Flattener

A recap letter by Goldman's Dominic Wilson, Director of Goldman's Global Macro & Markets Research, is surprisingly conciliatory in its most recent view of the world. The firm notes tongue in cheek that while its Top 9 ideas for 2010 have lost its clients billions, it is still megabullish, but no longer "too dogmatic." We are not sure what that means except that Goldman prop is selling into every rally, and Goldman will still have all the >5x beta stocks on conviction buy up until it moves them to the conviction nuke list, just like JPMorgan did with its disastrous recommendations on greek banks. Nonetheless, reading between the propaganda lines, the following recap is one of the better two-sided evaluations of the world currently to come from a sell-side desk.

Despite a better Friday, European sovereign risk and US financial reform continue to weigh on markets, causing some to connect the dots from these sorts of concerns to broader questions about the health and sustainability of the global cycle. Our baseline view remains that these fears are overdone. Indeed, in Wednesday’s Global Economics Weekly, Jim O’Neill argued that the world remains “Better than you think” with the needed austerity in peripheral Europe posing only minimal challenges to our above consensus global real GDP growth view. Importantly, conclusive economic evidence of a shift in the business cycle has yet to materialize. However, there are some faint signs of fraying around the edges of the evolving macro data set, and, especially in the US, we continue to expect a second half slowdown. US retail spending continued to grow in April, but the acceleration in spending has paused. Weekly UI claims have stalled, and shown no improvement for several months. The Philly Fed survey inched up by a tenth of a point in May, but key leading subcomponents (New Orders less Inventories in particular) failed to make headway, as has been the case for several months. Euroland PMI fell in May, though it remains solidly in expansionary territory, indicating a slowdown in the rate of growth but not a shift in direction, as did German PMI after a blowout reading in April. - Goldman's Noah "Top Trades For 2010" Weisberger

One of the notable observations in recent Treasury auctions has been the increasing participation by commercial banks in taking down 10 and 30 Year Treasury auctions - traditionally two parts on the curve banks have historically avoided like the plague. We present some observations on why this may be happening as well as some troubling conclusions, both of which indicate trouble, namely that liquidity is and has been the name of the game for the past 13 months, and that commercial banks, or presumably some of the smarter money around, are seeing economic distress ahead.

Spreads were mixed in the US with IG worse, HVOL improving, ExHVOL weaker, and HY rallying. IG trades 10.9bps tight (rich) to its 50d moving average, which is a Z-Score of -1.4s.d.. At 84bps, IG has closed tighter on only 6 days in the last 326 trading days (JAN09). The last five days have seen IG flat to its 50d moving average. Indices typically underperformed single-names with skews mostly narrower as IG underperformed but narrowed the skew, HVOL outperformed but narrowed the skew, ExHVOL intrinsics beat and narrowed the skew, HY's skew widened as it underperformed. 4.8% of names in IG moved more than their historical vol would imply as higher vol names underperformed lower vol names by 0.36% to -0.4%. IG's vol is around 4.38% per 1 day period, which leaves 95 names higher vol and 30 lower vol than the index. The names having the largest impact on IG are Altria Group Inc (-10.75bps) pushing IG 0.08bps tighter, and Universal Health Services Inc (+7.25bps) adding 0.06bps to IG. HVOL is more sensitive with International Paper Company pushing it 0.23bps tighter, and SLM Corp contributing 0.21bps to HVOL's change today. The less volatile ExHVOL's move today is driven by both Altria Group Inc (-10.75bps) pushing the index 0.11bps tighter, and Universal Health Services Inc (+7.25bps) adding 0.07bps to ExHVOL.

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

Pimco's Total Return Fund has released its February holdings, which is now a ridiculous 54% higher than a year earlier, at $214.3 billion. The fund reduced it cash holdings from $19 billion in January to just $4 billion in February, and used the proceeds to buy $10 billion of US Treasuries ($75 billion in total), $5 billion in Mortgages ($36 billion), and also expanded further internationally, buying $3 billion in Non-US Developed country bonds (total of $41 billion). Pimco also surpassed the $10 billion mark in Emerging Market holdings. The firm kept its holdings of High Yield bonds flat at $6.4 billion. While there were no major asset reallocations, Pimco did change its curve exposure materially, eliminating all of its sub-1 year paper, which in January amounted to $17 billion. The firm added the most exposure to the 5-10 year bucket, which increased by $12 billion to $72.9 billion. The greatest amount of holdings is still in the 1-3 year bucket. Holdings of 20 years or over were a moderate $15 billion. Is Pimco gradually shifting to a flattener position?

We start with Fixed Income. With supply next week and unemployment report on Friday we had a preference being short fixed income this week. Technically we see that on the bund we have been in a narrow 123/123.65 range, and the slow stochastic is about to turn which has not generated a false signal in quite some time for that market that decent sell-off of at least 2 figures is on the way. 10Y treasury futures have held the 118-10 resistance but curiously look like they are in the process of doing a 5th wave up with potential between 118-27 and 119-05. It is not ou preference to view the recent price action as a bullish impulse with respect to the overall market dynamic since the highs last March but we remain cautious about the possibility of extending further on the upside. The bund paints a slightly more bearish picture for now. Still we are fairly overbought here and we think the risk reward is tilted to the downside. People who do not wish to express this view directionally can engage in a 5s/10s flattener (charted here using implied yield on the future). We see that we are back testing the former wedge support as resistance and we are fairly close to the highs excluding the post-lehman spike in the curve. Negative carry on the position is only 9bps per quarter so it is not too expensive to hold the position as well.

Some intraday Treasury market commentary from Market News. Everyone's word of the day is steepeners (except for Rosie, who loves the flattener. As usual he is on to something, although the "don't bet against the Fed" mantra should be amended to "don't bet against optimistic groupthink"). Don't fall for the call stupids.

Somewhere Julian Robertson is convulsing in a fit of lucre-driven epilepsy. The question for today: what is the bigger pain trade - an outright stock short, or a UST flattener? Everyone knows one shouldn't go against the Fed, however the Fed is behind both of these... So where will it crack first?

The CDX IG12 5s10s curve has just hit a high since the March lows, following to the equity market drum beat. The popular flattener trade has now unwound as more accounts start shifting into corporate steepeners. As we have noted in the past, IG new issuance has likely peaked, and in the face of dropping new commercial paper issuance, the supply overhang is muted, forcing managers to play with the corporate curve. The 5s10s trade was one of the most popular ones in the halcyon days of late 2006 and early 2007. With near-term refi risks effectively eliminated the corporate steepener seems the place to be, especially as equities continue indicating heightened inflation pressures, yet contrary to what the Treasury market demonstrates. Nonetheless, the upcoming roll in CDS should be one to watch.

After three very volatile weeks, it seems the CDS world tapered off modestly. While action was rather subdued, the bulk of activity was focused on insurance buying, with over $63 billion in net notional being purchased in over 3,400 contracts. Total cumulative CDS action since the beginning of April grew to over $400 billion, and virtually all sectors are now net derisked over the past 2 months, with the consumer leading the risk parade.

The chart below demonstrates the 1 year forward level on the 1 Year treasury. Someone really just went all in on Bernanke's bluff. 2Y/1Y flatteners anyone? Wait, what's that? Every prop desk had a steepener on and was highly levered into it? Basis trade blow up deja vu anyone? Wait for opportunistic hedge funds to be ramping into the flattener and killing who knows how many props on the wrong side of the trade.

The chart below demonstrates the 1 year forward level on the 1 Year treasury. Someone really just went all in on Bernanke's bluff. 2Y/1Y flatteners anyone? Wait, what's that? Every prop desk had a steepener on and was highly levered into it? Basis trade blow up deja vu anyone? Wait for opportunistic hedge funds to be ramping into the flattener and killing who knows how many props on the wrong side of the trade.

The chart below demonstrates the 1 year forward level on the 1 Year treasury. Someone really just went all in on Bernanke's bluff. 2Y/1Y flatteners anyone? Wait, what's that? Every prop desk had a steepener on and was highly levered into it? Basis trade blow up deja vu anyone? Wait for opportunistic hedge funds to be ramping into the flattener and killing who knows how many props on the wrong side of the trade.