High Yield

The markets have been pushing new all-time highs this past week as earnings season begins to wind down. Starting next week, much of the focus will shift back to the economy and holiday retail sales. Expectations are for a robust season but the early arrival of winter could have a more negative effect on the economy than anticipated should current weather patterns persist.

If yesterday's slightly tailing 10 Year auction was a non-event, today's $16 billion 30 Year refunding was one of the uglier long-end auctions in a while, which perhaps is to be expected in a world in which the Fed is, for the time being, no longer monetizing Treasurys and Dealers no longer have the option to turn around and flip the paper back to the Fed on a whim, and with guaranteed profit.

The relentless regurgitation of the only two rumors that have moved markets this week, namely the Japanese sales tax delay and the "surprise" cabinet snap elections, was once again all over the newswires last night in yet another iteration, and as a result the headline scanning algos took the Nikkei another 1.1% higher to nearly 17,400 which means at this rate the Nikkei will surpass the Dow Jones by the end of the week helped by further reports that Japan will reveal more stimulus measures on November 19, although with US equity futures rising another 7 points overnight and now just shy of 2050 which happens to be Goldman's revised year-end target, the US will hardly complain. And speaking of stimulus, the reason European equities are drifting higher following the latest ECB professional forecast release which saw the panel slash their GDP and inflation forecasts for the entire period from 2014 to 2016. In other words bad news most certainly continues to be good news for stocks, which in the US are about to hit another record high (with the bulk of the upside action once again concentrated between 11:00 and 11:30am).

While there was some selling of 10 Year paper following today's earlier 52-Week Bill auction which came in week, today's refunding of $24 billion in 10 Year paper was a snoozer. Closing moments ago at a 2.365% high yield (33% allotted at high), this was a 0.1% bp tail to the 2.364% When Issued. It was almost nearly identical to last month's 2.381% auction, although the small decline in yield means this was the lowest yield for the On The Run security since last June. The internals were also tame, with the Bid To Cover of 2.52 a carbon copy of last month's 2.52, if a little weaker than the TTM average. Finally, 42% of the allotment went to Dealers, or 4% above the 12 month average, while Indirects took down 44.7%, again nearly an identical amount to last month's 44.4$, and Directs, traditionally the domain of Pimco, were left with 13.4% of the auction. It is unclear if the Total Return Fund was the big bidder here now that Gross is long gone.

On one hand, global growth is slowing down. And on the other, the cost of living is rising. That’s a bad combination, but we’ll make it. While you’re waiting for QE4 to see how it all goes down, remember to hold on to your  assets… if you have any. 

It appears the excitment of US midterm election sparked a "sell-everything-American" strategy today as stocks, bonds, WTI crude, the dollar, Treasuries, and credit all sold off to a lesser or greater amount. Trannies started off liking weak oil prices but faded as WTI could not bounce off multi-year lows but stocks were jolted lower (before v-shape recovering to VWAP) by Mutiny at the ECB (and desk chatter that - as we have warned - QE is not coming). The decouplings continue as high yield presses to 2-week lows and Nikkei futures diverge from USDJPY. The dollar weakened back to unch on the week after Draghi but commodities saw no gains from that as gold, silver, and copper slipped. WTI dropped to as low as $75.85 at 3-year lows. VIX - helped by numeous CBOE 'breaks' today - jerked back below 15 (after trading above 16 briefly).

While it is unclear whether it is due to the rare event that no central bank stepped in overnight with a massive liquidity injection or because the USDJPY tracking algo hasn't been activated (moments ago Abe's deathwish for the Japanese economy made some more progress with the USDJPY hitting new mult-year highs just shy of 113.6, on its way to 120 and a completely devastated Japanese economy), but European equities have traded in the red from the get-go, with investor sentiment cautious as a result of a disappointing the Chinese manufacturing report. More specifically, Chinese Manufacturing PMI printed a 5-month low (50.8 vs. Exp. 51.2 (Prev. 51.1)), with new orders down to 51.6 from 52.2, new export orders at 49.9 from 50.2 in September. Furthermore, this morning’s batch of Eurozone PMIs have failed to impress with both the Eurozone and German readings falling short of expectations (51.4 vs Exp. 51.8, Last 51.8), with France still residing in contractionary territory (48.5, vs Exp and Last 47.3).

If one had to pick a carbon copy replica of yesterday's 5 Year tailing auction, today's 7 Year probably ranks toward the top. Just like yesterday, the auction priced with a tail to the 2.009% WI, coming in 0.9 bps wider at 2.018%. Just like yesterday, the high yield was a steep drop from the September auction, sliding from 2.24 to just over 2%, and just like yesterday the Bid to Cover slid alongside the yield, with the 2.415 BTC printing at the lowest level since November 2013. Finally, and just like yesterday, the internals demonstrated the same trend with Directs taking down 15.42%, less than the 23.11% TTM average, Indirects ended up with 46.6% or more than the recent average, and dealers left holding 38.0%: right on top of where it has been in the past year. In fact, the only difference from yesterday is that there is no FOMC announcement in less than an hour.

A Treasury auction an hour before the Fed is set to announce the end of the latest (if not last) iteration of QE may not have seemed like the best idea, and sure enough moments ago the Treasury sold $35 billion in 5 Year paper in what can be described as a miserable auction, when the 1.567% high yield tailed by 1.5 bps to the 1.552% When Issued. Not only that but the Bid to Cover tumbled from 2.56 to just 2.36: this was the lowest BTC since July 2009 when it actually had a 1-handle. Finally, the less exciting internals showed that Directs were largely in line with recent auctions, taking down 10.5% of the auction, above the TTM average of 13.5%, as Indirects bought just less than half or 47.8%, leaving Dealers with 41.7%  of the final allotment, slightly above the 39.3% 12 month average.

High-yield bond issuance has surged in recent days as 'wide' spreads have encouraged investors to take the dip once again (despite firms' record leverage and increasing desperation to roll the wall of maturing debt). However, it's not all guns blazing, as one manager noted, "while the market reopens, it reopens with issuers having to be a little more investor friendly." Despite Carl Icahn's warning that "the high-yield bond market is in a major bubble that's gonna burst," Bullard's "QE4" comments sparked Goldman to add US junk bonds and Aberdeen says selling EU and buying US corporate debt "is the trade that kind of screams at you right now." The dash-for-trash down-in-quality is back as CCC-demand surges and, as one trader notes the market's schizophrenia: "one day the market feels like it is shut down and you can’t sell anything and you wake up this morning and you can price any part of the curve."

Perhaps the most interesting question from late yesterday is just how did the Chinese PMI rebound from 50.4 to 50.2, when the bulk of its most important forward-looking components, New Orders, Output, New Export Orders, posted a material deterioration? When asked, not even Markit could provide an explanation that seemed remotely reasonable so we can only assume the headline was goalseeked purely for the kneejerk reaction benefit of various algos that only focus on the headline and nothing else. Luckily, we didn't have much time to ponder this quandary as a few hours later we got the latest batch of Eurozone PMI numbers.

"The Fed is really holding the market up.... The Fed turned this market around here because it let it be known that the Fed funds rate isn't going to be raised in March. I am concerned about the high yield market, I think that's in a major bubble, but nobody knows when it's gonna burst." - Carl Icahn

For the fourth consecutive night, futures attempted to storm higher, and were halted in their tracks when the USDJPY failed to rebound from the recalibrated 107 tractor beam, following a statement by the BOJ's former chief economist and executive director (until March 2013) who said that now is the time for the Bank of Japan to begin tapering. Needless to say, there could be no worse news to bailout and liquidity-addicted equities as the last thing a global rigged market can sustain now that QE is about to end in two weeks, is the BOJ also reducing its liquidity injections in the fungible world. This promptly took away spring in the ES' overnight bounce. Not helping matters is the continuing selloff in oil, which as we reported first yesterday, has hit the most oversold levels ever, is not helping and we can only imagine the margin calls the likes of Andy Hall and other commodity funds (ahem Bridgewater -3% in September due to "commodities") are suffering. But the nail in the coffin of the latest attempt by algos to bounce back was the news which hit two hours ago that a second Ebola case has been confirmed in Texas, and just as fears that the worst is over, had started to dissipate.

Yet again, early exuberance in stocks - which was entirely unsupported by credit and bonds - plunged back to reality late in the day. Intraday volatility in Russell and Trannies was unbelievable with 3-4% swings (Trannies best day in 14 months before the tumble - but managed to close back above its 200DMA). Since Friday, Treasury yields are 6-9bps lower and the dollar rallied back to unchanged today. The big story was the total collapse in oil prices into their close (accompanied by weakness in CAD and EUR, stocks, and bond strength) as it appears someone large got a serious tap on the shoulder to liquidate (WTI under $82 -4.4%, biggest drop in 2 years). Copper gained as gold and silver slipped modestly on the day. HY credit pushed back above 400bps (widest in 13 months) as VIX broke above 24.5 briefly in the last hour (from below 21.5 at its lows) highest since June 2012.