FAA Pops On AMR Bankruptcy

American Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection today and shares of AMR, its parent company, took a nose dive, plummeting 84% to 26 cents, as it too declared bankruptcy.

The third-largest airline, in terms of traffic, whined that it couldn’t compete with the other big U.S. airlines, because they had all cut costs by declaring bankruptcy at least once during the last decade, while American had not.

However, the entire airline industry has been funk due to higher fuel prices and an lagging economy that leaves many consumers taking fewer flights. The industry’s troubles can be seen in the 40% decline in the Guggenheim Airline ETF (FAA).  Not that this should be any surprise. A year ago, I basically declared the industry had peaked in my story Flying High With Airline Stocks.

Surprisingly, the ETF jumped 22 cents to $25.25 on Tuesday because other airline stocks popped. It appears American’s woes could be a boon for the rest of the industry as they take over some of its routes. This move is a good example of why ETFs are better investments than single stocks. Not only did the ETF’s diversified portfolio protect it against AMR’s troubles, but by holding the entire industry, the ETF registered a gain.

Zacks says the ETF is worth watching as the bankruptcy plays out and the competitors move in on its hubs. But I think you should just stay away. Oil prices will continue to hurt airline income statements. Not to mention the potential fallout from the European debt crisis.

ETF Outflows Topped $2.5 Billion Last Week

ETFs posted net outflows of $2.5 billion last week, a period during which the S&P 500 fell 4.7%, says Morgan Stanley in its weekly ETF report. It was a huge amount considering the Thanksgiving holiday shortened the week to just 3 ½ trading day.

U.S. equities led the march out of the market with $3.1 billion in net outflows, with large-cap stock ETFs seeing the most redemptions, about $2.9 billion, according to the report. This has brought the total of U.S. ETF assets down 1% year to date to $991 billion, on a combination of lower asset values from market declines and net outflows.

Despite the flight from U.S. equities, the Vanguard Small-Cap ETF (VB) saw the most inflows of any ETF last week, $1.1 billion. In addition, Vanguard equity ETFs made up five of the top 10 ETFs to see net inflows last week. The other four were Vanguard Mid-Cap ETF (VO), Vanguard Small-Cap Growth (VBK), Vanguard Small-Cap Value (VBR) and the Vanguard Value ETF (VTV).

Meanwhile, the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) saw the largest outflows for the 1-, 4- and 13-week periods. The SPDR lost $1.2 billion in assets last week. The iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund (IWM) saw the second-most outflows, $1.0 billion.

Over the past 13 weeks, fixed-income assets saw the greatest inflows, $15.8 billion vs. $32.5 billion for all asset classes. Fixed-income ETFS now make up 18% of all ETF assets, up from 14% at the beginning of the year, says the report.

Europe Must Act Now to Avoid a Default, Buiter Says

Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup Inc., discusses Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis, the exposure of banks to the region and the role of the European Central Bank in resolution of the crisis. He speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s

Buiter says what everyone inherently knows, but can’t say outloud, that “time is running out… I think we have maybe a few months — it could be weeks, it could be days — before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it. So they have to act now.”

Europe Must Act Now to Avoid a Default, Buiter …, posted with vodpod

The Real Issue Behind The Euro Crisis

The European Central Bank’s unbending stance now threatens the survival of the euro and the broader integration of Europe itself, say European politicians and analysts. Forgetting for a minute whether the ECB has the will to intervene and print money like the U.S. Federal Reserve, the big question is whether it has the legal authority. According to its charter, the ECB’s role is to maintain price stability and maintain the euro’s value by preventing inflation. It is “specifically prohibited form financing the governments of euro area members,” says the New York Times. Still, because it can print money, its ability to buy the bonds of member nations is theoretically unlimited.

While becoming the lender of last resort would be against European law, many believe the ECB won’t let the euro collapse to defend that principle. Many European, and U.S., leaders says the ECB is the only institution that can prevent the collapse of the European economy and with it the common currency. But the Wall Street Journal says by transcending its mandate it would assume as new role as the most potent institution in Europe. The WSJ then gives a nice summary of how the ECB got into this predicatment.

 

 

ING Offers Positive Outlook for 2012

Europe, Shmeurope. If you looking for good news, ING has it.

“Don’t listen to noise coming out of Europe,” said Douglas Cote, chief market strategist of ING, at a press conference Wednesday where the firm offered its outlook for the new year. “The [European Central Bank] will be forced to jump in. I expect an end-of-year rally.”

Paul Zemsky, ING’s chief investment officer of Multi Asset Strategies, says while Europe may suffer a mild recession in 2012, the U.S. will experience tepid growth between 2% and 2.5% With housing weak and the Federal Reserve not raising interest rates until 2013, he says inflation won’t be a problem, staying around 2%. However, he says this growth won’t be enough to bring down the unemployment and if per-capital income remains stagnant, this could cause some social unrest. And while the housing sector has bottomed out, he says it may take another year before the market begins to see a sustained recovery. The main risk to the U.S. economy is the contagion of a European slowdown.

Still companies continue to post record profits, keeping expenses low by not hiring new workers. Zemsky expects the S&P 500 to surge 9% by the year’s end to 1325, and again to 1450 by the end of 2012. “Unless,” he adds, “ Europe blows up.”

You can track the benchmark with the largest ETF in the world, the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY).

“How can you not be in the market with earnings hitting record highs?” asked Cotes, suggesting market fundamentals will continue to be strong in the face of rising global risk. In addition to rising corporate profits, he sees U.S. manufacturing expanding and retail sales at their highest levels after seven consecutive monthly increases. “As far as eye can see we see positive quarters.”

Mid-capitalization stocks are the “sweet spot of the economy,” he says, because they have the financial wherewithal of large-caps and the growth of small-caps.” He also like emerging market stocks and global real estate investment trusts.

For mid-cap stocks take a look at SPDR S&P MidCap 400 ETF (MDY).

As for those global risks, Cote says Europe’s “bank recapitalization plan is an effective fence around the crisis.” In addition, if China begins to experience a slowdown, South Korea and Turkey will pick up the slack.

Really?

The Institute of International Finance said the recapitalization plan has “serious problems” that will hurt economic growth.

Meanwhile, China is one of South Korea’s major trading partners. If China stops buying South Korea is going to have to find a lot of other clients just to break even.

Christine Hurt sellers, ING’s fixed income chief, continued the trend of discounting Europe, “there are a lot of good opportunities, unless you think there will be a massive global recession.” U.S. companies are well prepared for any credit crunch because they have nearly $1.5 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

She likes high-yield bonds, because spreads are wide, but not consumer cyclicals. She also recommends buying sovereign debt in emerging markets. With emerging markets seeing inflation declining and credit quality increasing people should “take advantage of the shift in liquidity out of Europe.”

She expects the ECB to come save the euro zone, but if you wait until the ECB acts, it will be too late. Because there is very little liquidity in the credit markets, she says you need to buy bonds you are willing to hold for a long time.

I wasn’t very satisfied with their optimistic answers about Europe’s problems. Even though the ECB is the chief monetary authority for counties that use the euro, European Union treaties forbid it from being the lender of last resort for member countries. And as Roubini said last week, that’s not going to change.

Hurtsellers said Italy’s high bond yields are worrisome and if Italy doesn’t get enough tie to restructure, the whole thing could balloon out of control. If that happens, “market’s can create their own chaos and we’ll see more pressure on Germany.”

Zemsky added that while the ECB has remained out of the picture in terms of directly financing governments, if the European banking system seizes up, the ECB would supply quantitative easing. Why did he think that? “Because in 2008, the Fed stepped in to where we never would have expected it before, but they did it to save the world.” True, but the Fed had the power to do that and the ECB doesn’t.

“The ECB will stand behind a bank if they have enough collateral. If that doesn’t happen,” said Zemsky, “that’s the worst case scenario and will lead to a much worse recession of possibly negative 4% gdp growth in Europe.”

That should put our minds to ease.

It’s Not the Heat; It’s the Liquidity

It’s not the heat, it’s the liquidity, says Nouriel Roubini on why Italy’s days in the eurozone are numbered.

Even as stocks and Italian bonds posted a recovery after Wednesday’s surge in Italian yields, Roubini, better known as Dr. Doom, said in the Financial Times, the only way to avert “the upcoming disaster is “if the ECB became an unlimited lender of last resort and cut policy rates to zero”, combined with the euro’s value falling to even with the dollar, “fiscal stimulus in Germany” and the deflation in the eurozone’s. Since the ECB can’t do that without rewriting the eurozone treaties, it doesn’t really matter that the other four are basically impossible as well. More to the point, even if Italy isn’t insolvent, the lack of liquidity in its system could be just as fatal.

Meanwhile, an extremely cute economist named Megan Greene agrees with Roubini. Greene has been waiting for the eurozone to go “into full meltdown mode” for months. She says “the only possible way Italy could regain market confidence at this point is if it swiftly implemented a package of austerity and structural reforms under a government with cross-party consensus and a strong, respectable leader, and this package immediately yielded results. This is nearly impossible.” Of course, being cute has nothing to do with it. She writes a blog called Euro area debt crisis. I’m going to assume that if your blog title is that specific, you’ve got a pretty good read on the situation. My favorite tab on the blog is “Beyond the Pigs.” It lends itself to so many interpretations.

Roubini says Italy, and the next bailout in line, Spain, are “too-big-to-fail but also too-big-to-save,” and will need a restructuring of 1.9 trillion euros of public debt. However, the European financial stability facility has already committed half of its resources to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, leaving just 200 billion euros for Italy and Spain. Efforts to leverage that 200 billion euros to 2 trillion, “is a turkey that will not fly, because the original EFSF was already a giant collateralized debt obligation, where a bunch of dodgy, sub-triple-A sovereigns try to achieve, by miracle, a triple-A rating via bilateral guarantees.” He calls it another “a giant sub-prime CDO scam.”

Still Wall Street isn’t going down easy. After Italy passed an austerity measure, the S&P 500 jumped 2% to 1264 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.2% to 12158. The yield on Italy’s benchmark bonds fell to 5.69%.

The rebound was so strong that some of the ETFs that tumbled on Wednesday are now trading above Tuesday’s close. These include the PowerShares DB Italian Treasury Bond Futures ETN (ITLY) up 3% to $18.25 and the PowerShares DB 3x Italian Treasury Bond Futures ETN (ITLT) up 10% to $14.29. These ETNs measure the performance of a long position in Euro-BTP futures, whose underlying assets are Italian government debt with an original term of no longer than 16 years. The ITLT ETN provides leveraged exposure three times greater than the unleveraged bonds.

Meanwhile, while not above the Nov. 8, close, these still made a nice recovery. The iShares MSCI Italy Index Fund (EWI), which tracks about 85% of the Italian equity market, gained 4% to $13.24 and the CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE), which offers U.S. investors a way to bet on the euro without trading on the foreign exchange markets, climbed back to $137.

Stocks, ETFs Plunge as Italian Bonds Top 7%

If you had any hopes that Europe would get its act together and come up with a reasonable plan to deal with its debt crisis, I think it’s time to give the points to the cynics.

Italian bond yields spiked to 7.25% today on fears that Italy has replaced Greece as the next flash point in the European debt crisis. People were hoping Italy would be able to institute some austerity measures if Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stepped down. However, news that Berlusconi had pledged to resign, and his insistence on elections instead of an interim government, instead sent markets reeling.

With Italian bonds hitting an all-time high since the euro’s 1999 introduction, they reached the same level that forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts. This sent U.S. stocks plunging. The S&P 500 Index tumbled 47 points, or 3.7% to 1229.

The evaporation of investor confidence was clear by the movement of ETFs that track the Italian bond and equity markets. The PowerShares DB Italian Treasury Bond Futures ETN (ITLY) fell 3% to a new low of $17.38 and the PowerShares DB 3x Italian Treasury Bond Futures ETN (ITLT) sank 10.3% to $12.37. These ETNs measure the performance of a long position in Euro-BTP futures, whose underlying assets are Italian government debt with an original term of no longer than 16 years. The ITLT ETN provides leveraged exposure three times greater than the unleveraged bonds. They have expense ratios of 0.5% and 0.95% respectively. If you’re looking for a good way to short the Italian bond market, these offer a good proxy. Just be aware, the ETNs are unsecured debt notes subjected to Deutsche Bank’s credit risk.

After months of failed plans, it’s become apparent that the European politicians are unable to make the hard choices to avert a disaster and that this has all been a huge shell game to push the problem forward without actually doing anything. I think it’s time for people to get out of U.S. stocks. We’re in for another hard landing.

Other ways to take advantage of the clustercuss that I fear will soon envelope Europe are the iShares MSCI Italy Index Fund (EWI), which tracks about 85% of the Italian equity market, and the CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE), which offers U.S. investors a way to bet on the euro without trading on the foreign exchange markets. The MSCI Italy fund, which charges 0.54%, plummeted 9.4% to $12.30, while the Euro Trust, which charges 0.4%, fell 2% to $135.03.

With Berlusconi demanding new elections, he effectively leaves Italy leaderless at the depths of the crisis, bringing the country close to a breaking point.

Meanwhile, late Wednesday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou did officially quit, without naming a successor.

It’s hard to see things getting better soon. The market’s recent bounce gave most people an opportunity to get out of the market with some profits. I think it’s a good time to go to cash.

Telecom ETFs May Offer Haven From Europe

In a world of massive uncertainty and miniscule yields, S&P Capital IQ recently recommended that investors look to international telecom sector for both safety and high-yield dividends.

With the 10-year Treasury bond yield hovering around 2%, S&P Capital IQ analyst Todd Rosenbluth recommended two telecom ETFs that pay yields nearly three times higher. The iShares MSCI ACWI ex US Telecommunication Services Sector Index Fund (AXTE) currently pays a dividend that yields 5.7% and the and the SPDR S&P International Telecommunications Sector ETF (IST). Both invest exclusively in telecom companies domiciled outside of the U.S.

Rosenbluth says telecom stocks, both domestic and international offer stable dividends in light of macroeconomic uncertainties. Even though some of the large telecom stocks appear to be undervalued, he recommends ETFs because they provide a low-cost way to diversify and reduce risk. S&P favors defensive sectors and is “cautious on the potential gains in the broader market, believing that the risk of global recession is rising, influenced by mixed ‘hard’ economic data and ‘soft’ data that remain at recessionary levels, as well as ineffectual government policy.”

“We believe that certain telecom companies, while exposed to potential macroeconomic weakness, offer favorable total return potential as their relatively stable customer bases provide strong cash flow to support the dividend and reinvest in the business for growth,” says Rosenbluth.

Launched in July 2010, the iShares MSCI ACWI ex-US Telecommunication Services Sector Index Fund holds just $3 million in assets. The top ten stocks make up 57% of the portfolio, with Vodaphone at 15% and Telefonica at 9%. Rosenbluth particularly likes the fact that 21% of the portfolio is in emerging markets. The expense ratio is a reasonable 0.48%

The three-eyar-old SPDR S&P International Telecommunications Sector ETF holds just a little more than $10 million in assets. It’s more concentrated than AXTE with the top ten stocks making up 66% of its portfolio. Vodaphone makes up 20% of the fund, while Telefonica is at 12%. A key difference is this ETF doesn’t have exposure to emerging market telecoms from China or Latin America. The expense ratio is 0.5%.

KBW Jumps to PowerShares, New Funds Charge 0%

It appears the reason that State Street Global Advisors isn’t using financial indices from investment bank Keefe Brunette & Woods is because KBW jumped ship to Invesco PowerShares.

The same day State Street changed five of its financial ETFs from KBW indices to benchmarks from Standard & Poor’s, PowerShares began trading ETFs that tracked four of the same KBW Indices.

And in a stunning move to grab investors away from State Street, PowerShares said it would wave it’s unitary fee of 0.35% until February 1, 2012. The unitary fee is the management fee portion of the expense ratio. And since the entire expense ratio for these funds goes to the manager, the effective expense ratio for these funds is 0% until

Apparently, KBW’s license with State Street was expiring and coming up for renewal. Meanwhile, KBW had also licensed some indices to PowerShares for ETFs. KBW is also currently working with Invesco on some global initiatives and was happy with the service they had received from Powershares on the ETFs. So, KBW decided this was a good time to consolidate with one ETF provider and chose Powershares.

The new ETFS:
PowerShares KBW Bank Portfolio (KBWB)
PowerShares KBW Capital Markets Portfolio (KBWC)
PowerShares KBW Insurance Portfolio (KBWI)
PowerShares KBW Regional Banking Portfolio (KBWR)

Each ETF tracks the KBW index of the same name. The only KBW index that had been used for a SPDR ETF, but hadn’t moved to PowerShares was the KBW Mortgage Finance Index.

KBW is a well-known provider of research on the financial services sector and KBW indexes are widely used by industry professionals as performance benchmarks.