High Yield

The world’s financial system is saturated with speculations fostered by nearly two-decades of central bank credit inflation. Just since 2006, the footings of central bank balance sheets have expanded from $6 trillion to upwards of $22 trillion. That’s all combustible monetary fuel that cannot be recalled; it can only be liquidated in the course of a monumental meltdown in the casino. So, yes, after the carnage of the past few days the global sovereign bond index has lost $625 billion since the bond bubble peak in late March. Call that spring training.

U.S. companies announced $141 billion of new stock buyback programs last month and $243 billion of new M&A deals. Both figures are all-time records, and according to bubblevision are further evidence that CEOs are bullish on their companies and the economic outlook. You might say that. Then, again, it might put you in mind of swarming moths heading for a light bulb. The baleful truth is this. In its arrogant and misbegotten seizure of all financial power, the nation’s central bank has turned the C-suite of corporate America into a destructive agent of bubble finance. That’s ‘dumb money’ with a vengeance.

The current asset bubble depends on a number of perceptions that could easily be put to the test by unexpected developments. There is a widespread consensus on a number of issues. This includes the belief that the economy will strengthen, that the emergence of “price inflation” is practically impossible, that “QE” will always guarantee rising asset prices, and that central banks have everything under control. Now we learn that in addition to this, a surprisingly large number of traders has no experience beyond the ZIRP & QE era of recent years. Meanwhile, the market’s underpinnings in terms of liquidity exhibit numerous weaknesses.

Bill Gross just revealed another aspect of trading in the new (or any) normal: one may get the direction and the timing with laser-like precision (as Gross did on his Bund trade), but if said trade is excecuted in a way where the inherent "coiled spring" volatility of the Gross-defined "new normal" blows up the trade structure, the losses will make one wish never to have had the correct idea in the first place.

As we documented previously, one of the best ways to determine if a given Treasury auction will be strong is to look at the implied short overhang heading into the auction courtesy of Repo rates. Earlier today, ahead of today's $26 billion auction, the 2Y was trading -0.27% in repo: not too shorted, but judging by the results of the just concluded auction, shorted enough.

Episodes of “corrections” are apparently happening more frequently according to BofAML's credit strategist Barnaby Martin and given the extremities of liquidity, profits, technological disruption, regulation, and income inequality, BofAML warns 'gently' that the potential for a cleansing drop in asset prices cannot be dismissed. Most likely catalysts: Consumer, Rates, A-shares, Speculation, High Yield. "We advise selling risk into strength, buying volatility into weakness, advocate higher than normal levels of cash and would add some gold."

According to Fitch, nearly 40% of credit in China is outside bank loans, meaning that between forced roll-overs, the practice of carrying channel loans as "investments" and "receivables", inconsistent application of loan classification norms, and the dramatic increase in off balance sheet financing, the 'real' ratio of non-performing loans to total loans is likey far higher than the headline number.

Looking for signs that the country's largest asset management firms believe a market meltdown may be on the horizon? Look no further than Vanguard and several other large ETF providers who have set up billions in credit lines with banks to guard against the possibility that a wave of redemptions could wreak havoc on illiquid credit markets.

If yesterday's strong 3 Year auction caught the hordes of shorts unaware, sending the repo rate plunging from a super special -1.7% to positive, today's just concluded 10 Year auction was nothing short of epic, in virtually every possible way.

Earlier today, there was once again a massive scarcity of 3 Year underlying paper, when as the SMRA charts below show, the bond was trading the most negative in repo it has been since September: at a -1.68% rate, everyone was rushing to short ahead of today's 3 Year auction. And with the latest tumble in rates, absolutely, everyone was convinced shorting today's 3 Year auction would be easy money. And then the central banks showed up, in the form of a whopping 52.7% in Indirect Bid takedown in the just concluded auction of $24 billion in 3 Years, which also was the highest indirect bid since December 2009.

"If banknotes are outlawed you will be forced to hold money that is a liability of a commercial bank (deposits) and refused access to money that is the liability of the central bank (bank notes)... In such a world, zero-yielding gold would be a high-yielding instrument. If the authorities ever sought to restrict access to banknotes, then gold would suddenly find itself enfranchised as money for the first time in many decades. So, given the scale of these competing forces, it is just too early to say what might happen to the gold price, but the allure of gold will grow the more it becomes clear that central bank fiat has failed and the age of government fiat is dawning."

Liquidity is plentiful when you don't care about it and scarce when you need it most

With NIRP having turned traditional risk-free assets into guaranteed losers, investors have poured more than $9 billion into junk bond ETFs YTD, and while common sense dictates that buying at the top of an epic HY bubble just ahead of a rate hike cycle and against a backdrop characterized by disappearing liquidity in the secondary market for corporate credit is a fool's errand, most investors feel they have little choice. 

"They're buying the yield and they think 'Oh, bonds are going to go up,' but when they start coming down, there's going to be a great run to the exits and at least in 2008 you had a bit of a safety net with the prop desks at banks, but now with the Volcker rule you can't even depend on that."

Holidays in Europe and Asia left things quiet overnight after some traders used the last day of April to frontrun the old "sell in May and go away" market adage. Market closures also kept the Chinese day trading hordes from using a tiny beat on the official manufacturing PMI print as an excuse to pile more money into the country's equity mania, while Japanese shares ended mostly unchanged as investors fret over when the BoJ will deliver the next shot of monetary heroin. In the US we'll get a look at ISM manufacturing and the latest read on consumer confidence as we head into the weekend.