Earnings Optimism Meets Debt Reality

Bill Fleckenstein MSN Money April 23, 2011

4/22/2011 12:28 PM ET

By Bill Fleckenstein, MSN Money

The latest week of earnings brought good tidings for tech, but it also carried a stern warning from S&P about approaching US debt and credit risks.

Related topics: Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Bill Fleckenstein

Wall Street's so-called "earnings season" is typically a period that gives the market a lot to digest, as companies across many industries report their results -- in this case, quarterly. The most recent earnings season, which kicked off earlier this month, presented investors with more to take in than just balance sheets and income statements.

The first item to consider is from April 18, when Standard & Poor's shocked the world by stating the obvious and putting a "negative outlook" on the AAA rating for U.S. bonds because of rising budget deficits and debt. (Meanwhile, Moody's raced to affirm its positive viewpoint.)

What does the S&P's warning mean?

However, Standard & Poor's missed the fact that we have a printing press and are more than happy to use it, thus we are not likely to turn into Greece anytime soon. Yes, the debt has risk, but that is interest rate (and inflation) risk, not credit risk à la the so-called PIIGS -- the beleaguered nations of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.

Nonetheless, that downgrade -- which occurred before U.S. markets opened -- helped drive European markets lower; markets here in America soon followed suit. In rather short order, Wall Street was a sea of red nearly everywhere. So far, so good, as far as logic is concerned: U.S. Treasury bonds losing their AAA rating would drive up yields, which would hurt stocks. So a negative reaction to that news made sense.

Bill Fleckenstein

But logic was trumped by a lack of immediacy and gamesmanship. Not surprisingly, Treasurys and the dollar rebounded in a silly, knee-jerk "risk off" trade away from stocks, the euro and European sovereign debt.

As for the reaction from equities, they eventually turned higher the afternoon of April 18 in the wake of the S&P announcement. And why not? If bonds and the dollar can rally when our hallowed Treasury bond rating is in peril, why should stocks sink? I don't mean to suggest that I think stocks ought to have rallied given the world we live in, but if the S&P news didn't matter to our Treasury or currency markets, then it has zero consequences for stocks.

There, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of the perversity of markets: S&P "shocks" people by daring to tell the truth, which should make investors negative on our debt, but bonds are bought anyway because there are more immediate problems (for now) elsewhere.

Now that S&P has let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, it may sensitize people to the idea that the funding crisis I've written about many times (see "Say goodbye to the bond bull market" for a full explanation) is in fact a very real prospect. We must remember, though, that because we have a printing press, it will take the currency and bond markets to take that option away from the Federal Reserve. We are not Greece, and cannot have austerity forced upon us in the absence of a rejection of our currency and/or Treasury bonds by the rest of the world.

Attitude adjustment

As for actual earnings reports, I was especially curious to see how the market would respond to quarterly results from Texas Instruments (TXN, news) -- one of the first high-profile companies to report that I expected to show some weakness. Sure enough, that company was forced to take down guidance for next quarter, not just because of Japan, but also because of weakness in other areas. However, the stock was barely affected.

That told me it is still not safe to sell stocks short because, by all rights, Texas Instruments should have sunk. Some may argue that the markets did not respond to good news either, as Goldman Sachs Group (GS, news) didn't see its stock trade higher after winning at beat-the-number, and that may be true to some degree. But when stocks don't decline on bad news, that is more telling (regarding potential success from shorting, or betting stocks will go down) than their not rallying on good news.

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