Repo Market

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• U.S. Weighs Iraq Rescue Mission to Save Yazidis (WSJ)
• Maliki says Abadi's appointment as Iraqi PM 'has no value' (Reuters)
• Iran Joins U.S. in Backing Replacement for Iraq’s Maliki (BBG)
• Kurds Push Attack in North Iraq as Maliki Clings to Power (BBG)
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• Israel, Palestinians pursue Gaza deal with ceasefire clock ticking (Reuters)
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• With Natural Gas Byproduct, Iran Sidesteps Sanctions (NYT)
• Kazakhs to Hoard Food as Putin Sanctions Rattle Alliance (BBG)

We noted yesterday once again that The Fed was out en masse demanding investors sell their bonds because "bonds are in a bubble" but not stocks. The reason - as we have explained in great detail - is the repo market is broken due to massive collateral shortages (thanks to the Fed). Today, the Fed admitted it has a problem...

*TREASURY ASKS DEALERS TO EXPLAIN REASONS FOR FAILS-TO-DELIVER

The bottom line is - The Treasury wants to know why all the dealers are so short bonds (even as it urges 'investors' to sell). Furthermore, it is surveying dealers over the need to issue bonds of greater maturity than 30 years in order to fulfill collateral needs.

This is a big deal. On the heels of our pointing out the surge in Treasury fails (following extensive detailing of the market's massive collateral shortage at the hands of the unmerciful Fed's buying programs), various 'strategists' wrote thinly-veiled attempts to calm market concerns that the repo market (the glue that holds risk assets together) was FUBAR. Even the Fed itself sent missives opining that their cunning Reverse-Repo facility would solve the problems and everyone should go back to the important business of BTFATHing... They are wrong - all of them - as yet again the Fed shows its ignorance of how the world works (just as it did in 2007/8 with the same shadow markets). As JPMorgan warns (not some tin-foil-hat-wearing blogger with an ax to grind) "the Fed’s reverse repo facility does little to alleviate the UST scarcity induced by the Federal Reserves’ QE programs coupled with a declining government deficit." The end result, they note, is "higher susceptibility of the repo market to collateral shortages" and thus dramatically higher financial fragility - the opposite of what the Fed 'hopes' for.

The current repo fails problem “directly rebukes” the idea that the Fed has “all possible scenarios covered.” The FOMC wants, actually needs, to instill confidence that it can transform itself from its QE legacy (however much tarnished it has grown). This only heightens the idea that stability is a paperlike illusion that may be undone with only the slightest “shock” or disruption – the hidden asymmetry that is the hallmark of fragility. This severely, in my opinion, undermines the credibility of even the idea of the rate floor.

Yesterday we heard from the CEO of the world's biggest company that the exuberant jobs data did not reflect any economic reality Wal-Mart was seeing. Overnight, William Arthur Tindell, CEO of The Container Store, further destroyed the myth of a 'recovery' stalled by 'weather' and threw the rest of his 'retailer' brethren under the bus: "We thought our sluggish sales were all because of weather and calendar shift...but now we've come to realize it's more than that, consistent with so many of our fellow retailers, we're experiencing a retail funk."

Be careful what you wish for. As the Fed imbibes a sense of confidence in its ability to manage any bumps in the road on its perpetual bubble-blowing mission through the use of macro-prudential policies (big words that truly mean nothing) as stock valuations surge and the repo market is experiencing severe problems; it can always point to VIX as an indicator that all is well in the world and no real risk exists. The problem is - the world is beginning to wake up to the 'odd' micro-structure of the US equity markets and how 'dark pools' are beginning to dominate trading volume. As Barclays faces major legal problems over its alleged dark pool lies, lies, and more lies, the Fed must be growing concerned... as the following chart shows JPMorgan indicates there is evidence of an inverse relationship between equity volatility and the share of off-exchange trading.

• Bond Anxiety in $1.6 Trillion Repo Market as Failures Soar (BBG), as reported first by Zero Hedge
• As Food Prices Rise, Fed Keeps a Watchful Eye (WSJ)
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• Israel's Netanyahu phones father of murdered Palestinian teen (Reuters)
• Ukraine says forces will press forward after taking rebel stronghold (Reuters)
• Goldman Sachs Brings Forward Rate Forecast as Treasuries Drop (BBG)... you mean rise?
• Super typhoon takes aim at Japan (Reuters)
• Kidnapped Nigerian girls 'escape from Boko Haram abductors' (Independent)
• Merkel says U.S. spying allegations are serious (Reuters)

The selloff last year was a desperate warning about the lack of resilience in credit and funding. That repo markets persist in that is, again, the opposite of the picture Janet Yellen is trying to clumsily fashion. Central banks cannot create that because their intrusion axiomatically alters the state of financial affairs, and they know this. It has always been the idea (“extend and pretend” among others) to do so with the expectation that economic growth would allow enough margin for error to go back and clean up these central bank alterations. That has never happened, and the modifications persist. Resilience is the last word we would use to describe markets right now, with very recent history declaring as much.

Goldman Sachs listened (and read) Janet Yellen's remarks at The IMF and see them "generally in line." Despite waffling on for minutes about risk management and monitoring, no one at The Fed has mentioned the total carnage in the repo market, spike in fails-to-deliver, and record reverse repo window-dressing that just occurred. The use of the term "reach for yield" twice and "bubble" 5 times, and admission that the Fed should never have popped the housing bubble, leaves us less sanguine than Goldman and wondering if this was Janet's subtle and nervous 'irrational exuberance" moment.

As Barclays Joe Abate warns, delivery fails in the Treasury market have surged recently. Whil enot at the scale of the 2008 crisis, we suspect the spike is what is paniccing the Fed to say "the market is wrong", talk up short-end rates, and implore the public to sell-sell-sell their bonds. The Fed's market domination has meant massive collateral shortages (as we have detailed previously) and now more even that during last year's taper-tantrum, the repo market is trouble. But why do I care about some archaic money-market malarkey? Simple, Without collateral to fund repo, there is no repo; without repo, there is no leveraged positioning in financial markets; without leverage and the constant hypothecation there is nothing to maintain the stock market's exuberance (as we are already seeing in JPY and bonds). Q.E.D.

Pundits enjoy pointing to NYSE margin debt as an indication of overall system leverage, and how prone to margin calls and liquidations the investor class may be at any given moment. However, in the new normal, in which sophsiticated investors fund themselves via completely different mechanism - mostly involving repo and other shadow banking conduits - margin debt has become a very much irrelevant indicator of overall leverage.

Investors and speculators face some profound challenges today: How to deal with politicized markets, continuously “guided” by central bankers and regulators? In this environment it may ultimately pay to be a speculator rather than an investor. Speculators wait for opportunities to make money on price moves. They do not look for “income” or “yield” but for changes in prices, and some of the more interesting price swings may soon potentially come on the downside. They should know that their capital cannot be employed profitably at all times. They are happy (or should be happy) to sit on cash for a long while, and maybe let even some of the suckers’ rally pass them by. As Sir Michael at CQS said: "Maybe they [the central bankers] can keep control, but if people stop believing in them, all hell will break loose." We couldn't agree more.

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• Big investors replace banks in $4.2tn repo market (FT)
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• Parsley CEO Emerges as One of Youngest U.S. Billionaires (BBG)

We at the Fed are the platonic guardians of the global financial system.  And our logic is undeniable….

Plain vanilla bank runs are as old as fractional reserve banking itself, and usually happen just before or during an economic and financial collapse, when all trust (i.e. credit) in counterparties disappears and it is every man, woman and child, and what meager savings they may have, for themselves. However, when it comes to shadow bank runs, which take place when institutions are so mismatched in interest, credit and/or maturity exposure that something just snaps as it did in the hours after the Lehman collapse, that due to the sheer size of their funding exposure that they promptly grind the system to a halt even before conventional banks can open their doors to the general public, the conventional wisdom is that this is a novel development (and one which is largely misunderstood). It isn't.