fixed

After yesterday's €132 billion euro 90 day LTRO seemed to indicate that all is well for European banks and that up to €310 billion of liquidity could be withdrawn, today's stunningly bad result in the follow up 6 Day liquidity providing fine tuning operation, in which another 78 banks bid for €111.2 billion worth of reverse repo cash, at the same rate as yesterday's 90 Day, or 1%, indicated that all is, after all, bad for European banks, who further more can't seem to realize that when given the opportunity to luck up funds for 90 days versus 6 days, you always go for the former. In other words, the liquidity crunch in Europe is just as bad as everyone had feared.

A week ago, when noting the increasingly weaker results of the ECB's Term Deposit Operation, better known as liquidity sterilization, we said, to the usual ridicule: "With another auction next week, and then many more, all dependent on the
amount of debt that Spain et al place "successfully", we expect the Bid
To Cover to decline consistently, until we hit a 1 BTC and the ECB
realizes its monetization program is a failure." It turns out we were right much sooner than expected: the ECB just reported a failed sterilization operation, attracting only €31.9 billion bids for the most recent, seventh sequential €55 billion auction, in which that amount of sovereign bond purchases had to be "laundered" through the system. Only 45 banks placed bids to take down €31.86590 billion or a 0.6 Bid To Cover, compared to the 67 bidding for €71559.9 billion in the prior week, and a "safe" 1.4 BTC. Furthermore, even this failed auction required a massive surge in the rate on the auction: the weighted average allotment rate for today's
operation was 0.54%, compared to 0.31% in last week's operation. The
lowest rate was 0.25% and the highest rate accepted, or the marginal
rate, was 1% -- the highest allowable under the rules of the term
deposit program. This also is a surge from a week ago, when the lowest rate was 0.25%, or the same, and the highest
accepted rate was 0.4%, less than half of today's high rate.

Full blown deflation is here: the 30 Year Freddie fixed rate mortgage just dropped to a fresh new all time low. The problem - not even record low mortgage rates are incentivizing consumers to buy homes. This is a complete disaster for the Fed which is now facing outright deflation in the face and will be forced, without debate, to monetize and launch another round of QE very shortly, as this trend suicidal to the banks' bloated balance sheets. If home prices continue dropping, look for the next Flow of Funds report to be a massacre for household net wealth. The nuclear option: giving away houses for free. Yet with yesterday's announcementby the GSEs that they will lock out any strategic defaulters, this has all the makings of a disaster for the administration.

Earlier today Brazil held a treasury auction for National Treasury Bills due 2011 and 2012, Treasury Financial Bills due 2012 and 2014, and most importantly Fixed National Treasury Notes due 2014 and 2021. The bulk of the easy to sell treasuries were sold, especially the 2012 LTN Bills sold to yield 12,2863%, yet curiously Brazil announced that it had rejected all offers for its 2021 NTN bonds at auction. The attached chart demonstrates just which tranche failed to place. We are trying to uncover what the Bid To Cover on the 2021 NTN was, but more curious as to what rate investors were demand for this 11 year paper that forced the TesouroNacional to balk at selling at such a "high" rate, in essence leading to a busted auction.

The Freddie Mac 30 year Fixed Rate Mortgage rate for the May 27 week was announced, and, in tried and true "let no crisis go to waste" fashion, it has dropped to a fresh 2010 low of 4.78%. So to recap: stocks are where they were at the beginning of the year, the US federal debt is over $13 trillion, QE is over, Europe is imploding, China is tightening, North and South Korea are blasting The Eagles at each other at over 200 dB in clear violation of the Geneva convention, there is no oil left in the GOM, US double dip is accelerating, Marsian global rescue swaps are being considered by the Fed, yet mortgages are cheaper than they ever have been, as the government goes double all in in its attempt to reflate the housing bubble. Well played, Ben, well played.

After having covered our short risk asset position (equities) and taken a long position at the end of January and early February, we have started to sell our long position and build a short position 10 days ago. By this Tuesday our position was finalized with a net 60% short position. We can only stress that there have rarely been as many hidden headwinds and that a bad surprise is almost certain in the days to come. Be prudent.

Yesterday we reported that the MBA announced the highest average 30 year FRM rate since August: a jump from 5.04% to 5.31%. Today this deterioration in mortgage rates was confirmed by Freddie Mac, whose 30 year Fixed Rate Mortgage jumped from 5.08% to 5.21%. Whether this is a function of the recent surge in 10 Year yields (subsequently ameliorated by Chinese purchases during yesterday's auction) or of the end of QE finally being felt is uncertain, although it is probably a combination of the two. This implies a loss in household net worth of billions of dollars in just one week. Of course, that is money that was already spent to bring you last month's fantastic retail store data, which was driven purely by everyone doing the moral hazard jingle, and refusing to pay for anything already purchased. Wholesale government justified theft is now a way of life in America, but it's cool - the banks on the hook for these billions in losses will keep getting back door bailouts in perpetuity.

A few days ago we demonstrated the spike in Freddie 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgages which hit a near 2010 high of 5.08 after being as low as 4.93% a few weeks prior. We speculated that the end of QE is starting to be felt much earlier than anticipated. Today's release of the Mortgage Brokers' Association of the Weekly Application Survey confirms this: the MBA discloses that the average contract interest rate for the 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage has surged from 5.04% to 5.31% - the highest 30-year rate recorded in the survey since August of 2009. Discussing this event, the MBA said:"“Mortgage rates jumped last week as the Federal Reserve completed their
purchases of mortgage-backed securities. Refinance application
volume dropped as mortgage rates reached their highest level since
August 2009." With rates surging on the back of the recently breach of 4% in 10 year rates, this has pretty much made sure the Fed will soon need to get involved again. A 1% rise in mortgage rates is equivalent to a loss of a few hundred billion in household net worth. Just as the bond vigilantes are calling Greece's bluff (and winning soundly) so the mortgage vigilantes are stirring.

The Freddie 30 Year FRM just posted its 3rd weekly increase, jumping from 4.99% to 5.08%, which is just 1 basis point below the 2010 high recorded in the first week of the year. The end of QE may not have dented stocks much, but it is sure starting to be felt in the mortgage arena. It is only a matter of time before rising mortgage rates halt additional home refinancing activity, and force homeowners to take more drastic measures, such as those prescribed by the national and enforced doctrine of Moral Hazard. It is only a matter of time before the shorts in the MBS market find their bearings again and instead of covering existing positions, press new ones.

Following our focus yesterday on key supports in Fixed income, we feel that the risk is that on a rally here the curve could flatten. Indeed 2Y yields even though they rose recently, remain very low, and we feel that if the next leg is up in fixed income then the long end should outperform. We have attached a chart of 2/10 for US treasuries, as can be seen we just retested the 50-dma. - Nic Lenoir

As indicated this morning, the market is getting pretty close to some key support levels in Fixed Income. We first highlight the 30Y future support we tested today at 114-26. If we bypass this level we have potential to sell off down to 111-24 which is the next key support, and would trigger a massive bond bear market if actually triggered. But we should expect a bounce here.

As we have been discussing the Bund seems close to a medium term top to us. We tested the resistance of the daily channel Friday afternoon, the slow stochastic has now validated the break, and we have a potential H&S pattern in progress here, with the top of the second shoulder around 123.50/60. We would be sellers here, adding to shorts if we break on a break of 123/122.95.

After a mere $100 billion in projected debt maturities in the 2010-2011 period, the LBO wave of 2005-2007, largely financed with 5-7 year tenor bonds and loans, will set the refi scene on fire in the 2012-2014 period, when $700 billion of debt is set to mature. Should Fed Fund rates, and the yield curve begin to shift higher, the incremental cost of debt capital will destroy tens if not hundreds of billions of equity value over the next 5 years. After peaking at 19.4% in Q4, 2008, and subsequently dropping to 9.5%, Moody's expects HY bond yields to begin increasing in 2011. And while HY companies are rushing to access the current favorable HY refi window, when refi capital is still broadly available, growth capital has been extremely scarce with just 4% of last year's total HY issuance used for M&A activity (78% was for refinancing maturity extension). It would appear High Yield companies have entered "run-off" mode for credit investors, with no consideration for any residual equity value.

BlueMountain Capital, Stephen Siderow's fixed income fund, is liquidating one of its credit funds opened during the credit crisis, and returning capital to investors on the premise that the easy money has been made, and that the peak in the market is behind us. "We’ve captured most of the big opportunity,” BlueMountain co-founder Stephen Siderow, 42, said. “It isn’t going to happen again anytime soon and that’s why we urged our clients to move on.” Instead, Bloomberg reports, the fund is now urging clients to invest their money into other funds of the hedge fund, presumably the "less than bullish ones."

Yet more tactical allocation thoughts from Damien Cleusix, this time on the topic of Fixed Income.