Streetwise Professor

Even by the standards of the commodity business (and the commodity trading business in particular) Glencore is known for its appetite for political and legal risk, and its willingness to deal with sketchy counterparties.  It does so because by taking on these risks, it gets deals at good prices.  But the bigger the appetite, the greater the indigestion when things go wrong.

In the past several weeks, Glencore has hit the going wrong trifecta.

It has a longstanding relationship–including marketing deals and equity investment–with Rusal, entered when the Russian company’s reputation was particularly dubious in the aftermath of the aluminum wars, and its owners were involved serial litigation.

We know what happened to Rusal–it is in dire straits because of US sanctions.  Yes, the Treasury has indicated that it will take Rusal’s case on appeal, but there is no guarantee that it will grant a stay of execution when the appeal process is completed.

Glencore also partnered with very dubious Israeli businessman Daniel Gertler in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  Gertler was sanctioned by the US government in December for a history of corrupt dealings in that country.  Glencore bought out Gertler in 2017.  After the sanctions were imposed, Glencore stopped paying Gertler royalties, but now Gertler is suing for $3 billion in royalties that he claims Glencore owes him.

Also in the DRC, Glencore is in a dispute with the government’s mining company, which claims that a Glencore subsidiary operating in the country is undercapitalized.  This is really a battle over rents: in essence, the government claims that foreign miners (including Glencore) overburden operating subsidiaries with debt in order to reduce dividend payments to the government (which is part owner).  The government has moved to dissolve the Glencore subsidiary.

I don’t know enough to comment on the substance of the various legal disputes in Africa.  But I can say that the risks of such disputes are material, and that they can be very costly.

In some respects, the Glencore political/legal risk strategy is like a short vol trade.  It can be a money printing machine when things go well, but when it goes bad, it goes really bad.

In a way Glencore is lucky.  It can withstand these hits now, having clawed its way back from its near death experience in the fall of 2015.  If these hits had occurred back then, well . . .

In sum, when you play with fire, eventually you are going to get burned.  Even if you are Glencore.

PS. The tumult in the Congo could disrupt cobalt supplies.  This would put pressure on one of my fave targets–Tesla–which is already in a parlous state.  Elon gave a crazed performance at today’s Tesla earnings call.  To me it came off as the meltdown of a narcissist who is facing failure and cannot handle being questioned.

I’ve been biding my time on some additional Tesla posts.  The time may be near!

Journalism on financial markets generally, and commodity markets in particular, often resorts to rounding up the usual suspects to explain anomalous price movements.  Nowadays, the usual suspect in commodity markets is computerized/algorithmic/high frequency trading.  For example, some time back HFT was blamed for higher volatility in the cattle market, even though such trading represents a smaller fraction of cattle trading than it does for other contracts, and especially since there is precious little in the way of a theoretical argument that would support such a connection.

Another case in point: a flipping of the relationship between London and New York cocoa prices is being blamed on computerized traders.

Computers are dominating the trading of cocoa in New York, sparking a dramatic divergence in the longstanding price relationship with the London market.

Speculative funds have driven the price of the commodity in New York up more than 50 per cent since the start of the year to just under $3,000 a tonne. The New York market, traded in dollars, has traditionally been the preferred market for financial players such as hedge funds.

The London market, historically favoured by traders and commercial players buying and selling physical cocoa, has only risen 34 per cent in the same timeframe.

The big shift triggered by the New York buying is that its benchmark, which normally trades at a discount to London, now sits at a record premium.

So, is the NY premium unjustified by physical market price relationships?  If so, that would be like hundred dollar bills lying on the sidewalk–and someone would pick them up, right?

Not according to this article:

The pronounced shift in price relationships comes as hedge fund managers with physical trading capabilities and merchant traders have exited the cocoa market.

In the past, such a large price difference would have encouraged a trader to buy physical cocoa in London and send it to New York, hence narrowing the relationship. However, current price movements reflected the absence of such players, said brokers.

Fewer does not mean zero.  Cargill, or Olam, or Barry Callebaut or Ecom and a handful of other traders certainly have the ability to execute a simple physical arb if one existed.  Indeed, given the recent trying times in physical commodity trading, such firms would be ravenous to exploit such opportunities.

What’s even more bizarre is that pairs/spread/convergence trading is about the most vanilla (not chocolate!) type of algorithmic trade there is, and indeed, has long been a staple of algorithmic firms that trade only paper.  Meaning that if the spread between this pair of closely related contracts was out of line, if physical traders didn’t bring it back into line, it would be the computerized traders who would.  Yes, there are some complexities here–different delivery locations, different currencies, different deliverable growths with different price differentials, different clearinghouses–but those are exactly the kinds of things that are amenable to systematic–and computerized–analysis.

Weirdly, the article recognizes this

Others use algorithms that exploit the shifts in price relationships between different markets or separate contracts of the same commodity. [Emphasis added.  I should mention that cocoa is one of the few examples of a commodity with separate active contracts for the same commodity.]

It then fails to grasp the implications of this.

One “authority” cited in the article is–get this–Anthony Ward of Armajaro infamy:

Anthony Ward, the commodities trader known in the cocoa market for his large bets, has been among the more well-known fund managers to close his hedge fund, exiting the market at the end of last year. Mr Ward, dubbed “Chocfinger” due to his influence over the cocoa price, blamed the rising power of algorithmic and systems-based trading for making position-taking based on “fundamental” supply and demand factors more difficult.

Methinks that the market isn’t treating Anthony well, and like many losing traders, can’t take the blame himself so he’s looking for a scapegoat. (I note that Ward sold out Armajaro’s cocoa trading business to Ecom for the grand sum of $1 in December, 2013.)

I am skeptical enough that computerized trading can distort flat prices, but those arguments are harder to refute because of the knowledge problem: the whole reason markets exist is that no one knows the “right” price, hence disagreements are inevitable.  But when it comes to something as basic as an intracommodity spread, I find allegations of computer-driven distortions completely implausible.  You can’t arb flat price distortions, but you can arb distorted spreads, and that business is the bread and butter for commodity traders.

So: release the suspect!

PS. For my Geneva students looking for a topic for a class paper, this would be ideal. Perform an analysis to explain the flipping of the spread.

Rusal shares rose sharply and aluminum prices fell sharply on the news that the US Treasury had eased sanctions on the company.  The concrete change was an extension in the time granted for those dealing with Deripaska-linked entities to wind down those dealings.  But the market was more encouraged by the Treasury’s statement that the extension was being granted in order to permit it to evaluate Rusal’s petition to be removed from the SDN list.  It is inclusion on that list that sent the company into a downward spiral.

Methinks that the celebration is premature.  Treasury made clear that a stay of execution for Rusal was contingent upon it cutting ties with Deripaska.  Well, just how is that supposed to happen? This is especially the case if any transaction that removes Deripaska from the company not benefit him financially.  Well, then why would he sell?  He would have no incentive to make certain something–the total loss of his investment in Rusal–that is only a possibility now.

Of course, Putin has ways of making this happen, the most pleasant of which would be nationalization without compensation to Deripaska, perhaps followed by a sale to … somebody (more on this below). (Less pleasant ways would involve, say, Chita, or a fall from a great height.)

But if the US were to say that this was sufficient to bring Rusal in from the cold, the entire sanctions regime would be exposed as an incoherent farce.  For the ultimate target of the sanctions is not Deripaska per se, but the government of Russia, for an explicit foreign policy purpose–a “response to the actions and polices of the Government of the Russian Federation, including the purported annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.”

Deripaska didn’t personally annex Crimea or support insurrection in the Donbas.  The Russian government did.  The idea behind sanctions was to put pressure on those the Russian government (allegedly) cares about in order to change Putin’s policies.  They are an indirect assault on Putin/the Russian government, but an assault on them nonetheless.

So removing Rusal from the SDN list because it had been seized by the Russian government would make no sense based on the purported purpose of the sanctions.  Indeed, under the logic of the sanctions, the current discomfiture of the Russian government, facing as it does the potential unemployment of tens of thousands of workers, should be a feature not a bug. The sanctions were levied under an act whose title refers to “America’s adversaries,” which would be the Russian state, and were intended to punish said adversaries.

Mission accomplished!  Which is precisely why the Russian government is completely rational to view the Treasury announcement “cautiously,” and to view the US signals as “contradictory.”  The Russians would be fools to believe that nationalization and kicking Deripaska to the curb would free Rusal from the mortal threat that sanctions pose.

Perhaps Treasury has viewed the market carnage, and is trying to find a face-saving way out.  But it cannot do so without losing all credibility, and appearing rash, and quite frankly stupid, for failing to understand the ramifications of imposing SDN on Deripaska.  Also, doing so would feed the political fire that Trump is soft on Russia.

Further, who would be willing to take the risk buying Rusal from Deripaska either directly, or indirectly after nationalization?  They would only do so if they had iron clad guarantees from the US government that no further sanctions would be forthcoming.  But the US government is unlikely to give such guarantees, and I doubt that they would be all that reliable in any event.  Analogous to sovereign debt, just what could anyone do if the US were to say: “Sorry.  We changed our mind.”?

Indeed, the Treasury’s signaling of a change of heart indicates just how capricious it can be.  Any potential buyer would only buy at a substantial discount, given this massive uncertainty.  A discount so big that Deripaska or the Russian government would be unlikely to accept.

And who would the buyers be anyways?  Glencore already has a stake in Rusal, and a long history of dealings.  But it is probably particularly reluctant to get crosswise with the US, especially given its vulnerabilities arising from, say, its various African dealings.

The Chinese?  Well, since China is already on the verge of a trade war in the US, and a trade war involving aluminum in particular, they would have to be especially chary about buying out Deripaska.  Such a deal would present the US with a twofer–an ability to shaft both Russia and China.  And perhaps a three-fer: providing support to the US aluminum industry in the bargain (although of course harming aluminum consuming industries, but that hasn’t deterred Trump so far.)

So short of the US going full Emily Litella (and thus demolishing its credibility), it’s hard to see a viable path to freeing Rusal from SDN sanctions.  Meaning: Put away the party hats.  The celebration is premature.

Stung by yet another allegation of manipulation of the VIX, Cboe Chairman and CEO Ed Tilly and President and COO Chris Concannon fired off an open letter defending the exchange and VIX.  To say it begs the key questions is an understatement.

Here’s their explanation of the April 18 event:

During the opening auction on April 18th, a single market participant submitted orders to buy approximately 212,000 SPX options across a wide range of strike prices. Five additional market participants submitted buy orders totaling 20,000 options. The size and structure of these buy orders appeared consistent with the weights prescribed by the VIX Index formula. Offsetting this buy interest were sell orders submitted by nine participants for a total of 118,000 contracts. This left a buy order imbalance of 114,000 SPX options. This buy order imbalance contributed to the opening prices of the option series that were used to calculate the final VIX settlement value. Based on the orders that were submitted, we believe the auction process functioned as intended, notwithstanding that the final settlement value was higher than what market participants may have otherwise expected.

Although oddly disconnected from the discussion of the 18 April spike in the VIX, this statement ostensibly directed at the Griffin and Shams paper claiming to find frequent manipulations of the VIX strongly suggests that they are denying there was a manipulation on 18 April as well:

Finally, we would like to again address the claims of possible manipulation of the settlement process. We reiterate that we believe these claims are without merit, and that the academic paper’s analysis and conclusions are based upon a fundamental misunderstanding about how VIX derivatives are traded and settled. The trading behavior the author considered suspicious is
consistent with normal and legitimate trading behavior.

The explanation of what happened a couple of weeks ago begs the question because in no way does it disprove that a manipulation took place.  Indeed, what they describe is exactly how a large trader could and would “bang the auction” to influence the settlement price of VIX derivatives, in order to profit on positions in those derivatives.  What Tilly and Concannon describe involves a single large trader submitting a huge order on one side of a market with liquidity constraints.  That is almost certain to affect the auction price. That’s how that kind of manipulation works.

Note that the order–again, entered by a single participant–represented about 90 percent of the buy side interest, and more than 80 percent of the order imbalance.  Further, Tilly and Concannon’s touting of the Cboe’s efforts to improve liquidity at the auctions (perhaps inadvertently) concedes that the liquidity at the auctions is presently inadequate, which would mean that a huge order imbalance would almost certainly move prices–as occurred on the 18th–and be anticipated to move prices.  “There’s no problem (’the auction process functioned as intended’), but we’re fixing it!” hardly inspires confidence.

Any participant with the heft to enter such a large order would surely be sophisticated enough to know that it would be highly likely to move prices.  Note that non-manipulative traders would typically want to mitigate price impact, not trade in a way that exacerbates it.  So why do this?

Thus, there is evidence to support all of the elements of a manipulation case, but one.  There is evidence for artificial price, causation, and ability to cause.  The missing element is intent.  I’d be open to suggestions as to why this one market participant would enter such a large order but for an intent to distort prices.  Any such explanation would have to show how this was the most economical way of achieving some non-manipulative objective, such as hedging.

Addressing the issue of intent would require knowledge of the large trader’s positions in VIX-related instruments.  Tilly and Concannon are silent on that issue, which makes their confident disavowal of manipulation incomplete and hence unpersuasive.  Discussing the auction alone, disconnected from the VIX derivatives markets tied to the auction, is inadequate to dispel suspicions of manipulation.

Perhaps the exchange execs are right, and this “whale” (as the FT referred to the trader) was not manipulating.  But the information in the public record, including the information in their letter, is not sufficient to demonstrate this claim. The question-begging defense will therefore likely feed suspicions about VIX, rather than lay them to rest, as the letter’s authors intended.

This 1 March article from Caixin–which has since disappeared down the memory hole in China–is a stunning exposé about the ostensible purchaser of a 14.1 percent stake in Rosneft.  It portrays the company as a financial shell game that basically kited trade finance credit to grow like Topsy, and accumulate a collection of assets around the world–many of which it is now unloading.   The company also utilized shadow finance to raise funds via a securities affiliate.  It needed to grow rapidly to generate the financial churn that it used to finance itself. Now it is unraveling because the powers that be in China have, for some reason, decided this will happen–presumably because a forced unwind executed in a highly opaque manner is far preferable to an uncontrolled collapse that was impending.

That Glencore, Qatar, Intessa, Rosneft, and Russian and Chinese banks would agree to sell to such an entity, and/or to lend it money to permit it to purchase the Rosneft stake indicates either a shocking lack of due diligence, or more likely, a desperation to exit the deal and the lack of a more reputable buyer.  Given CEFC’s implosion, and the even more fraught circumstances of government-linked Russian companies, I’d be hard pressed to identify any company that can or will step into CEFC’s shoes.

An even more important issue here is why the Chinese authorities have yanked the reins on CEFC, and hard.  This follows the seizure of Anbang Insurance, and the regulatory pressure on HNA.

My suspicion is that the government realized that CEFC was a house of cards, and the financial strains of the Rosneft acquisition would bring the house tumbling down.  Indeed, it seems that the company was having real difficulties securing the funding, and if it had failed that would have been a major embarrassment to China. But this only raises more important questions, such as, what inferences should be drawn from the government’s intervention?  In particular, what inferences should be drawn about the state of the Chinese financial system?

One possible inference is that the CEFCs and Anbangs are the exceptions, and the government will intervene before they threaten the broader system.  That’s the comforting inference.  The more disturbing inference is that there are many houses of cards in China waiting to fall, and that the government can neither crack down on them all or let any fall, so it intervenes on a just-in-time basis.  This kicks the can down the road, and buys time to attempt to get the leverage in the system somewhat under control.

I say attempt, because this strategy is fraught with moral hazard.  A controlled wind-down cushions the blow for creditors, and the expectation that the government will do this in the future provides little disincentive to cut back on the extension of credit today.  Protecting creditors from the consequences of lending to the likes of CEFC ensures that they will continue to lend to similar companies in the future.  But letting companies fail in a way that imposes big losses on creditors threatens a crisis in the financial system.

I paid attention to CEFC initially because of the Rosneft angle.  But I think a far more important angle is what CEFC’s rise and fall say about the Chinese financial system, and the ability of firms to grow rapidly and to a huge size on the basis of the most dodgy financing mechanisms.  If CEFC is at all representative, the implications for the Chinese financial system are dire.  Which could explain the haste with which the government consigned the story to the memory hole.

I clearly underestimated the impact that the sanctions imposed on Deripaska, Rusal, and others would have.  The initial reaction Monday by many was to puke everything Russian.  Everything.  The ruble. The overall Russian stock market.  Russian debt.  Every major Russian company.  They all crashed. The carnage was widespread and indiscriminate and extended far beyond those directly targeted.

Rusal was the biggest loser, and extended its losses today.  Overall, its stock price is down almost 55 percent.  Ivan Glasenberg resigned from the board, and just now two Russian non-executive directors also resigned.  The company is clearly toxic/radioactive.  I don’t see it surviving without massive state support, and perhaps nationalization.   But even then . . . who outside of Russia and China will buy its aluminum?  (Note China is already suffering an overcapacity problem in the metal, which US trade restrictions would only make worse.)

I thought I might have misjudged seriously that Potanin would gain at Deripaska’s expense: on Monday Norilsk Nickel was down almost 20 percent, and Potanin was the biggest absolute loser.  Norilsk has since bounced back, and recovered much of its loss: it is now down about 7.5 percent from Friday.  But the “shootout” auction will still be between two gunmen who have been grievously wounded by fire from an unexpected direction.

Many other Russian companies that were pounded yesterday have also bounced back.  Severstal is actually trading above the pre-sanctions-news price.  Rosneft and Novatek have also recovered most of their losses.

Sberbank remains down–down more than 16 percent.  The bank disingenuously stated that the selloff was overdone because its exposure to sanctioned companies represented only 2.5 percent of its assets.  Well, since it is leveraged about 12-to-1, that represents 30 percent of its shareholder equity, which would justify a pretty big selloff.

The ruble remains down.  Indeed, it extended its loss today, and actually experienced a greater percentage decline today (almost 5 percent) than it did Monday (around 3 percent).  Perhaps this reflects the central bank’s statement that it would not intervene in support.  But it does indicate that this is perceived as a Russia-wide shock, and not one limited to a few billionaires and their companies.

The broader selloff, somewhat overdone as it was (as reflected by today’s recovery in many names) suggests a widespread estimation that other shoes will drop, and that billionaires that escaped the first round are still at risk for the Oleg treatment.

This raises the question of how the targets were chosen. Leonid Bershidsky argues that Deripaska and Rusal were targeted because taking Rusal’s aluminum off the market (as is happening, with the LME saying it will not warrant Rusal metal not already in warehouses) would be a much more effective way of supporting the US aluminum industry than selective tariffs.  This does have a certain logic, but if that is the logic, it would speak very poorly of the the US government, for it would imply the masking of a protectionist measure behind an allegedly principled reaction to Russian turpitude. It also doesn’t explain the other targets.

Nor does it explain the non-targets.  Novatek and Timchenko are much more tightly connected to Putin than Deripaska and Rusal. And Novatek LNG competes with US LNG, so there would be a protectionist rationale for hitting it.  Yet Novatek was not subject to SDN treatment, and as noted earlier its stock price has largely rebounded.  Perhaps a journalist friend in Moscow is right that Total’s big investment in it and its Yamal project has given it some immunity.

Similarly, Rosneft and Sechin are much more in the inner sanctum than Deripaska/Rusal.  Yet it too has escaped SDN.  Perhaps the risk of creating an oil shock is too great.

The “perhapses” indicate, however, that the rhyme and reason of the administration’s actions is not obvious.  And perhaps (there’s that word again) that’s what really has the market–and many rich Russians–spooked.  Given the capriciousness of the list, everyone is at risk.

Russia’s official reaction was of course negative, but one voice has been missing: Putin’s.  It’s not quite akin to Stalin, 22 June-3 July, 1941 (when he remained out of sight after the shock of Barbarossa), but it does suggest uncertainty as to how to respond.  Not a B’rer Rabbit reaction, at least not yet.

This uncertainty is no doubt fed by the realization of the vulnerability of the Russian economy to US policy.  I’ve written before that the US could crush Russia like an overripe grape by, for instance, cutting it off from SWIFT or the dollar system altogether.  This shows that it can wreak havoc with far more limited measures.

It’s also interesting that Xi made rather conciliatory remarks yesterday.  A coincidence? Perhaps (again). But Friday’s sanction action shows that Trump can act unpredictably and punishingly.  That likely concentrates minds in Beijing as well as in Moscow.

Whatever the logic of Friday’s thunderbolt, it should put paid to the Trump-is-Putin’s-pawn and Putin-has-something-on-Trump theories.  Indeed, a desire to terminate with prejudice those narratives is as good an explanation for the administration’s action as anything.  Not that reality will interfere with the conspiratorial ravings of those in the Democratic Party and the media and the neocon NeverTrumpers.  They are just too invested and obsessed, and nothing short of a preemptive nuclear strike on Moscow is likely to change that–and even then . . . . And with Trump threatening to attack Syria despite Russian warnings against it, maybe we’ll soon put that theory to the test as well.

Trump fired his 2d trade salvo last week.  Unlike the the previous one on steel and aluminum, which first appeared to be aimed at everyone and then due to various exceptions and exemptions is hard to know who will actually take the hit, this blast is clearly aimed squarely  at China.  Moreover, the rationale for the salvoes is quite different.  The allegation relating to the metals was that other countries were unfairly favoring domestic producers and exporting to the US at unfairly cheap prices, the China-directed blast is a response to systematic Chinese theft of intellectual property, an issue of longstanding that the US has repeatedly bitched about, but not taken action against.

These issues are quite different, and as Doug Irwin notes, whereas economists are largely opposed to tariffs like those levied on steel and aluminum, they have a much more open mind on taking on China on IP issues.

They are indeed quite different.  A simple analogy comes to mind.  When someone sells you a car below cost, they are doing you a favor.  When someone steals your car, and then sells it back to you, they are harming you–and adding insult to injury.  Steel and aluminum fall in the first category, IP theft in the second.

This should be a debate about tactics: how can Chinese theft be deterred and diminished?  I don’t know the answer to this question, but given the systematic failure to make progress on this issue for years, I wouldn’t rule out Trump’s tariff-based approach out of hand.  Maybe he is talking a language the Chinese understand.

What I can state with absolute certainty is that this is not a battle between principled free trader nations and retrograde protectionists, with China in the former role and Trump in the latter.  Anyone who treats it as such is not to be taken seriously, and indeed deserves brickbats.

Let’s be clear.  Virtually every government around the world criticizing Trump’s protectionism is hypocritical to the n-th degree.  Even with Trump’s recent actions, the US is less protectionist that the Europeans and the Japanese, and let’s not even start with the Chinese, whom Adam Smith would have recognized for what they are: aggressive mercantilists.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I’ll be damned if I listen to lectures from the Europeans, Japanese, or particularly the Chinese about the American threat to the world trade system.  Look in the mirror, jackholes.

It is particularly infuriating to see Tim Cook of Apple mouth pieties about embracing free trade–while speaking in Beijing, no less:

“Countries that embrace openness, that embrace trade, that embrace diversity are the countries that do exceptionally,” Mr. Cook said during a panel discussion at an economic forum here Saturday, when asked what message he would like to bring home to Mr. Trump. “And the countries that don’t, don’t,” he added, without mentioning the president by name.

OK, Timmy–do you have the balls to give that sickeningly sanctimonious homily to Xi Jinping?  The US is infinitely more open than China.  And if you think that the Chinese are all into diversity, Timmy, you are even a bigger idiot than I thought.

But of course Timmy doesn’t have the balls, because he knows that if he challenges the Chinese autocracy they will make Apple’s life miserable, whereas by dissing Trump he’ll get accolades in both Beijing and the “elite” circles in the US.  A profile in cowardice, not courage.

In fact, by criticizing the speck in the US eye while ignoring altogether the beam in Beijing’s, Cook is carrying Xi’s water like a good little flunky.  Objectively his criticism of Trump (and if you don’t think that who he was aiming at despite his not mentioning Trump’s name, your IQ is about the same as Stormy Daniels’ bra size) helps China in a confrontation with the US over an issue in which China is overwhelmingly in the wrong.

Again, the issue here is NOT about free trade.  It is about theft, and whether imposing penalties on the thief’s exports is the appropriate way to deter theft.  His phrasing implicitly supports the Chinese framing of Trump’s actions, which is as an attack against trade and openness, which is a grotesque distortion.

Given the extremely asymmetric threat that Apple faces from displeasing the president for life in China (who has virtually unlimited power)  vs. displeasing the president for at most 6+ more years in the US (who is hamstrung by myriad Constitutional and political constraints), it is understandable why Cook would sell out his own country by serving as its adversary’s mouthpiece.  But we should understand that’s exactly what he’s doing, and as a result ignore his homilies, and direct at him the scorn he so richly deserves.

After literally years of delays and false starts, the International Energy Exchange (a subsidiary of the Shanghai Futures Exchange) will launch its yuan-denominated, China-delivery crude oil futures contract on Monday.

Will it succeed?  Well, that depends on how you measure success.  No doubt it will generate heavy volume.  Speculative enthusiasm runs deep in China, and retail traders trade a lot.  They would probably make a guano futures contract a success, if it were launched: they will no doubt be attracted to crude.

Whether it will be a viable and successful contract for commercial market participants is far more doubtful.  Its potential to become an international benchmark is even more remote.

For one thing, most successful commodity futures contracts specify delivery in a major production area that is connected to multiple consumption regions, but the INE contract is at a major consumption location.  This will increase basis risk for non-Chinese commercials, even before taking into account the exchange rate issue.  Considering the cash basis (the cash-futures basis is more complicated), basis risk between a delivery location and a location supplied by that delivery point is driven by variability in transformation costs, most notably transportation costs.   The variance in the basis between two consumption locations supplied by a delivery point is equal to the variance in the difference between the transformation costs to the two locations, which is equal to the sum of the variances, minus 2x the covariance.  This is typically bigger than either of the variances.  Thus, non-Chinese hedgers will typically be worse off using the INE contract than the CME’s WTI or DME’s Oman or ICE’s Brent, even before liquidity is considered.

In this respect, the INE’s timing is particularly inauspicious, because the US crude oil export boom, which is seeing large volumes go to Asia and China specifically, has more tightly connected WTI prices with Asian prices.

I deliberately say “transformation costs” (rather than just transport costs) above because there can be disparities between international prices and prices in China due to regulations, currency conversion issues, and taxes.  I don’t know the details regarding the relevant tax and regulatory regime for oil specifically, but I do know that for cotton and other ags the tax and quota regime has and does lead to wide and variable differences between China prices and ICE prices, and that periodic changes in this regime create additional basis volatility.

Related to transformation costs, the INE has implemented one bizarre feature that is likely to undermine contract performance.  Specifically, it is setting a high storage rate on delivery warehouses.  The ostensible purpose of this is to restrain speculation and reduce price volatility:

One of its strategies to deter excessive price swings is to set related crude storage costs in China at levels that are at least twice the rate elsewhere. That’s seen discouraging speculators interested in conducting so-called cash and carry trades, which seek to take advantage of differences between the spot price and futures of a commodity.

This will be highly detrimental to the contract’s performance, and will actually contravene the intended purpose.  Discouraging storage will actually increase volatility.  It will also increase the volatility in the basis between the INE price and the prices of other oil in China.  The fact that discouraging storage will make the contract more vulnerable to corners and squeezes will further increase this basis volatility.  This will undermine the utility of the contract as a hedging mechanism.

Where will hedging interest for the contract come from?  Unlike in say the US, there will not be a large group of producers will big long positions that they need to hedge (in part because their banks insist on it).  Similarly, there is unlikely to be a large population of traders with inventory positions, as most of the Chinese crude is purchased by refiners.  The incentives of refiners to hedge crude costs are limited, because they have a natural hedge: although they are short crude, they are long products.  To the extent that refiners can pass on crude costs through products prices, their incentives to hedge are limited: this is why there is a big net short futures exposure (directly and indirectly) by producers, merchants and processors in WTI and Brent: sellers of crude (producers and merchants) have an incentive to hedge by going short futures because they have no natural internal hedge, and the big refiners’ natural hedge mutes their incentive to take long positions of commensurate size.

Ironically, regulation–price controls specifically–may provide the biggest incentive for refiners to hedge.  To the extent they cannot pass on crude cost increases through higher product prices, they have an incentive to hedge because then they have more of a true short exposure in crude.  Moreover, this hedging incentive is option-like: the incentive is greater the closer the price controls are to being binding.  I remember that refined product price restrictions have been a big deal in China in the past, resulting in periodic standoffs between the government and Sinopec in particular, which sometimes involved fuel shortages and protests by truckers.  I don’t know what the situation is now, but that really doesn’t matter: what matters is policy going forward, and Chinese policies are notoriously changeable, and often arbitrary.  So the interest of Chinese refiners in hedging will vary with government pricing policy whims.

If hedging interest does develop in China, it is likely to be the reverse of what you see in WTI and Brent, with hedgers net long instead of net short.  This would tend to lead to a “Keynesian contango” (the Canton Contango? Keynesian Cantongo?), with futures prices above expected future spot prices, although the vagaries of Chinese speculators make it difficult to make strong predictions.

Will the contract develop into an international benchmark? Left to its own devices, this is highly unlikely.  The factors discussed above that create basis risk undermine its utility as an international benchmark, even within Asia.  But we are talking about China here, and the government seldom leaves things to their own devices.  I would not be surprised if the government explicitly requires or strongly pressures domestic firms to buy crude basis Shanghai futures, rather than Brent or WTI.  This contract obviously involves national prestige, and being launched at a time of intense dispute on trade between the US and China I suspect that the government is highly motivated to ensure that it doesn’t flop.

Requiring domestic firms to buy basis Shanghai could also force foreign sellers to do some of their hedging on INE.

Another issue is one I raised in the past, when China peremptorily terminated trading in stock index futures.  The prospect of being forced out of a position at the government’s whim makes it very risky to hold positions, particularly in long-dated contracts.

All in all, I don’t consider the new contract to be transformative–something that will shake up the world oil market.  It will do better than the laughable Russian Urals oil futures contract (in which volume over six months was one-third of the projected daily volume), but I doubt that it will develop into much more than another venue for speculative churn.  But like all things China, government policy will have an outsized influence on its development. Refined product pricing policy will affect hedging demand.  Attempts to force firms to use it as a pricing mechanism in contracts will affect its use as a benchmark, which will also affect hedging demand.

If you are looking for a metric of success as a commercial tool (rather than of its success as a money making venture for the exchange) look at open interest, not volume.  And look in particular in open interest in the back months.  This will take some time to build, and in the meantime I imagine that there will be a lot of awed commentary about trading volume.  But that’s not the main indicator of the utility of a contract as a commercial risk management and price discovery tool.

Update. I had a moment to catch up on Chinese price regulations.  The really binding regulations, which resulted in shortages and the periodic battles between Sinopec and the government date from around 2007-8, when (a) oil prices were skyrocketing, and (b) I was in China teaching a course to Sinopec and CNPC execs, and so heard first-hand accounts.   These battles continued, but less intensely post-Crisis because the controls weren’t binding when prices collapsed.  Moreover, the government adopted a policy that effectively implemented a peg between crude and refined prices, but only adjusted the peg every 22 days and only if the crude price had moved 4 percent.  Subsequently, in 2013, Beijing revised the policy, and eliminated the 4 percent trigger and shortened the averaging period to 10 days. Then in 2015, after the collapse in oil prices, China suspended this program.  A few months later, it introduced a revised program that makes no adjustments to the price when crude falls below $40 or rises above $130.

Several takeaways.  First, at present the adjustment mechanism reduces the incentives of refiners to hedge crude prices.  Under the earlier adjustment system, the lags and thresholds would have created some bizarre optionality that would have made hedging decisions vary with prices in a highly non-linear way.  The system in effect from 2015 to 2016 would have created little incentive to hedge because the pricing system imposed hardly any constraints on margins that were allowed to vary with crude prices.

Second, the current system with the $40 floor and $130 ceiling actually increases the incentive to hedge (relative to the previous system) by buying futures when prices start to move up towards $130 (if that ever happens again).  That’s actually a perverse outcome (triggering buying in a rising price environment, and selling in a falling price environment–positive feedback loop).

Third, and most importantly, the policy changes often, in response to changing market conditions, which reinforces my point about the new futures contract being subject to government policy whims.  It also creates a motive for a perverse kind of speculation–speculation on policy, which can affect prices, which results in changes in policy.

One thing I should have mentioned in the post is the heterogeneity of refiners in China.  There are the big guys (Sinopec, CNPC, CNOOC), and there are the independents, often referred to as “teapot refineries.”  Teapots might have more of an incentive to hedge, given that they are in more tenuous financial straits–but those very tenuous straits might make it difficult for them to come up with the cash to pay margins.  And even they still have the natural hedge as long as price controls don’t bite.  It’s worth noting, however, that Chinese firms have a penchant for speculating too. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the teapots turn plunger on INE.

Government policy towards the independents has been notoriously volatile–I know, right? In 2015, China granted the independents the right to import oil directly.  Then in late-2016 it thought that the independents were dizzy with success, and threatened to suspend their import quotas if they violated tax or environmental rules.  As always, there are competing and ever changing motives for Chinese policy.  They’ve lurched from wanting to protect the big three and drive consolidation of industry to wanting to provide competitive discipline for the big three to wanting to rein in the competition especially when the independents sparked a price war with the big firms.  These policy lurches will almost certainly affect the commercial utilization of the new futures market, even by Chinese firms.

Updated update. The thought that cash-and-carry trades are some dangerous speculative strategy puzzled me–it’s obviously not a directional play, so why would it affect price levels. But perhaps I foolishly took the official explanation at face value.  Chinese firms have been notorious for using various storage stratagems as ways of circumventing capital controls and obtaining shadow financing.  Perhaps the real reason for the high storage rate is to deter use of the futures market to play such games.  Or perhaps there is a tax angle.  Back in the day futures spreads were a favored tax strategy in the US (before the laws were changed and the IRS cracked down), and maybe cash-and-carry could facilitate similar games under the Chinese tax code.  Just spitballing here, but the stated rationale is so flimsy I have to think there is something else going on.

The outrage du jour is that a firm that worked on the Trump Campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had sucked up, and then retained, Facebook data on 50 million users.  The sucking up apparently occurred with Facebook’s approval and knowledge, the retention not.

I am highly confident that this is being treated as Armageddon primarily because of CA’s work for Trump.  Why am I so confident?  Because the 2012 Obama campaign did as much, or worse (a) with Facebook’s knowledge and support, and (b) without attracting anything close to the same criticism.  Indeed, quite the opposite: the Obama campaign’s supposedly innovative use of Facebook data to shape its strategy was the subject of fawning, slobbering praise from virtually the entire media.  Privacy, shmivacy! It helped Obama, so it’s good!  And besides, it proved how much more hip and with it those cool Obama people were, as compared to those fuddy-duddy Republicans.

And as I say, the Obama effort was massive, and occurred with Facebook’s knowledge.

Just like Orwell wrote in Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

As it turns out, the Cambridge Analytica effort was less decisive than previously reported, and was arguably irrelevant to the outcome of the campaign.  Perhaps the Obama campaign’s use of Facebook was similarly overhyped.  Not that we’ll ever know, given the media’s clear preference to give the Sainted One’s administration tongue baths, rather than critical coverage.

The rah-rahs that Facebook gave to the Democrats sucking up of its entire “social graph,” and  Sheryl Sandberg’s email exchange with John Podesta in which he said that he looked forward to “working with you” to elect Hillary, and she replied that she wanted Hillary to “win so badly” raise serious concerns about how in Facebook’s political Farmville, Democratic animals are much more equal than others.  This in turn makes it worthwhile to revisit an idea that I mooted many moons ago, and which has subsequently gained some traction: regulating Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other social media.  It relates directly to my proposal to regulate them as common carriers, subject to a non-discrimination requirement.

It is clear that these companies have a political agenda, and that that agenda is relentlessly left and pro-Democrat.  Well, so does the New York Times and the rest of the “elite” media, so why just regulate Facebook et al?

Two reasons.  The first is the one I gave in the earlier post.  That unlike traditional media, due to network effects these companies have market power.  They fit very well into the common carrier framework in that regard.

The recent events bring out another reason.  Whereas the NYT or CNN blatantly broadcast their bias, and it is there for all to see, the same is definitely not true of Facebook, Google, and Twitter.  They can readily engage in partisanship in very insidious ways that are virtually impossible to detect.  The algorithms that Facebook uses to push content, or now censor content; that Google uses to slant search results; and Twitter uses to censor, ban, and shadow block, are utterly opaque to outsiders.  Meaning that whereas if I feel particularly masochistic and decide to read the NYT or watch CNN, I can identify and correct for the bias, I cannot readily do so when interacting with the social media and search platforms.

The second point means that a common carrier-like non-discrimination requirement is not sufficient, given the opacity of the platforms: unlike, say, price discrimination by a railroad, political discrimination by Facebook is unlikely to be observable to those who are adversely affected.  To be effective, therefore, common carrier status would have to be accompanied by a more or less intrusive means of auditing these platforms and their algos.

As a classical liberal, I do not advance this proposal with glee, although as I noted in my earlier post the idea of common carrier regulation is rooted in classical liberal jurisprudence and thought.  But the deep politicization of powerful network industries, and their Animal Farm ethos, pose a serious threat to the political system.  Life is about trade-offs, and the perfect is the enemy of the good.  These platforms are subject to little economic competition, and pose a grave threat to political competition.  They need to be constrained, before they do even more damage.

Overall, I have found the Trump administration’s economic policies to be favorable.  The tax bill was pretty good, even though it was worse than the administration’s original proposal.  The chipping away at the encrustation of regulation has been highly beneficial.

But there was always a sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over our heads: protectionism. Heretofore, that sword has remained dangling, but last week the hair broke (perhaps by Trump’s hair-trigger temper) when he announced plans to impose substantial tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

This is egregiously bad policy, even on its own terms. Like all tariffs, these will impose far greater costs on consumers than they will generate benefits for producers.  Since steel and aluminum are intermediate goods, the first consumers are manufacturers that use the metals.  The cost will be borne in the form of lower output from these firms, lower employment and wages in the consuming industries, and higher prices for the final goods.

These tariffs are a failure on their own terms, and demonstrate Trump’s economic ignorance. Trump wants to bolster American manufacturing: these tariffs will harm US manufacturing overall, even though they benefit relatively small subsectors thereof.   This is because US manufacturing is a big consumer of these materials.  As an example, Trump touts the American energy revolution and promotes American energy exports.  Well, the energy business is a huge consumer of steel in particular, in everything from pipelines to rigs to drill pipe to storage tanks to oil refineries to LNG liquefaction plants.  By helping one shrunken sector of the US economy, Trump is imposing substantial harm on a growing one–and one that he touts, no less.

A common retort to criticisms like mine is that the trade playing field is unfair, and that countries like China in particular advantage domestic producers at the expense of foreigners.  Well, they do that in many sectors, but even though that is inefficient, it redounds to the benefit of other sectors in the US economy: for example, subsidizing aluminum benefits US auto manufacturers, who increasingly utilize aluminum (in part to achieve compliance with self-inflicted regulatory harms, namely CAFE standards).

What is little understood is that a tax on imports is a tax on trade: it reduces both imports and exports.  Similarly, subsidizing exports increases trade–including exports by the country importing the subsidized good.

This is true over the long run: in the short run capital flows adjust as well as trade flows.  For example, Chinese subsidies can lead to an increased US trade deficit (Chinese trade surplus), which means that the Chinese accumulate US dollar claims–pieces of paper (or, more accurately, electronic book entries).  Then one of two things happens.  Either the dollar claims prove worthless, or the Chinese spend the dollars on US goods.  So we either get goods in exchange for worthless pieces of paper (or electronic records), or we export goods later.

If retaliatory measures like Trump’s tariffs could result in some bargain or accommodation that levels the playing field, then perhaps the benefit would exceed the cost (although ironically much of the overall benefit will redound to those who tip the playing field, because they bear the brunt of the cost of doing so). The track record on this is hardly encouraging, however. I predict that the likelihood is that Trump’s actions will not materially reduce imbalances in the trade playing field, and that as a result they will be highly detrimental to the US economy–including the sectors which Trump claims to champion.

When Trump was a candidate, I was highly critical of his views on trade, e.g.:

Perhaps to give him more intellectual credit than he deserves, Trump is a died-in-the-wool mercantilist who believes trade is a zero sum game, and who favors protectionism and beggar-thy-neighbor currency policies. He talks like it is the late-80s, and Japan is still an economic juggernaut that will overwhelm the US, completely overlooking the fact that Japan’s crypto-mercantilist policies gifted it a 25 year long lost decade, and that neo-mercantilist China is on the brink of the same fate. If it is lucky.

and:

What is bizarre is that the sin of “giving our industrial markets to the Japanese” was somewhat dated by 1999, but Trump pounds on that theme today, when it is well past its sell date. Decades past. Just yesterday, in  Greenville, SC, he said something to the effect that “the Japanese are up here [holding his hand over his head] and we are down here [holding his hand by his knee].” Fact: Japanese per capita GDP is $36K, and US per capital GDP is exactly 50 percent higher, at $54K. But facts don’t matter. The image of Japanese domination (now accompanied by the image of Chinese domination) resonates intensely among Jacksonians.

I was hoping that he would not act on these impulses, or that he would be constrained from doing so. No such luck. Impulsive ignorance has won out.