2 Year Treasury

With an all time high of 293 ounces of paper per ounce of registered physical gold, it appears hedge funds continue to ignore systemic risk and surging physical demand, merely following the trend lower in paper gold prices by adding to already record short positions in gold last week. With the speculative world near-record long the USDollar and record short gold, how much longer can the status quo boat can remain upright with so many on the same side. After this week's shake-out of USD longs courtesy of Draghi, one wonders if the gold squeeze is about to begin?

2 Year Treasury yields have jumped 4.5bps today, breaking to 77.4bps - the highest since April 2011 as it appears (despite the 30% odds of a rate hike priced into the ED curve) Fed jawboning is creating front-end selling (in the face of weak data). Notably this is the same level that 2Y rates traded at in Dec 2008 after the initial tumble post-Lehman.

Every Federal Reserve Chair since 1979 has faced a notable challenge in the first 12-20 months of their tenure – something akin to capital markets “Bullies” hazing the new kid at school. Paul Volcker had the 1979-1980 Iranian oil shock/recession, Alan Greenspan the 1987 Stock Market Crash, and Ben Bernanke the 2007 Financial Crisis. Their responses shaped market perceptions about Federal Reserve priorities and set the stage for the remainder of their tenures, from Inflation-Fighting Volcker to Save-the-World Bernanke. Now, it is Chair Yellen’s turn...

The week's weakness started with the surprise yuan devaluation, but the moves in everythingfrom crude oil to U.S. government debt signal that investors and traders are telling the Fed to hold off for now. Will U.S. policymakers listen? Make no mistake: the Fed marches to its own data-dependent drum. These indicators will only tell you if the central bank has the right tempo to support markets.

If the recent batch of longer-dated Treasury auctions were a barnburner with unprecedented demand for "high quality" collateral with duration longer than 3 years, then today's just concluded 2 Year issuance was somewhat more tame: moments ago the Treasury sold $27 billion in 2 year paper at a yield of .703%, 1 basis point inside the .713% When Issued. Still, this was the highest yield on 2 Year paper since March 2011.

Thanks to the People's Bank of China...

While the auction overall was not fireworky just yet, a few more "dots" fiascoes and suddenly the short end of the curve is going to get a whole lot more interesting. And should European idiot asset managers, once they have taken the Spanish 10 Year to 0%, decide to bid up US paper, and inverted the 2s10s, well that is the time to quiet get out of dodge.

For most portfolio managers, investable assets can be thought of as sitting somewhere on the risk-return curve. If we look at the risk-return curve today it is obvious that 75% of global financial assets are now locking in real losses, unless of course, inflation collapses and deflation takes hold in the major economies. If we are spared a massive deflationary wave the assets at the bottom left of the curve will lose 1.5% real per year for the next five years. This means that, for global assets to stay roughly in the same place, equities will need to provide a real return of 4.5% per year for five years. However, it is important to note that such returns will only serve to compensate for the capital destruction taking place in the fixed income market. Real returns on equities of 4.5% will not leave us any richer compared to our starting level. This means that investors will have spent five years on a treadmill running to stand still. When you consider that no asset growth was registered in the previous five years, we are facing a whole decade devoid of capital accumulation. Given the world’s aging population, isn’t this bound to be problematic?

Earlier today, Thomas Jordan of the Swiss National Bank stated that banks may need to triple their current common equity level, essentially undoing all the carefully prepared propaganda of Basel III, and validating just how undercapitalized banks throughout the world truly are. And while the regulators will likely completely ignore his message, the market appears to have noticed: the USDCHF fell to a fresh 2.5 year low of 0.9702, which is making Swiss exporters very, very unhappy. Additionally, the dollar weakness of recent days has reversed this morning especially on continuing Irish sovereign fears (especially after the whole Irish PM Citi conference circus), even as the Dollar-Yen continues to attack that critical 83 level which was the barrier for the BOJ's last intervention on September 15. It seems all the Chinese posturing of bailing out Europe is now completely priced in - oddly enough nobody seems to care that China is willing to provide vendor financing to broke European countries.All of this has driven the 2 Year UST to a fresh all time low yield of 0.3987%, as the Fed's finger salute to the saving middle class becomes ever more distinct.

And this is happening even despite the very appropriately named Bullard telling CNBC that he calls "for a plan to have significant easing if the situation arises" in essence guaranteeing QE2.0. Today's GDP report has just confirmed that another round of dollar debasement, long expected by everyone at Zero Hedge, is now inevitable. And with the ECB actively "easing", better known as printing, as well, the race to the currency bottom, now well in the second to last lap, is starting to get interesting once again.