Archive - Sep 2011

In an amazing story by the WSJ Blog - Real-Time Economics, the mysterious world of the Fed-embargoed statement production is revealed. For all those worried HP or Xerox in the tough global economy (or for that mind any printer-ink/copier provider), fear not, for the Fed will keep their revenues flowing as we can't help but envision the movie 'Office Space' when we read this: Why Was Fed Statement Late? 20th Century Technology.

Luckily the US has everything else in order, which is why it can afford to shut down the government... Again

• HOUSE REJECTS BILL CONTAINING DISASTER RELIEF AID
• REPUBLICAN DEFECTIONS LEAD TO DEFEAT OF BUDGET BILL
• SPENDING BILL NEEDED TO FUND GOVERNMENT PAST SEPT. 30
• REPUBLICANS OBJECTED TO OVERALL COST OF SPENDING BILL

Hey Ben, when we said we can't wait for an inverted 2s30s, we were only kidding. Please don't destroy the country to satsify our wish. In other news, 3 month Libor will soon be trading wide of the 30 year.

What was already a relatively volatile morning as we lead up to the European close, paused for an hour or two until the FOMC statement was released. Immediately, stocks ripped and dipped, the TSY curve started to flatten - pivoting around the 7-10Y, the USD took off, commodities and PMs dropped, and credit cracked wider. Somewhat interestingly, while all this chaos was occurring, ES remained relatively well behaved with regard a broad basket of risk assets - which while not a positive per se, did indicate that this was a very broad de-risking and not simply an overly excitable US equity market prone to vicious dips, rallies, and retracements. It seems very obvious now, and fit with our indications of an exuberant equity market relative to the 2s10s30s fly, credit, and risk in general, that the rally in equities (which baffled anyone with common sense given the background of worsening macro data) was on pure hope and perhaps the sell-off's harshness today will have burned a few fingers as it seems the Bernanke Put strike just moved a lot further out-of-the-money.

UPDATE: Appended some equity-credit relative-value perspective.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 21/09/11

The plop heard 'round the world.

And so the Twist spin (pun and all that) begins after Morgan Stanley's Jim Caron tells clients that OpTwist will remove "more duration risk than expected." He says that the operation will remove more than $500 billion in 10 Year equivalents of duration risk from the market, which is far higher than the firm's expectations, and adds that he was "most aggressive on the street" saying the consensus was for $300 billion in 10 Yr equivalents, especially with QE2 removing $490 billion in 10 Yr equivalents. Well, Jim, the problem is that you are right about bonds - when it comes to Twist a lot of it was priced in, but judging by the 30 year reaction, not all. However, when it comes to stocks, the robots had been expecting not just Twist but a significant LSAP component, potentially up to $1 trillion. Which explains the unwind. And as for the opportunity cost of Twist, it is shown in the chart below. As SMRA just predicted, the average maturity on the Fed's balance sheet is about to soar by 33%, from 75 months to an all time record 100 months. This means the Fed goes all in on being able to control rates. Should the Fed have to print, and it will before long, at that time the Fed's interest rate risk will be unprecedented, and should it lose control, it will lose not only that, but all credibility it is capable of keeping something, anything, be it inflation, unemployment or price stability, under control. Then, it will be truly time to panic.

As Diapason's Sean Corrigan demonstrates, the Fed has failed at not only every single explicit mandate, such as keepin inflation and unemployment under control, but in its most important implicit one as well, that of preserving price stability, following an 8 week 2s30s curve shift which has been the greatest such move in 30 years, and a nearly 3 sigma event. 3 SIGMA... In boring government bonds...

Bernanke shot back at the Republicans today. He's facilitating a mortgage deal that will help the WH. The Republicans are going to fire right back.

There are lots of things out there that once they have been done, can never be undone. Ben just disappointed the market for the first time. Whether he knew it or not he failed to beat expectations. He has been so good at managing expectations and using that as a policy tool he lost sight of how far ahead of itself the market had gotten. Everyone expected twist and seriously, what's a 100 billion in size between friends in this crazy market.

Wonder why the Fed's DV 01 is about to surpass $2 billion in a few short months? Because the downward sloping line below, which shows the average maturity of Fed holdings, is about to go up, up, up. And yes, that means that every 0.01% change in interest rates will mean a $2 billion capital loss for the Fed. But, oh yes, the Fed can always print money so no risk there...

DON'T read this ... this has NOT been approved by Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner or any other branch of the government ... and it has NOTHING to do with finance, economics or business (including shifting jobs from the civillian to military sector and bankrupting the country with more than $5 trillion spent on the war on terror) ... DON'T READ THIS!!!

BOTTOM LINE: Fed "does the twist", announcing plans to sell short-term securities and buy longer-term Treasury securities through mid-2012. Though IOER remains unchanged, overall the move is more aggressive than expected given a) a relatively large share of purchases at the long end of the yield curve, b) plans to reinvest prepayments of agency debt and MBS back into agency MBS, rather than in Treasuries.

Here is the summary kneejerk response out of a panel of Wall Streeters, all of whom perfectly anticipated just this announcement. How else...

Congratulations Ben: you succeeded in getting the 30s to a near record low level (and by far the lowest for 2011) , which also means that the entire curve will soon be flat as a pancake, killing Net Interest Margin, aka curve carry for the banks, momentarily. Good bye Bank of America. Have fun riding that bear market rally with no financial leadership for the next several years.