With a quiet start and more violent end to the week, Europe was a technical mess across asset classes. Sovereign bond strength through Thursday seemed much more a story of a missing CDS market (Monday and Tuesday) and basis traders into the end of the week than any underlying confidence. As Spain's and Italy's basis (the spread between CDS and bonds) pushed back up and over zero so sure enough Friday saw their bonds underperforming. Further banking system bailout fears weighing on debt concerns and the contagion to Italy were evident as Italy and Spain gavce up most of the week's gains into the close. Notably France and Austria were significantly wider on the week (burden-sharing). The bailout hopes spureed significant outperformance in European financial credit spreads - both relative to their stocks and the broad credit market overall. The long credit, short stock trade played out as the capital structure effects of any banking bailout were figured into dilution or further encumbrance of whatever equity value is deemed left. Swiss 2Y rates plunged under -30bps today and EURUSD weakened notably (almost roundtripping the week's strength) as clearly the seeming positives of the word 'bailout' are beginning to sink into the reality of what more debt, more encumbrance, and more stigma means for banks and sovereigns now more and more closely tied thanks to LTRO.
Major underperformance by European bank stocks relative to credit...
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as senior and sub financial credit soared relative to IG and XOver credit and stocks broadly...
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but the burden sharing and guarantees were not lost on traders who marked down Italy and Spain's sovereign bonds notably today...
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helped by technicals from CDS-bond basis traders taking profits...
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But as is painfully clear from EURUSD's slide and the crash in Swiss 2Y rates, all is not well in the euro-zone...
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