High Yield

Tuesday's weak 2 Year bond auction is now a distant memory, and following yesterday's strong 5 Year it was not surprising to see a very strong pick up in demand for the just concluded 7 Year auction. On the surface, the auction was very strong with the high yield printing at 1.496%, stopping through the 1.515% When Issued if still the highest since March 2012. The internals were also very strong, with the Bid to Cover closing at 2.70, in line with last month's 2.71, and above the TTM average of 2.68. More importantly, Direct demands soared with 20.68% of the takedown going to Direct bidders, the second highest ever in this series, and lower only to December's 23.11%. Indirects were no slouch either, with a final allotment of 40.84%, leaving just 38.48% for Dealers, the lowest take down for 2013. So with very strong primary market demand along the belly, it is safe to say all rumors of a blow up in the US bond market are greatly exaggerated. Remember: TSYs still continue to be the primary source of repoable collateral and for the time being at least, everyone still wants them.

What a difference 24 hours makes: if yesterday's 2 Year bond auction was weak from beginning to end, today's 5 Year showed that any fears of a "great vortexing" in the market can be largely forgotten. The 5 Year, which was expected to price 0.1 bps over 1.05%, and whose WI was trading at 1.048% at 1 pm, just priced at a stop through high yield of 1.045% - quite better than many had feared. The Bid to Cover also was hardly disappointing, coming at 2.79, just shy of the TTM average of 2.83. But the most notable component was the Dealer take down: if yesterday Dealers couldn't get their hands on enough bonds in the final allocation, today it was the Directs and Indirects that took down a combined 67.4% of the auction, leaving just 32.6% for Primary Dealers, the lowest in our dataset, and likely ever. Something tells us Dealers are very eager to load up on as many repoable bonds as they could yet failed: earlier today, the OTR 10Y CUSIP was among the Fed's exclusions in today's POMO, which brings the question - is the TSY collateral shortage starting to spread?

UPDATE: S&P 500 futures plunged back to the lows of the day as soon as cash closed.

The streak is alive. For the 20th Tuesday in a row, The Dow Jones Industrials have closed green. With an average gain of 80 points, since 1/25, the Dow is up an impressive 11% but absent Tuesdays is merely unchanged at +0.2%. Today saw significantly volatility in stocks though with Nikkei and S&P futures giving up all their gains at one point only to bounce back into the close for a glorious victory. Volatility was everywhere as the collapse of the JGB market spills over. VIX rose 0.5 vols to 14.5% (disagreeing with stocks). FX markets jerked and gapped with JPY ending down around 1% from Friday's close. Commodities diverged today with Copper and Oil rising and Gold and Silver sliding even with the 0.75% gain on the USD this week. High yield credit slid lower all day but we suspect this was dominated by rate risk as Treasury volatility exploded. 10Y yields rose by their most (+16.5bps or 5-sigma) since Oct 2011 to close at their highest since April 2012.

Moments ago the US Treasury sold another $35 billion in 2 Year paper in what can only be classified as one of the weakest 2 short-end auction in the recent past. While the high yield rose notably from 0.233% to 0.283%, it is still at negligible ZIRPy levels associated with Bernanke's extended promise to keep the short-end as virtually equivalent to cash currency. With increasing rumblings that the Fed may be tapering, tightening, and otherwise pushing the short-end higher over the next two years, there was little such fear manifesting in the auction's yield which telegraphs nothing but smooth sailing for the next two years in terms of where Bernanke sees yield: perhaps a better indicator will be demand for the 3 Year auction next week which is seen on the cusip of the ZIRP time barrier.  That said, the internals were ugly, with the Bid to Cover sliding from 3.63x to 3.04x, the lowest since the 3.03x seen in February 2011. But it was the general abdication by Direct bidders, who took down a tiny 12.6% of the auction compared to a TTM average of 21.58%, and the lowest since July 2012. Same with Indirects who were left with just 21.93% of the allocation, meaning Dealers had to end with 65.47% of the auction. This was the highest Dealer take down since April 2009. Oh well: at least they will have plenty of "money good" collateral against which to rehypothecate and use the cash proceeds to buy stocks and other risk assets, at least until such time as the Fed proceeds to monetize this paper as well.

First, the important news: in a few hours the Fed will inject between $1.25-$1.75 billion into the stock market. More importantly, it is a Tuesday, which means that in order to not disturb a very technical pattern that will have held for 20 out of 20 Tuesdays in a row, the Dow Jones will close higher. Judging by the futures, this has been telegraphed far and wide: it is a Ben Bernanke risk-managed market, and everyone is a momentum monkey in it. In less relevant news, the underlying catalyst for the overnight rip higher in risk was the surge in the USDJPY, which left the gate at precisely Japan open time, and after languishing at the round number 101 support for several days, did not look back facilitated by what rumors said was a direct BOJ intervention via a Price Keeping Operation in which banks bought ETFs directly. This was catalyzed by the usual barrage of BOJ and FinMin individuals engaging in post-crash damage control and chattering from the usual script.

Many are still wondering who (or what) stole the jam from the Japanese stock market's doughnut just three short days ago. Some blame an out-of-control bond market; others fear members of the BoJ recognizing they have blown the bubble too big too soon; still more fear the jawboning on JPY devaluation that has seemingly about-faced recently. The reality is - none of these were surprises or new to the marketplace. But in this world of free-flowing totally fungible central bank liquidity, we suspect the following chart is the real answer. Simply put, the S&P 500's bubble just couldn't keep pace with the Nikkei 225's and with USDJPY unable to support the relative price appreciation difference - the six-sigma richness of Japan to the US was just too much. Two-and-a-half months of 'outperformance' undone in 3 days leaves the question - is it over?

Markets are starting to price the removal of the unprecedented policy stimulus provided by the Fed. Investors have faced this situation several times in recent years, but as Barclays notes, these prior episodes lacked broad consensus and proved short-lived as further risks to the global recovery quickly re-appeared. The edginess of markets to ebbs and flows in the data and Fed communications in recent months suggests this time is different. Market movements are saying the Fed’s exit is now more ‘when’ than ‘if’. Fed actions have led to some of the most extraordinary market moves on record. Nominal US bond yields are at historically low levels, and real yields have been negative for a prolonged time. Risky assets, by contrast, have rallied sharply, supported by central bank policy even in the face of poor economic data. If the Fed is preparing for an exit, these market moves may need to go in reverse...

Everyone seems to have an opinion on asset valuation these days, even commentators who are normally quiet about such matters.  Some are seeing asset price bubbles, others are just on the lookout for bubbles, and still others wonder what all the fuss is about. Simply put, our financial markets weren’t (and still aren’t) structured to be efficient, and consistently rational behavior is a pipe dream, history shows over and over that the idea of a stable equilibrium is deeply flawed. Policies focused on the short-term tend to exacerbate that cycle, as we saw when decades of stabilization policies and moral hazard exploded in the Global Financial Crisis. Maybe if macroeconomics were rooted in the reality of a perpetual cycle - where expansions eventually lead to recessions (stability breeds instability) and then back to expansions - we would see more economists and policymakers balancing near-term benefits against long-term costs. Or, another way of saying the same thing is that mainstream economists should pay more attention to Austrians and others who’ve long rejected core assumptions that are consistently proven wrong.

Once again: The FOMC minutes had nothing to do with overnight's events, especially since both Ben Bernanke and Bill Dudley made it very clear previously that for any tapering to occur (and which is supposedly bullish according to David Tepper, who may finally be done selling to momentum chasers) if ever, the economy would have to be be stronger (which is of course a paradox because it is the Fed's QE that is making the economy weaker). If anything, the minutes reminded us that there is a mutiny in the FOMC with finally someone having the guts to say on the record that Bernanke is blowing a bubble - something never seen before on the official FOMC record. And after all, the Nikkei opened way up, not down. It was only after the realization of what soaring bond yields mean for, wait for it, stocks (despite central planner promises that it is soaring bond yields that are a good thing - turns out, they aren't) that the sell-off really started. That, and of course copper, and the end of the Chinese Copper Financing Deals arrangement that has been China's illicit cross-asset rehypothecation scheme for years (more shortly). So in a nutshell, here is what has transpired so far, courtesy of Bloomberg.

MOAR Orderly... oops... Bernanke: "Fed could reduce bond purchases in the next few meetings if data supports it" and perhaps most disturbing is that reality is finally seeping into the corner offices of the Marriner Eccles building when Bernanke says that concerns about "frothiness" and "bubbles" has increased? Was it the sub-5% yield in high yield that tipped them off?

Another event-free day in which the only major economic data point was the release of UK CPI, which joined the rest of the world in telegraphing price deflation, despite bubbles in the real estate and stock markets, printing 2.0% Y/Y on expectations of a 2.3% increase, the lowest since November 2009 and giving Mark Carney carte blanche to print as soon as he arrives on deck. In an amusing twist of European deja-vuness, last night Japan's economy minister who made waves over the weekend when he said that the Yen has dropped low enough to where people's lives may be getting complicated (i.e., inflation), refuted everything he said as having been lost in translation, and the result was a prompt move higher in the USDJPY, quickly filling the entire Sunday night gap. That said, and as has been made very clear in recent years, data is irrelevant, and the only thing that matters, at least so far in 2013, is whether it is Tuesday: the day that has seen 18 out of 18 consecutive rises in the DJIA so far in 2013, and whether there is a POMO scheduled. We are happy to answer yes to both, so sit back, and wait for the no-volume levitation to wash over ever. The US docket is empty except for Dudley and Bullard speaking, but more importantly, the fate of Jamie Dimon may be determined today when the vote on the Chairman/CEO title is due, while Tim Cook will testify in D.C. on the company's tax strategy and overseas profits.

A quiet day unfolding with just Chicago Fed permadove on the wires today at 1pm, following some early pre-Japan market fireworks in the USDJPY and the silver complex, where a cascade of USDJPY margin calls, sent silver to its lowest in years as someone got carted out feet first following a forced liquidation. This however did not stop the Friday ramp higher in the USDJPY from sending the Nikkei225, in a delayed response, to a level surpassing the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the first time in years. Quiet, however, may be just how the traders at 72 Cummings Point Road like it just in case they can hear the paddy wagons approach, following news that things between the government and SAC Capital are turning from bad to worse and that Stevie Cohen, responsible for up to 10-15% of daily NYSE volume, may be testifying before a grand jury soon. The news itself sent S&P futures briefly lower when it hit last night, showing just how influential the CT hedge fund is for overall market liquidity in a world in which the bulk of market "volume" is algos collecting liquidity rebates and churning liquid stocks back and forth to one another.

It’s amazing what people can trick themselves into believing and even shout about when you tell them exactly what they want to hear. It was disappointing to see Brad DeLong’s latest defense of Fed policy, which was published this past weekend and trumpeted far and wide by like-minded bloggers. If you take DeLong’s word for it, you would think that the only policy risk that concerns hedge fund managers is a return to full employment. He suggests that these managers criticize existing policy only because they’ve made bad bets that are losing money, while they naively expect the Fed’s “political masters” to bail them out. Well, every one of these claims is blatantly false. DeLong’s story is irresponsible and arrogant, really. And since he flouts the truth in his worst articles and ignores half the picture in much of the rest, we’ll take a stab here at a more balanced summary of the pros and cons of the Fed’s current policies. We’ll try to capture the discussion that’s occurring within the investment community that DeLong ridicules. Firstly, the benefits of existing policies are well understood. Monetary stimulus has certainly contributed to the meager growth of recent years. And jobs that are preserved in the near-term have helped to mitigate the rise in long-term unemployment, which can weigh on the economy for years to come. These are the primary benefits of monetary stimulus, and we don’t recall any hedge fund managers disputing them. But the ultimate success or failure of today’s policies won’t be determined by these benefits alone – there are many delayed effects and unintended consequences. Here are seven long-term risks that aren’t mentioned in DeLong’s article...

With home prices rising at near-record paces in SoCal, corporate debt yields at record-lows, equity markets surging at near-record rates, and high quality assets dwindling by the minute under the heel of a central bank jack boot; it is perhaps no surprise that investors have switched from finding leverage through the balance sheet (i.e. crappy quality firms) to finding leverage through the instrument (i.e. structured credit). The trouble this time is that yields (and spreads) being so low, the creators of the new-normal ABS, CDOs, and CLOs have to stoop to the old tricks to make their money (as we noted here). As Bloomberg reports, bond issuers are once again exploiting the credit rating agency pay-for-performance business model to create "high-quality" collateralizable assets from utter garbage - such as auto loans.

Overnight risk continues to ignore all newsflow (today the economic reporting finally picks up with advance retail sales due at 8:30 am as expectations for a second modest decline in a row of -0.3%) and is focused entirely on what the consensus decides to make of the Hilsenrath piece, even as the difficulty level was raised a notch following another late Sunday Hilsenrath piece, which puts more variable into the "tapering" equation, and whose focus is whether Bernanke will be replaced by Janet Yellen, Geithner or Summers, or anyone. With all three classified as permadoves, one does scratch their head how the market can be confused: worst case Fed tapers by $10/20 billion per month, market tumbles, then Bernanke's replacement or Ben himself ploughs on even more aggressively with QE. QED.