Mortgage Backed Securities

I want to draw your attention to the fact that the Fed balance sheet is DOWN $50 billion year over year. This confirms that the Fed has in fact been engaging in mostly verbal intervention over the last year rather than actual monetary intervention.

Dimon: "So, we were asked to buy Bear Stearns.  Some said the Fed did us a favor...No, no, we did them a favor.  Let's get this one exactly right.  We were asked to do it."

So, Jamie, you still think that Bear Stearns is not material to JPM investors? 

We discussed the unintended consequence of QEternity previously as we noted the massive front-running of the Fed's MBS buying program that was occurring as 30Y current coupon mortgage bond yields were tumbling. While the last week or so has seen Treasury yields reverse their rising trend, the trend of front-running the Fed has not abated. In what, quite frankly, stunned us more than Sofia Vergara's wardrobe malfunction this weekend, we note that today the spread between the 30Y FNMA CurCpn mortgage bond (at 1.66%) and 10Y US Treasuries has smashed to incredible all-time lows of around 3bps. The day before QEternity, this spread was 60bps - having been over 100bps at the start of June 2012. The previous low from July 2010 of 54bps has been obliterated as Bernanke has managed to remove one more market from the lexicon of risk (and in the meantime, PIMCO's Bill Gross has earned back his 'bond guru' title by making a killing). Can we see Mortgage yields trade inside of Treasury yields?

Indeed, it is now clear, via QE 3, that the Fed has gone “all in” in its commitment to money printing. QE 2 put food prices to record highs… what do you think QE 3 (which is unlimited) will do to the cost of living?

We'll fare better than you...

So, the Fed has failed to improve the economy… but it has unleashed inflation. This is called STAGFLATION folks. And the fact the Fed thinks the answer to it is printing more money tells us point blank: things are going to be getting a lot worse in the coming months.

Congratulations Mario Draghi and Ben Bernanke, you’ve unleashed "unlimited" and "open-ended" programs and the bond markets are still imploding.

Without justice for investors, pension funds and banks defrauded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, there can be no investor confidence to support private finance.  

These are the issues to consider going forward. Our view is that it is quite possible the Fed has played its hand too strongly and thereby damaged its future efforts to maintain market stability via intervention. Given that stocks were already decoupled from the underlying economic realities, this has made the market highly vulnerable to a sharp correction.

These are the issues to consider going forward. Our view is that it is quite possible the Fed has played its hand too strongly and thereby damaged its future efforts to maintain market stability via intervention. Given that stocks were already decoupled from the underlying economic realities, this has made the market highly vulnerable to a sharp correction.

Yesterday, when we first presented our calculation of what the Fed's balance sheet would look like through the end of 2013, some were confused why we assumed that the Fed would continue monetizing the long-end beyond the end of 2012. Simple: in its statement, the FOMC said that "If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability." Therefore, the only question is by what point the labor market would have improved sufficiently to satisfy the Fed with its "improvement" (all else equal, which however - and here's looking at you inflation - will not be). Conservatively, we assumed that it would take at the lest until December 2014 for unemployment to cross the Fed's "all clear threshold." As it turns out we were optimistic. Bank of America's Priya Misra has just released an analysis which is identical to ours in all other respects, except for when the latest QE version would end. BofA's take: "We do not believe there will be “substantial” improvement in the labor market for the next 1.5-2 years and foresee the Fed buying Treasuries after the end of Operation Twist." What does this mean for total Fed purchases? Again, simple. Add $1 trillion to the Zero Hedge total of $4TRN. In other words, Bank of America just predicted at least 2 years and change of constant monetization, which would send the Fed's balance sheet to grand total of just over $5,000,000,000,000 as the Fed adds another $2.2 trillion MBS and Treasury notional to the current total of $2.8 trillion.

Against what seemed logical (given the assumption that Bernanke would save his limited ammo for a weaker market/economic environment), Bernanke launched an open ended mortgage backed securities bond buying program for $40 billion a month "until employment begins to show recovery."   That key statement is what this entire program hinges on.  The focus of the Fed has now shifted away from a concern on inflation to an all out war on employment and ultimately the economy.  However, will buying mortgage backed bonds promote real employment, and ultimately economic, growth.  Furthermore, will this program continue to support the nascent housing recovery? Clearly, the Fed's actions, and statement, signify that the economy is substantially weaker than previously thought. While Bernanke's latest program of bond buying was done under the guise of providing an additional support to the "recovery," the question now is becoming whether he has any ammo left to offset the next recession when it comes.

The implications of this are severe. However, the first question we have to ask is, “why now?”

The Chinese Stock Markets are returning to the lows of 2009 and the Europe is mired in a recession. The American Stock Markets are not far off their highs and we do not think this will continue. Mark Grant is quite negative, for all kinds of reasons, about our equity markets now and would be taking profits and returning to the more assured bets of getting yield from bonds and not from dividends. A dividend may be reduced or cancelled by the wave of some Boards’ hand one afternoon while senior debt cannot be cancelled without the company or the municipality going into bankruptcy so that the top of the capital structure is far safer than relying upon dividends for income. In the next sixty days we are faced with Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and ECB issues that are quite serious both economically and politically. You may think what you like but there is a lot of risk on the table; of that you may be assured. When someone says, “Buddy can you spare a dime” we would like to be the one being asked and not the one doing the asking. It is here where we stand and wait.