Historically non farm payroll days are a catalyst to a big move in treasuries and sentiment... Today may be a bit different...Expectations for today are for a 550,000 number... BB Intelligence is at the higher range of 700,000... The whisper number is on top of the expectation , being at 564,000... But as always the outlier is Covid and the new cases of Omicron in the US... Obviously these numbers will spike, but will we see lockdowns? No... But slowdowns and more work at home? Maybe... So today's numbers are clearly backward looking to what may happen to the US economy... For now we think the economy is strong and will continue...latest Atlanta GDP was at 9.7%... But now we have to deal with year end liquidity and flows... Will too many buyers or sellers try to get through the door at once...?
Overnight there is little to discuss... Equities are mildly positive after a 35 point range in the S+P overnight... Yesterday the equity markets had a good day, after a back and forth week...catalyst yesterday was the news that Novavax was preparing a Omicron focused vaccine... Rates markets overnight were range bound with 10 years between 1.42 and 1.45... No surprises, although this week has seen a strong divergence between US Treasuries and Bunds, with treasuries 8 wider... Clearly the ECB is struggling with the idea of raising rates, while Fed governors have lined up in Hawkish formation... We have not heard any doves in the last two weeks...
Fed...Bullard out today, which is the last scheduled speech before the black out period... Do not be surprised to find another Fed speaker out there today in a unscheduled interview on one of the big 3... But the Fed is clearly anticipating an acceleration of tapering... We still think the report from the KC Fed concerning reduction of balance sheet makes a lot of sense..There were Chinese headlines early this morning about easing , but they did not come with any concrete details...
Ranges and flows...Shorts versus longs is about even, with CTA having plenty of room to initiate shorts in the belly... But maxed out longs in the 30 year... Hence more of a flattening... 5/30s have reached our objective of 56, that trade has now been taken off... But there are those that think the 30 year run is not over, if 1.72 breaks on the close of the week, 1 comes into play... For 10 years today, the resistance is 1.42 with 1.36 next... For 5 years it is not meaningful...our colleague Ian Lyngren pointed out in his survey that the most participants ever think the next 15 basis points in 10 year yields is higher...at 79%, it was the highest number in the 17 years he has been doing this... Meanwhile we read a liquidity report pointing out that the seasonal drain in liquidity is in force...Historical order books depth data showing that OB typically falls by more than 75% across DM 10 year benchmarks.
Corporate bonds came with over 8 billion yesterday lower than recent interest... And wider spreads... But general trading was ok as the equity market was strong...but high grade funds lost 3.86 billion of outflows in the latest week... IG will not meet their expectation of issuance for the week...
It will be a volatile day, regardless of the number... Fears of Omicron are high.. And the Fed is clearly in Hawkish mode.....we should be in high alert volatility mode until 24 hours after the Fed meeting....which lines up with our view that the first two weeks of December are not as good as the last two weeks for risk