Month: June 2014

World Cup 2014 … Asian telcos & cable operators … between a Rock & a Hard Place

Asianmacro11 Comments

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Asian telecommunication companies (telcos) have long enjoyed oligopolistic hold in their respective markets in the past 2 decades when Asians found their love with mobile phones, internet broadband & cable TV. From the normalised (adjusted to USD) chart above (encompassing Singapore, Malaysia & Hong Kong telcos & cable operators), since the 2008 financial crisis, they have managed to performed very well indeed given their phenomenally stable earnings & relatively high dividend yields averaging 2.5 – 5% in general.

However, all good things must come to an end, sometimes it is some disruptive technological change or advance that renders certain businesses and processes obsolete. We have seen that with the steam locomotive, polaroid instant snaps, Xerox copiers, pagers, … the list goes on.  The roll-out of 3G-4G networks and fast breakneck fibre broadbands across Asia encouraged the growth of social media, peer-to-peer streaming & other usage of applications that are able to harness the tremendous speed & connectivity into the last mile into Asian consumers’ homes & even when they are on the move.  However, the country / domicile walls that these oligopolistic Asian telcos & cable operators have enacted in the past with their respective government support are crumbling down fast!

The key is that there are serious dearth of unique domestic content & services provided by all these Asian telcos & cable operators. Most contents, apps and media come from the West or recently from China, Korea & Japan that all the Asian operators syndicated, bought or licensed from.  This extends to the current FIFA 2014 World Cup that has enthralled all viewers around the world.  The ridiculous price that Singapore football fans have to endure to watch the World Cup matches  http://www.goal.com/en-sg/news/3880/singapore/2014/03/18/4690244/singapore-costliest-place-to-watch-world-cup is a case study of what has gone wrong in ”paying based on where you happen to live” when it can be free or much cheaper even within other Asian countries.

Asianmacro has been using a VPN service so that he can simply be in the USA, UK, Europe, Latin America or any other country he fancies as identified by his IP address & gateway / DNS to provide security for his online activities.  The fringe benefit to this is I have access to watch all the FIFA 2014 World Cup matches for free in those countries that provide free viewing to residents in them too (where Asianmacro will be simply be there by choosing to be there online)!

I have taken profit on my long position in Asian telcos like Singtel recently.  While I am not going short these stocks as they pay relatively high dividends that many yield hungry investors do chase, the question that we should be asking is whether Asian telcos really have a future besides being “dumb pipe” gateway providers in communications & media, without any real innovative apps or unique domestic content that people want & will pay for!

P.S. And asking Whatsapp or Skype to pay for using its network by Singtel’s CEO is definitely not the way to go! http://www.techgoondu.com/2014/02/26/commentary-singtel-wants-whatsapp-and-skype-to-pay/#.U6wq8PmSySo

Call me a lunatic … calling a short term market top

AsianmacroLeave a comment

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Asianmacro had previously called for a continuous rally in S&P500 when it was at 1880 around May 24 and it has advanced almost 4% since  https://asianmacro.com/2014/05/24/path-of-least-resistance-is-up/. Back in May, many doomsayers were on CNBC and various media calling for an impending collapse of even 10-15% in stocks. But looks like  the shorts and underweights in equities and bonds were all forced to scramble and had to catch up with their benchmarks that they are underperforming against.

However with the impending Full Moon on June 13 and the onset of the FIFA2014 World Cup, I am now calling for caution. Generally, stocks tend to perform better in the days around the New Moon, while price weakness is often seen in the days around Full Moon as seen in the chart above. Many research have touched upon this topic like this here http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=281665 and an example of lunar-cycle trading by other traders can be found here http://lunatictrader.com/?Moon_Cycles:Lunar_Phases and http://www.ftsefreedom.com/2012/08/how-moon-affects-trader-sentiment-and.html.

However, another indicator which is the USA Federal Reserve Money Supply M2 yoy growth that I track to give me an idea of the pace of liquidity creation in the US monetary system.  It has peaked in 2012 in spite of further QE which has propelled the equity markets higher.  M2 in itself don’t mean much but belongs to an array of economic & other market indicators which I track. While we might see S&P500 ending higher and maybe even cross 2,000 level by December 2014.  But Asianmacro will take his chips off the table for now, pour himself a glass of nice burgundy, followed by a fabulous single malt whisky and watch the FIFA2014 World Cup action unfold.  The market is now left to the losers who need to be around. Not me!

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Waiting with bated breath for Thursday ECB meeting

Asianmacro6 Comments

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Asianmacro has many close friends in the ”real world” i.e. people who are engaged in real productive businesses or employment like doctors, engineers, businessmen, lawyers (OK maybe not lawyers) …. where FOMC. ECB, QE & other financial lingo don’t mean much to them! However, what you do not know nor care in your regular life in going for work in the morning at 9 a.m., punching out at 5 p.m. (if there is even regular hours anymore like days of old!) does not mean that you will not be affected by events & developments which only financial market practitioners care about to monitor with a hawk eye.

In fact since the 2008 global financial crisis, everything that has happened especially in the real world & economy affecting many lives can be traced back to financial markets development & actions taken by governments & central banks since.

The most important event coming up with reverberating effects globally with be this upcoming European Central Bank (ECB) meeting on Thursday 5 May.  All expectations are on Draghi, the ECB President to cut Eurozone refinance rate and unleash their version of QE as well. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/02/us-markets-forex-idUSKBN0EA11M20140602 . From the chart above, we can see that EUR/USD has plunged from 1.40 to 1.36 currently in the past one over week end May as short positions (*best captured by the IMM CFTC net non-commercial positions) reached the highest level of shorts in 2014. Risk reversals volatility prices (where price of calls over puts) have fallen as well with options market pricing more demand for EUR puts over calls.

In the chart below, in fact, Citigroup Pain Index is at an extreme negative level. This is a FX Positioning Alert Indicator that infer positioning of active currency traders from relationships between exchange rates and currency managers’ returns. A positive reading suggests that currency traders have been net long the currency and a negative reading suggests that currency traders have been net short the currency, and in this case, the market is extremely short EUR.

We can also see that the yield spread between 2-year EUR rates & USD rates have gone to an extreme level since EUR rates fell a lot more & quicker in the recent weeks vis-a-vis USD rates.

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When the entire sell-side screams for lower EUR & for further short EUR recommendations into ECB meeting, this is when Asianmacro gets worried over the imbalance of sentiments. Sometimes, the markets have no logic beyond street positioning & will go to the maximum pain to squeeze out the weak hands. As such, I have close out my short EUR/USD position & in fact turned long via 3-day EUR 1.3600 strike call options NY cut expiry (NYC 10 a.m. expiry which is right after ECB meeting decision & when the ECB press conference is underway). From illustration below, it cost my only 33 b.p. (or an equivalent of 40 pips in FX terms) with breakeven at 1.3640. If Draghi underwhelms in delivering an ECB cut & tone in his press conference, EUR/USD might just fly up to 1.3750-1.3800 level and I will be a happy man via my options & allow me to re-sell EUR/USD to take profit & establish new EUR shorts if it make sense again. If ECB overwhelms with aggressive cut & dovish undertones & EUR/USD plunge further, I don’t lose much beyond my small option premium for the call option that will expire worthless.

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