10 Year Treasury

High yield bond markets are another victim of the "new normal"

Just as the Fed started the Taper large banks began ramping up their U.S. Treasury holdings.

Cruising through earnings, it is now time to revisit certain indicators that speak to the underlying health of the economy and that of the US equity and Treasury bond market.

The "Shiller P/E" is much in the news of late, and, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas suggests, with good reason. It shows that U.S. equity valuations are pushing towards crash-worthy levels. This measure of long term earnings power to current price is currently at 25.3x, or close to 2 standard deviations away from its long run median of 15.9x. As Colas concludes, the writing is on the wall and we must all read it. Future returns are likely going to be lower. Competition for investor capital will get even tougher. That’s what the Shiller P/E says, and it is worth listening.

Are the S&P 500 and VIX right while the Russell and Treasury Rates are Dumb?

The biggest fear the market currently has is not the ongoing crisis in the Emerging Markets, not the suddenly slowing economy, not even China's credit bubble popping: it is that Bernanke's successor may have suddenly reverted to the "Old Normal" - a regime in which the Fed is not there to provide the training wheels should the S&P suffer a 5%, 10% or 20% (or more) drop. Whether such fears are warranted will be tested as soon as there is indeed a bear market plunge in stocks - the first in nearly three years (incidentally the topic of the Fed's lack of vacalty was covered in a recent Reuters article). So, assuming that indeed the most dramatic change in market dynamics in the past five years has taken place, how does one trade this new world which is so unfamiliar to so many of today's "younger" (and forgotten by many of the older) traders? And, more importantly, how does one look for the signs of a bottom: an Old Normal bottom that is. Courtesy of Convergex' Nicholas Colas, here is a reminder of what to look forward to, for those who are so inclined, to time the next market inflection point.

Forget the last two day's decline.  The consensus opinion for 2014 is pretty uniform: stocks will go up modestly, bond will decline in similar fashion.  Job growth will grind higher, as will inflation.  The Fed will taper its bond-buying program, slowly.  And so it may all come to pass...  But ConvergEx's Nick Colas ponders what could go wrong, or at least different.  Top of his list: fixed income volatility, in conjunction with stock market valuations that are, at best, average. Colas reflects ominously on 1914, where if you read the papers of the day you would have seen much of the same "Yeah, we got this" tone that prevails today.  As the great market sage Yogi Berra once opined, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Either way, a cautious outlook is the better part of valor so early in the year.

Curious which were the best and worst performing asset classes for the month of October? Deutsche Bank explains.

This artificial prosperity plan for Wall Street has the added benefit of allowing the captured politicians in Washington D.C. to continue their $1 trillion per year deficit spending with no consequences for their squandering of future generations’ wealth. Bernanke and Yellen will never taper, because they can’t. The Fed balance sheet will continue to grow by at least $1 trillion per year until they crash the financial system again. Except this time, there will be no money printing solution. We are all trapped like rats in this monetary experiment being conducted by evil mad scientists. No one will get out alive. Welcome to the new normal. Now eat your cheese.

The macro picture for the world is dangerous. And high quality companies will not be spared the carnage if a market onslaught begins (which is looking increasingly likely).

If you are an equity bull let’s hope you don’t get what you wish for.

There is one problem with the Fed's plan that bond yields will progress ever higher in calm, cool and collected fashion from here to 3%, 4%, 5% and onward: it assumes that those who don't sell today, will patiently await turn to sell (with much bigger) losses tomorrow. Of course, what happens instead is that everyone will try to sell today, to avoid any losses tomorrow. What results, are spikes such as the one seen on the chart below, which just took the 10 Year yield to a fresh 2 year high of 2.8269% and rising. But perhaps most important, there are now just under 70 bps until the 3.50% "disorderly rotation" threshold beyond which bad things start happening.

How is the Federal Reserve going to stem the deflationary tide with equity markets at their highs?

So maybe we should take Bernanke at face value.