Wednesday Macros
Powell Clearly the Focal Point..He Will Maintain Optionality... China Stable
The focal point of today is clearly Jay Powell, who is the leader of the dovish pack of the Fed... While we think he is outnumbered by the Kaplans, Bostic, Bullard, and many others, he has the bully pulpit... Powell clearly wants his optionality given all the world turmoil and uncertainty, from Delta variant, to supply chain issues, and to inflation... This is an elegant way to say, he will kick the can down the road, to make the big decisions after his big speech at Jackson Hole, and more likely at the September Fed meeting...
What will Powell say and what will he emphasize... Hear is how we see it...
1) Hawkish... He can mention tapering but as he gets closer to making a decision, the more the markets will view this as hawkish... But it is necessary, but given the recent uptick in Covid, he probably will be very careful... Meanwhile our old colleague Scott Skrym , tells us that " the liquidity the Fed is providing through QE is just circulating back to the Fed via RRP"... "The more the QE continues, the more the repo and overall Treasury market will be distorted"
2) Hawkish... Inflation has clearly moved higher from the last Fed meeting.. If Powell tries to emphasize transitory too strongly the markets will push back in disbelief.. Even the White House is fearing more inflation and is worried as their infrastructure program stalls because of overheating the economy and continued high inflation...
3) Dovish... Powell has a window here and we think he will take it... The recent uptick in Delta cases in many parts of the country has caused the CDC to bring back indoor mask mandates in many areas... This gives him cover to maintain his optionality by saying "we are not there yet"... And nothing in the employment spectrum , where he counts 8 million still not back to the work force, would dispute that... And yes there are 9 million job openings, but the CDC mandate is going to slow these down... So this is where Powell is going...
Markets... Treasuries overnight have given back some of their gains from yesterday... While treasuries did rally yesterday they did not break out of the previous days range... This is neutral at best... 200 day moving average is still 1.27 while the 10 year is 1.26... So it is a magnet... We have seen some reduction of longs according to the flow data we follow... Volumes have been weak... The 1.22-1.30 range we expected to hold into the Fed meeting has held... Now we expect to see that range challenged after the Fed meeting... The big players have been in Asia recently, where lots of money plays the trend... Our "guess" is that a dovish Fed will steepen the yield curve... And by 10 am tomorrow, if Powell does what we think, long yields will rise .. 1.36 and then 1.42... 1.50 to 1.75 is too early and too far over our skis for now.
Equities... As we like to say, the least dirty shirt in the laundry.. Chinese equities stabilized overnight on some talk from Chinese media that they are not trying to hurt the stock market... But 1.5 trillion dollars of losses after 3 days, that is what they have done... The Chinese financial advisors warned the politicians that they were about to put the Hong Kong markets into bear territory, so we have stabilization for now, but for how long?..Expect to see the Chinese "national team, step in to stabilize. That aside, earnings last night and in the past few weeks have been stellar in the US... And we saw a nice bounceback yesterday afternoon in small caps and all the indices.. Again, there is plenty of risk in equities, but with the Fed remaining dovish, even in the face of 8.5% GDP tomorrow and 5.4% YOY CPI, one has to play the hand they are dealt... So stay with it for now... But expect some volatility between this afternoon and the close of Friday.