Streetwise Professor

Last week, the great economist Harold Demsetz passed away at age 88. Harold (whom I knew slightly) was truly a giant, who made seminal contributions to industrial organization, property rights economics, transactions cost economics (especially his early recognition of the bid-ask spread as a cost of transacting, well before it became a focus of research in finance), information economics, and the theory of the firm.

He also coined the memorable phrase “nirvana economics,” which skewered the then-prevalent (and alas, too often currently prevalent) tendency to compare imperfect market outcomes with perfect ones, soon followed by a prescription for regulation to correct the “market failure.” He noted–and this can not be emphasized enough–that the true “relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.” That is, there are government failures too, and it is necessary to evaluate those in order to make policy choices. Nirvana is not a choice.

Like many great economists of his era (e.g., Coase), Demsetz’s work was literary rather than formal, but that definitely does not mean it lacked rigor. Demsetz wrote well, and could present tightly reasoned and impeccably logical theoretical arguments without resorting to a single equation. His article on entry barriers is a great example of this. There was a great deal more economic logic and insight in a typical Demsetz paper than in the typical modern densely mathematical work.

Demsetz’s biggest contribution to my economic education was his work that confronted, and largely demolished, the prevailing structure-conduct-performance paradigm in industrial organization, and the related empirical work on the relationship between industrial concentration and profits, which concluded that a positive correlation was the result of market power. End of story.

Demsetz demonstrated (as Sam Peltzman formalized shortly afterwards) that cost-concentration correlations could give rise to profit-concentration correlations even in the absence of market power. A simple story that illustrates the point is that a firm that experiences a favorable cost shock when its competitors do not will expand at their expense, and earn a profit commensurate with its greater efficiency. This tends to increase industry profitability and concentration.

Demsetz also showed in a famous paper (“Why Regulate Utilities?” that structural monopoly (e.g., a “natural monopoly” due to extensive scale economies) does not necessarily convey market power. Further, in
“Industry Structure, Market Rivalry, and Public Policy” he argued that competition for the market could be quite intense, and even thought it might result in a firm obtaining a large market share, (a) the firm’s ability to exercise market power might be limited, and (b) competition for the market could be an engine for progress, including notably product and process innovation.

In this work, and that of his contemporaries primarily at Chicago and UCLA, Demsetz undermined the prevailing paradigm in industrial organization, with its simplistic equation of market structure and market power. This resulted in a revolution in economic science, but also public policy, and in particular antitrust policy.

Alas, there is a counter-revolution afoot, and quite depressingly Chicago is one of the leaders in this. In particular, Luigi Zingales and the Stigler Center (!), and the Center’s Promarket blog, are among the leaders in resuscitating the notion that concentration is per se objectionable, and creates market power. In my perusal of this literature, and the voluminous writings about public policy it has spawned, I find no real intellectual advance, and indeed, perceive severe retrogression. In particular I find little effort to confront the Demsetz critiques (and the critiques of others that followed).

It is very sad that Harold Demsetz passed, although after a long and very productive life. It is sadder still that many of his most perceptive insights predeceased him.

After two years of waiting after a trial, and five years since the filing of a complaint accusing them of manipulation, Don Wilson and his firm DRW have been smashingly vindicated by the decision of Judge Richard J. Sullivan (now on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals).

Since it’s been so long, and you have probably forgotten, the CFTC accused DRW and Wilson of manipulating IDEX swap futures by entering large numbers (well over 1000) of orders to buy the contract during the 15 minute window used to determine the daily settlement price.  These bids were an input into the settlement price determination, and the CFTC claimed that they were manipulative, and intended to “bang the close.”  The bids were above the contemporaneous prices in the OTC swap market.

The Defendants claimed that the bids were completely legitimate, and that they hoped that they would be executed because the contract was mispriced because of a fundamental difference between a cleared, marked-to-market, daily-margined futures contract and an uncleared swap.  The former has a “convexity bias” and the latter doesn’t.  DRW did some IDEX deals with MF Global and Jefferies at rates close to the OTC swap rate, which it thought were an arbitrage opportunity, and they wanted to do more.  And, of course, they  received margin inflows to the extent that the contract settlement price reflected the convexity effect: thus, to the extent that the bids moved the settlement price in that direction, they expedited the realization of the arbitrage profit.

Here was my take in September, 2013:

Basically, there’s an advantage to being short the futures compared to being short the swap.  If interest rates go up, the short futures position profits, and the short can invest the resulting variation margin inflow at the higher interest rate.  If interest rates go down, the short futures position loses, but the short can borrow to cover the margin call at a low interest rate.  The  swap short can’t play this game because the OTC swap is not marked-to-market.  This advantage of being short the future should lead to a difference between the futures yield and the swap yield.

DRW recognized this difference between the swap and the futures.  Hence, it did not enter quotes into the futures market that were equal to swap yields.  It entered quotes at a differential to the swap rate, to reflect the convexity adjustment.  IDC used these bids to determine the settlement price, and hence daily variation margin payments.  Thus, the settlement prices reflected the convexity adjustment.  Not 100 percent, because DRW was trying to make money arbing the market.  But the settlement prices were closer to fair value as a result of DRW’s quotes than they would have been otherwise.

CFTC apparently believes that the swap futures and the swaps are equivalent, and hence DRW should have been entering quotes equal to swap yields.  By entering quotes that differed from swap rates, DRW was distorting the settlement price, in the CFTC’s mind anyways.

Put prosaically, in a way that Gary Gensler (the lover of apple analogies) can understand, CFTC is alleging that apples and oranges are the same, and that if you bid or offer apples at a price different than the market price for oranges, you are manipulating.

Seriously.

The reality, of course, is that apples and oranges are different, and that it would be stupid, and perhaps manipulative, to quote apples at the market price for oranges.

Here’s Judge Sullivan’s analysis:

[t]here can be no dispute that a cleared interest rate swap contract is economically distinguishable from, and therefore not equivalent to, an uncleared interest rate swap, even when the two contracts otherwise have the same price point, duration, and notional amount.  Put another way, because there is some additional value to the long party . . . in a cleared swap that does not exist in an uncleared swap, the economic value of the two contracts are distinct.

Pretty much the same, but without the snark.

But Judge Sullivan’s ruling was not snark-free!  To the contrary:

It is not illegal to be smarter than your counterparties in a swap transaction, nor is it improper to understand a financial product better than the people who invented that product.

I also wrote:

In other words, DRW contributed to convergence of the settlement price to fair value relative to swaps.  Manipulative acts cause a divergence between the settlement price and fair value.

. . . .

In a sane world-or at least, in a world with a sane CFTC (an alternative universe, I know)-what DRW did would be called “arbitrage” and “contributing to price discovery and price efficiency.”

Judge Sullivan agreed: “Put simply, Defendants’ explanation of their bidding practices as contributing to price discovery in an illiquid market makes sense.”

Judge Sullivan also excoriated the CFTC and lambasted its case.  He blasted it for trying to read the artificial price element out of manipulation law (“artificial price” being one of four elements established in several cases, including inter alia Cargill v. Hardin, and more recently in the 2nd Circuit, in Amaranth–a case that was an expert in).  Relatedly, he slammed it for conflating intent and artificiality.  All of these criticisms were justified.

It is something of a mystery as to why the CFTC chose this case to make its stand on manipulation.  As I noted even before it was formally filed (my post was in response to DRW’s motion to enjoin the CFTC from filing a complaint) the case was fundamentally flawed–and that’s putting it kindly.  It was doomed to fail, but the CFTC pursued it with Ahab-like zeal, and pretty much suffered the same ignominious fate.

What will be the follow-on effects of this?  Well, for one thing, I wonder whether this will get the CFTC to re-think its taking manipulation cases to Federal court, rather than adjudicating them internally in front of agency ALJs.  For another, I wonder if this will make the CFTC more gun-shy at bringing major manipulation actions–even solid ones.  Losing a bad case should not be a deterrent in bringing good ones, but the spanking that Judge Sullivan delivered is likely to lead CFTC Enforcement–and the Commission–quite chary of running the risk of another one any time soon.  And since enforcement officials are strongly incentivized to, well, enforce, they will direct their energies elsewhere.  I would therefore not be surprised to see yet a further uptick in spoofing actions, an area where the Commission has been more successful.

In sum, the wheels of justice indeed ground slowly in this case, but in the end justice was done.  Don Wilson and DRW did nothing wrong, and the person who matters–Judge Sullivan–saw that and his decision demonstrates it clearly.

The IEA points out the obvious:

Driving electric cars and scrapping your natural gas-fired boiler won’t make a dent in global carbon emissions, and may even increase pollution levels.

Higher electrification may lead to oil demand peaking by 2030, but any reduction in emissions from the likes of electric vehicles will be offset by the increased use of power plants to charge them, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook, which plots different scenarios of future energy use.

Substitution electrical motors for internal combustion engines involves a substitution of one fossil fuel for another?  Who knew?  WHY WASN’T I TOLD????

Further, especially when it comes to countries outside the EU, Canada, and the US, this will result in a substitution towards coal, electrification will involve a substitution of higher-CO2 intensive fuel (coal) for lower CO2-intensive fuel.

But, but, but . . . renewables! Right?

Of course, Bloomberg feels obliged to quote a green fantasist:

“Electrification is a necessary part of deep decarbonization because it is relatively easy to decarbonize the power sector,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior analyst at Greenpeace’s air pollution unit. “But electrification only helps if the power sector moves rapidly towards zero emissions.”

Zero emissions power sector.  “Relatively easy to decarbonize.”  Apparently, Greenpeace does not require drug tests.  Or perhaps, they do, but if you test negative you’re fired.

What is the cost of zero emissions power sector? (Anything is “easy” if cost is no object.)  Even far smaller renewable penetration (Denmark, Germany, California) results in substantially higher electricity costs.  Costs which fall extremely regressively, especially if implemented no a global basis, but upper middle class types who populate Greenpeace and Green Parties etc. couldn’t be bothered thinking about that.

Furthermore, there is no proof that renewables scale, and indeed,  basic considerations and basic economics strongly suggest they will not and cannot.  Renewables are diffuse and intermittent, and as a result maintaining reliability is costly, and this cost increases at an increasing rate the larger the share of renewables in the generation mix.

But, but, but . . . . batteries!

Batteries have been the subject of intense research for decades, and costs are falling, but again there are serious doubts that they can scale sufficiently to make zero emissions power even remotely attainable.  Indeed, batteries perhaps can handle diurnal variations in renewable power production, but handling the massive seasonal fluctuations in power demand is another matter altogether.

Further, from a lifecycle perspective, it is by no means clear that electric vehicles reduce CO2 emissions.  What’s more, the monomaniacal focus on CO2 ignores the other environmental and economic consequences of renewables generation, including profligate use of land, blended birds, the pollution created by extraction of minerals used in batteries and motors, and the pollution caused by the disposal thereof.

These issues always bring to mind James Scott’s Seeing Like a State, which shows that “high modernist” projects envisioned by alleged elites invariably result in catastrophe because they inevitably impose simplistic, low-dimension measures on complex, high-dimension systems.  Unintended consequences usually strike with a vengeance, and even the intended consequences fail to materialize.

The massive re-engineering of society required to de-carbonize is in many ways the zenith of high modernism, and is destined to produce a nadir of consequences, even compared to some of the other disasters that Scott examines.

The IEA’s caution should be heeded.  But it will not be.  Those Who Know Better will plunge ahead, until it becomes clear that they in fact know very little about what they imagine to design.  Alas, they will not bear the costs of their conceit.  The Lesser Thans will, and the lesser you are, the greater the costs will be.

 

An email from a legal academic in response to yesterday’s post spurred a few additional thoughts re spoofing.

One of my theories of spoofing is that is a way to improve one’s position in the queue at the best bid or offer.  Why does one stand in a queue?  Why does one want to be closer to the front?

Simple: because there is a rent there to capture.  Where does the rent come from?  When what you are queuing for is underpriced, likely due to some price control.  Think of gas lines, or queues for sausage in the USSR.

In market making, the rent exists because the benefit from executing at the bid or offer exceeds the cost.  The cost arises from (a) adverse selection costs, and (b) inventory cost/risk and other costs of participation.  What is the source of the price control?: the tick size.

Exchanges set a minimum price increment–the “tick.”  When the tick size exceeds the costs of making a market, there is a rent.  This makes it beneficial to increase the probability of execution of an at-the-market limit order, i.e., if the tick size exceeds the cost of executing a passive order, it pays to game to move up in the queue.  Spoofing is one way of gaming.

This has a variety of implications.

One implication is in the cross section: spoofing should be more prevalent, when the non-adverse selection component of the spread (which is measured by temporary price movements in response to trades) is large.  Relatedly, this implies that spoofing should be more likely, the more negatively autocorrelated are transaction prices, i.e., the bigger the bid-ask bounce.

Another implication is in the time series.  Adverse selection costs can vary over time.  Spoofing should be more prevalent during periods when adverse selection costs are low.  These should also be periods of unusually large negative autocorrelations in transaction prices.

Another implication is that if you want to reduce spoofing  . . .  reduce the tick size.  Given what I just discussed, tick size reductions should be focused on instruments with a bigger bid/ask bounce/larger non-adverse selection driven spread component.

That is, why police the markets and throw people in jail?  Mitigate the problem by reducing the incentive to commit the offense.

This story also has implications for the political economy of spoofing prosecution (which was the main thrust of the email I received).  HFT/algo traders who desire to capture the rent created by a tick>adverse selection cost should complain the loudest about spoofing–and are most likely to drop the dime on spoofers.  Casual empiricism supports at least the first of these predictions.

That is, as my correspondent suggested to me, not only are spoofing prosecutions driven by ambitious prosecutors looking for easy and unsympathetic targets, they generate political support from potentially politically influential firms.

One way to test this theory would be to cut tick sizes–and see who squeals the loudest.  Three guesses as to whom this might be, and the first two don’t count.

My eyes popped out when I read this statement regarding the DOJ’s recent criminal indictment (which resulted in some guilty pleas) for spoofing in the S&P 500 futures market:

Market participants that traded futures contracts in these three markets while the spoof orders distorted market prices incurred market losses of over $60 million.

$60 million in market losses–big number! For spoofing! How did they come up with that?

The answer is embarrassing, and actually rather disgusting.

The DOJ simply calculated the notional value of the contracts that were traded pursuant to the alleged spoofing scheme.  They took the S&P 500 futures price (e.g., 1804.50), multiplied that by the dollar value of a price point ($50), and multiplied that by the “approximate number of fraudulent orders placed” (e.g., 400).

So the defendants traded futures contracts with a notional value of approximately $60+ million.  For the DOJ to say that anyone “incurred market losses of over $60 million” based on this calculation is complete and utter bollocks.  Indeed, if someone touted that their trading system earned market profits of $60 million based on such a calculation in order to get business from the gullible, I daresay the DOJ and SEC would prosecute them for fraud.

This exaggeration is of a piece with the Sarao indictment, which claimed that his spoofing caused the Flash Crash.

And of course the financial press credulously regurgitated the number the DOJ put out.

I know why DOJ does this–it makes the crime look big and important, and likely matters in sentencing.  But quite frankly, it is a lie to claim that this number accurately represents in any way, shape, or form the economic harm caused by spoofing.

This gets to the entire issue of who is damaged by spoofing, and how.  Does spoofing induce someone to cross the spread and incur the bid/ask, who would otherwise not have entered an aggressive order?  Does it cause someone to cancel a limit order, and therefore lose the opportunity to trade against an aggressive order and thereby earn the spread (the realized spread, not the quoted spread, in order to account for losses to better-informed traders)?

Those are realistic theories of harm, and they imply that the economic harm per contract is on the order of a tick in a liquid market like the ES.  That is, per contract executed as a result of the spoof, the damage is .25 (the tick size) times $50 (the value of an S&P point).  That is, a whopping $12.50.  So, pace the DOJ, the ~800 “fraudulent orders placed caused economic harm of about 10,000 bucks, not 60 mil.  Maybe $20,000, under the theory that in a particular spoof, someone lost from crossing the spread, and someone else lost out on the opportunity to earn the spread.  (Though interestingly, from a social perspective, that is a transfer not a true loss.)

But $10,000 or $20,000 looks rather pathetic, compared to say $60 million, doesn’t it?  What’s three orders of magnitude between friends, eh?

Yes, maybe the DOJ just included a few episodes in the indictment, because that is sufficient for a criminal prosecution and conviction.  But even a lot more of such episodes does not add up to a lot of money.

This is precisely why I find the expenditure of substantial resources to prosecute spoofing to be so dubious.  There is other financial market wrongdoing that is far more harmful, which often escapes prosecution.  Furthermore, efficient punishment should be sized to the harm.  People pay huge fines, and go to jail–for years–for spoofing.  That punishment is hugely disproportionate to the loss, under the theory of harm that I advance here.  So spoofing is over-deterred.

Perhaps there are other theories of harm that justify the severe punishments for spoofing.  If so, I’d like to hear them–I haven’t yet.

These spoofing prosecutions appear to be a case of the drunk looking for his wallet (or a scalp) under the lamppost, because the light is better there.  In the electronic trading era, spoofing is possible–and relatively cheap to detect ex post.  So just trawl through the trading data for evidence of spoofing, and voila!–a criminal prosecution is likely to appear.  A lot easier than prosecuting market power manipulations that can cause nine and ten figure market losses.  (For an example of the DOJ’s haplessness in a prosecution of that kind of case, see US v. Radley.)

Spoofing is the kind of activity that is well within the competence of exchanges to detect and punish using their ordinary disciplinary procedures.  There’s no need to make a federal case out of it–literally.

The time should fit the crime.  The Department of Justice wildly exaggerates the crime of spoofing in order to rationalize the time.  This is inefficient, and well, just plain unjust.

This piece by John Thornhill on net neutrality epitomizes why I despise pretty much any opinion piece in the FT: it oozes pompous stupidity:

In a world that corresponds to economists’ assumptions of perfect competition and rational actors, we would not need net neutrality rules. But until that happy day arrives and goodwill, peace, and free chocolate ice-cream descend upon the earth, then we should defend this necessary principle.

And a bit later:

It is better to enforce equal access with some exemptions, as in India, than to allow a handful of ISPs to discriminate between users in far-from-perfect markets. [Emphasis added.]

There’s a name for this particular foolishness–“the Nirvana fallacy”–coined by the great Harold Demsetz almost 50 years ago:

The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing “imperfect” institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.

Perhaps there was an excuse for falling for the fallacy in 1969.  But decades post-Demsetz, it is embarrassing to see someone proudly flaunting the fallacy on the pink pages of the FT.

Perfection is not an option in this fallen world.  One has to make choices between flawed alternatives–that’s what Harold meant by “a comparative institution approach.”  What is particular bizarre is that in the paragraph just preceding what I quoted, Thornhill seems to understand this:

In truth, the arguments over net neutrality involve complex trade-offs and are a matter of broader societal choice. But that public debate is often based on partial information, corrupted by corporate lobbying, and mangled by dysfunctional political systems.

But never mind that! This particular regulation–which is certainly based on “based on partial information, corrupted by corporate lobbying [e.g., by those paragons of virtue Facebook, Google, Twitter, Netflix] and mangled by dysfunctional political systems”–is preferred to alternatives, because the alternatives are imperfect.  To call this a non sequitur hardly does it justice.

It is also amusing to see India–which has a dismal history of regulatory failure–held up as some paragon.  Absent some assertion that this is the exception that proves the rule, India’s adoption of net neutrality should be taken as more of a warning than an exemplar.

This is all twaddle.  And supercilious twaddle at that.

And that, my friends, is the FT in a nutshell.

 

As most of you probably know by now, Elon Musk settled with the SEC.  Though, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the SEC settled with Elon Musk.  The settlement over last weekend was apparently on the very same terms that he rejected at the end of the week.  Uhm, who leaves a rejected offer on the table, especially when that offer was a gift because the case against Musk was extremely strong.

Apparently it is because Elon is deemed the Indispensable Man.  SEC Chair Jay Clayton said that the settlement was best for Tesla shareholders.  Musk supposedly threatened to quit as CEO unless the board backed him to the hilt.  So apparently both caved to the legend of Elon.

The board’s action is somewhat expected–after all, they are Elon’s co-dependents and enablers.  The SEC’s actions are rather more disappointing.  My best explanation is that the SEC filed suit against Musk only because if they hadn’t they would have been a laughingstock given the outrageousness of Musk’s actions.  Their heart wasn’t in it, however, and they were willing to capitulate rather than bear responsibility for Tesla’s fate.  The fundamentals haven’t changed, and Tesla’s future is still fraught.

And Elon hasn’t changed either.  Even a mild settlement spurred his narcissistic rage, which he expressed in a tweet scorning the SEC as the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission.”  Still obsessed with shorts, still unable to handle any criticism, still unable to count his blessings.

This is the man whom the SEC apparently deems indispensable, and believes is the best guardian of Tesla shareholders’ interests.

Perhaps the judge who must approve the settlement will find the SEC’s arguments unpersuasive.  She has asked for each side to file briefs defending the settlement.  This briefing is pro forma, but in past years–in dealing with big banks and brokers like BofA and Merrill, anyways–judges have rejected SEC settlements.   Perhaps that will happen here.  Tesla stock sank today on the news of the judge’s request, and sank more post-close after Elon’s tweeter tantrum.

Even if the judge blesses the settlement, Tesla still faces its chronic cash flow issues.  The settlement may make it somewhat easier to go to the capital market–although that would potentially–and should–trigger another investigation and perhaps suit given Elon’s adamant denials of the need to do so.  But even with a settlement, recent events have no doubt made it harder–and costlier–for the firm to sell more stocks and bonds.  Elon got off easy once.  Given that he clearly hasn’t changed–and what 47 year olds do, really?–there is a serious risk that (a) he won’t get off so easy next time, and (b) there will be a next time.  That will affect the receptiveness of the capital markets to Tesla’s voracious cash needs.

In sum, by the grace of the SEC, Nemesis has been stayed for now.  But Hubris remains.  Meaning that Nemesis may well return, more vengeful than before.

Soon after the news of the SEC securities fraud lawsuit against Elon Musk, Tim Newman tweeted “Finally says @streetwiseprof.”  Indeed I did.

I am mildly surprised, but presumably Musk’s actions were so outrageous that the SEC couldn’t avoid taking action.

Although it shouldn’t be an issue, because Musk had to have known that his going private tweets were false, the law forecloses any “it was secured in my own mind” defense: recklessness–that he should have known the tweets were materially false–satisfies the scienter requirement.  At least that’s the case for the civil action: I’m not sure about any criminal action by the DOJ.

Several people emailed me soon after the announcement, and my response was (in addition to “It’s about time”): Is this just the first step?  Will the SEC (and perhaps DOJ) expand its investigation, and eventually legal action, to include Musk’s myriad previous dodgy statements?  SolarCity came to mind.  This SeekingAlpha post has a nice summary of some(!) of the others:

There’s been plenty of talk regarding SEC action since the day Elon Musk issued the go private tweet. With the news out Thursday, many would argue that a substantial overhang has been lifted from the stock, but of course, it brings up a lot of other issues that I’ve detailed above. Unfortunately, investors should consider the possibility that more shoes will drop.

There already have been many lawsuits filed from investors who have lost money during this whole fiasco. Additionally, there may be even more action from a number of government bodies. Who knows if the SEC is looking at other items like the Model 3 production ramp or the mysterious solar roof product? Perhaps they might even take a look at this blog post where Elon Musk talked about discussions for going private going back two years. He’s bought tens of millions in Tesla shares since, so would that be trading on material non-public information (insider trading)? Perhaps an investigation is started related to end of quarter sales tactics, where it seems Tesla is holding back deliveries of vehicles despite consumers paying for them. Some say this would be an effort to add much needed cash to the balance sheet or book unearned revenues for quarter’s end.

Not to mention missed production deadlines, the supercharger rollout, and on and on and on.  And what could a deep dive into Tesla’s accounting reveal?

Elon’s co-dependents, AKA the Tesla Board of Directors, came out in his support.

Good luck with that!  Though truth be told, they are so deeply connected to Elon that it would be pointless to try to cut loose from him now: their best bet is to go to the mattresses with him.  Not a good bet, but their best one.

A friend has repeatedly asked me why haven’t there been class action lawsuits.  My reply: not until there is a big break in the stock price.  That is occurring now.  So I wouldn’t stand in front of federal courthouses in the SDNY or NDCal for fear of being trampled by class action attorneys rushing to file.

The knock-on effects of this are many.  As I’ve written repeatedly, despite Elon’s denials (another possible legal vulnerability!) Tesla needs cash.   I don’t see a public equity or debt raise being remotely possible now, which would cripple the company’s ability to grow–and fulfill Elon’s grandiose promises.  Moreover, Elon has borrowed extensively against Tesla stock.  Margin call, anyone?  And if that happens, what will he do and how will that impact the stock?

It was only a matter of time before Elon’s words–and his tweets–came back to haunt him.  The only surprise is that it took such a long time.  But his aura as a visionary protected him.

There is an element of Greek tragedy here.  Hubris brings nemesis.  To say that Elon exhibited hubris is the understatement of the century.  If nemesis is even remotely proportional to hubris, he is in for hellish torments.

This Bloomberg piece from last month claims that the International Maritime Organization’s looming 2020 caps on sulfur emissions from ships “could lift crude prices by $4 a barrel when the measures come into effect in 2020.”

Not so fast.  It depends on what you mean by “crude.”  According to the International Oil Handbook, there are 195 different streams of crude oil.  Crucially, the sulfur content of these crudes varies from basically zero to 5.9 percent.  There is no such thing the price of “crude,” in other words.

The IMO regulation will have different impacts on different crudes.  It will no doubt cause the spread between sweet and sour crudes to widen.  This happened in 2008, when European regulation mandating low sulfur diesel kicked in: this regulation contributed to the spike in benchmark Brent and WTI prices, and wide spreads in crude prices.  During this time, (if memory serves) 10 VLCCs full of Iranian crude were swinging at anchor while WTI and Brent prices were screaming higher and sweet crude inventories were plunging precisely due to the fact that the regulation increased the demand for sweet crude and depressed demand for heavier, more sour varieties.

The IMO regulation will definitely reduce the demand for crude oil overall.   The demand for crude is derived from the demand for fuels, notably transportation fuels.  The regulation increases the cost of some transportation fuels, which decreases the (derived) demand for crude.  This change will not be distributed evenly, with demand for light, sweet crudes actually increasing, but demand for sour crudes falling, with the fall being bigger, the more sour the crude.

The regulation will hit ship operators hard, and they will pass on the higher cost to shippers.  In the short run, carriers will eat some of the cost–perhaps the bulk of it.  But the long run supply elasticity of shipping is large (arguably close to perfectly elastic), meaning after fleet size adjusts shippers will bear the brunt.

The burden will fall heaviest on commodities, for which shipping cost is large relative to value.  Therefore, farmers and miners will receive lower prices, and consumers will pay higher prices for commodity-intensive goods.  Further, this regulatory tax will be highly regressive, falling on relatively low income individuals, who pay a higher share of their income on such goods.

This seems to be a case of almost all pain, little gain.  The ostensible purpose of the regulation is to reduce pollution from sulfur emissions.  Yes, ships will produce less such emissions, but due to the joint product nature of refined petroleum, overall sulfur emissions will fall far less.

Many ships currently use “bottom of the barrel” fuel oil that tend to be higher in sulfur.  Many will achieve compliance by shifting to middle distillates.  But the bottom of the barrel won’t go away.  Over the medium to longer term, refineries will make investments that allow them to squeeze more middle distillates out of a barrel of crude, or to remove some sulfur, but inevitably refineries will produce some low-quality, high sulfur products: the sulfur has to go somewhere.  This is inherent in the joint nature of fuel production.

And yes, there will be some adjustments on the crude supply side, with the differential between sweet and sour crude favoring production of the former over the latter.   But sour crudes will be produced, and new discoveries of sour crude will be developed.

Meaning that although consumption of high sulfur fuels by ships will go down, since (a) in equilibrium consumption equals production, and (b) due to the joint nature of production the output of high sulfur fuels will go down less than its consumption by ships does, someone will consume most of the fuel oil that ships no longer used.  And since someone is consuming it, they will emit the sulfur.

The most likely (near term) use of fuel oil is for power generation.  The Saudis are planning to ramp up the use of 3.5 percent sulfur fuel oil to generate power for AC and desalinization.  Other relatively poor countries (e.g., Bangladesh, Pakistan) are also likely to have an appetite for cheap high sulfur fuel oil to generate electricity.

The ultimate result will be a regulation that basically shifts who produces the sulfur emissions, with a far smaller impact on the total amount of emissions.

This represents a tragic–and classic–example of a regulation imposed on a segment of a larger market.  The pernicious effects of such a narrow regulation are particularly acute in oil, due to the joint nature of production.

Given the efficiency and distributive effects of the IMO, it is almost certainly not a second best policy.  Indeed, it is more likely to be a second worst policy.  Or maybe a first worst policy: doing nothing at all is arguably better.

 

Some other power traders–this time in the US–blowed up real good.   Actually preceding the Aas Nasdaq default by some months, but just getting attention in the mainstream press today, a Houston-based power trading company–GreenHat–defaulted on long-term financial transmission rights contracts in PJM.  FTRs are financial contracts that have cash-flows derived from the spread between prices at different locations in PJM.  Locational spreads in power markets arise due to transmission congestion, so FTRs can be used to hedge the risk of congestion–or to speculate on it.  FTRs are auctioned regularly.  In 2015 GreenHat bought at auction FTRs for 2018.  These positions were profitable in 2015 and 2016, but improvements in PJM transmission caused them to go underwater substantially in 2018.  In June, GreenHat defaulted, and now PJM is dealing with the mess.

The cost of doing so is still unknown.  Under PJM rules, the organization is required to liquidate defaulted positions.  However, the bids PJM received for the defaulted portfolio were 4x-6x the prevailing secondary market price, due to the size of the positions, and the illiquidity of long-term FTRs–with “long term” being pretty much anything beyond a month.  Hence, PJM has requested FERC for a waiver to the requirement for immediate liquidation, and the PJM membership has voted to suspend liquidating the defaulted positions until November 30.

PJM members are on the hook for the defaulted positions.  The positions were underwater to the tune of $110 million as of June–and presumably this was based on market prices, meaning that the cost of liquidating these positions would be multiples of that.  In other words, this blow up could put Aas to shame.

PJM operates the market on a credit system, and market participants can be required to post additional collateral.  However, long-term FTR credit is determined only on an annual basis: “In conjunction with the annual update of historical activity that is used in FTR credit requirement calculations, PJM will recalculate the credit requirement for long-term FTRs annually, and will adjust the Participant’s credit requirement accordingly. This may result in collateral calls if requirements increase.”  Credit on shorter-dated positions are calculated more frequently: what triggered the GreenHat default was a failure to make its payment on its June FTR obligation.

This event is resulting in calls for a re-examination of  PJM’s FTR credit scheme.  As well it should!  However, as the Aas episode demonstrates, it is a fraught exercise to determine the exposure in electricity spread transactions.  This is especially true for long-dated positions like the ones GreenHat bought.

The PJM episode reinforces the Aas episode’s lessons the challenges of handling defaults–especially of big positions in illiquid instruments.  Any auction is very likely to turn into a fire sale that exacerbates the losses that caused the default in the first place.  Moral of the story: mutualizing default risk (either through a CCP, or a membership organization like PJM) can impose big losses on the participants in risk pool.

The dilemma is that the instruments in question can provide valuable benefits, and that speculators can be necessary to achieve these benefits.  FTRs are important because they allow hedging of congestion risk, which can be substantial for both generation and load: locational spreads can be very volatile due to a variety of factors, including the lack of storability of power, non-convexities in generation (which can make it very costly to reduce generation behind a constraint), and generation capacity constraints and inelastic demand (which make it very costly to increase generation or reduce consumption on the other side of the constraint).  So FTRs play a valuable hedging role, and in most markets financial players are needed to absorb the risk.  But that creates the potential for default, and the very factors that make FTRs valuable hedging tools can make defaults very costly.

FTR liquidity is also challenged by the fact that unlike hedging say oil price risk or corn price risk, where a standard contract like Brent or CBT corn can provide a pretty good hedge for everyone, every pair of locations is a unique product that is not hedged effectively by an FTR based on another pair of locations.  The market is therefore inherently fragmented, which is inimical to liquidity.  This lack of liquidity is especially devastating during defaults.

So PJM (and other RTOs) faces a dilemma.  As the Nasdaq event shows, even daily marking to market and variation margining can’t prevent defaults.  Furthermore, moving to a no-credit system (like a CCP) isn’t foolproof, and is likely to be so expensive that it could seriously impair the FTR market.

We’ve seen two default examples in electricity this past summer.  They won’t be the last, due the inherent nature of electricity.