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St Louis Fed Discloses More Free Money: A Carry Trade in Liquidity

October 16, 2018

St Louis Fed Discloses More Free Money: A Carry Trade in Liquidity

Not only do banks earn free money on excess reserves, they can borrow money and make guaranteed free money on that.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis discusses the Carry Trade in Liquidity.

The IOER [interest on excess reserves] has been the effective ceiling of other short-term interest rates. The figure above compares the IOER with overnight rates on deposits and repos.

As we can see, the IOER has mostly remained above these two rates, implying that (at least some) banks have been able to borrow funds overnight, deposit them at the Fed and earn a spread, in essence engaging in carry trade in liquidity markets.

Interest Rate on Excess Reserves

​How Much Free Money?

Fed vs ECB

While the Fed has been busy giving banks free money by paying interest on excess reserves, banks in the EU have suffered with negative interest rates, essentially taking money from banks and making them more insolvent.

If the goal was to bail out the banks at public expense (and it was), it’s clear Bernanke had a far better plan than the ECB.

WTI Crude Slides Back Into Red For 2016 As The Fed And Oil Remain On Unsustainable Paths

March 18, 2016

WTI Crude Slides Back Into Red For 2016 As The Fed And Oil Remain On Unsustainable Paths

Oil prices have increased 50 percent since the lows exhibited earlier this year, a rise that is largely linked to the positive market reaction to the OPEC output freeze.

But WTI Crude has given up all its early morning “see oil is fixed” gains in a hurry as once again the algo ramps give way to the realization that, as OilPrice’s Leonard Brecken notes, comes even as for all intents and purposes OPEC has nearly reached its production limits and Iran still plans in increasing output.

What started the entire correction, in my view, was the carry trade on buying the Euro ahead of more quantitative easing (QE) and the Fed playing games by talking up a recovery and threatening to raise rates. That created a double whammy on a strong U.S. dollar beginning in the summer of 2014 when oil prices peaked.

At the same time, U.S. producers did manage to ramp up output even further in the second half of 2014, at a time of rising inventories. By the first half of 2015 things began to self-correct as inventories began to fall. Oil prices started to make a recovery but reversed as OPEC flooded the market with more oil, which began in late 2014. Meanwhile the nuclear deal with Iran opened up the prospect of a new source of supply, a fact that was overhyped by the media.

Demand remained strong for gasoline despite the weakening global economy, much to the media’s surprise. Inventories rose in absolute terms, but in terms of days of supply, storage remained at much more modest levels, only eclipsing the upper end of the historic five-year range in 2016.

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

 

A Contagious Crisis Of Confidence In Corporate Credit

February 14, 2016

A Contagious Crisis Of Confidence In Corporate Credit

Credit is not innately good or bad. Simplistically, productive Credit is constructive, while non-productive Credit is inevitably problematic. This crucial distinction tends to be masked throughout the boom period. Worse yet, a prolonged boom in “productive” Credit – surely fueled by some type of underlying monetary disorder – can prove particularly hazardous (to finance and the real economy).

Fundamentally, Credit is unstable. It is self-reinforcing and prone to excess. Credit Bubbles foment destabilizing price distortions, economic maladjustment, wealth redistribution and financial and economic vulnerability. Only through “activist” government intervention and manipulation will protracted Bubbles reach the point of precarious systemic fragility. Government/central bank monetary issuance coupled with market manipulations and liquidity backstops negates the self-adjusting processes that would typically work to restrain Credit and other financial excess (and shorten the Credit cycle).

A multi-decade experiment in unfettered “money” and Credit has encompassed the world. Unique in history, the global financial “system” has operated with essentially no limitations to either the quantity or quality of Credit instruments issued. Over decades this has nurtured unprecedented Credit excess and attendant economic imbalances on a global scale. This historic experiment climaxed with a seven-year period of massive ($12 TN) global central bank “money” creation and market liquidity injections. It is central to my thesis that this experiment has failed and the unwind has commenced.

The U.S. repudiation of the gold standard in 1971 was a critical development. The seventies oil shocks, “stagflation” and the Latin American debt debacle were instrumental. Yet I view the Greenspan Fed’s reaction to the 1987 stock market crash as the defining genesis of today’s fateful global Credit Bubble.

The Fed’s explicit assurances of marketplace liquidity came at a critical juncture for the evolution to market-based finance.

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

“The Fed Suspended The Laws Of The Market In Order To Save It” – What Happens Next

January 31, 2016

“The Fed Suspended The Laws Of The Market In Order To Save It” – What Happens Next

That the Fed has been boxed in by unleashing destructive monetary policies to “fix” decades of prior policy mistakes, is something we have been warning about since our first day. And, with every passing day that the Fed and its central bank peers pile up error upon error  to offset prior mistakes, the day approaches when this latest bubble, which some have dubbed it the “central banks all-in” bubble, will burst as well: Friday’s shocking announcement of NIRP by the BOJ just brought us one step closer to the monetary doomsday.

However, the one saving grace for the central banks was that as long as none of the market participants who benefited from these flawed policies dared to open their mouths and point out that the emperor is naked, nobody really cared: after all, why spoil the party, especially since virtually nobody outside of finance knows, let alone cares, about monetary policy or why the Fed is the most important institution in the world.

All of that has changed in recent weeks, when just one week ago in the aftermath of the Fed’s dovish quasi-relent, the billionaires in Davos were quite clear that in light of the upcoming bursting of the latest “policy error” bubble by the central banks, “The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play The Game.” As the WSJ summarized the Davos participants’ mood so well, “their mood here was irritated, bordering on affronted, with what they say has been central-bank intervention that has gone on too long.”

There is just one problem: central bank intervention simply can not go away. Exhibit A: NIRP in Japan.

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

How Much Higher Can The U.S. Dollar Go?

November 26, 2015

How Much Higher Can The U.S. Dollar Go?

And what will the implications be?

megainarmy/Shutterstock

Let’s start our examination of the U.S. dollar (USD) by recalling the chart from my August 2014 essay, Why the Dollar Could Strengthen—A Lot.  At that point, the USD had moved modestly off its lows, and had yet to challenge long-term resistance around 80.

Here’s the same chart of the Real Trade-Weighted U.S. Dollar Index now:

The USD broke out of its multi-year downtrend and soared above 100. Needless to say, the USD did in fact strengthen a lot.  After that initial leg up, the dollar has remained in a consolidation range for much of 2015. Though it recently broke out of a wedge/triangle formation to the upside, it’s not yet clear if this is a definitive move higher or more consolidation.

Is the Dollar Rally Done?

So is the dollar rally done, or could it move higher?

The long-term chart above (Real Trade-Weighted U.S. Dollar Index) offers some clues.

Our first observation is that trends in the USD tend to last for some time, so if this rally follows the pattern of previous rallies, it’s unlikely to have run its course in one year.

Secondly, previous rallies paused for a multi-month consolidation period before launching upward for the second leg of the long-term rally.

Thirdly, the USD rose sharply to previous peaks and then round-tripped back to the 80 level.

This raises the question: How high could the dollar rise in this rally?

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

The Numbers Are In: China Dumps A Record $94 Billion In US Treasurys In One Month

September 7, 2015

The Numbers Are In: China Dumps A Record $94 Billion In US Treasurys In One Month

Shortly after the PBoC’s move to devalue the yuan, we noted with some alarm that it looked as though China may have drawn down its reserves by more than $100 billion in the space of just two weeks. That, we went on the point out, would represent a stunning increase over the previous pace of the country’s reserve draw down, which we’ve began documenting months ahead of the devaluation (see here, for instance). We went on to estimate, based on the estimated size of the RMB carry trade unwind, how large the FX reserve liquidation might need to be to offset capital outflows and finally, late last week, we suggested that China’s official FX reserve data was set to become the new risk-on/off trigger for nervous, erratic markets. In short, the pace at which Beijing is burning through its USD assets in defense of the yuan has serious implications not only for investors’ collective perception of market stability, but for yields on core paper, for global liquidity, and for US monetary policy. 

On Monday we got the official data from China and sure enough, we find out that the PBoC liquidated around $94 billion in reserves during the month of August and as Goldman argues (see below), the “real” figure might have been closer to $115 billion. Whatever the case, it’s a staggering burn rate and needless to say, were the PBoC to continue to liquidate its assets at this pace, it would necessitate a raft of RRR cuts and hundreds of billions in short-term liquidity ops to ensure that money market don’t seize up in the face of the liquidity drain.

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

 

How China Cornered The Fed With Its “Worst Case” Capital Outflow Countdown

August 31, 2015

How China Cornered The Fed With Its “Worst Case” Capital Outflow Countdown

Last week, in “What China’s Treasury Liquidation Means: $1 Trillion QE In Reverse,” we took a look at the potential size of the RMB carry trade, noting that according to BofAML, the unwind could, in the worst case scenario, be somewhere on the order of $1 trillion.

Extrapolating from that and applying Citi’s take on the impact of EM reserve drawdowns on 10Y UST yields (which, incidentally, is based on “Financing US Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World – and at What Cost?“, by John Kitchen and Menzie Chinn from 2011), we noted that potentially, if China were to use its FX reserves to offset the pressure on the yuan from the unwind of the great RMB carry, the effect could be to put more than 200bps of upward pressure on the 10Y yield. 

Going farther, we also said that $1 trillion in FX reserve liquidation by the PBoC would essentially negate around 60% of QE3. In other words, China’s persistent FX interventions amount to reverse QE or, as Deutsche Bank calls is “quantitative tightening.” 

Now, SocGen is out with a description of China’s “impossible trinity” or “trilemma”. Here’s the critical passage:

The PBoC is caught in an awkward position: not letting the currency go requires significant FX intervention that will not prevent ongoing capital outflows but which will result in tightening domestic liquidity conditions; but letting the currency go risks more immense capital outflow pressures in the immediate short term, external debt defaults and possibly further domestic investment deceleration. Furthermore, it has to consider the painful repercussions globally that could result from any sharp RMB depreciation.

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

 

 

 

Why QE4 Is Inevitable

August 28, 2015

Why QE4 Is Inevitable

One narrative we’ve pushed quite hard this week is the idea that China’s persistent FX interventions in support of the yuan are costing the PBoC dearly in terms of reserves. Of course this week’s posts hardly represent the first time we’ve touched on the issue of FX reserve liquidation and its implications for global finance. Here, for those curious, are links to previous discussions:

And so on and so forth.

In short, stabilizing the currency in the wake of the August 11 devaluation has precipitated the liquidation of more than $100 billion in USTs in the space of just two weeks, doubling the total sold during the first half of the year. 

In the end, the estimated size of the RMB carry trade could mean that before it’s all over, China will liquidate as much as $1 trillion in US paper, which, as we noted on Thursday evening, would effectively negate 60% of QE3 and put somewhere in the neighborhood of 200bps worth of upward pressure on 10Y yields. 

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

 

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