Free Money Side Effect: Corporate Debt Leverage Now at Record Highs

Typically, companies leverage out their balance sheets during times of durress. Although the past few years has been anything but stellar for the economy, it has been growing. What’s particularly unusual about the amount of debt issuance is that it’s coming at a time when growth is abundant, which makes the fall that much more onerous–whenever it may come.

For the year of 2015, company share buy backs and dividends topped 1 fucking trillion dollars. Although that number is set to decline in 2016, the numbers are still staggering.

Corporate bond sales surpassed $1t last week for the fifth consecutive year. Collective debt now stands at a record 2.4x earnings.

“The investment-grade ‘safe’ part of the market is becoming the most dangerous,” said Ashish Shah, chief investment officer at AllianceBernstein LP. “There are so little returns out there. People are crowding into whatever they can.”

Total corporate debt has grown 10% per annum since 2009 and +16% in 2015. Simultaneously, EBITDA dropped by 4% during 2015.

Most of the issuance is occurring in the energy and healthcare sectors, where fuckheads run around like chickens without heads, buying back their own stock instead of investing in their businesses. The result has led to the sharpest decline in productivity in decades.

Between the growing debt bombs in both China and the United States, the global economy will need to grow a lot in order to ease the burden that is being applied to corporate balance sheets.

Also, U.S. Federal Debt is on the cusp of topping $20 trillion.

There weren’t many places to hide today, with 90% of stocks lower for the session. Gold, Silver and other commodities were the big dogs for the day, all encumbered with harrowing losses, some in the double digits. REITs sold off and everyone is panicked over a Fed rate hike. Meanwhile, the people who actually control the Fed’s decisions are only giving a 24% chance for a September hike and 57% chance for one in December. Lots of fuckery can happen from now until December, when horrible retail sales will likely rear its ugly head.

Two things to take into account.

1. We are overdue a correction and September is the most likely time for it to happen, being the worst month for stocks historically.

2. The market isn’t pricing in political risk or even remotely taking into account that the Fed is intending to hike rates, or jawbone about it, at a time when recent economic data is suggesting the economy is weakening.

This tone deafness out of the Yellen Fed is something of a hallmark for her. I used to joke on the Twitter about her partaking in podiatrist appointments, or eating clubbed sandwiches, while the world burned. Somethings never change. Unlike Dr. Benjamin Bernanke, who used to lamp up in his dimly lit office at the Federal Reserve, smoking joints and enacting big balled Fed policy to save the world–because he was a hero, Yellen is much more comfortable with trying to justify her existence and incessantly worrying about the inflation boogeyman–who was killed a long time ago.

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to join the league of gentlemen in Exodus, for an oversold signal might be right around the bend.

The Fed merely discussed the option of hiking rates and the market threw itself into a lit fireplace, wrapped in flammable outer garments. Unbeknowst to Yellen’s Fed, apparently, their bosses (the stock market) are saying there is only a 24% chance of a hike in September and a 57% chance of it happening in December.

Bear in mind, the Fed has NEVER hiked rates without the probability being at 100% beforehand. Ergo, there isn’t a chance in red fucking hell that the Fed will hike rates and live to talk about it.

Ellen Zentner, Chief Economist at Morgan Stanley, thinks the Fed is ‘itching to move’, mainly to justify their existence on the planet Earth. But, ultimately, will bend to the caprices of the market and back the fuck down.

WTI was down more than 3.5%, after people did the math and figured out a potential Saudi oil freeze pales in comparison to the increases being placed on the supply side by a number of fellow terrorist sponsored countries.

The Third Estate are enduring hideous losses in a most fastidious fashion this afternoon. Like their predecessors lost before them pressing their luck into an inexorable circumstance, the vast majority of trulls infecting Twitter today, with their inane banter, will succumb to the pangs of detrimental and irreversible loss. Their bones will be broken and their marrow sapped by blood sucking vampires who feed off the weak. Lucky for all of you, “The Fly”  is a vampire killer, raised from birth to defeat the dark forces of man, protect the addled from speeding his/her wheeled chairs into deep and unforgiving crevasses.

History is replete with men who’ve been extricated from this game of play. Bear in mind, golden age thinking is the number one enemy of the future. We must forge ahead and create a new world, hopefully one without garrulous shit talkers, prattling about Twitter with mechanized rebuttals for all of the harrowing issues facing the world today. While the rosed colored glasses make things look good, it’s all a facade and only serves to undermine people–falling into a false sense of security that will inevitably lead to a most heinous demise.

From hog butchers to Goldman Ball Sacks, a courrection is coming (Extra Debert Grady), offering all a Hobson’s Choice that will clean the streets of talking potatoes and mollified whores of Babylon.

Have a great weekend!

After feeling the heat from his own progressives, banning a picture that could very well be used to promote anti-war activism or a keen awareness of the fuckery of man, Zuckerberg reversed his decision and will not permit historically important picture that do not plod along with his view of the world.

“We recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time,” the statement reads. “Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal.”

Indeud. Mr. Hansen from Aftenposten has dispatched the socially awkward tyrant at Facebook.

Sometimes making a big fucking deal about things can make a difference.

The sell off is intensifying as the day progresses. The losses in the NASDAQ are reaching -100 and the Dow more than 250.

The events over the past 2 weeks culminated in rudderless morons using the markets as their personal ATM machine. The history of Wall Street is built upon the broken bones and dreams of the canaille, the new money actors who bore a resemblance of an active day trader using his rent money to finance his pseudo high lifestyle. Anything that is easy is usually a fake. If you believed markets could spiral higher indefinitely, you forgot the most important rule when playing this game.

The house wants you to lose.

Keep your eyes on gold, dollars, crude and treasuries. Stocks are overdue a kinetic response to the downside. Brace yourselves for a grande finale, which entails rolling men in wheel chairs off ramps into deep and unforgiving crevasses–starting at 3:30pm!

The yield curve is widening today, which is providing succor to the banks. Remember, they’ve been surviving off saltine crackers and repurposed salt water for the past 5 years. Should rates go up, their margins will expand. Should H. Clinton get elected, their clout will spread like the mist in the movie The Fog.

As a result of both Draghi declining to extend the ECB’s QE, and hawkish comments out of Fed’s Rosenberg, bonds are getting hit, globally. I believe this was coordinated to get Europe out of the negative rate mud hole they were stomped into.

German bunds are now positive yielding, miraculously.

Also, in spite of the fact that the Dow is off by almost 200, most banks are outperforming.

We can make a few deductions from this price action.

1. This sell off is controlled and within the realms of reason.
2. Banks are in a position, both here and in Europe, to make more money with higher yields.
3. Markets aren’t forecasting an economic slowdown, otherwise the banks would be diving.
4. Traditional safe havens, like bonds and gold, aren’t safe today. As a matter of fact, BAC is safer.

5. The primary driver for lower treasuries is lower bunds. The two are intermingled. The bond sell off started yesterday, following Draghi’s comments, not today.

It’s a slow Friday afternoon, so I won’t read too much into it. Just keep your eye on the dollar, for it possesses the power to single handedly make a giant mess out of global trade and FOREX markets. Should you start to see buying enter the bond and gold markets, at the same time markets dive lower, then we have a real problem. Unless otherwise, this is a standard milling about the edges of the market sell off that is more likely to be viewed as constructive than destructive, even though I’d greatly prefer the latter.

Understand the set up here. A Fed hike itself shouldn’t be a concern, but what comes after it. For example, will a stronger dollar cause HIBOR to keep blowing out, amidst renewed capital flight from China? Or will the strong dollar begin to cause issues in both commodity markets and US exports? That won’t happen until after the rate hike, if it’s coming at all.

This is all about Rosengren’s speech, who notoriously is a dove.

JP Morgan believes the Fed is purposely backing themselves into a corner.

“I think the key thing here is Eric Rosengren’s speech,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds. “I think they are trying to box themselves into a corner where they have to raise rates in September in order to maintain credibility.”

“If the market does sell off in anticipation of a rate hike, I think it will recover pretty quickly,” Kelly added, noting a rate hike would ultimately be seen as a vote of confidence for the economy.

The result of these new Fed fears is sharply lower equities and bonds. I’ve always said longer duration bonds shouldn’t be affected by Fed policy. But TLT is getting hit today, for the second day in a row. I believe this has more to do with German bunds soaring in yield than the specter of a hike.

The usual suspects are pronounced today: lower gold, oil etc, higher dollar and volatility.

My bear thesis has always been contingent upon two things.

1. China unraveling.
2. Credit defaults in the energy space.

Fed hikes actually help towards those two headwinds gaining steam. I’m hard pressed to believe they’d be so stupid as to upset the apple cart, unless of course they’re trying to disrupt things on purpose.

It’s worth noting, my Exodus inspired ‘Fuck France‘ call ended up on the right side of the trade.

I wore my XENOPHOBE robe before I sat down to write this article.

The globalization of American industry isn’t confined to just manufacturing, but social media too. We all know the pivotal role Twitter played in allowing radical Islamists seize power in the Middle East, through their ‘Arab Spring’ offensive. But I bet most people didn’t know India will soon pass the US in FB users, many of which are likely fake accounts created to inflate their numbers.

Currently, two thirds of Facebook’s 1.7b users are from ’emerging markets’ or the shittiest parts of the world.

According to eMarketer, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Philippines are the fastest growing countries for Zuckerberg’s tyrannical warehouse of misfits.

“From a monetization perspective it’s still dominantly the U.S. but from a long-term opportunity perspective it’s definitely emerging-markets,” Charlie Wilson, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based managing director at Thornburg Investment Management Inc., said in an interview in New York.

That’s very true, Charlie Wilson. See, like big Pharma and a sundry of US based companies doing business abroad, they still make the bulk of their profits siphoning off the rotting corpse of America. After these vampires have laid waste to us and taken all they could, they would’ve already built gigantic businesses abroad and America would, essentially, become the new emerging market or shittiest place in the world.

Alas, the circle of life (takes XENOPHOBE robe off).

Rosengren was smoking the good stuff before today’s speech, where he said, with a straight face, the Fed should start hiking rates or risk hurting the economy because it was overheating. Lolz.

Maybe he should take another gander at the ISM data?

He added that “a failure to continue on the path of gradual removal of accommodation could shorten, rather than lengthen, the duration of this recovery.”

Continuing.

“My personal view, based on data that we have received to date, is that a reasonable case can be made for continuing to pursue a gradual normalization of monetary policy.”

Overall, Rosengren sees the silver lining where others might see weakness. He is warning of asset bubbles, most likely to be found in real estate and stocks, suggesting that if the Fed fails to take away the punch bowl now, all of you stupid little fuckers out there might get drunk and crash into ravines.

“I expect some continuing drag from foreign activity,” Rosengren added. “But underlying domestic strength is likely to be sufficient to engender continued improvement.”

Commenting on risks to the outlook, Rosengren noted the presence of global concerns but said that “market indicators have so far provided little evidence of outsized risks.”

However, Rosengren cautioned that an overheated economy – one that significantly exceeds sustainable output and employment – would pose risks to maintaining full employment over time.

History shows the difficulty of slowing the economy to a sustainable rate without going too far and causing a recession.

Rosengren noted that waiting too long to tighten could lead to conditions that require more rapid increases, risking a more pronounced slowing of growth and rise in unemployment. It may also allow some asset markets to “become too ebullient,” and he reiterated previous concerns over commercial real estate prices.

“The risks to the forecast are becoming increasingly two-sided, in my view,” Rosengren explained. “Weakness emanating from abroad poses short-term downside risks to the domestic U.S. economy,” yet there are also “longer-term risks from significantly overshooting the U.S. economy’s growth.”