U.S. Retailers’ Sales Rise at Fastest Pace in 4 Years

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. retailers’ sales are growing at the fastest pace in four years, a sign consumers may be overcoming concern about unemployment and depressed home values.
Sales probably expanded at an average monthly rate of 4 percent in the first five months of the retail fiscal year that began Jan. 31, the biggest gain since 2006, the International Council of Shopping Centers trade group said in advance of its June report tomorrow. Nordstrom Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. are among chains that will report June sales increases at stores open at least a year, according to analysts’ estimates.
Retailers may have bucked last month’s drop in consumer confidence that threatens to temper the rebound. The year-to- date growth in sales shows that spending, a key driver of the U.S. economy, is faring better than many investors are betting, said Michael Niemira, the New York-based ICSC’s chief economist.
“The sales results have been uneven, which makes people worry about the recovery,” Niemira said in a telephone interview. “If you look at the underlying growth rate, it suggests a relatively healthy, moderate pace of spending for the remainder of the year.”
In the current fiscal year, the ICSC’s monthly number swung as high as 9 percent in March, then receded to a 0.8 percent gain in April, partly because of an earlier Easter.
June sales probably came in at the high end of a projected
3 percent to 4 percent range, the ICSC said today.

Luxury, Wholesale

The sales growth has been driven by a 4.2 percent increase at wholesale clubs, excluding gasoline sales, and an 8 percent jump at luxury chains this year, according to the ICSC. Wealthy consumers tend to “come out of hibernation” first after a recession, and the clubs are luring value-seeking customers, Niemira said.
“Our customers in the U.S. are feeling more confident than a year ago, tied to improved levels of net worth,” Tiffany & Co. Chief Financial Officer James Fernandez told an investors’
conference June 30. “It’s probably also true, and not surprising, that economic issues and stock-market volatility still affect consumer psychology.”
The potential spoiler remains a lack of U.S. jobs.
Employment fell in June for the first time this year, reflecting a drop in federal census workers and a smaller-than-forecast gain in the private sector, the Labor Department said July 2.
Unemployment was one reason Deborah L. Weinswig, a retail analyst at Citigroup Inc., lowered her stock price forecasts and earnings estimates for Macy’s Inc. and other retailers.
“We are tempering our outlook for retail sales for the back half of 2010 based on mounting pressures against the consumer,”
the New York-based analyst wrote in a July 5 report. She also cited a lack of consumer credit, less home equity, and tax increases.

Wary Investors

The Standard & Poor’s 500 retail index rose 2.4 percent today. The 31-member index has declined 4.4 percent this year after surging 47 percent in 2009.
“Investors seem to have given up on the consumers,” Bill Dreher, an analyst with Deutsche Bank AG in New York, said on a July 1 conference call with clients. “Most of our retail operators are very bullish.”
June sales reports will meet or beat analysts’ estimates, and the positive comparable-sales trend will continue, Dreher predicted. Retailers are well-positioned for profitability, with inventories and operating expenses tightly controlled, he said.
Nordstrom will report a same-store sales increase of 11 percent for June and Kohl’s and Macy’s will post gains of 8 percent, Dreher estimated.
Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S.
economy. The Conference Board’s confidence index slumped to 52.9 in June from a revised 62.7 in May, the New York-based private research group said June 29. Same-store sales are a key indicator of a retailer’s growth because they exclude results from new and closed locations.

Year-Earlier Declines

The chains’ numbers don’t tell the whole picture because some retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest, and New York-based Tiffany, don’t post figures monthly, and the reports don’t include all spending online.
The industry’s latest gains look better partly because they are coming off steep declines a year earlier, and while the growth rates have improved, many retailers haven’t recovered their earlier sales volumes, Niemira said.
Sales in 2010 will grow 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent at the more than 30 chains it tracks, the ICSC predicted in mid-May, faster than its January projection of 3 percent to 3.5 percent.
An increase within the latest forecasted range would be the largest since 2006. Those sales dropped 1.6 percent last year.
“These growth rates are the best we’ve seen in several years, after a multiyear slump,” Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners LLC, a consulting firm in New Canaan, Connecticut, said in a July 2 telephone interview. “Some of the analysts get caught up in the month-to-month comparable sales, and they can be misleading.”

Malaysia Equity Preview - June 29,2010

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- The following companies may have unusual price changes in Malaysia trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses, and share prices are from the most recent close.
Malaysia’s FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index dropped 0.1 percent to 1,325.54.

Aeon Co. (M) Bhd. (AEON MK): The Malaysian unit of Japanese retailer Aeon Co. said it agreed to buy 17.3 acres of land in Perak state for 27.1 million ringgit ($8.4 million). Aeon plans to build a shopping mall on the site, it said in a statement.
Aeon was unchanged at 4.90 ringgit.

Atlan Holdings Bhd. (ALN MK): The electronics and stamped metal components maker said it’s proposing a reverse takeover of Esmart Holdings Ltd. to give the company greater access to “alternative funding options” in the Singapore market. Atlan will inject two subsidiaries, DFZ Capital Bhd. and Darul Metro Sdn Bhd into Esmart, according to a statement to the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange today. Atlan was unchanged at 3.25 ringgit on June 25. DFZ was unchanged at 3.27 ringgit. Both stocks were suspended yesterday.

Kencana Petroleum Bhd. (KEPB MK): The oil and gas services provider said profit in the third quarter ended April 30 dropped
13 percent from a year earlier to 31.2 million ringgit. Kencana was unchanged at 1.47 ringgit.

Malayan Banking Bhd. (MAY MK): The Employees Provident Fund, Malaysia’s largest pension fund, had net sales of 7.7 million shares in Malayan Banking, the nation’s biggest bank, a stock exchange filing showed. The sales, made between June 21 and 22, trimmed the fund’s stake to 10.8 percent, according to the filing. Maybank, as the lender is known, added 0.1 percent to 7.59 ringgit.

UMW Holdings Bhd. (UMWH MK): The vehicle assembler said it viewed losses at its oil and gas division as a “temporary setback” and the company is in the final stages of negotiations to lease its jack-up drilling rigs. UMW doesn’t need to make provisions for the losses, it said in a statement. UMW was unchanged at 6.32 ringgit.

Zelan Bhd. (ZELAN MK): The builder said it sold 9.4 million shares of IJM Corp. (IJM MK) for 45.5 million ringgit or at an average price of 4.85 ringgit a share. Zelan will book a gain of
6.5 million ringgit at the group level from the sale, it said in a statement. The money raised will be used to pare debt, the company said. Zelan gained 1.9 percent to 54 sen. IJM rose 0.4 percent to 4.93 ringgit.

George Soros: We Are Just Entering "Act 2" Of The Crisis, And We're Totally Screwed

George Soros recently gave a speech at a conference in Vienna. Here's a transcript, courtesy of Australia's The Age. We've highlighted the important bits.

In the week following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008 — global financial markets actually broke down, and by the end of the week, they had to be put on artificial life support. The life support consisted of substituting sovereign credit for the credit of financial institutions, which ceased to be acceptable to counterparties.

As Mervyn King of the Bank of England brilliantly explained, the authorities had to do in the short term the exact opposite of what was needed in the long term: they had to pump in a lot of credit to make up for the credit that disappeared, and thereby reinforce the excess credit and leverage that had caused the crisis in the first place. Only in the longer term, when the crisis had subsided, could they drain the credit and re-establish macroeconomic balance.

This required a delicate two-phase maneuver just as when a car is skidding. First you have to turn the car into the direction of the skid and only when you have regained control can you correct course.

The first phase of the maneuver has been successfully accomplished — a collapse has been averted. In retrospect, the temporary breakdown of the financial system seems like a bad dream. There are people in the financial institutions that survived who would like nothing better than to forget it and carry on with business as usual. This was evident in their massive lobbying effort to protect their interests in the Financial Reform Act that just came out of Congress. But the collapse of the financial system as we know it is real, and the crisis is far from over.

Indeed, we have just entered Act II of the drama, when financial markets started losing confidence in the credibility of sovereign debt. Greece and the euro have taken center stage, but the effects are liable to be felt worldwide. Doubts about sovereign credit are forcing reductions in budget deficits at a time when the banks and the economy may not be strong enough to permit the pursuit of fiscal rectitude. We find ourselves in a situation eerily reminiscent of the 1930s. Keynes has taught us that budget deficits are essential for counter cyclical policies, yet many governments have to reduce them under pressure from financial markets. This is liable to push the global economy into a double dip.

It is important to realize that the crisis in which we find ourselves is not just a market failure but also a regulatory failure, and even more importantly, a failure of the prevailing dogma about financial markets. I have in mind the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Expectation Theory. These economic theories guided, or more exactly misguided, both the regulators and the financial engineers who designed the derivatives and other synthetic financial instruments and quantitative risk management systems which have played such an important part in the collapse. To gain a proper understanding of the current situation and how we got to where we are, we need to go back to basics and re-examine the foundation of economic theory.

I have developed an alternative theory about financial markets which asserts that financial markets do not necessarily tend toward equilibrium; they can just as easily produce asset bubbles. Nor are markets capable of correcting their own excesses. Keeping asset bubbles within bounds have to be an objective of public policy. I propounded this theory in my first book, “The Alchemy of Finance,” in 1987. It was generally dismissed at the time, but the current financial crisis has proven, not necessarily its validity, but certainly its superiority to the prevailing dogma.

Let me briefly recapitulate my theory for those who are not familiar with it. It can be summed up in two propositions. First, financial markets, far from accurately reflecting all the available knowledge, always provide a distorted view of reality. This is the principle of fallibility. The degree of distortion may vary from time to time. Sometimes it’s quite insignificant, at other times it is quite pronounced. When there is a significant divergence between market prices and the underlying reality I speak of far from equilibrium conditions. That is where we are now.

Second, financial markets do not play a purely passive role; they can also affect the so-called fundamentals they are supposed to reflect. These two functions that financial markets perform work in opposite directions. In the passive or cognitive function, the fundamentals are supposed to determine market prices. In the active or manipulative function market, prices find ways of influencing the fundamentals. When both functions operate at the same time, they interfere with each other. The supposedly independent variable of one function is the dependent variable of the other, so that neither function has a truly independent variable. As a result, neither market prices nor the underlying reality is fully determined. Both suffer from an element of uncertainty that cannot be quantified. I call the interaction between the two functions reflexivity. Frank Knight recognized and explicated this element of unquantifiable uncertainty in a book published in 1921, but the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Expectation Theory have deliberately ignored it. That is what made them so misleading.

Reflexivity sets up a feedback loop between market valuations and the so-called fundamentals which are being valued. The feedback can be either positive or negative. Negative feedback brings market prices and the underlying reality closer together. In other words, negative feedback is self-correcting. It can go on forever, and if the underlying reality remains unchanged, it may eventually lead to an equilibrium in which market prices accurately reflect the fundamentals. By contrast, a positive feedback is self-reinforcing. It cannot go on forever because eventually, market prices would become so far removed from reality that market participants would have to recognize them as unrealistic. When that tipping point is reached, the process becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction. That is how financial markets produce boom-bust phenomena or bubbles. Bubbles are not the only manifestations of reflexivity, but they are the most spectacular.

In my interpretation equilibrium, which is the central case in economic theory, turns out to be a limiting case where negative feedback is carried to its ultimate limit. Positive feedback has been largely assumed away by the prevailing dogma, and it deserves a lot more attention.

I have developed a rudimentary theory of bubbles along these lines. Every bubble has two components: an underlying trend that prevails in reality and a misconception relating to that trend. When a positive feedback develops between the trend and the misconception, a boom-bust process is set in motion. The process is liable to be tested by negative feedback along the way, and if it is strong enough to survive these tests, both the trend and the misconception will be reinforced. Eventually, market expectations become so far removed from reality that people are forced to recognize that a misconception is involved. A twilight period ensues during which doubts grow and more and more people lose faith, but the prevailing trend is sustained by inertia. As Chuck Prince, former head of Citigroup, said, “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We are still dancing.” Eventually a tipping point is reached when the trend is reversed; it then becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction.

Typically bubbles have an asymmetric shape. The boom is long and slow to start. It accelerates gradually until it flattens out again during the twilight period. The bust is short and steep because it involves the forced liquidation of unsound positions. Disillusionment turns into panic, reaching its climax in a financial crisis.

The simplest case of a purely financial bubble can be found in real estate. The trend that precipitates it is the availability of credit; the misconception that continues to recur in various forms is that the value of the collateral is independent of the availability of credit. As a matter of fact, the relationship is reflexive. When credit becomes cheaper, activity picks up and real estate values rise. There are fewer defaults, credit performance improves, and lending standards are relaxed. So at the height of the boom, the amount of credit outstanding is at its peak, and a reversal precipitates false liquidation, depressing real estate values.

The bubble that led to the current financial crisis is much more complicated. The collapse of the subprime bubble in 2007 set off a chain reaction, much as an ordinary bomb sets off a nuclear explosion. I call it a superbubble. It has developed over a longer period of time, and it is composed of a number of simpler bubbles. What makes the superbubble so interesting is the role that the smaller bubbles have played in its development.

The prevailing trend in the superbubble was the ever-increasing use of credit and leverage. The prevailing misconception was the belief that financial markets are self-correcting and should be left to their own devices. President Reagan called it the “magic of the marketplace,” and I call it market fundamentalism. It became the dominant creed in the 1980s. Since market fundamentalism was based on false premises, its adoption led to a series of financial crises. Each time, the authorities intervened, merged away, or otherwise took care of the failing financial institutions, and applied monetary and fiscal stimuli to protect the economy. These measures reinforced the prevailing trend of ever-increasing credit and leverage, and as long as they worked, they also reinforced the prevailing misconception that markets can be safely left to their own devices. The intervention of the authorities is generally recognized as creating amoral hazard; more accurately it served as a successful test of a false belief, thereby inflating the superbubble even further.

It should be emphasized that my theories of bubbles cannot predict whether a test will be successful or not. This holds for ordinary bubbles as well as the superbubble. For instance, I thought the emerging market crisis of 1997-98 would constitute the tipping point for the superbubble, but I was wrong. The authorities managed to save the system and the superbubble continued growing. That made the bust that eventually came in 2007-8 all the more devastating.

What are the implications of my theory for the regulation of the financial system?

First and foremost, since markets are bubble-prone, the financial authorities have to accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big. Alan Greenspan and other regulators have expressly refused to accept that responsibility. If markets can’t recognize bubbles, Greenspan argued, neither can regulators — and he was right. Nevertheless, the financial authorities have to accept the assignment, knowing full well that they will not be able to meet it without making mistakes. They will, however, have the benefit of receiving feedback from the markets, which will tell them whether they have done too much or too little. They can then correct their mistakes.

Second, in order to control asset bubbles it is not enough to control the money supply; you must also control the availability of credit. This cannot be done by using only monetary tools; you must also use credit controls. The best-known tools are margin requirements and minimum capital requirements. Currently, they are fixed irrespective of the market’s mood, because markets are not supposed to have moods. Yet they do, and the financial authorities need to vary margin and minimum capital requirements in order to control asset bubbles.

Regulators may also have to invent new tools or revive others that have fallen into disuse. For instance, in my early days in finance, many years ago, central banks used to instruct commercial banks to limit their lending to a particular sector of the economy, such as real estate or consumer loans, because they felt that the sector was overheating. Market fundamentalists consider that kind of intervention unacceptable, but they are wrong. When our central banks used to do it, we had no financial crises to speak of. The Chinese authorities do it today, and they have much better control over their banking system. The deposits that Chinese commercial banks have to maintain at the People’s Bank of China were increased 17 times during the boom, and when the authorities reversed course, the banks obeyed them with alacrity.

Third, since markets are potentially unstable, there are systemic risks in addition to the risks affecting individual market participants. Participants may ignore these systemic risks in the belief that they can always dispose of their positions, but regulators cannot ignore them because if too many participants are on the same side, positions cannot be liquidated without causing a discontinuity or a collapse. They have to monitor the positions of participants in order to detect potential imbalances. That means that the positions of all major market participants, including hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, need to be monitored. The drafters of the Basel Accords made a mistake when they gave securities held by banks substantially lower risk ratings than regular loans: they ignored the systemic risks attached to concentrated positions in securities. This was an important factor aggravating the crisis. It has to be corrected by raising the risk ratings of securities held by banks. That will probably discourage loans, which is not such a bad thing.

Fourth, derivatives and synthetic financial instruments perform many useful functions, but they also carry hidden dangers. For instance, the securitization of mortgages was supposed to reduce risk through geographical diversification. In fact, it introduced a new risk by separating the interest of the agents from the interest of the owners. Regulators need to fully understand how these instruments work before they allow them to be used, and they ought to impose restrictions guard against those hidden dangers. For instance, agents packaging mortgages into securities ought to be obliged to retain sufficient ownership to guard against the agency problem.

Credit-default swaps (C.D.S.) are particularly dangerous. They allow people to buy insurance on the survival of a company or a country while handing them a license to kill. C.D.S. ought to be available to buyers only to the extent that they have a legitimate insurable interest. Generally speaking, derivatives ought to be registered with a regulatory agency just as regular securities have to be registered with the S.E.C. or its equivalent. Derivatives traded on exchanges would be registered as a class; those traded over-the-counter would have to be registered individually. This would provide a powerful inducement to use exchange traded derivatives whenever possible.

Finally, we must recognize that financial markets evolve in a one-directional, nonreversible manner. The financial authorities, in carrying out their duty of preventing the system from collapsing, have extended an implicit guarantee to all institutions that are “too big to fail.” Now they cannot credibly withdraw that guarantee. Therefore, they must impose regulations that will ensure that the guarantee will not be invoked. Too-big-to-fail banks must use less leverage and accept various restrictions on how they invest the depositors’ money. Deposits should not be used to finance proprietary trading. But regulators have to go even further. They must regulate the compensation packages of proprietary traders to ensure that risks and rewards are properly aligned. This may push proprietary traders out of banks, into hedge funds where they properly belong. Just as oil tankers are compartmentalized in order to keep them stable, there ought to be firewalls between different markets. It is probably impractical to separate investment banking from commercial banking as the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 did. But there have to be internal compartments keeping proprietary trading in various markets separate from each other. Some banks that have come to occupy quasi-monopolistic positions may have to be broken up.

While I have a high degree of conviction on these five points, there are many questions to which my theory does not provide an unequivocal answer. For instance, is a high degree of liquidity always desirable? To what extent should securities be marked to market? Many answers that followed automatically from the Efficient Market Hypothesis need to be re-examined.

It is clear that the reforms currently under consideration do not fully satisfy the five points I have made, but I want to emphasize that these five points apply only in the long run. As Mervyn King explained, the authorities had to do in the short run the exact opposite of what was required in the long run. And as I said earlier, the financial crisis is far from over. We have just ended Act II. The euro has taken center stage, and Germany has become the lead actor. The European authorities face a daunting task: they must help the countries that have fallen far behind the Maastricht criteria to regain their equilibrium while they must also correct the deficiencies of the Maastricht Treaty which have allowed the imbalances to develop. The euro is in what I call a far-from-equilibrium situation. But I prefer to discuss this subject in Germany, which is the lead actor, and I plan to do so at the Humboldt University in Berlin on June 23. I hope you will forgive me if I avoid the subject until then.

Malaysia Equity Preview - June 25,2010

June 25 (Bloomberg) -- The following companies may have unusual price changes in Malaysia trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses, and share prices are from the most recent close.
Malaysia’s FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index fell 0.3 percent to 1,325.87.

Genetec Technology Bhd. (GENE MK): The Malaysian industrial automated equipment maker said it won orders worth 13.5 million ringgit ($4.2 million) from its existing clients in the hard disk drive industries. Genetec dropped 2 percent to 25 sen.

Gamuda Bhd. (GAM MK): The construction and infrastructure company said third-quarter net income rose 58 percent from a year earlier to 73 million ringgit on higher contributions from all its divisions. Construction projects are progressing on schedule and the property market is recovering, it said in a statement. Gamuda added 0.3 percent to 3.21 ringgit.

Goldis Bhd. (GOLD MK): The investment company and information technology services provider said profit in the first quarter ended April 30 fell 49 percent from a year earlier to 4.24 million ringgit. Goldis was unchanged at 1.29 ringgit.

IJM Land Bhd. (IJMLD MK): The Malaysian property developer said it agreed to sell a company that owns a shopping mall in Melaka state for 66.3 million ringgit. The stock lost 1.8 percent to 2.16 ringgit.

IOI Corp. (IOI MK): The Employees Provident Fund, Malaysia’s largest pension fund, disclosed net sales of 3.4 million shares in IOI, the nation’s second-biggest listed palm oil producer, a stock exchange filing showed. The sales, made between June 17 and 18, trimmed the fund’s stake to 13.5 percent, according to the filing. IOI added 0.4 percent to 5.11 ringgit.

KFC Holdings (Malaysia) Bhd. (KFC MK): The country’s biggest fast-food operator said it bought 4.6 million shares in Al-’Aqar KPJ REIT (AQAR MK), an Islamic property trust, for 4.86 million ringgit. KFC bought the shares in the open market, it said in a statement. KFC added 0.8 percent to 10.06 ringgit.

SapuraCrest Petroleum Bhd. (SCRES MK): The Malaysian oil and gas services provider said profit in the first quarter ended April 30 jumped 99 percent from a year earlier to 50.7 million ringgit on higher sales. The stock dropped 0.5 percent to 2.23 ringgit.

Zeti Says Malaysian Exchange Rate Policy to Remain, Reuters Says

June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Malaysian central bank Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said the country will stick to its exchange rate regime as she didn’t expect a more flexible yuan policy to have an impact in the region’s financial markets, according to a Reuters report carried in the Star newspaper.
European debt woes haven’t posed a threat to market stability and the central bank would only consider intervening in the currency market if there were disorderly market conditions, the report said, citing Zeti.

Malaysia credit outlook 'stable': Moody's

Malaysia’s sovereign credit outlook is “stable” and “adequately supported by favorable expectations” for economic performance and policy management, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report today.

The country’s A3 rating has been underpinned through the global crisis by its “strong” external position, “deep and liquid” domestic capital markets and “well-managed” financial system, Moody’s said. -- Bloomberg

Updata: 10th Malaysia Plan (2)

Malaysia has identified 52 high- impact projects worth 63 billion ringgit to implement, Prime Minister Najib Razak said in parliament in Kuala Lumpur today.
They include seven highway projects at an estimated cost of
19 billion ringgit, he said in his speech. The government also plans two coal electricity generation plants at a cost of 7 billion ringgit, he said.

Malaysia plans to establish a 500 million-ringgit Mudharabah Innovation Fund to provide risk capital to government venture capital funds, Prime Minister Najib Razak said in a speech today in Kuala Lumpur.
This will bridge the financing gap betwen the early stage of commercialization and venture capital financing for high- technology products, he said.

Malaysia has earmarked plans to develop the Malaysian Rubber Board’s land in Sungai Buloh at an estimated cost of 10 billion ringgit, Prime Minister Najib Razak said in parliament in Kuala Lumpur today.
The land covers an area of 3,300 acres, he said in his speech.