Reverse Repo

Stocks may be masquerading as a big bounce today, driven by a VIX slam which has gotten the algos to ramp the S&P higher and of course a perfectly innocuous gold slam which as usual took out the entire bid stack, but the real money is furiously going elsewhere, such as today's 4 Week auction. Two things were notable: first - the rate was a solid 0.000%. This is not that surprising: after all under ZIRP, and as long as the Fed has control and the USD is the reserve currency, ultra-short term maturities are cash equivalent, which is why investors don't mind getting zero return in exchange for 1 month maturities.  However, what was far more notable is that the Bid to Cover in today's auction just soared to 6.36x, highest than last week's 5.66x, and the highest since December of 2011, when the scramble into short-term paper was a function of year end window dressing (made since unncessary courtesy of the Fed's Reverse Repo facility). So while algos are levitating stocks higher based on simple carry currency/VIX correlations, why the sudden real money scramble for the safety of near-term paper?

With no major macro news on today's docket, it is a day of continuing reflection of Friday's abysmal jobs report, which for now has hammered the USDJPY carry first and foremost, a pair which is now down 170 pips from the 105 level seen on Friday, which in turn is putting pressure on global equities. As DB summarizes, everyone "knows" that Friday's US December employment report had a sizeable weather impact but no-one can quite grasp how much or why it didn't show up in other reports. Given that parts of the US were colder than Mars last week one would have to think a few people might have struggled to get to work this month too. So we could be in for another difficult to decipher report at the start of February. Will the Fed look through the distortions? It’s fair to say that equities just about saw the report as good news (S&P 500 +0.23%) probably due to it increasing the possibility in a pause in tapering at the end of the month. However if the equity market was content the bond market was ecstatic with 10 year USTs rallying 11bps. The price action suggests the market was looking for a pretty strong print.

As one might have expected the tension during the most recent FOMC meeting was palpable in the minutes as opposing dovish and hawkish less dovish views on the costs and benefits (and non-comprehension of the machinations) of QE were evident.

• *FED OFFICIALS SAW WANING BENEFITS FROM MONTHLY BOND PURCHASES
• *MANY FOMC MEMBERS FAVORED QE TAPERING IN `MEASURED STEPS'
• *MOST FOMC PARTICIPANTS WERE MORE CONFIDENT IN JOB MARKET GAINS
• *FOMC PARTICIPANTS `MOST CONCERNED' ABOUT QE RISKS TO STABILITY

The likely path of tapering seems clear (and mention of extending the reverse repo facility is notable) but how forward guidance will be implemented remains the hottest topics and Eurodollar prices suggest the latter even more so than the former.

Pre-FOMC Minutes: S&P Futs 1832.0, Gold $1225.5, 10Y 2.995%, EURUSD 1.3570, USDJPY 104.95

The minutes of the December FOMC meeting will be released at 2 PM ET on Wednesday, January 8. As BofAML notes, the minutes give a platform to those outside the voting majority on the FOMC to express their disagreements with the current policy stance. Typically, that has meant that the minutes sound more hawkish than the FOMC statement or speeches by the voters. Also remember that much of the discussion in the minutes is based on old news: the US economy has shown mostly stronger data since the December 18th FOMC decision to taper by $10 bn as of January 1.

The "polar vortex" (no, really) which is about to unleash even record-er cold temperatures upon the US may be the greatest thing to happen to the economy: after all once Q1 GDP estimates miss once again, what better scapegoat to blame it on than cold winter weather during... the winter. However, for the overnight markets, the weather seems to have had an less than desired effect following both much weaker Services PMI data out of China, and after the entire USDJPY ramp achieved during Bernanke's late Friday speech evaporated in the span of two hours in Japanese Monday morning trading, sending the Nikkei reeling lower by 2.35%. One reason for this may be that like in the early summer when both the Yen and the Nikkei froze in a rangebound formation, South Korea has vocally started t0 complain about the weak Yen, which as readers may recall was one of the catalysts to put an end to the surge in the USDJPY and EURJPY. This time may not be different, furthermore as Goldman forecast overnight, it now expects a BOK rate cut of 25 bps as soon as this Thursday. Should that happen expect the JPY coiled-short spring to pounce.

If what happened in the last days of 2013 was indeed merely reverse repo-assisted window dressing, then we would expect the that first days of 2014 should see a comparable collapse in the magnitude of the Fed's reverse repo operations. Sure enough, as the chart below shows, this is precisely what has happened following today's far more modest $56.7 billion reverse repo operation conducted among 50 bidding counterparties and the Fed, of course.

!?

Enter the Fed's recently announced Fixed-Rate Reverse Repo facility, which earlier today saw its greatest use to date in history, when a record $95 billion in Treasury paper was repoed out to the street for a 3 day term, at an 0.03% annual rate. Since there were 68 bidders in the operation, the average participant had an extra $1.4 billion in cash lying around to give to the Fed in exchange for holding Treasurys into year end.

It's the last Friday of 2013. Here is what happened overnight.

From the first headline to the last, the following brief month-by-month summary of the year shows just how far markets and global happenings have come...

While shortened Christmas Eve trading is traditionally the lowest volume day of the year, based on recent trends it may be difficult for today's action to stand out from the landscape thanks to an ongoing volume collapse, which however should make the even more traditional low-volume melt up that much easier. Sure enough, futures are modestly higher driven by their favorite signal, the EURJPY. Not surprisingly there has been particularly light newsflow with market closures in Germany, Italy and Switzerland in addition to early market closures for UK, France, Netherlands and Spain. Those markets that are open are trading in positive territory with the FTSE 100 being supported by BSkyB following an upbeat pre-market report for the company and their customer base, whilst the IBEX 35 is being supported by the financial sector. Overnight in China there was news of an injection of CNY 29bln via a 7-day reverse repo, although market commentators have said that this is more of a gesture than any meaningful intervention given the size of the country's banking market. Fixed income markets are particularly light with there being no trade in the bund future given the Eurex closure, with other trading products relatively flat given the lack of newsflow. However, the short-sterling curve has bear-steepened and thus continuing the trend seen since the end of last week as a result of both UK unemployment and UK GDP coming in better than expected.

UPDATE: Un-Taper didn't work - 7-day repo just hit 9% as (just as we warned) the small banks are left wth scraps

For the first time in 3 weeks, the PBOC un-tapered and added CNY 29 billion liquidity (via reverse repo). Despite the Chinese governments denial of any liquidity crisis, the decision to "fold" reflects a clear indication that, as Monex strategist Eimear Daly notes, "China's attempting to incrementally liberalize markets and to allow instabilities to unwind with minimal damage; and spikes in interbank lending rates show authorities are struggling to manage this task." The liquidity was provided at 4.1% (not a particularly low rate but well off the highs of the last week) but 7-day repo rates (though down 3.5%) remain high at 5.5% (150bps above the 'normal' levels of July to October). The night is young though as we suspect, just as yesterday, the big banks will soak up the first juice and leave the small banks (who need the most) floundering...

Of the 8 "most important ever" FOMC decisions in 2013, this one is undisputedly, and without doubt, the 8th. As Jim Reid summarizes, what everyone wonders is whether today’s decision by the FOMC will have a bearing on a few last-minute Xmas presents around global financial markets. No taper and markets probably breathe a sigh of relief and the feel-good factor might turn that handheld game machine into a full-blown PS4 by Xmas day. However a taper now might just take the edge off the festivities and leave a few presents on the shelves. Given that the S&P 500 has pretty much flat-lined since early-mid November in spite of better data one would have to say that some risk of tapering has been priced in but perhaps not all of it. Alternatively if they don’t taper one would expect markets to see a pretty decent relief rally over the rest of the year. So will it be Santa or Scrooge from the Fed tonight at 2pm EST?

Something snapped overnight, moments after the EURJPY breached 140.00 for the first time since October 2008 - starting then, the dramatic weakening that the JPY had been undergoing for days ended as if by magic, and the so critical for the E-Mini EURJPY tumbled nearly 100 pips and was trading just over 139.2 at last check, in turn dragging futures materially lower with it. Considering various TV commentators described yesterday's 0.27% decline as a "sharp selloff" we can only imagine the sirens that must be going off across the land as the now generic and unsurprising overnight carry currency meltup is missing. Still, while it is easy to proclaim that today will follow yesterday's trend, and stocks will "selloff sharply", we remind readers that today is yet another infamous double POMO today when the NY Fed will monetize up to a total of $5 billion once at 11am and once at 2 pm.

In addition to the bevy of ugly European unemployment and inflation news just reported, the overnight session had a dollop of more ugly macro data for the algos to kneejerkingly react to and ramp stocks to fresh time highs on. First it was China, where the PBOC did another reverse repo, however this time at a fixed 4.3% rate, 0.2% higher than the Monday iteration and well above the 3%-handle from early October, indicating that China is truly intent on tightening its monetary conditions. Then Japan confirmed that despite the soaring imported food and energy inflation, wages just refuse to rise, and have declined now for nearly 1.5 years. Then, adding core insult to peripheral injury, Germany reported retail sales that missed expectations of a +0.4% print wildly, declining -0.4% from a prior downward revised 0.5% to -0.2%. And so on: more below. However, as usual what does matter is how the market digests the FOMC news, and for now the sense is that the risk of a December taper has risen based on the FOMC statement language, whether warranted or not, which as a result is pushing futures modestly lower following an epic move higher in the month of October on nothing but pure balance sheet and multiple expansion.  The big data week in the US rolls on with the highlights being the Chicago PMI and initial jobless claims, which are expected to print their first accurate, non-impaired reading since August.