Wednesday Macros
Confused by the Fed?... Join the Markets... 37 Billion Gone...Bear Steepening?
Bear Steepening today... Bull Flattening last week... Inflation no longer transitory and the Fed is worried... Now Powell walked it back along with Williams, so we are back to transitory...others disagree..Morgan Stanley waves the red flag on commodities... Oil and the GLCO space did not get the memo, they are rallying. We quote from IHS Markit this morning on the German inflation " the rate of inflation in average prices charged for goods and services accelerated well beyond anything seen before in the series history"... Transitory or not, these numbers are huge and won't be reversed in the near term... Meanwhile our colleague Steve Spratt, of Bloomberg, writes this morning that 37 billion in 10 year bond positions have been wiped out over the last 4 sessions... This is what we mean when we said the reflation trades were smoked and unwound by the perception of what the Fed has been trying to say... Fed misspeak? Policy error?... Yep, but not just last week... So back to today
The long end of the treasury curve is under minor pressure in the overnight session... But as we write the 10 year is back to unchanged.. Bonds are lower... Everything is in a range so it is difficult to predict... 10 years are hovering at the 1.47 level... We won't see a major move unless we break 1.52... Or if the other way 1.42... We still think higher rates, but it is turning out to be a long waiting game...it looks to us that the next big number will be the unemployment number a week from Friday, right before the July 4 holiday on an early close...
Fed... We get three speakers today.. Bowman and Bostic in the morning... Neither looks market moving... And one of the most respected ,in our opinion, Rosengren , in the afternoon... He is the Fed expert on real estate and managed the Fed lending to real estate programs... He has said in the past that the Fed should end the purchases of mortgages....no need to support housing with prices soaring...
Markets will get back to normal, but it will take time... Two things we saw this morning.. US business borrowing jumps 20% In May
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-business-borrowings-jump-20-190749712.html that is good to see, as if this picks up banks will slow down their treasury buying and go back to their core business of lending... And in the BB Day Break, there was a piece from Bank America... And we quote " reports that some major banks will boost their capital allocation to trading,, allowing more market making availability"... Hallelujah ... Liquidity has been so poor for so long... Buyers wait for auctions to buy to get what they need. So if banks are now lending and some banks are willing to put some skin in the game of trading, maybe things will get less confusing and start to trend.
Corporate new issuance is starting to slow down... Too early to say a trend is developing, and spreads are steady, but not a great sign...
Have a good day