Archive - Dec 27, 2011 - Story

When on Friday we penned "And This Is Where The LTRO Money Went" we said that the final nail in the "Carry Trade" theory was that instead of using the LTRO "Bazooka" cash to collect meaningless pennies in front of a steamroller, Europe's banks turned around and deposited it right back with the ECB after the bank's deposit facility soared to a 2011 record €347 billion, €82 billion more than the day before. Today, any residual doubt of where the LTRO cash proceeds went is eliminated, as the ECB has just confirmed that what goes out of one pocket comes back in the other, as the ECB's deposit facility has just exploded to not a 2011 record, but an all time record high €412 billion, a €65 billion increase overnight, and €167 billion higher in the past two days alone, which effectively accounts for practically all of the LTRO's free €210 billion... But the biggest slap in the face of Sarkozy is that instead of banks pocketing the "guaranteed" 2-3% in carry trade between the 1% LTRO rate and the soveriegn bond yield, banks are losing 75 basis point on this inverse carry trade, where they take LTRO cash and deposit it with the ECB where it yields... 0.25%!

It appears the PBoC is stepping up the monitoring and management of their gold reserves. Headlines, via Bloomberg, suggest controls tightening on the trading of gold away from official channels:

• *CHINA TO INCREASE MANAGEMENT OF GOLD TRADING, PBOC SAYS
• *CHINA GOLD TRADING RESTRICTED TO SHANGHAI EXCHANGES, PBOC SAYS
• *CHINA ORDERS UNAUTHORIZED GOLD TRADING PLATFORMS TO STOP: PBOC
• *PBOC ASKS SHANGHAI GOLD, FUTURES EXCHANGES TO BOOST MANAGEMENT

Despite more ramblings from Juncker this morning, the overnight session in Asia saw comments on downside risks from the BoJ drive risk assets modestly lower. Led by Japan, Asia-Pac equities were down around 0.3%. While EURUSD is higher by 25pips or so from Christmas Eve's close (and implicitly USD weaker), commodities are broadly underperforming with Copper worst (-1.3%), Gold (under $1600) and Silver in line -0.8%, and Oil just underwater from 12/23 close. European credit markets just started trading and are a smidge tighter - though liquidity is questionable for now - but sovereigns are leaking wider in spread with Italian 10Y worst for now +13bps (and BTP yields now breaking 7% again). US TSYs are 1-2bps lower in yield from the afternoon surge on Christmas Eve's discorrelated action. Given the markets that are open so far, CONTEXT (a broad risk market proxy for where ES - the e-mini S&P futures contract - should trade) is practically unchanged, which given the late-day surge on 12/23, leaves us looking for modest weakness when it re-opens later today.