Tag Archives: yellow metal

Its All Greek..A RareView View…

As the events in Greece escalate to a frenzy, global macro strategists are lining up to opine on what might happen as the EU and the world calculate the impact of a Grexit. MarketsMuse tapped into one of the industry’s most thoughtful strategists and one who is notorious for having both ‘sight beyond sight’ and inevitably, a view that is rare when compared to those who position themselves as “opinionators.”  Without further ado, below is the extracted version of the 29 June edition of “Sight Beyond Sight

Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
  • Key Talking Points…What People Are Watching…Major Asset Prices
  • US Fixed Income – Choke Yourself If  You Believe in 2 Rate Hikes in 2015
  • China – Correction Accelerates Government Learning Curve & Possibly IPO Reform

 

We started working early yesterday morning, spending time on the phone with as many risk takers as possible around the world and listening in on numerous bank conference calls on the unfolding events. Additionally, we felt compelled to watch our screens all night. At the time of writing, we have not actioned one item in our model portfolio and are nowhere near able to aggregate the thoughts of the risk takers we respect or the market commentary we received from anyone who writes research for a living. The fact is there is no coherent sentence to write. The dust has yet to settle, and until it does, no one can claim to know what will happen.

Despite all of this market plumbing being very visible, and even after the Greece referendum news on Friday, the probability of a disorderly financial reaction due to its consequences has only risen to ~40% from 20% or less based on what we can gather. Leaving last week many held the view there was a 50-50 probability for a resolution with a bias for a positive outcome.

Now let’s go through the asset classes and products, and ask how they will perform. For ETF players, our lens is on GREK, FXI, HEDJ and necessarily, SPY. For those looking for an immediate take-away trade with regard to the overwhelming Greek-infused chitter chatter and jibber jabber, think $GLD. In this case, our view, which we have espoused for more than 15 minutes, might or might not be  ‘rare’, but its one we can hang our hat on…

Prudent risk management says that the overriding exercise now is to take risk down regardless of your bias on the outcome. Resolution strategies are a distant second place and with US employment Thursday followed by a three day weekend that includes this Greek referendum, that makes this scenario that much more likely.

In terms of Greece, many are watching/waiting for the ECB reaction function to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA), which is scheduled to be revisited on Wednesday. As a reminder, the events in 2012, in which there was a large spike in the ELA program assistance as a result of Greece, was the catalyst for the now famous “do whatever it takes” speech by ECB President Mario Draghi. Ironically, the three-year anniversary of that speech is coming up shortly and there is no question professionals want to see Draghi re-ignite the European recovery trade. Our point is that faith in him being a steward of the market remains unwavering and he is still the only person perceived as the class act in this goat rodeo.

If we had to pick one asset that we all were led to believe mattered in the context of a “Grexit” over the last five years, and that was supposed to react to that event, it would be Gold. It should be up $50 at a minimum and yet it can barely hold a bid. If you feel bad for the citizens of Greece, then please save a little sympathy for the Gold terrorists at the failure of the yellow metal to respond today. Next week, if things get worse, and gold still fails to respond, that could be the final nail in their coffin. At least there will be one good outcome to the whole sorry saga. Continue reading

Black Gold v. Yellow Metal: Macro-Strategy Perspective

As if it were a segment in “Orange is the New Black,” the price correlation between Crude Oil (aka Black Gold) and the Yellow Metal continues to swing like a chandelier in a windy mansion. Below extract courtesy of Neil Azous, from today’s a.m. edition of Rareview Macro’s Sight Beyond Sight summarizes the current correlation in a crisp way…

Neil Azous, Rareview Macro LLC
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro LLC

There are two assets being watched closely right now – Brent Crude Oil and the Euro Exchange Rate.

Firstly, Brent Crude Oil is showing the largest negative risk-adjusted return in Commodities. This morning, the “barrel” has broken through yesterday’s low and overall has now retraced over 50% of the Iraq/ISIS move higher seen in June. Below is a regression analysis between Brent Crude Oil and Gold for three time periods related to Iraq/ISIS: Before, Height, and Current.

Gold was trading at its lower point on June 2nd and the correlation (i.e. red asterisk on chart) to Brent Crude Oil was negative. On June 19th, the correlation was the most positive when Brent Crude Oil was at its highest level. Today, the correlation is on the cusp of swinging back to negative territory. We highlight this because the same pattern has been seen before, with the height on March 14th and after the Ukraine-Russia crisis. And what happened next? Gold dropped by -10% over the next 45 days.

By the way, it was reported that assets in the SPDR Gold Trust (symbol: GLD) rose +1.4% to 796.39 metric tons in the two sessions through yesterday. To put that in context, that is the largest two-day gain since November 2011 and it is just one example of the new found retail length in Gold. The other was in CFTC futures positioning which professionals use to gain exposure. Continue reading