Reverse Repo

Two years ago, in January 2010, Zero Hedge wrote "This Is The Government: Your Legal Right To Redeem Your Money Market Account Has Been Denied" which became one of our most read stories of the year. The reason? Perhaps something to do with an implicit attempt at capital controls by the government on one of the primary forms of cash aggregation available: $2.7 trillion in US money market funds. The proximal catalyst back then were new proposed regulations seeking to pull one of these three core pillars (these being no volatility, instantaneous liquidity, and redeemability) from the foundation of the entire money market industry, by changing the primary assumptions of the key Money Market Rule 2a-7. A key proposal would give money market fund managers the option to "suspend redemptions to allow for the orderly liquidation of fund assets." In other words: an attempt to prevent money market runs (the same thing that crushed Lehman when the Reserve Fund broke the buck). This idea, which previously had been implicitly backed by the all important Group of 30 which is basically the shadow central planners of the world (don't believe us? check out the roster of current members), did not get too far, and was quickly forgotten. Until today, when the New York Fed decided to bring it back from the dead by publishing "The Minimum Balance At Risk: A Proposal to Mitigate the Systemic Risks Posed by Money Market FUnds". Now it is well known that any attempt to prevent a bank runs achieves nothing but merely accelerating just that (as Europe recently learned). But this coming from central planners - who never can accurately predict a rational response - is not surprising. What is surprising is that this proposal is reincarnated now. The question becomes: why now? What does the Fed know about market liquidity conditions that it does not want to share, and more importantly, is the Fed seeing a rapid deterioration in liquidity conditions in the future, that may and/or will prompt retail investors to pull their money in another Lehman-like bank run repeat?

Curious what the investing world will focus on next week? Here is a recap courtesy of Goldman Sachs, though for those who want the punchline now, just fast forward to Thursday when get Spain and French bond auctions. In the meantime just ignore all the intraday trading halts of Intesa, UniCredit And Banco Popolare. The rest is just the supporting cast.

With the Fed expected to at least extend the period of guaranteed ZIRP from 2013 to 2014 tomorrow, it is no surprise that the just priced $35 billion in 2 year bonds did so very uneventfully, and at a high yield of 0.25% (38.96% allotted), in line with the When Issued, the note priced like what is was: an issue explicitly guaranteed by the Fed, and a yield reflecting it. The pricing was uneventful in the headline, and in the internals, with the Directs taking down 8.27% (quite lower than the TTM 13.05%), Indirects in line with average at 32.89% and Primary Dealers as usual accounting for more than a majority, or 58.84%. The Bid To Cover was a solid 3.75 if not a record. And now the Dealers will promptly reverse repo the bond back to the as nobody can do anything with a 0.25% yield in an environment in which investors demand double digits ROEs. Most importantly, however, was that this was merely the latest bond auction concluding even with the US debt ceiling still not getting an extension, and even more plundering from the G-fund. Once the ceiling is finally lifted, total US debt will move the maximum $15.2 trillion to well over $15.3 trillion overnight, maybe higher, just as it did back in August.

All you need to read.

There were two reasons for today's big initial market move: one was the realization that the next LTRO could be massive to quite massive (further confirmed by a report that the ECB is now seeking a "Plan B"), the second one was that, somehow, even though China's economy came in quite better than expected, and much better than whispered, the market made up its mind that the PBoC is now well on its way to significant easing even though inflation actually came in hotter than expected, and virtually every sector of the economy, except for housing, is still reeling from Bernanke's inflationary exports. While we already discussed the first matter extensively earlier, we now present some thoughts from Standard Chartered, one of the most China-focused banks, to debunk the second, which in a note to clients earlier summarized "what the economy is really doing and where it is going" as follows: "If anything, today’s data is another reason not to expect a quick move to further loosening. The economy is slowing, but not dramatically – so far." This was subsequently validated by an editorial in the China Securities Journal which said there was no reason to cut interest rates in Q1, thereby once again confirming that the market, which in its global Bernanke put pursuit of interpreting every piece of news as good news, and as evidence of imminent Central Bank intervention, has once again gotten ahead of itself. And as the Fed will be the first to admit, this type of "monetary frontrunning" ironically make the very intervention far less likely, due to a weaker political basis to justify market intervention, while risking another surge in inflation for which it is the politicians, not the "independent" central banks, who are held accountable.

Considering there was no POMO today, the fact that the Fed just pulled out $1.75 billion from the market via a 3 Day reverse repo (TOMO) may raise some eyebrows. This is probably the first day in many years in which there was a net outflow of liquidity from the market without a corresponding inflow from POMO. That the total amount submitted into the Reverse Repo was $3.09 billion probably indicates just how overliquified the market is, if PDs are willing to accept a modest 0.09% weighted rate of return on a 3 Day repo operation. Also, notable is that the lower bound in the submission rate was a laughable 0.04% on Treasury holdings. Either way, PDs are sans $1.8 billion and nary a hiccup in stocks, while bond yields are back at day's lows. And Dudley hopes the naive public will believe that it is not excess liquidity chasing commodities to all time highs...

Today's TOMO has closed, with the Fed conducting a whopping $2.180 billion reverse repo, easily the biggest operation of this nature since 2009, when the Fed commenced comparable liquidity extracting tests. The TOMO consisted of $770 million in Treasury, $710 million in Agency and $700 million in MBS being use a reverse repo collateral, paying 0.09%, 0.1% and 0.14% respectively to the banks involved, undoing the entire $1.6 billion TIPS POMO conducted earlier. It seems that Fed is doing all it can to telegraph that this time it really is done with QE2. In other words 2011 is not 2010, when this movie ran the last time around...

In a repeat of the "tightening" days from last spring when the Fed was posturing with one after another reverse repo to demonstrate just how prepared it is to take out money from the system (and look how that ended up), the FRBNY has once again started to conduct Reverse Repo tests, today removing $830 million in liquidity from the market, by reverse repoing $320 million in Treasurys at a 0.1%, $260 million in Agency notes at 0.13%, and $250 milion in Mortgage Backed debt at 0.16%. The term of the operation was 7 days. Considering this is about 10% of the amount POMOed earlier, to say this operation has any impact at all is aggressive. The only question is whether the reverse repo TOMO will be the same easing harbinger that it was last year.

In confirmation that the market is nothing more than Fed liquidity game, the sudden drop in the S&P back to the red is driven by the just completed reverse repo. As this is the opposite of a liquidity ramp, the amount withdrawn is apparently directly impacting stocks. And today's amount was a doozy (at least by historical standards): the $1.5 billion withdrawn may well be a record for recent reverse repo operations. The $1.5 billion was roughly equally split between USTs, MBS and Agencies. The weighted rate was 0.215% on USTs, 0.226% on Agencies, and 0.237% on MBS. Total amount submitted was $3.64 billion, implying a 41% hit rate. The only thing that matters is that the Fed actively withdrew liquidity today. Should the market close red today it will be pretty clear what is going on: Monday and Wednesday: POMO days, and huge gain, Tuesday - no POMO, today: Reverser Repo (negative liquidity): market down. It is all so transparent at this point. And yes, there is a POMO tomorrow. We can't wait for the Fed to extract as much liquidity via reverse repos as it injects via POMOs - then the confusion will be total and complete as the Fed becomes a pulsating neutron star of liquidity.

Today, the Fed withdrew a whopping $260 million in liquidity from the market via a Treasury-backed 5 day reverse repo at a 0.20% stop out rate, which is pretty much what banks earn on their excess reserves confirming that this operation was nothing but a travesty. Much more importantly, minutes ago the Fed announced the POMO schedule for the next month: there are 9 liquidity drowning events coming up in the next month. Expect another $32 billion in AMZN, NFLX and AAPL purchasing power to appear magically out of Brian Sack's left pocket. As is now common knowledge shorting on any day, but especially on these days, is suicide. Which is why all natural shorters will continue piling into gold which has become the only way to formally oppose the Fed. Instead of looking at POMO days as stock melt up days, consider them days in which gold will soar even more (due to the recently discussed higher gold melt up beta compared to risk). Trade accordingly.

The Fed continues to send schizophrenic signals, as one day after announcing it will be purchasing hundreds of billions of bonds it completes yet another half a billion liquidity extracting tri-party repo. This time the Fed used all three core types of collateral: USTs, MBS and Agencies, transacting in $180 million of each, paying an average stop out rate of just over 0.2%. We just wonder who the Fed is trying to fool with these "tests" - it is more than obvious that the Fed will never tighten again, or at least not until the next regime takes hold... some time after the debt repudiation event.

Over the weekend we posted a very critical paper by the Minneapolis Fed discussing the potential weakness with the various liquidity extraction mechanisms (in the absence of a Fed Funds rate hike). Today, the Fed goes one step further, after noting increasing pressure by its own members to commence a tightening policy, and has announced the expansion of its reverse repo program with Primary Dealers, by adding additional counterparties.And guess who the first expansion wave focuses on - why Money Market mutual funds of course. Let's just do all we can to drain the money market system asap, shall we.

A 5th sequential revese repo test conducted by the Fed, indicates either unprecedented posturing by the printer leprechaun or some legitimate concerns about pulling the trillions in banker slush funds floating around and propping REITs around 200% higher than fair value. What was odd about this reverse repo test is that for the first time, the Fed accepted Agencies, and specifically $180 million in a 2 day operation, as collateral. There is still a long way to go before the Fed is willing to reverse repo bankrupt stocks and Goldman bonus pool IOUs: the same assets which the banks have repoed out from the Fed (at par value no less...) We only partially jest about the bankrupt companies part, but since nobody except the Fed Chairman can correct us on what the haircut, and what the assets in the discount window are (the particular data is what Ron Paul is trying to get public), we will continue claiming that the Fed is allowing banks to collateralize worthless assets at 100 cents on the dollar, until such time as there is an actual fact that would refute such claims. At that point we will even gladly issue a retraction. Auditing the Fed would seem like a fair price.

The Fed is really picking up on its reverse repo operations, even if for completely meaningless amounts. Today's 4th sequential reverse repo test follows yesterday's of the same size, the only difference is the term, which dropped to 3 days today from 8 days yesterday. The question of when these will shift from tests to actual liquidity extractions (and collateralized by anything than 0% Treasuries) is open, and if Goldman is right expect nothing to happen here for several years.

Just a day after the second reverse repo test was conducted, the Fed has launched repo test #3: this time, as we expected, for a greater (if still notionally meaningless) amount of $225 million, compared to yesterday's $180 million. The term of this operation is just one day, compared to the 8 and 3 in tests #2 and #1. The increasing frequency of these Temporary Market Operations should be making the liquidity bulls very nervous. And as we pointed out yesterday, the notional on the repo test "can only go up" - so far we have been proven right. Yet wait for the collateral to move down from Treasurys. That's when all hell will break loose.