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The Fed Just Picked the “Big Guys” (Again) Over Individuals

The Fed Just Picked the “Big Guys” (Again) Over Individuals

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In a recent disclosure to Congress, the Fed revealed that it just purchased $429 million in bonds from 86 corporations.

They did this through something called a Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF). Buried on the Fed’s website, the press release explains the intention behind this purchase of bonds:

The SMCCF will purchase corporate bonds to create a corporate bond portfolio that is based on a broad, diversified market index of U.S. corporate bonds. This index is made up of all the bonds in the secondary market that have been issued by U.S. companies that satisfy the facility’s minimum rating, maximum maturity, and other criteria.

According to Agora’s 5-Minute Forecast, the Fed also plans to purchase an additional $320 million of corporate bonds in the near future.

If you read the bolded phrase above from the Fed’s press release, you might think they intend to use this as an opportunity to help the “little guy” weather the recent economic storm.

But the “broad, diversified market index” that the Fed claims it’s rescuing doesn’t appear that broad… or that diversified.

The list includes giants like AT&T, Walgreens, Microsoft, Pfizer, Apple, Walmart, Comcast, Ford, Boeing, Cisco and Visa.

It goes without saying that these behemoths can weather out the storm while the smaller corporations struggle and lay off employees.

Fed Doing Its Best to Make Sure the “Big Guys” Keep Winning

The same edition of Agora’s 5-Minute Forecast sums up another example of a confused Fed:

The fact the Fed is buying corporate bonds at all signals favoritism toward big existing players — indebted lumbering behemoths that can’t innovate. It’s not as if the Fed is going to take the largesse it creates from thin air and spread it around to a plucky but capital-starved startup, right?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BOJ Intervenes For Third Time In A Week: Offers To Buy Unlimited Bonds To Stabilize Markets

Ahead of the potentially dramatic BOJ decision tonight, the Japanese bond market is becoming increasingly jittery.

After 10Y JGBs sold off early in the session, with yields rising as high as 0.11% – the highest level in almost a year and a half – as the market continues to test the Bank of Japan’s intentions ahead of its policy decision, on Monday morning, the BOJ intervened again, offering to buy an unlimited amount of bonds for a third time in a week.

While unlimited in size, the central bank offer, made at 0.1% for bonds with 5-10 year maturities, drew some 1.6 trillion yen ($14.4 billion) of bids which were all accepted, the central bank reported just around 1am EDT. The 10-year yield pared the day’s advance after the move was announced.

Following the announcement, the 10-year JGB yield slid half basis point lower to 0.095%, compared with the 0.11% touched before the operation. This is over 3x more than the close of 0.03% just ten days ago ahead of media reports the BOJ will adjusted the parameters of its YCC.

As Bloomberg notes, Monday’s purchase was significantly larger than the 94 billion yen bought in the latest prior on Friday, as prevailing bond prices were below where the BOJ was buying, allow investors to take advantage of the free money.

The fixed rate of 0.10% for the operations on Friday and Monday was lower than the 0.11% offered at four previous operations for the five-to-10 year maturities. Monday’s fixed-rate operation was the seventh since the policy was introduced, and the first time it has conducted three operations within a single week as shown below.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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