Turnaround Tuesday??? Dead Cat Bounce....Fed 75 Tomorrow? 3 Month Libor 2%+
Yesterday was one of the ugliest days we have seen... While it was not a crash, it was ugly... Both bonds and equities got smoked, and bitcoin crumbled... While the catalyst was the continuing fallout from the CPI number on Friday, it seems like everyone got on board to accelerate the fears much further... The afternoon catalyst was from Timaros at the WSJ, who penned a column that the Fed would go 75 tomorrow... Does he really have inside information on that?... Did someone in DC whisper that to him, even though the Fed is in blackout?.. We will know in about 30 hours... But the markets seem to take it that he knows something... Our view remains that Powell has said he will go 50 and he will not deviate... Meanwhile the world is now thinking 4% Fed Funds sometime next year... And the debate of 25 or 50 in September is now 50 or 75... 200 basis is now being talked about between now and the September meeting... 50 in June and 75 each in July and September... We doubt that will happen as we continue to get new information... And those type of panic related moves will raise the odds of recession from small to moderate... What the Fed does not realize, is there is no liquidity... The Fed has been the backstop for liquidity for over a decade, and now they are no longer there... How in the world does a 3 month Tbill auction tail 9 basis yesterday?... That is the worst since the Lehman situation, which was a leverage play... This is not leverage, it is a replay of the beginning of Covid when the economy was mistakenly closed...
Fed... Goldman, JP, DB, all joined Barclays and Jefferies predicting a 75 basis hike tomorrow... Citi is not there and remains at 50,.. We agree with Citi... In BB Daybreak there is a note that says both JP and StanChart, "Mooting the possibility of 100 basis hike tomorrow"... Why not 700 basis hike tomorrow to get to inflation right away??? Again we think 50 and many are trying to jump ahead to see who can be the most aggressive... Meanwhile we see that 3 MONTH LIBOR JUMPED 17.443 BASIS THIS MORNING TO 2.0039...
Inflation is bad... And we get PPI today which could add more fire to the argument..PPI final demand YOY is predicted to be 10.9%... We think likely mid 11%... And if you want to add fire to the argument, look at German inflation numbers today...Cpi EU Harmonized YOY was 8.7%... But the WHOLESALE PRICE INDEX YOY WAS 22.9%... We could argue that these numbers are peaking and be reduced significantly over the next few months, but no one will listen to us... However, we are not the only ones that think it will come down quickly..UBS raised their oil target for Brent to 130 by the end of September.... But BB reports that OIL OPTION TRADERS ARE VERY PESSIMISTIC.. CONTRACTS WITH THE MOST OPEN INTEREST FOR DECEMBER ARE BRENT PUTS WITH A STRIKE OF 55... HELLO... It looks like others see the chance for a big drop in inflation... Just not today.
Rates... Treasuries are bull steepening as 2 years are better by 7.2 basis... 10 years better by 5.3.. 2/10 have gone from -4 to +4 overnight, now at 2.5...we are searching for support levels... Citi has 3.75 for both 2's and 5's...seems too wide for us... We see support for 2 years around 3.375 to 3.5.. For 5 years 3.5 to 3.625... For 10 years 3.375 to 3.5... We expect to see significantly different levels for rates Thursday morning, depending on what the Fed does and how they portray their hawkishness...
Corporates... Forget about it... No new issues yesterday and none scheduled yet today... The world is ugly in this space for now...IG CDX is now over 100, after widening 20 in the last week. We see 112 support in the charts... HY is out more than 100 in the last week going from 472 close on 6/6 to 583 now...we see 636 on the charts as the next stop... We said that when the new issue markets starts to close, it would bring havoc to the equity markets... It seems that while the correlation is there, the equity markets led this..
Equities... We had multiple calls yesterday asking if it is safe to buy equities here... While we did see capitulation yesterday, we don't know if this is one of many that we will see... But it was a big one as 1.3 trillion of value was wiped out... We now get David Rosenberg Tweets, where this morning he called for a crash... Problem with the guys that are always negative, is that just like a broken clock, they are right every once in awhile... We don't dispute that another downdraft could happen, and will likely happen, but our gut feel is that while we think equities could be ok here, markets tend to overshoot... And we do not think that has happened yet...