Tag Archives: EU

Europe’s deal on Greek debt

October 27, 2011 By in Current Market Thoughts, economics, Portfolio management, Recent Market Action, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the Greek sovereign debt deal

Europe appears to have reached another milestone in its circuitous journey toward resolution of its twin debt crises–Greece and its banks’ unknown, but presumably very large, exposure to sub-prime mortgage debt.

Yesterday’s development is that commercial banks in the EU have agreed to “voluntarily” agree to forgive half the amount the Greek government owes them and write down the value of their Greek sovereign debt by 50%.

Although sharply higher stock prices in Asia, Europe and in pre-market trading in the US signal investor relief, I don’t think it’s particularly surprising that the banks would accede to the wishes of their governments to do so.  For one thing, defying your central bankers is never a good idea.  But in this case agreement brings tangible advantages to the banks as well.

Press reports have made it clear that, earning once again their reputation as the world’s ultimate “dumb money,” the big EU commercial banks had enabled hedge funds to bet heavily on a Greek default by taking the other side of hundreds of billions of euros of credit default swaps.  So the banks would be facing mammoth losses if Greece defaulted and they had to pay off.

But the EU has found what it considers a loophole in the language of the CDS contracts. Technically speaking, it argues, if creditors “voluntarily” forgive a portion of Greece’s debt–which they have just agreed to do–that action doesn’t count as a default; the CDS payoffs aren’t triggered.

Maybe this interpretation is sound, maybe not.  But it’s what the EU is going to do.  National regulators will certainly order their banks not to pay any CDS claims.  Hedge funds can sue.  Litigation would doubtless be long and expensive, however.  And it would provoke the ire of EU politicians, who might find ways to make litigants’ lives more difficult in other areas.

So the bank agreement appears to make the threat to bank solvency of their CDS exposure go away.

what I make of the EU situation

To my mind, resolution to the EU financial crisis has three possible outcomes:

1.  The Greece et al sovereign debt crisis spins out of control–causing the failure of one or more major banks, a run on the euro and a collapse of the EU political structure.  While this is going on, we discover that one of the now-defunct institutions has a crucial, but hitherto unappreciated, role in world commerce.  So the global economy comes to a screeching halt, just like it did after the Lehman bankruptcy.

There’s no evidence there’s an EU Lehman and it’s hard to believe the world would shoot itself in the foot a second time.  On the other hand, the EU has shown itself particularly ill-suited to deal with a financial crisis.  recent trading show clearly that global equity investors have been worried about this possibility, but I regard Lehman II as about as unlikely as you can get.  It’s even less likely today.

2.  Same as #1, except no Lehman.  That is to say, a big banking failure paralyzes the EU.  Most of the economic damage is domestic.  There are ripple effects elsewhere, but they’re not gigantic.

It seems to me that today’s news is also the start of taking this worry off the table.

how important is the EU?

Sizing the problem in the most simple-minded way (all I’m capable of), the world economy is divided about 50-50 into emerging and developed markets.  Half the developed part is the US and another 5% is the UK.  That leaves 20% for Euroland.

Suppose banking failure(s) caused a severe recession in the euro area.  Real output drops by 5%.  That would reduce total world output by 1% (5% x .2), and developed world output by 2%, in the year following the blowup.  factoring in ripple effects, the developed world would stagnate; the developing world would power along, but a bit more slowly.  The whole world would grow at, say, 2.5% next year instead of 3.5%-4.0%, if the blowup happened now.

…something you’d like to avoid, but not such a big deal.

As surprising as this thought may be to Americans with cultural roots in Europe, Euroland is no longer big enough to matter that much to overall world growth, except in extreme circumstances.

True, Europe has a lot of accumulated wealth–which we’ve seen on display, I think, in the periodic panic selling that has marked the past few months.  But it’s too wrapped up in what looks to an outsider like petty regional politics to focus on getting GDP to expand.  And much of the rest of the world is passing it by.

3.  The financial crisis is addressed, the banks recapitalize and the EU begins to heal its wounds, following the general trajectory of the US economy with a three-year lag.  Dreary as it sounds, I think this is both the most favorable and most likely case.

equity implications

Not much different from what I’ve been writing for a long time.  In cases #1 and #2, equity investors would be better off not holding EU-listed securities and should shade their other holdings away from companies with a large percentage of their business in the EU.

In case 3, it’s safe to dip a toe in the water.  But growth outside the EU will likely be much better than growth inside.  So the relative winners will be EU-listed firms with large exposure to foreign markets.  In a non-recessionary EU, these stocks stand to be winners on the world equity stage as well, since EU investors will likely concentrate heavily on them.

more on “discounting”

September 25, 2011 By in Current Market Thoughts, Discounting, Portfolio management, Recent Market Action, Strategy, Technical Analysis, Trading Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

discounting

“Discounting” is the jargon that Wall Street uses to describe the process of factoring changes in consensus beliefs about future happenings into today’s stock prices.  I’ve outlined the basics of discounting in an earlier post.

fundamental vs. technical analysis

Fundamental analysis, the study of company-specific and economy-wide economic and financial information, and technical analysis, the study of charts, can be seen as two approaches to discounting.  In the first case, researchers try to figure out what information is most important for making a security’s price go up or down, and then actively search for relevant data.  In the second, investors study chart patterns as a way of figuring out what fundamental analysts are doing and then riding on their coattails.

the internet

The internet has changed the amount, quality and cost of information in dramatic fashion. For example:

–When I was building an international equity investing organization for a major financial institution in the early 1990s, it cost about $300,000 a year in today’s dollars to get access to all corporate SEC filings.  The data came on microfiche and was available about six weeks after the documents were filed.  Today, the information is free on the SEC’s Edgar website; documents are available the instant they’re filed (companies do this electronically).

–Thanks to regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), company presentations are routinely webcast and are available through the company website.  Typically, they’re archived for at least a year.  True, breakout sessions at conferences, small group meetings or one-on-ones aren’t, but these mostly serve to fill in the blanks for analysts not familiar with a firm.  Companies may sound like they’re revealing new information, but they’re not.

–A Bloomberg terminal still costs $30,000-$50,000 a year, depending on its capabilities.  But discount brokers offer most of what an individual investor needs to their customers on their websites for free.

discounting and Greece

Discounting isn’t a one-time event.  It’s a process.

1.  For one thing, what’s painfully obvious to a seasoned observer or an industry specialist may only dawn on the average investor a considerable time later.

2.  Also, bad news that relates to a specific event is typically not fully discounted until the event occurs–no matter how far in the future that may be.  The financial crisis in Greece is a good example.

A year ago, a new administration in Athens revealed that the country had been falsifying its national accounts for many years.  Greece had taken in less in taxes and also spent a lot more than it had ever revealed.  How so?  Its membership in the EU had allowed it to borrow much more than it could ever repay.

For at least six months, it has been clear that either the rest of the EU will be forced to pick up the tab and let Greece remain in the EU, or that Greece will default and lose its EU membership.  In default, holders of Greek sovereign debt would lose most of their money.  But, since that’s mostly big EU banks which might need government bailouts as a result, the effect is basically the same.  EU taxpayers ultimately foot the bill.

Over recent months, however, EU stock markets–and the financials, in particular–have been subject to periodic waves of selling, driving prices ever lower, as investors express their fears about Greece.  …despite the fact that in general terms everyone has already read the closing chapter of the story.

This pattern of discounting the same news over and over again is typical.  It begins in denial (inadequate discounting) and may end in despair (overdiscounting), the same emotional pattern that shapes a bear market.  While bear markets end in a whimper sometimes, however, discounting that anticipates a discrete event usually involves a final selling bout as the event actually occurs.

Over the weekend, the G-20 seems to have given the EU an ultimatum to resolve the Greek crisis quickly.  We’ll see tomorrow how the markets react.

Juergen Stark quits the European Central Bank and stocks sag: why?

September 12, 2011 By in Banks, Current Market Thoughts, Industry Analysis, Recent Market Action, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

resignation last Friday

Jürgen Stark, a respected and politically-connected economist representing Germany on the ECB, resigned from that body’s board on Friday at about the time US markets opened for trading last Friday.  You can see the sharp drop in stocks that followed the announcement of this news.  Why?

some background

1.  Deeply scarred by the hyperinflation of the Weimar years after WWI, Germany has always been the strongest advocate of price stability (i.e., no inflation) in modern Europe.  Unlike the US, which is willing to accept a moderate amount of inflation (currently the upper bound is 2% or less–and we wish it could get that high) in return for faster GDP growth, Germany is willing to sacrifice almost any amount of growth to maintain stable prices.

As a result, Germany has traditionally acted as the economic “policeman” of Europe, enforcing sound fiscal and money policy rules and acting as a lightning rod to deflect local political criticism in the rest of the EU for governments taking unpopular but necessary economic actions.

Mr. Stark’s resignation from the ECB for “personal reasons” –but apparently in protest over the ECB’s decision to prop up the finances of weaker EU member states by buying their bonds–suggests the ECB is deciding/has decided to break with the traditional no-inflation-first policy stance.

2.  Mr. Stark is the second German official to resign from the ECB in recent months.  In February, Axel Weber resigned as head of the German central bank and withdrew from consideration to head the ECB–apparently with similar concerns to Mr. Stark’s.

3.  The Stark resignation may cause enough political fallout inside Germany to force the Merkel government to say openly whether it approves of ECB actions.  So far, Germany has been pretending it doesn’t see the drift away from the traditional German policy stance and just, little by little, letting the drift continue.  I’m not an expert on internal German politics.  But it doesn’t seem clear whether Germany would back Ms. Merkel vowing unconditional support for a Greek bailout–meaning German taxpayers would foot a large part of the bill.

stock market reaction

World financial markets are acting as if the Stark resignation is the tipping point that will force the EU to stop hoping the problem disappears and confront the fact that Greece can’t service the large amount of euro-denominated sovereign debt it has amassed since joining the EU.

possible solutions

In general terms, two approaches to resolution are possible:

–the German price stability mentality holds.  If so,

Greece will be allowed to default.  Holders of Greek sovereign debt, including big EU banks which are stuffed to the gills with these bonds, will suffer large losses.  The problem with this solution is that the markets will just turn to the next country with wobbly finances–Portugal or Spain–and the whole destabilizing question of bailout or not arises anew.  Look at the Asian debt crisis of 1997 if you don’t think so.

–the EU as a whole assumes responsibility for the sovereign debt of weaker members.  There’d have to be some mechanism for ensuring that a repeat of their debt expansion doesn’t happen.  To the stronger countries’ eyes–and certainly to Germany’s–this has to look like a rerun of the reunification of the two Germanies after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  A decade of economic stagnation followed.  So this solution (which I think is more likely) probably also entails a bias toward a weaker euro and tolerance of a bit of inflation.

what do investors do?

Solution 1 is bad for Greece, and bad for banks and other financials that hold Greek debt.  It might just shift the focus of worry away from Greece to Portugal or Spain.

Solution 2 is bad for the less-indebted EU members and bad for the euro.

The intersection of the bad-ness is the financial companies in the less-indebted EU countries.  So for traders, selling them is a no-brainer.  Even if these stocks are the epicenter of weakness–and they have been so far–arbitrage tends to drag everything down.  So just selling anything in the EU is a close second choice.

If there’s any silver lining to the selling, it’s that it may force a resolution to the Greek debt issue.  A sharp market decline may provide the political cover EU authorities feel they need before they act in a way that could threaten their ability to be reelected.  Also, as the selling exhausts itself, there may be an opportunity to pick up the stocks of well-run EU-based multinationals at a cheap price.

 

 

 

more problems from Greece

June 27, 2011 By in Banks, Current Market Thoughts, Industry Analysis, Recent Market Action, Securities regulation Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Last week, the new Greek finance minister tried to renegotiate the bailout plan the country had agreed to with the rest of the EU, by suggesting weaker austerity.  After that overture was rebuffed, the Greek government–the one that revealed the prior administration had been falsifying the national accounts for years, triggering the current crisis–was found to be preparing legislation for a necessary parliamentary vote that incorporated the weaker austerity measures the EU had rejected.  Apparently, Greece was planning to ratify the weaker terms and then present the rest of the Eu with a fait accompli.

Now it appears the Greek government may not have the votes to pass any austerity plan.

It’s hard to know which side to have sympathy for–Greece, which merrily used its EU membership to run up bills it knew it never could pay, or the rest of the EU, which fudged its membership criteria to get  Greece in and which seems to have known what Greece was up to, but just underestimated the extent of the fraud.

I think the EU has two objectives:

–it wants to avoid having its banks forced to write down the Greek government bonds they’re stuffed to the gills with; and

–it wants to avoid setting a precedent that Ireland and Portugal, if not Italy and Spain, could reasonably expect to follow.

Greece, on the other hand, seems to fully appreciate the maxim that if you owe $20,000 to the bank you’re in trouble; if you owe $200 million, the bank is in trouble.

Today’s development is that large French banks have “voluntarily” proposed to roll over much of their Greek debt for thirty years, while reducing interest and reinvesting a large part of the coupon payments into new Greek sovereign debt.

A wildcard in these proceedings is credit default swaps–how large, who owns them and what are the precise terms.  History tells us that Continental European banks tend to be the ultimate “dumb money,”  which would lead to the surmise that there are a lot of CDSs and European banks are on the losing side in case of default.

The burning question, then, would be about the terms.  Let’s say the EU as a whole reaches an internal agreement about Greek debt that it believes solves the problem without requiring the banks to write down any of their Greek bondholdings.  What happens if the rating agencies declare that despite this legal paper shuffling, the solution is in fact a default.  Does this trigger the credit default swaps?  My experience says “Yes” is probably the correct answer, but I don’t know.

It seems to me we’re entering the final innings of the game.  The outcome is still in doubt, and no one is leaving the ballpark.

From an equity investing point of view, I think the negative effects of an ugly outcome to the Greek situation will be felt mainly in European financial companies and in firms doing most of their business in Europe.  A good portion of the ugliness has to already be discounted in global stock prices.  Still, this is an issue to watch carefully to make sure the ripples don’t spread far wider than one might expect.