Markets Ain’t What They Used To Be...

How markets have evolved over the past decade. pic.twitter.com/zrR5StdqzE

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Mongolia plans to issue first sovereign bonds

The money has not yet come in, but the debt has already started...

Mineral-rich Mongolia plans to issue first sovereign bonds - FT.com

Mongolia plans to issue its first sovereign bonds this month, marking a milestone for capital markets in this resource-rich democracy.

The newly created Development Bank of Mongolia will issue $700m in sovereign bonds to fund lending programmes...in areas that include infrastructure, industry, energy and roads. 

the issuance would take place in tranches beginning this month, with the first slice likely to be $100m.

The bond will be in tugrik, the Mongolian currency, which has appreciated by 1.6 per cent against the dollar since January.

investment in the mining sector has soared in the past two years along with global commodities prices.

Government revenues from the mining sector are set to jump next year as the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine comes online, and politicians in Ulan Bator are looking for ways to manage the coming influx into state coffers.

The Development Bank is being set up with training from the Korean Development Bank and the Development Bank of Japan. 

yields on the bonds could be quite low, perhaps 6-8 per cent.

Mongolian sovereign debt has a B1 non-investment grade rating from Moody’s

Read the full article here: FT.com / Capital Markets - Mineral-rich Mongolia plans to issue first sovereign bonds

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Ex-Goldman programmer gets 8 years for code theft | Reuters

Ex-Goldman programmer gets 8 years for code theft

6:50pm EDT

By Grant McCool
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) computer programer was sentenced to eight years in prison on Friday for stealing secret code used in the Wall Street bank's valuable high-frequency trading system.
Sergey Aleynikov, was arrested by the FBI and charged in July 2009 with copying and removing trading code from Goldman before taking a new job at Teza Technologies LLC, a high-frequency trading startup firm in Chicago.
A onetime collegiate-level competitive ballroom dancer, Aleynikov, 41, was convicted of trade secrets theft and transporting stolen property across state lines on December 10 after a two-week long jury trial in Manhattan federal court.
High-frequency, computer-driven trading has become an important and competitive business. The software codes that trade shares in milliseconds are closely guarded secrets.
"I very much regret the foolish thing of downloading information," the Russian-born father of three said at his sentencing on Friday. "Part of this information was proprietary to Goldman. I never meant to cause Goldman any harm or harm anyone at the bank."
Aleynikov's words fell short of U.S. District Judge Denise Cote's hopes for "an open and honest statement of responsibility" for his criminal conduct.
"You did not do that," said Cote, imposing a sentence of 97 months that was within the eight to 10 years recommended by the government. Cote also fined him $12,500.
Aleynikov's lawyer, Kevin Marino, had originally asked for a sentence of probation but in court on Friday he suggested two years was adequate for what he called Aleynikov's "foolish, tragic, horrible, ridiculous mistake."
Aleynikov has the right to appeal the sentence. His defense lawyers have argued that the matter belonged in civil, not criminal court.
U.S. prosecutor Joseph Facciponti said the stolen code was Aleynikov's "golden ticket" to Teza and "he stood to make millions more" there than he did at the bank. Facciponti said Aleynikov spent several months planning his move, eventually transferring 500,000 lines of Goldman Sachs source code to an outside server.
Cote had revoked the bail of Aleynikov, a dual citizen of the United States and Russia, on the grounds that there was a risk of him fleeing before sentencing.
Throughout the trial and sentencing phase, many comparisons were made with a similar case in the same courthouse against a former Societe Generale (SOGN.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) trader, Samarth Agrawal.
The citizen of India was found guilty by a jury last November of stealing high-frequency trading code from the French bank before going to a new job. On February 28, a judge sentenced him to three years in prison and he will be deported when he completes his sentence.
The case is USA v Aleynikov, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-00096.
(Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Ex-Goldman programmer gets 8 years for code theft | Reuters: "Ex-Goldman programmer gets 8 years for code theft

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Is AGF (Canada) the next takeover target?

Is AGF the next takeover target?

Financial Post | Business » Trading Desk
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 02:57 PM
Author: Jonathan Ratner  

While a takeover of AGF Management Ltd. appears unlikely in the near future, it is not impossible. In the wake of Bank of Nova Scotia's acquisition of DundeeWealth Inc., a growing realization of the need for size and scale in the asset management space may force AGF to at least consider its options, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Geoffrey Kwan.
He upgraded AGF to Outperform from Sector Perform and boosted his price target to $20 from $18, reflecting an 7% increase in 2011 and 2012 earnings per share forecasts.
"As one of few remaining potential 'partners of size' following DundeeWealth's sale, AGF shares may have additional upside potential above our $20.00/share 12-month target in the event it is able to realize strategic value," Mr. Kwan said in a note to clients.
He believes AGF shares are attractively valued trading at a significant discount to the fund company peer group. The analyst also anticipates that AGF shares will benefit more than others as a result of greater exposure to equities in its asset under management base as the macro environment gradually improves and equity market conditions remain healthy.
Mr. Kwan said net redemption trends could be improving, and although AGF's fund performance is below its peers, this has improved in the past few months. "We believe fund performance relative to peers is a leading indicator for future net sales," he said.
So what does Bank of Nova Scotia's planned takeover of DundeeWealth mean for CI Financial Corp?
Scotiabank remains committed to its relationship with CI (it owns a 35% stake in Canada's third-largest fund manager) and a complete takeover at some time in the future, according to BMO Capital Markets analyst John Reucassel. However, he said the timing has probably been pushed out a couple of years.
"While asset management is an attractive business because most of the activities are conducted off balance sheet, acquisition of asset managers can be onerous from a bank capital perspective," Mr. Reucassel said in a research note.
He explained that mutual fund company balance sheets are overwhelmingly comprised of goodwill and intangible assets, which when consolidated, must be fully deducted (under Basel 3) from common equity to calcultate capital ratios. Therefore, digesting acquisitions of both DundeeWealth and CI could strain Scotia's capital ratios.
Based on similar multiples to the DundeeWealth transaction, the analyst noted that CI could be valued at $26 to 28 per share, plenty of upside from its current level.
Jonathan Ratner

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Gold Will Outlive Dollar Once Slaughter Comes: John Hathaway - Bloomberg

Gold Will Outlive Dollar Once Slaughter Comes: John Hathaway

By John Hathaway - Oct 28, 2010

Bloomberg Opinion

The world’s monetary system is in the process of melting down. We have entered the endgame for the dollar as the dominant reserve currency, but most investors and policy makers are unaware of the implications.

The only questions are how long the denouement of the dollar reserve system will last, and how much more damage will be inflicted by new rounds of quantitative easing or more radical monetary measures to prop up the system.

Whether prolonged or sudden, the transition to a stable monetary system will become possible only when the shortcomings of the status quo become unbearable. Such a transition is, by definition, nonlinear. So central-bank soothsaying based on the extrapolation of historical data and the repetition of conventional wisdom offers no guidance on what lies ahead.

It’s amazing that there is no intelligent discourse among policy leaders on the subject of monetary rot and its implications for the future economic and political landscape. Until there is fundamental monetary reform on an international scale, most economic forecasts aren’t worth the paper on which they are written.

Telltale signs of future trouble aren’t hard to spot. Only a few months ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and a chorus of other high-ranking Fed officials were talking about exit strategies from the U.S. central bank’s bloated balance sheet and the financial system’s unprecedented excess liquidity. Now, those same officials are talking about pumping more money into the system to stimulate growth.

Risky Targets

And they’re not alone: Six months ago, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, suggested that raising inflation targets to 4 percent from 2 percent wouldn’t be too risky.

This sort of talk must grate on the nerves of our trading partners, China, India, Russia and others, who have accumulated pyramids of non-yielding Treasury debt. No haven there. Return- free risk may be a better way to put it. And bickering among central bankers over currency manipulation and rising trade tensions doesn’t exactly reinforce one’s confidence in a scenario of sustained economic growth and a return to prosperity.

The prospects for an orderly unwinding of the extreme posture of global monetary policy are zero. Bernanke, Jean- Claude Trichet and Mervyn King, his counterparts in Europe and the U.K. respectively, are huddling en masse upon the most precarious perch in the history of monetary affairs. These alleged guardians of monetary stability, in their attempts to shore up the system, have simply created the incinerator for paper money. We are past the point of no return. Quantitative easing may well become a way of life.

No Freak Occurrence

The consensus investment view seems to be that the credit crisis of 2008 was a freak occurrence, unlikely to repeat. That is wishful thinking. Monetary policy has painted itself into a corner. Based on our present course, there will be more bubbles and more meltdowns.

Financial markets and institutions sense trouble, as reflected in the flight to supposedly safe assets such as Treasuries and corporate-debt instruments with paltry yields, as well as the reluctance to lend by commercial banks. We are stuck in an epic liquidity trap. The irony is, if global central banks succeed in creating inflation, the value of these safe assets will be destroyed. It is a slaughter waiting to happen.

In the pedantic mentality of central bankers, their playbook creates just the right amount of inflation. As inflation accelerates, consumers will spend to get rid of their dollars of diminishing value and spur the economy. Once consumers start spending, it will be time to raise interest rates because a solid foundation for prosperity will have been established, they say.

Slender Thread

But whatever the playbook promises, the capacity of financial markets to overshoot can’t be overestimated. The belief among policy makers and financial markets in the possibility of this sort of fine-tuning is preposterous, but it is the slender thread on which remaining investment and business confidence rests.

The breakdown of the monetary system will be chaotic. When inflation commences, it will be highly disruptive. The damage to fixed-income assets will seem instantaneous. Foreign-exchange markets will become dysfunctional. The economy will become even more fragile and unpredictable.

Gold is an imperfect, but comparatively reliable, market gauge for the extent of current and future monetary destruction. The recent acceleration in the dollar price of the metal to $1,381, a record high in nominal terms, coincided with talk of a new round of quantitative easing and highly visible discord among major nations on trade and currency-valuation issues.

Naysayers’ Bubble

Naysayers point to gold’s price and see a bubble, without understanding that the only acceleration that is taking place is in the rate of decline of paper currency. The Fed is organizing an attack on the dollar’s value, believing that this is the most expedient way to defuse deflationary market forces. The man in the street is unaware, a perfect setup. Inflation can only be successful when the public doesn’t see it coming.

The sudden torrent of commentary on gold isn’t the sign of a bubble. Anti-gold pundits provide a great service to those who grasp this historical moment: They facilitate the advantageous positioning of the one asset most likely to be left standing when the dust settles.

(John Hathaway is a managing director of Tocqueville Asset Management LP in New York. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: John Hathaway at JHathaway@Tocqueville.com

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

®2010 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Gold Will Outlive Dollar Once Slaughter Comes: John Hathaway - Bloomberg

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On Tomorrow's Secret Meeting To Plot The End Of High Frequency Trading | zero hedge

On Tomorrow's Secret Meeting To Plot The End Of High Frequency Trading

By Tyler Durden

Created 10/03/2010 - 17:35

Published on zero hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)

The SEC's "definitive"(ly worthless) report on what happened on May 6^th was a dud, and was nothing more than a distraction-based smear campaign against Waddell and Reed (an experiment in which we can only hope W&R participated involuntarily): a firm which did something that was completely in its right to do. But is this unexpected? After all had the SEC confirmed that it is indeed HFT who is responsible for a broken market structure, it would have effectively destroyed itself: if and when the SEC does indeed confirm that the entire market topology over the past 5 years has been hijacked by young and pustular math Ph.D.'s with fast computers, the implications to fair markets would be orders of magnitude worse than the fallout associated with the Madoff scandal, and could serve as grounds for the unwind of the SEC itself, which would have to explain why it has been avoiding calls against HFT impropriety for years. So in a sense Mary Schapiro's conclusion is nothing less than a lass desperate act of self preservation. Which however means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Tomorrow, as the WSJ [1]reported a week ago, the Investment Company Institute, better known to Zero Hedge readers as the guys who track the now permanent weekly outflows from capital markets, is holding a secret meeting in which some of the participants "are determined to push for a plan to restrict high-frequency trading" (furthermore, the ICI was rather pissed about this particular leak, implying that things are really serious). While the SEC may have declared a market structure truce, and is peddling its usual worthless solution of circuit breakers (more on this below), actual market participants have had enough of seeing their profits plunge and seeing HFT extract more capital out of the market than the much maligned ten years ago market makers and specialists ever did.
More from the WSJ [1]on the dilemma facing the "whales" -traders who trade in blocks which are orders of magnitude larger than the typical (lately) trade size of 100 to 300 shares:

Using powerful computers and data feeds, high-frequency trading firms typically hold stocks a few minutes and sometimes only a few seconds at a time, churning roughly half of total stock-market volume. Whenever you—and your mutual fund or pension plan—buy or sell a stock, one of these fast-trading firms is likely to be on the other side of the trade.

The problem? While some fund leaders have praised high-frequency trading for making markets more efficient, others contend that the profits earned by fast traders may come partly at the expense of ordinary investors.

Mutual funds and other giant investors are often forced buyers and sellers. When money comes in they must buy stocks; when it goes out they must sell. Their typical buy or sell order is roughly 185,000 shares. Yet the average trade size on U.S. exchanges is only about 100 to 300 shares.

So institutions trade in dribs and drabs. A giant buy order would push up a stock; a huge sell order would knock it down. "Would you leave $100 in cash on the street corner and hope nobody takes it, or would you hide it in your pocket?" asks Andrew Brooks, head of U.S. equity trading at T. Rowe Price. "Information about our order flow is valuable, and we need to protect it."

Yet order flow leakage and anticipation is precisely the key issue behind the great battle currently raging between HFTs and slow money: algorithms constantly seek and find new way to predict if a small block is closed or if there are millions of shares lying in wait behind it, forced to transact at any price. Themis Trading's Joe Saluzzi has discussed this issue extensively before, for example in this article in Advanced Trading [2] magazine, in which he notes that implicit costs associated with constant order frontrunning by HFTs, "have been rising and hurting pension and mutual fund performance. Even the most sophisticated buy-side quantitative funds are also experiencing higher trading costs, as their models are also being spotted and taken advantage of by their highspeed, high-frequency trading cousins."
The WSJ explains this phenomenon as follows:

Any institutional order for a couple hundred shares can have thousands or even millions of shares behind it. A fast trader that can infer which orders were placed by a big institution gains an insight into how stock prices may be about to change. Whoever gets there first stands to make a tiny profit on each of those trades.

Some of the larger exchanges are now fighting back with all they have - starting tomorrow the NYSE is now instituting a small way to throw a wrench in the HFT spokes: selective order ID elimination.

Direct data feeds supplied to fast traders by several major exchanges have customarily included an "order ID"—a kind of tag that, according to several traders, may assist a fast trader in deducing whether a large institution lurks behind a small order. Starting Oct. 4, the NYSE Arca exchange will give customers the option of having these IDs removed from its direct data feeds on orders they don't want displayed to the whole market.

Traders say the absence of the ID may itself alert rapid traders to the presence of a large, hidden order. "Without the order ID, we don't think anyone could map the order to any other information to divine that it is part of something larger," responds Ray Pellecchia, an NYSE Euronext spokesman.

Another exchange, recently known for doing pretty much anything to win order flow, and thus permitting all sorts of alleged shady practices to take effect on it is BATS, which chimes in on another practice known as "partial post only at limit."

Or consider a type of trading order called a "partial post only at limit." Here, if a fast trader's small buy order is rejected instead of executed, the firm can deduce that a large block of shares may lie hidden in reserve, poised to sell at a given price. Thus a trader may be able to get information without executing the trade. Clever use of this order type can increase the trader's odds of being in the right place at the right time—capturing a splinter-thin, lightning-fast profit before the institution can move.

Chris Isaacson, chief operating officer at BATS Exchange, the third-largest U.S. stock market, downplays such concerns. "This order type is rarely used and would be very complex to implement for the purpose of detecting a large order on the other side," he says. Such a trader "would have to be willing to take considerable risk."

Which is why, since the SEC refuses to get involved, starting tomorrow, all readers should immediately notify their brokers to stop allowing their orders to be Flashed (a topic extensively discussed last summer and which is still continuing with the SEC's blessing) if they have not already done so (as this implicitly allows non-qualified orders to be front run), and to stop trading with any exchange with either has no idea what this is, or refuses to comply. More importantly, brokers should also be advised to drop all order IDs tagging each and every individual order. Since the HFTs front run stock blocks based on a statistical distribution of tagged versus untagged orders, the only hope of equalizing the playing field is if every single order is now untagged, thus fooling HFTs into believing that there is large money sitting in the bid behind the order. Granted, this may force prevailing prices higher for the time being, but the end result will be a faster divergence from market equilibrium, which eventually, when the balance inevitably reasserts itself, will force the vast majority of HFTs to be blown up once there is a market correction and the computers are caught with artificially dollar-cost average inflated prevailing prices. In other words: open war on HFTs has been declared, and since regulators refuse to stand on the side of the small and long-term investors, it is time to form a unified block against the HFT scourge.
And while we are once again (as always) discussing the SEC's terminal incompetence, we wish to present one last time, just what happened on Friday in the LQD flash crash, courtesy once again of Nanex. Note the dubious absence of Waddell and Reed:
Chart 1, which demonstrates what exchange(s) the rogue algo originated from: note the PACF repeater and BATS stubbing all the way down:
[3]
Chart 2, which shows the actual LQD trades:
[4]
Chart 3, which confirms that the PACF had the BBO all the way down. Once again, no W&R
[5]
Is it thus any wonder the industry itself is now ganging up against HFT? We believe that now that HFT is scapegoated by real money accounts for all P&L problems and otherwise, its days are effectively numbered. Which is why as the HFT world enters its death rattle days, expect markets to be even more unpredictable and volatile than ever... and of course, to ultimately break as usual.

• Capital Markets
• Circuit Breakers
• High Frequency Trading
• Joe Saluzzi
• New York Stock Exchange
• NYSE Euronext
• Stop Trading

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Source URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tomorrows-secret-meeting-eliminate-high-frequency-trading

Links:
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703793804575511990102886132.html#articleTabs=article
[2] http://www.themistrading.com/article_files/0000/0587/081010_AdvancedTrading2.pdf
[3] http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/shirakawa/LQD 1.png
[4] http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/shirakawa/LQD 2.png
[5] http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/shirakawa/LQD 3.png

On Tomorrow's Secret Meeting To Plot The End Of High Frequency Trading | zero hedge

Rio’s sights fixed on Ivanhoe and Mongolian mine

By William MacNamara
Published: September 22 2010 22:15 | Last updated: September 22 2010 22:15

Rio Tinto is creeping its way towards control of Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines at a slow but relentless pace, drawing investors’ attentions away from a multi-billion dollar mining transaction that could be as significant for Rio as Canada’s PotashCorp looks to be for BHP Billiton.
Over the past six months a conflict has erupted between Rio and Ivanhoe, developers of a new copper project in Mongolia that many analysts consider to be one of the best in the world. With a stake in Ivanhoe that rose to 35 per cent last week, Rio can feel confident that it is best placed for an eventual takeover. It has invested more than $1bn in Ivanhoe and its Oyu Tolgoi mine since 2006.
But under Robert Friedland, the legendary mining entrepreneur, Ivanhoe has been making plain that Rio’s money will not buy its love. It has engaged investment bankers to assess “strategic options”. Over the summer it pushed through a shareholder rights plan, otherwise known as a poison pill, to protect against what it calls “coercive and creeping takeovers”.
The markets are giving credit to Ivanhoe’s manoeuvres. One London-based analyst ascribed the performance of its share price, which hit a 12-month high above C$22 on Wednesday, to investors’ intrinsic faith in Mr Friedland’s “wiliness” and record of coming out ahead.
The Toronto-listed shares have stayed elevated since July when the company adopted the poison pill, causing Rio to launch arbitration against Ivanhoe. It cancelled a restriction against selling more than 5 per cent of its shares to a strategic partner. But despite Ivanhoe’s much-advertised search for alternative options all year, no third-party offer has materialised. “This is completely in keeping with Robert’s personality,” said one banker who has worked for Ivanhoe. “He wants the best deal for his shareholders. He wants to make sure that Rio does not have a 100 per cent stranglehold on his company.

Kicking off Mongolia mining fever

Ivanhoe’s Robert Friedland is a legend in the mining industry. The superlatives he enjoys range from “best entrepreneur” to “biggest genius” to “luckiest stiff”.
This last tag refers to his big break in the 1990s. Mr Friedland was a large investor in an exploration company called Diamond Fields Resources. In the course of exploring for diamonds in Canada’s Labrador province the company struck a motherlode deposit of nickel. The company’s sale to Inco netted Mr Friedland a fortune that helped him launch Ivanhoe.
In 2000 Ivanhoe took over an exploration programme in Mongolia, then an unpromising mining zone, from BHP Billiton. Ivanhoe spent several years proving that the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold deposit is one of the biggest and world’s best new sources of copper.
Mr Friedland evangelised the promise of Mongolia to investors with his Steve Jobs-like knack for the grand narrative. He laid the groundwork for the Mongolia fever that has swept the mining industry since Oyu Tolgoi won government approval in October 2009.
An early convert to his vision for Oyu Tolgoi was Tom Albanese, currently chief executive of Rio. In 2006 Mr Albanese headed Rio’s copper and exploration division, and he led the deal that created the Rio-Ivanhoe partnership. Both men appear to have an affinity for Oyu Tolgoi.
They also are known to be personally friendly in spite of the widening rift between the two companies. Over the summer Mr Albanese stayed at Mr Friedland’s home in Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital.
Ivanhoe and Oyu Tolgoi stand to be the most important venture of Mr Friedland’s career. That, say some, is why this owner of 20 per cent of shares wants to ensure a good outcome. Seeing the project through and possibly selling at a premium might also expunge his reputation as Toxic Bob, a name he earned in 1993 when one of his early gold projects leaked cyanide, causing an environmental disaster.

“He has gotten hundreds of millions of dollars from Rio so far,” the banker continued, “but the [Oyu Tolgoi] copper deposit is clearly worth billions.”
Rio’s rigid agreements with Ivanhoe, which owns 66 per cent of Oyu Tolgoi, may give the Canadian miner less flexibility than is appreciated. In 2006, when its Mongolian project carried heavy political risk, it agreed a financing deal with Rio that essentially gave the Anglo-Australian miner a path to ownership that it could exercise in 2011. Over the years Rio has released project financing in return for tranches of equity. Over the past year it has raised its stake from 19.7 per cent to 34.9 per cent. In Canadian law there is no level above which an shareholder must make a bid for the full company.
Rio’s agreements with Ivanhoe, however, stipulate a maximum stake of 47 per cent until October 2011, when a “standstill agreement” preventing takeover moves lapses.
It is toward that October 2011 date that both companies are hurtling, amid attempts to outmanoeuvre each other. Ivanhoe has pushed back the date of the standstill agreement by adopting a poison pill. So far the companies have not yet agreed on a Canadian arbitrator to hear Rio’s request that the defence be struck down.
Today the Oyu Tolgoi mine is taking shape in a bleak area of Mongolia’s south Gobi desert. Mongolia has become one of the world’s leading frontiers for metals and mining, largely because its rich deposits of copper and coal lie so close to the border of China. Oyu Tolgoi’s strategic position has led to speculation that Ivanhoe could find a white knight in a state-owned Chinese company.
But the 2006 agreement gives Rio right of first refusal over any offer made from a third party. This places Ivanhoe in the dangerous position of offering its shares to a bidder, only to see Rio pre-empt and possibly move to immediate control of the company. Ivanhoe’s best tactic, said one person involved in the 2006 deal, may be to find a bidder whose offer is so high that Rio cannot follow.
“Whether all this momentum is leading to anything all depends on if Robert Friedland finds his $40 [per share] man,” the person said, referring to an offer of C$40 per share compared with Thursday’s price of about C$20 per share.
Chinalco, the Chinese state-owned aluminium producer, is one potential bidder for Ivanhoe, as it is attempting to diversify out of aluminium. Chinalco, however, is also Rio’s largest shareholder. That raises the possibility that Chinalco would be more likely to join with Rio to take control of the group than pay a high premium to buy Ivanhoe on its own.
“There aren’t that many players who can play,” said one Canadian banker familiar with both companies. “This project is about the big boy miners and governments. It’s about countries as big as China and companies as big as Rio or BHP. The permutations are very small.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

FT.com / Companies / Mining - Rio’s sights fixed on Ivanhoe and Mongolian mine

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Market Still Deluding Itself That It Can Escape The Inevitable Dénouement

 Until we face up to the reality of the economic landscape before us, we will be on the same path as Japan, 1987-present...

Market Still Deluding Itself That It Can Escape The Inevitable Denouement 
By Albert Edwards, Société Générale, London
 

The current situation reminds me of mid 2007. Investors then were content to stick their heads into very deep sand and ignore the fact that The Great Unwind had clearly begun. But in August and September 2007, even though the wheels were clearly falling off the global economy, the S&P still managed to rally 15%! The recent reaction to data suggests the market is in a similar deluded state of mind. Yet again, equity investors refuse to accept they are now locked in a Vulcan death grip and are about to fall unconscious. The notion that the equity market predicts anything has always struck me as ludicrous. In the 25 years I have been following the markets it seems clear to me that the equity market reacts to events rather than pre-empting them. We know from the Japanese Ice Age and indeed from the US 1930's experience, that in a post-bubble world the equity market merely follows the economic cycle. So to steal a march on the market, one should follow the leading indicators closely. These are variously pointing either to a hard landing or, at best, a decisive slowdown. In my view we are poised to slide back into another global recession: the data is slowing sharply but, just like Japan in its Ice Age, most still touchingly believe we are soft-landing. But before driving off a cliff to a hard (crash?) landing we might feel reassured when we pass a sign that reads Soft Landingand we can kid ourselves all is well. I read an interesting article recently noting the equity market typically does not begin to slump until just AFTER analysts begin to cut their 12m forward EPS estimates (for the life of me I can't remember where I read this, otherwise I would reference it). We have not quite reached this point. But with margins so high, any cyclical slowdown will crush productivity growth. Already in Q2, US productivity growth fell 1.8% - the steepest fall since Q3 2006.Hence, inevitably, unit labour costs have begun to rise QoQ. This trend will be exacerbated by recent more buoyant average hourly earnings seen in the last employment report. Whole economy profits are set for a 2007-like squeeze. And a sharp slide in analysts' optimism confirms we are right on the cusp of falling forward earnings (see chart below). I love the delusion of the markets at this point in the cycle. It bemuses me why investors cannot see what is clear as the rather large nose on my face. Last Friday saw the equity market rally as August's 67k rise in private payrolls and an upwardly revised July rise of 107kbeat expectations. But did I miss something? When did we switch from looking at headline payrolls to private jobs? Does the fact that government is shedding jobs not matter? Admittedly temporary census workers do mess up the data, but hey, why not look at nonfarm payroll data ex census? Why not indeed? Because the last 4 months run of data looks notably weaker on payrolls ex census basis than looking only at the private payroll data (ie Aug 60k vs 67k, July 89k vs 107k, June 50k vs 61k and May 21k vs 51k). But these data, on either definition, look dreadful compared to the 265k rise in April and 160k in March (ex census definition). If someone as pathologically lazy as me can find the relevant BLS webpage after a quick call to the BLS (link), why can't the market? Because it is bad news, that's why. August's rebound in the US manufacturing ISM was an even bigger surprise. This is a truly nonsensical piece of datum as it was totally at variance with the regional ISMs that come out in the weeks before. The ISM is made up of leading, coincident and lagging indicators. The leading indicators - new orders, unfilled orders and vender deliveries - all fell and point to further severe weakness in the headline measure ahead (see chart above). It was the coincident and lagging indicators such as production, inventories and employment that drove up the headline number. Some of the regional subcomponents (eg Philadelphia Fed workweek) are SCREAMING that recession is imminent (see left hand chart below).   The real reason why markets reversed last week was that they got ahead of themselves. Aside from the end of 2008, government bonds were the most over-bought they had been over the last decade. And in equity-land the AAII two weeks ago recorded a historically low 20% of respondents as bullish (see chart above). These technical extremes will now be quickly worked off before the plunge in equity prices and bond yields resumes. I am often asked by investors with a similar view of the world to my own (yes, there are some),whether the equity market will ever reach my 450 S&P target because of the likelihood that further Quantitative Easing will prevent asset prices from falling back to cheap levels. Indeed we know that a central plank of the unhinged policies being pursued by the Fed and other central banks is to use QE to deliberately target higher asset prices. Ben Bernanke in a recent Jackson Hole speech dressed this up as a "portfolio balance channel", but in reality we know from current and previous Fed Governors (most notably Alan Greenspan), that they view boosting equity and property prices as essential for boosting economic activity. Same old Fed with the same old ruinous policies. And by keeping equity and property prices higher, the US and UK Central Banks are still trying to cover up their contribution towards the ruination of American and British middle classes - (see GSW 21 January 2010, Theft! Were the US and UK central banks complicit in robbing the middle classes? - link). The Fed may indeed prevent equity prices from slumping with any QE2 announcement. But this sounds a familiar refrain at this point in the cycle. For is monetary easing in the form of QE that different from interest rate cuts in its ability to boost equity prices? Indeed announced rate cuts in previous downturns often did generate decent technical rallies. But in the absence of any imminent cyclical recovery, equity prices continue to slide lower (see chart below). The key for me is whether QE2 can revive the economic cycle, not equity prices temporarily. In the absence of a cyclical recovery I cannot see how QE is any different in its ability to revive asset prices than lower rates in anything other than a temporary fashion. (Interestingly many of our clients think QE2 might give a temporary fillip to the risk assets but that the subsequent failure to produce any cyclical impact will cause an extremely violent reaction as investors lose faith in QE as a policy tool and Central Banks in general.) If we plunge back into recession, do not place too much confidence in the Central Banks having control of events. As my colleague, Dylan Grice, said last week "let them keep pressing their buttons." Ultimately they cannot fool all of the investors, all of the time.

The MasterBlog: "It's Not A Market, It's An HFT 'Crop Circle' Crime Scene" - Further Evidence Of Quote Stuffing Manipulation By HFT | zero hedge

The MasterBlog: "It's Not A Market, It's An HFT 'Crop Circle' Crime Scene" - Further Evidence Of Quote Stuffing Manipulation By HFT | zero hedge

FT.com / Companies / Banks - Daiwa buys KBC capital markets unit

FT.com / Companies / Banks - Daiwa buys KBC capital markets unit

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