process rather than focus solely on the content, therefore, we would tend to agree with our friends Rcube latest call on global weakening earnings momemtum.

As humans we posited in our previous conversations that we tend to suffer from optimism bias as indicated by the work of Tali Sharot:

"Humans, however, exhibit a pervasive and surprising bias: when it comes to predicting what will happen to us tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now, we overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events." - Tali Sharot - The optimism bias - Current Biology, Volume 21, issues 23, R941-R945, 6th of December 2011.

Not only do we suffer, from optimism bias, but we suffer as well from "deception" and we also all play "deceit" to some extent. We are all "great pretenders", some way or another. In similar fashion to the 1955 hit by the Platters "The Great Pretender", while the song described a man who deals with his heartbreak by denying it, we seem to be dealing with the "broken economy" (more so in Europe) by "denying" its reality, but we ramble again. For those of you who enjoy human's ability in practicing deception, like ourselves, we recommend the site "deceptology.com" dealing with its various forms.

In this week conversation, we would like to look at the negative trend in Spanish nonperforming loans, indicating Spain is tilting towards the adverse scenario which was used by Oliver Wyman in their Spanish banking stress tests. We will also look at the divergence in Central banks approach and the consequences as well on credit from a "loan" perspective. But first a quick credit and markets overview.

The story last week has clearly been some normalization following the explosion of the "Daisy Cutter", namely bond volatility as displayed by the evolution of the Merrill Lynch MOVE  index, which has been falling  - graph source Bloomberg:

MOVE index = ML Yield curve weighted index of the normalized implied volatility on 1 month Treasury options.

CVIX index = DB currency implied volatility index: 3 month implied volatility of 9 major currency pairs.

Therefore the receding volatility in the fixed income space has led to a significant rebound in High Yield as displayed by the price action in one of the most liquid and active ETFs in the High Yield space, namely HYG. Whereas its investment grade equivalent namely the LQD ETF has not rebounded significantly - graph source Bloomberg:

More interestingly the normalization in the credit space was accompanied by a significant tightening in Itraxx indices credit spreads, thanks to a more dovish tone from Ben Bernanke at the Fed. Therefore, not only credit investors have been enjoying some welcome respite for a fourth consecutive week, which has been the longest streak of gains since before the bond route drove yields to a nine months high in June according to Bloomberg, but, benefited from the re-opening of the new issue markets, with credit investors showing again their strong appetite. For instance Gazprom issued a benchmark bond with an initial price guidance of a 4% coupon 5 year (BBB rating) which attracted 5.5 billion worth of orders in the book from 450 different investors, leading to a lower revised guidance to a more reasonable 3.75% coupon at the launch.

Of course the dovish tones from both the Fed and the ECB have so far limited the surge of European Government Bonds yields as indicated in the below graph with German 10 year yields staying below the 1.60% level and French yields now around 2.16% - source Bloomberg:

As far as summer 2013, the on-going respite is indeed a different experience so far from the summer of 2011 and 2012, which saw a liquidity crisis for the first, followed the following year by a spike in peripheral bond spreads during the summer 2012 which was called-off by the "whatever it takes" stance which kept the "feral bond hogs" at bay for the rest of the year leading to 2012 being a spectacular year for credit returns, following closely the record "reflationary" year of 2009.

But, as we posited last week, and in accordance with this week's chosen title, every silver lining has its cloud, and as far as Europe is concerned, clouds are indeed gathering. Record basking temperatures might indeed lead us to some thundering storm ahead in Europe, looking at the unemployment issues particularly hindering the economic prospects for peripheral countries. One just has to glance at the Spanish "Misery" index to fathom the uphill struggle face by our European politicians - graph source Bloomberg:

The misery index is calculated by adding the 12-month percentage change in the consumer price index to the jobless rate. Arthur Okun, an adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, created the indicator in the 1960s.

As far as Spanish banks are concerned, the recent surge in non-performing loans (NPLs) is seriously raising questions again on the adequacy of their level of provisioning. Particularly if ones look at the continuous fall in Spain real estate prices - graph source Bloomberg:

From a starting point of a 100 in September 2007, Spanish prices are now down to 72.64, a fall of more than 28%.

Given that we are now in the middle period considered by the previous Oliver Wyman (OW) stress tests for Spanish banks one can indeed look at the trend for actual nonperforming loans (NPL) and the implication for Spanish banks loss absorption capacity. This exercise is exactly what Nomura has done in their recent note from the 19th of July entitled - "Spanish Banks - On the road for the adverse scenario?":

"Now that we are in the middle of the period considered by the Oliver Wyman (OW) stress tests, we compare actual non-performing loans (NPL) trends with the implied expected probability of default (PD). We estimate an adjusted NPL ratio in May 2013 of 19.5%, representing 55% of total expected 2014 PD in the adverse scenario of 35.2%. On a three-year horizon, the NPL trend is closer to the baseline scenario. However, without a relatively vigorous recovery in 2015, asset quality deterioration could continue beyond the timeframe of the stress test, which would make the current trend closer to the adverse scenario.

Non-recurring income to absorb continued deterioration of asset quality Capital gains from the debt portfolio and other asset disposals should allow the Spanish banks to absorb the continued asset quality deterioration and partially absorb the new provisions needed for restructured loans. We expect net interest income (NII) to reach the bottom this quarter in most cases, although we still see limited upside given the low interest rate environment and ongoing deleveraging.

Support from LatAm – not so much this quarter

Volatile FX and rising bond yields could add some additional headwinds to the earnings contribution from LatAm for BBVA and SAN this quarter (although more so for Brazil vs Mexico). We believe the revenue environment in Brazil remains weak, and given a deteriorating economic outlook, concerns about the outlook for asset quality could return. Although the economic outlook remains positive in Mexico, in our view, this quarter faces some pressure from rising NPLs (particularly from homebuilders).

Relative preferences

We remain negative on the Spanish banking sector. The expected continued asset quality deterioration, the potential impacts of removing mortgages floors, the additional provisions needed for restructured loans or the slowdown in some LatAm economies, are examples of the headwinds facing Spanish bank profitability. In relative terms, we prefer BBVA (Neutral) owing to our bullish medium-term outlook for Mexico and, among the domestic banks, CABK (Neutral) owing to its relative higher returns, and the recent measures announced regarding their international financial stakes, which will allow them to improve the capital position." - source Nomura

As far as nonperforming loans are concerned and in relation to Spain, clearly, the trend is not the Spanish banking friend as indicated by Nomura in their note:

"The OW stress test was made for a three-year period, starting at the end of 2011, so we are now in the middle of the period being considered. In Fig. 4, we compare the 2011 NPL ratio with the 2014 OW expected PD and the actual level of NPLs, adjusted and reported, at a sector level.

The reported ratio includes total sector NPL balances over total credit and loans, reaching 11.2% in May 2013. The adjusted NPL ratio also considers the sectors foreclosed assets, the assets transferred to the SAREB and other EUR 30bn of problematic assets, mainly restructured and substandard loans classified as performing, leaving the May adjusted NPL ratio at 19.5%.
The adjustment of EUR 30bn of problematic assets considers that around 50% of total sector restructured loans are NPLs instead of the 37% reported at the end of 2012. In our recent report, Better today than tomorrow, we showed how total sector restructured loans at the end of 2012 were EUR 208bn, representing 14% of private sector loans, of which EUR 43bn were classified as substandard, other EUR 88bn as performing loans and the remaining EUR 77bn were not performing. The Spanish banks are reviewing these portfolios in order to apply the new and more conservative classification criteria, which will increase the non-performing and substandard restructured loans balances. If we consider as problematic assets all restructured loans, the adjusted NPL ratio will increase from 19.5% to 25.5% for May 2013. Fig. 4 shows that the Spanish financial sector adjusted NPL of 19.5% in May represents 55% of expected 2014 PDs under the OW adverse scenario." - source Nomura

Nomura has also gone further in their report hand have looked at the trend in the on-going deterioration in asset quality:

"The OW stress test assumed a three-year period. However, we believe the economic outlook in 2015 is not clear and a further deterioration in asset quality is possible. In Fig. 6, we show the expected NPL ratios trends if the period was extended to four years instead of the three-year period considered in the OW exercise. In this case, the current adjusted NPL ratio of 19.5% is closer to the adverse scenario than the base one, which theoretically for a four-year period are 21.4% and 17.3%, respectively.

From a macroeconomic perspective, in Fig. 6, we compare the latest available forecasts for the Spanish economy with those considered in the OW stress tests. The IMF published its July World Economic Outlook update on 9 July, downgrading its 2014 GDP and unemployment forecasts for Spain. Its new forecasts now assume that the Spanish economy will not grow until 2015, and it expects a 2014 unemployment rate of 26.5%, which is 50bp above its previous estimate (although this is below the 28% forecast recently published by the OECD).

Although the IMF macroeconomic estimates are still below ours, the downgrades highlight the potential risks for the Spanish economy. We also consider as negative the ongoing political scandals about alleged corruption, which, considering what happened recently in Portugal, could also add more volatility and uncertainty to the country and the banking sector.
We remain negative on the Spanish banking sector. The expected continued asset quality deterioration, the potential impacts of removing mortgages floors, the additional provisions needed for restructured loans or the slowdown of LatAm economies in the case of the two large banks, are some examples of the challenging outlook for the Spanish banking sector and the potential additional negative impacts." - source Nomura

Of course we would have to agree with Nomura, in this case the trend is indeed not your friend and regardless of the "silver lining" of some credit returns, there are indeed some clouds gathering on the horizon. While the ECB has recently tweaked its collateral framework as additional policy support, as part of the intent towards re-launching the ABS market to improve SME funding conditions, we think it is too little, too late and that the credit transmission mechanism has been broken in Europe, leading to a surge in bankruptcies as well as unemployment.

As an illustration of this broken credit transmission mechanism, one can only look at the below graph from Nomura relating to loan growth in Italy to get a clear picture of the damages inflicted to the real economy:

Loan growth? What loan growth?

No wonder the story separating the US economy from the European economy is a credit story. For instance we have been looking on numerous occasions on the price action of the  US Leveraged Loans market versus the European Leveraged Loans market. Comparing market fundamentals between both regions from a credit perspective is paramount in order to gauge the potential growth outcome for the two regions we think. Morgan Stanley in their recent Global Leveraged Insights from the 19th of July and entitled "Game of Loans: US vs Europe" look at these differences:

"Comparing Market Fundamentals: European loans have lower average ratings, higher trailing default rates, and a more challenging loan maturity wall, relative to the US. However, given a much more ‘issuer-friendly’ environment in the US, cov-lite volumes are higher, LBO leverage is greater, and levering transactions are more prevalent.

Technical Strength, but for Different Reasons: The US has been a story of strong demand, thanks to substantial fund inflows and strong CLO issuance. In Europe, positive technicals have been much more a story of low net supply." - source Morgan Stanley

As we posited in May this year in our "Chart of the Day - Too many European banks and why the deleveraging has only just started", the impact of credit growth in Europe is seriously impaired by the on-going deleveraging leading to a vicious deflationary spiral in the European space. It is therefore not a surprise to learn from Morgan Stanley's report the importance in Europe for banks in the loan market:

"Differences in the Investor Base: Banks continue to account for a much larger share of the Europe loan buyer base. As we show in Exhibit 2, banks’ share of the primary market for loans has shrunk over the last decade in both the US and Europe. But banks still account for 50% of the European loan market compared to just 13% in the US." - source Morgan Stanley.

Of course there are as well some quality differences:

"Differences in Credit Quality: The average credit quality of the two markets also differs. Whereas the US loan market is split almost evenly between BBs and Bs, the European loan market is clearly skewed towards Bs (66%), with only 17% BBs. It is notable that this difference in credit quality is almost the exact opposite of what is seen in the US and EU High Yield bond markets, where Europe has a much higher average rating. Investors should keep this quality differential in mind when comparing headline spreads and yields." - source Morgan Stanley

The growth differentiation between the US and Europe is no doubt to us a question of supply in credit:

"Weak Supply Story in Europe, Stronger in the US: In 1H 2013, the US loan market absorbed $267bn in gross institutional issuance, nearly matching levels last seen in the 1st half of 2007. The mix of this issuance, however, is much different today. In 2007, LBOs accounted for 36% of issuance, compared to 10% in 1H13. The majority of gross issuance today is still for refinancing. Subtracting repayments, net issuance for the US loan market was a more manageable $92bn in 1H13, compared to $181bn in 1H07. While stronger 2H growth in the US could lead to more corporate activity, and in turn net issuance, our base case is that supply remains manageable in the US near term.

In Europe, supply has been more muted. From the second half of 2009 through the 1st quarter 2013, LTM leveraged loan net supply was negative, and has only turned positive (just under €1bn) in 2Q13. An important reason for low supply in Europe has been bond-to-loan refinancings. 1H13 EUR high yield bond issuance was €48bn, just slightly below the total for 2012 – the highest year on record. By our estimates, 27% of this issuance has been to refinance bank debt and unlike previous years, concentrated (60%) in single-Bs that tend to dominate the loan market. Naturally, this trend has led to lower issuance of loans and as a result, soft demand has been outpaced by even softer supply. There are, however, tentative signs of revival in the loan market, and we do expect net supply to remain positive in Europe." - source Morgan Stanley

But even for the US, every silver lining has its cloud given the fast pace of credit releveraging and surge in covenant quality trends as highlighted by Morgan Stanley in their note:
"New Issuance Trends – More Worrying in the US
However, not everything looks better in the US from a fundamental perspective. Covenant quality trends in the US have been particularly worrying. Year to date 51% of US loans have been cov-lite — a far higher share than the previous peak in 2007. Although the share of cov-lite issuance is high in Europe by historical standards, it is miles behind that of the US.

Across both markets, new issuance has primarily been used to refinance outstanding debt. US issuance has had a somewhat more shareholder friendly tone, with 15% of proceeds used to fund dividends or share buybacks compared to just 6 percent in Europe. New LBOs also make up a larger share in Europe, although this is predominantly a result of lower overall issuance levels." - source Morgan Stanley

For sure, the buy-back frenzy, has no doubt been more "equity" friendly and definitely more worrying from a credit investor's perspective, making the US market therefore more attractive as of late.

On a final note, "housing bubbles" thanks to cheap credit and hot inflows has no doubt been exported to Emerging Markets when one looks at the cost of housing in Columbia, so much for a post-bubble world... - gaph source Bloomberg:

"Anyone presuming financial markets are in “a post-bubble world” might have a different view after looking at the cost of housing in Colombia, according to Yale University Professor Robert J. Shiller.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows how a home-price index compiled by the South American country’s central bank compares with the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller price gauge for 10 U.S. cities from seven years earlier. Colombia’s index focuses on Bogota, Cali and Medellin, the three largest cities. Both indicators
have been adjusting for inflation. 
“I was not expecting a bubble story when I visited Colombia last month,” Shiller wrote yesterday in a commentary posted on the Project Syndicate website. “People there told me about an ongoing real-estate bubble.” 
Home prices in Colombia have increased 69 percent in real terms since 2004, according to the posting. The gain recalled a 131 percent surge in the 10-city index from its 1997 low to its 2006 peak, he wrote.
Falling inflation and interest rates largely explain the Colombian market’s strength, Shiller wrote. Consumer prices rose in February at the slowest pace since 1955. The central bank cut the overnight lending rate seven times in the past year, and the current 3.25 percent rate is Latin America’s lowest.
Shiller also cited a diminished threat from a Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, that has been active for half a century. The government has held peace talks with the guerrillas, known as FARC, since October. “That is a good enough story to drive a housing bubble,” the New Haven, Connecticut-based economist wrote." - source Bloomberg

"Every silver lining has a cloud." - Mary Kay Ash

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