Fed Fund Futures Could Be Setting Market Up for a September Sell-Off

You would think that with everything Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said publicly thus far regarding the current turmoil in the mortgage and credit markets, the market might be at least somewhat doubting that a Fed Funds rate cut is coming later this month at the next FOMC meeting. After all, Bernanke came out and said the Fed is not responsible for bailing out lenders and consumers who made bad decisions in a loose lending environment. Quotes like that should at least temper people's expectations a little bit that a rate cut this month is essentially guaranteed. Well, that does not appear to be the case.

As of late Wednesday, a 25 basis point cut was fully priced into the market and there was a whopping 72% chance of a 50 basis point cut also priced into futures quotes. Given the actions we have seen from the Fed thus far (namely choosing to inject liquidity rather than lower interest rates for consumers) and the words they have chosen in public speeches in recent weeks, I have to take "the under" on the Fed Funds futures bet.

Now, that is not to say that there won't be a rate cut. That could surely happen, and you could justify it several ways. It just seems to me that the Fed wants to try every other option they have at their disposal before giving in with a rate cut, which many see as bailing out people who made ill-advised decisions and thus contributing to a moral hazard issue.

Because of that, I think saying there is a 100% chance of a cut this month is overly optimistic for interest rate bulls. And a 72% chance of a 50 basis point cut is even more aggressive. Right now, I'd put the odds of a cut of any magnitude between 50% and 75% based on what Bernanke has said and done so far.

I bring this up not because I think people should speculate in the futures markets, but because it's important to understand what is currently priced into the marketplace. If we don't get a cut later this month, which I think is certainly more probable than the markets currently are telling us, then stocks are going to sell-off. That is what we open ourselves up to when the market prices in something as a certainty even though there is still an undeniable fact that nothing is certain about the September FOMC meeting.

And even if we do get a cut of 25 basis points, we could still see the market not react positively because more than half of people right now expect 50 basis points (who knows what that number will be at meeting time). Just be aware that the risk-reward trade off right now in the short term doesn't appear all that favorable as long as you assume two things. One, the fed fund futures market accurately gauges what the market is currently pricing into prices. And two, the market will be reacting to interest rate speculation and action in coming weeks.

Don't Blindly Follow Carl Icahn (or anyone else for that matter)

From the Associated Press:

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) -- Shareholders of WCI Communities Inc. elected billionaire Carl Icahn to the board of the struggling homebuilder on Thursday, more than four months after management rejected his $22-per-share takeover bid. Icahn and WCI clashed for weeks over Icahn's proposed takeover and control of the board, each urging shareholders to support their candidates, before settling recently on the compromise approved Thursday. WCI nominated three of its candidates, plus Icahn and two of his candidates. Three additional directors were nominated jointly by WCI and Icahn. Icahn companies control more than 14.5 percent of WCI.

That's right, Icahn wanted to buy WCI for $22 per share. The stock currently trades at $9. That boneheaded bid lands him a board seat because of his 15% stake in the company. But hey, if I was a shareholder and he bid $22, I'd vote him on the board too.

Seriously though, I bring this up because many investors blindly buy stocks that billionaires like Icahn and Buffett get involved with. Although they make a lot of money, they are human too, so they make mistakes just like the rest of us. As a result, do your homework even if you want to follow a great investor into an investment. If your research yields a strong reason to buy (which would likely not have been the case with WCI) then at least you have less of a chance of making a mistake.

Full Disclosure: No position in WCI

Inventory Levels Suggest Housing Market is Far from a Bottom

There are undoubtedly a bunch of contrarians tying to find a bottom in the housing market, but I don't see any evidence that a rebound is anywhere in sight. The key metric here is home inventories. Without a drawdown in the inventory of unsold homes, prices will not stabilize, let alone begin rising again.

The July report from the National Association of Realtors shows single family home inventories jumping more than 2% year-over-year to nearly 4 million units. Not surprisingly, sales for the month dipped to a five-year low and prices fell 0.6% from last year.

Including condos, inventories soared 5.1% to a record 4.59 million units, putting total inventory at a 9.6 month supply. It's going to take a long, long time to work through that much supply, so don't expect the housing market to stabilize anytime soon.

Sub-Prime Mortgage Weakness Not Spreading to Other Credit Products

Below is an excerpt from the first quarter earnings press release of a consumer lender that serves lower end customers, including some who would be classified as sub-prime borrowers, but is not involved in the mortgage:

"Factors adversely affecting our first quarter results included lower than expected fee assessments due to lower than expected delinquencies."

No, that is not a typo. For all of those people who were expecting the sub-prime mortgage mess to spill over into other areas of credit such as credit cards and student loans, it appears the worries (and subsequent share price declines) were unfounded. Delinquencies were lower than expected!

It might seem baffling to many, but this is pretty good evidence that the sub-prime spillover effect is being greatly exaggerated, a theory I first rejected a month ago in a piece entitled Most Financials Dragged Down with Sub-Prime Lenders.

Renting versus Buying a House - A Contrarian View

I'm often posed with the question, "Given that interest rates are low, why shouldn't I buy a house instead of throwing money away by renting?" In recent years, buying a home has been all the rage. With interest rates around 6% for a 30-year fixed mortgage and the housing market booming, I've been amazed at how many people who have no real need for a house (young singles) have bought one.

As someone in the investment management business, whenever I am asked my opinion about buying a house, I look at it from two perspectives. The first one ignores the financial aspect (assuming the buyer can afford the home) because if you are getting married and starting a family, there are reasons to buy a house that have little to do with return on investment or anything like that. However, for those single people out there who don't have a true need for a house of their own, I suggest looking at the possible purchase as an investment and running the numbers accordingly.

I have made many spreadsheets for people to determine if buying a house makes sense financially. In the vast majority of cases it does not, as you can usually earn a higher return investing in a bank CD (let alone the stock market) than you can on a house, even after considering the benefits (mortgage interest deduction) and the costs (insurance, maintenance, taxes). The exceptions are cases where you rent out spare bedrooms and that cash flow covers a large chunk of your mortgage-related expense.

As a result, it is baffling to me when people will choose to take money out of their high yield savings accounts, investment accounts, and even their IRA or 401(k) plans in order to fund a house purchase. The common reason given is "renting is just throwing money away." While this sounds logical (your rent check isn't going toward the purchase of any asset), you have to look at it from a return on investment point of view.

A Smart Money article published last Wednesday entitled "Why Rent? To Get Richer" outlines the case for renting very well. I suggest those of you faced with the "rent versus buy" dilemma give it a read.

Full Disclosure: No position in a house at the time of writing

M&T Bank Preannouncement Shows Alt-A Mortgages Not Immune

Was anyone else surprised that news of a first quarter profit warning from M&T Bank (MTB) hardly had any effect on the market and received fairly little attention on Wall Street? One of the arguments we have heard from many Alt-A mortgage lenders is that the sub-prime mess is confined to that part of the spectrum, and Alt-A mortgages (given to home buyers with high credit scores but without verification of income, etc)are doing okay so far. M&T's warning directly contradicts that view.

For those of you that missed it, M&T Bank (a regional bank in the Mid-Atlantic) projected first quarter earnings of $1.50 to $1.60 last week, far below consensus estimates of $1.86 per share. The culprit: Alt-A mortgage loans, which make up 30% of the bank's mortgage portfolio. The company was forced to repurchase non-conforming loans and also decided to not sell some new loans due to inadequate pricing and a lack of bidders.

This news did hit MTB shares, which fell about 10 percent on the news, but very few others were affected. Other mortgages lenders heavy into Alt-A offerings such as IndyMac Bancorp (NDE) have come out publicly saying their mortgages are performing fine. The news from M&T, hardly an aggressive lender, show that the odds are good that Alt-A mortgages will become a problem for mortgage lenders as well as more diversified regional banks who make these types of loans.

This trend should continue to show up in first quarter earnings reports when they begin rolling in over the next month or so. As a result, playing the regional banks for a trade going into earnings season seems to be dangerous from the long side. Opportunities to get long may present themselves later, and companies highly levered to Alt-A may be good shorts heading into earnings, but I'd be cautious on the regionals heading into the upcoming reports. A good way to hedge existing positions would be to sell out-of-the-money calls to generate some additional income.

Full Disclosure: No position in MTB and short NDE at time of writing

Should We Blame the Fed for Sub-Prime's Woes?

I just heard an argument about this and I think it's extremely unfair to blame the Fed for the current crisis in the sub-prime mortgage industry. The rationale for doing so postulates that without record low interest rates for so long, the housing market would not have overheated. As a result, many lenders would not have made loans to customers who wanted to buy a house so badly that they might not disclose, or even lie, about their financial condition.

I have a problem with this logic. The sub-prime meltdown was not caused by low interest rates. Instead, it was caused by loose lending standards. The lenders gave loans to people who couldn't afford them. If you don't require prospective home buyers to verify their annual incomes or net worth, and you give them mortgages without a down payment and low teaser rates, you need to be responsible for the consequences of such actions.

The sub-prime lenders that are in trouble are the ones who gave loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back, either right from the start, or when their ARM's adjusted upward a few years later. You have to blame the business people who made the loans, not the people themselves. If you blame the Fed, then you are saying that high demand for mortgages was the problem. However, the problem seems to be that the bankers actually matched the high demand with a huge supply of loans.

Corporations are not required to accept every customer that comes knocking on their door. Rather, they have a duty to shareholders to do business that is profitable and in the best interests of the owners of the business. If they fail at managing their company adequately, which has been the case for most sub-prime lenders, the only people they (or anyone else) should blame are themselves.

Has the Housing Bubble Burst?

All I've heard recently in the financial media is that the housing bubble has finally burst. It's really quite comical. First of all, there was never a housing bubble. Everyone just threw around the bubble term because we had experienced one in Internet stocks a few years back and it was easy to categorize a very strong housing market as a bubble.

It's true that the housing market of the last five or six years was one of the strongest we have had in this country. The same can be said of the broad stock market from 1982 to 2000. We had the biggest equity bull market ever. However, it was not a bubble for all stocks, only one sector of the economy. Technology and telecom names fell by 90, 95, even 100 percent.

Outside of tech though, there was no bubble in stocks. The S&P 500 fell 50% when the "bubble burst" but the Nasdaq fell 80% and tech made up 30% of the index. As a result, half the S&P 500 loss was from tech stocks. Without the bubble, the market would have been down 25%. That classifies as a bear market, not a bubble.

Markets don't experience bubbles every five or ten years. It's a much rarer phenomenon than that. People are also calling the bull market in commodities as a bubble. It's not. It's a bull market. Markets are cyclical and when they rise they do so very quickly, but bull markets and bubbles are not synonymous terms.

So, yes, the housing market is very weak, but let's stop saying how the bubble is bursting. The mean home price in the U.S. remaining flat or only rising 1 or 2 percent does not classify as a bubble bursting. Not even a 20% drop in housing prices on the coasts qualifies. That's just a bear market, which is what typically follows a bull market. When housing prices in certain markets fall by 90% or more, then we can start calling it a bubble. Not going to happen. 

Despite Housing Weakness, Cashouts to Jump in 2006

Given that we know the housing martket is slowing dramatically and interest rates have been on the rise for a while now, it may be surprising to many that Americans are expected to draw $257 billion out of their homes in 2006, up $13 billion versus 2005 levels, according to Freddie Mac. This likely helps to partly explain why the consumer has yet to fall of a cliff despite housing market woes.

The bearish argument for consumers has been the fact that billions in adjustible rate mortgages are set to begin resetting this year, which will shock the monthly budgets of many people who could only move into the house they wanted with very low teaser mortgage rates. However, it appears that refinance activity is picking up as ARMs are about to readjust. With 30-year fixed rates around 6.5%, hardly an unaffordable rate for most, refinancing adjustible rate mortgages into fixed mortgages are helping to cushion the blow.

Now it's certainly true that even a move from 3% to 6% might prove too much of an increase for some lower end home buyers and speculators, but it is hardly something that seems likely to send the U.S. economy into recession all by itself. I do expect housing to remain weak for a while, given that inventories are hitting multi-year highs. However, unless mortgage rates take a dramatic turn upwards, say to 8 or 9 percent, consumers might be able to hold up a little better than some expect.

Fed Meeting Preview

As we head into the FOMC meeting today, I wish I was a bit more optimistic. The market has priced in a pause in rate increases and a definitively more "dovish" policy statement. The last time I saw the Fed Futures it was around 18% for a rate hike today at 2:15 ET.

Even if we get what the market expects, will the market make a nice run to the upside? I doubt it. We could get an immediate pop, but I don't think it would hold up. There will be plenty of sellers looking to slim down positions if we get something like +100 on the Dow this afternoon.

The other alternatives suggest we might see reasonable selling pressure. I've said here lately that I think we could very well get a 25 basis point hike today. I think the 18% chance that the futures markets have priced in is too optimistic. That said, the hike itself isn't catastrophic, so long as the Fed makes it clear in their statement that it is the last one for a while.

This is where the problem comes in. I don't think the Fed will want to say anything that makes them look "dovish" on inflation. Their policy statement, whether they raise rates today or not, might very well talk tough on inflation and indicate that while they are pausing for now, if they continue to see inflation pressures they won't hesitate to raise rates later in the year.

Such a development would likely cause a market sell-off, making today's highly anticipated Fed meeting fairly disappointing for those of us who own stocks. I sure hope I'm wrong and we see stock price advances from here over the near term. But if that happens, I would be tempted to take some money off the table. If others feel the same way, any rally will likely be short-lived.

*Update*

Full Disclosure: With the Dow +43 this morning, I have initiated a short trading position in the Spiders (SPY) for my personal account in anticipation of the gains fading after the Fed decision is released.