With UST yields backing up a little bit after the yield curve collapsed so far so fast, the combination of tax cut and reform “stimulus” juxtaposed with the constant, non-transitory mainstream message of recovery and growth has left us with yet another BOND ROUT!!! It has been somewhat if not completely reminiscent of earlier in 2017 when the mere promise [...]
US homebuilders haven’t been this happy since the dot-com era. Not even the housing mania of the mid-2000’s had builders feeling this good about things. According to the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), the trade group that represents firms in the industry, their sentiment index registered a blistering 74 in December 2017. Predictably, that’s got a lot of people excited [...]
If China wishes to ever throw off the shackles of the eurodollar system, and they do, to eventually go out on its own in an RMB dominated world there is a lot to cleanup long before that’s ever an attainable goal. To start with, we don’t know near enough about what’s going on inside that country’s financial and economic system. [...]
Why would any central bank try to disguise the fact that it is being highly accommodative in its own money markets? That would be a strange place to start, made all the more so by the further observation the same central bank is perfectly happy if you thought it was doing the opposite. Cryptic introduction aside, it is obvious I [...]
We ended last week with a clear sign that global “dollars” are in (escalating) shortage. I would write “again” with that sentence but there is every indication that said shortage never really ended. It’s not like last year’s “reflation” was a switch from insufficient supply to sufficient, rather it was a relative change to a degree that isn’t easily established [...]
The Federal Reserve’s Empire State Manufacturing Index fell slightly in its December 2017 estimate. At +18, that’s down from 19.4 in November and a high of +30.2 in October. It’s also nowhere near the low for the year, a -1.0 recorded back in May. This particular PMI is potentially noteworthy for what appears to be a replicating cycle. In a [...]
Industrial Production rose 3.4% year-over-year in November 2017, the highest growth rate in exactly three years. The increase was boosted by the aftermath of Harvey and Irma, leaving more doubt than optimism for where US industry is in 2017. For one thing, of that 3.4% growth rate, more than two-thirds was attributable to just two months. Combining April 2017 with October, [...]
Back in early October, I noted that repo fails had jumped above $250 billion (combined “to receive” and “to deliver”) for three weeks straight. That wasn’t an auspicious result, as sustained collateral problems like that don’t correlate to happy things. It all began the week of September 5, in what seemed like a minor one-day nuisance over the 4-week bill [...]
It was another pretty embarrassing day for the Federal Reserve and its policymaking body the FOMC. The latter voted, as expected, to raise the federal funds corridor (or double floor, if you can’t get over IOER fail) by another 25 bps. The long end of the Treasury bond market, however, was bid pushing yields down not up. There is a [...]
The PBOC has two seemingly competing objectives that in reality are one and the same. Overnight, China’s central bank raised two of its money rates. The rate it charges mostly the biggest banks for access to the Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) was increased by 5 bps to 3.25%. In addition, its reverse repo interest settings were also moved up by [...]
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