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State Street: “Move Over Zero Hedge, There Is A New Bear In Town”

September 23, 2016

State Street: “Move Over Zero Hedge, There Is A New Bear In Town”

By Mr. Risk – State Street Global Markets

Unleash Volatility Beast

Thanks for nothing, central banks!

  1. If central banks provided the prototypical inflection point, risk assets should get destroyed next week.
  2. Feast your eyes on a compendium of volatility charts. The beast wants out.
  3. Keys to watch: DXY, EURAUD, and 10-year yields. Move over ZEROHEDGE. There is a new BEAR in town,

* * *

Ahead of the BOJ and Fed meetings, volumes slowed to a trickle, traders got back to flat, and algos reached for the offswitch. Now that event risk is in the rear view mirror, it is time to vote. Buy-the-dip or ‘‘sell everything?’’ If classic market reflexes are in play, a market meltdown following the passing of event risks is by far the more likely outcome. That US equities launched higher is nothing, because it  always does that on Fed day. The obligatory central bank forensic is a good place to begin.

Expectations as measured by overnight volatility ahead of the BOJ were the third highest in 3-years. Notably, 7 out of the 10 highest readings have occurred in 2016, which says something about the growing perception about policy failure. Expanding monetary base has not delivered higher inflation expectations or a weaker currency. Just about every 2016 meeting USDJPY sunk like the proverbial stone.

The ‘‘monetary assessment’’ conducted by the BOJ was an admission that QQE was unsustainable, and needed to be tweaked. Plan B is ‘‘QQE with yield curve control.’’ No, that is not a new shampoo. Here is the stripped down ghetto-economist version.

  1. Negative interest rate
  2. Stabilize 10-year yields at 0%
  3. Keep asset purchases at ¥80 tn/year
  4. Abandon monetary base target
  5. Aim to overshoot the 2.0% inflation target
  6. Rebalance ETF by buying less Nikkei 225 linked ETFs and more Topix, removing a well-flagged distortion.

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

Like Everything Else, History Repeats (Almost Exactly) Because Power Truly Corrupts

September 23, 2016

Like Everything Else, History Repeats (Almost Exactly) Because Power Truly Corrupts

With both the Bank of Japan and Federal Reserve today undertaking policy considerations at the same time, it is useful to highlight the similarities of conditions if not exactly in time. As I wrote this morning, what the Fed is attempting now is very nearly the same as what the Bank of Japan did ten years ago. In the middle of 2006, after more than six years of ZIRP and five years of several QE’s, the Bank of Japan judged economic conditions sufficiently positive to begin the process of policy “exit” by first undertaking the rate “liftoff.”

If you read through the policy statement from July 2006 it sounds as if it were written by American central bank officials in July 2016. Swap out the year and the country and you really wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Japan’s economy continues to expand moderately, with domestic and external demand and also the corporate and household sectors well in balance. The economy is likely to expand for a sustained period…The year-on-year rate of change in consumer prices is projected to continue to follow a positive trend.

With incoming data judged as meeting predetermined criteria (they were somewhat “data dependent”, too), the Bank of Japan voted to raise their benchmark short-term rate but were careful, just like the Fed since December, to assure “markets” that it would be a gradual change only in the level of further “accommodation.”

The Bank has maintained zero interest rates for an extended period, and the stimulus from monetary policy has been gradually amplified against the backdrop of steady improvements in economic activity and prices…

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

Not Even Goldman Has Any Clue How The BOJ Will “Control” The Yield Curve

September 22, 2016

Not Even Goldman Has Any Clue How The BOJ Will “Control” The Yield Curve

The biggest news overnight, and certainly far bigger than this afternoon’s non-event from Janet Yellen, was the significant change in monetary policy announced by the BOJ which (belatedly) unveiled its re-revised “QQE”… this time “with Yield Curve Control” (or “QQEWYCC“), a phrase used in lieu of “Reverse Operation Twist”, whereby the BOJ is hoping to steepen the yield curve and undo the damage it itseld created in January when it introduced NIRP for the first time to Japan, without doing much of anything else.

While we laid out the theoretical big picture elements of QQEWYCC both earlier, and two weeks ago, there is a small problem when one gets into the practical nuances of the proposed monetary experiment: nobody really knows how it will work, not even Goldman Sachs, whose BOJ expert Naohiko Baba admitted that he has no clue how the BOJ will actually execute its vision.

Confirming that the “JGB market has become increasingly distorted”, Baba says that

“it is very unclear at this time exactly how the BOJ intends to “control” the yield curve in the future. Based only on the official statement, we think it is likely it will maintain the yield curve at more or less the current level for the time being. However, the question is how it will control the overall level and shape of the curve when financial and economic conditions change in the future. While the JGB market needs to take time to study the BOJ’s intentions, with interest rate movements lessening, we think the pricing function of interest rates as a mirror reflecting real economic and financial conditions will be increasingly lost.”

Ah yes, the old problem with nationalizing a market – whether it’s bonds or stocks – is that it is no longer, by definition, a market but merely a policy tool which has ceased to delivers any informational value whatsoever.

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

Why Did Japanese NIRP Cause Such Surprise In the Currency Market and Is It More Dangerous?

February 18, 2016

WHY DID JAPANESE NIRP CAUSE SUCH SURPRISE IN THE CURRENCY MARKET AND IS IT MORE DANGEROUS?

  • The Bank of Japan announcement of NIRP sent shock waves through currency markets
  • The Yen has strengthened on capital repatriation since the BoJ move
  • JGB 10 year yields turned negative this week
  • Longer-term the Yen will weaken

At the end of January the Bank of Japan (BoJ) shocked the financial markets by announcing that they would allow Japanese interest rates to become negative for the first time. USDJYP reacted with an abrupt rise from 118 to 121 which was completely reversed a global stock markets declined USDJYP is currently at 112.06 (11-02-2016). The three year chart below shows the extent of the move:-

USDJPY_-_3yr

Source: Big Charts

Here is an extract from the BOJ Announcement:-

The Introduction of “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE) with a Negative Interest Rate” 

The Bank will apply a negative interest rate of minus 0.1 percent to current accounts that financial institutions hold at the Bank. It will cut the interest rate further into negative territory if judged as necessary.

The Bank will introduce a multiple-tier system which some central banks in Europe (e.g. the Swiss National Bank) have put in place. Specifically, it will adopt a three-tier system in which the outstanding balance of each financial institution’s current account at the Bank will be divided into three tiers, to each of which a positive interest rate, a zero interest rate, or a negative interest rate will be applied, respectively.

“QQE with a Negative Interest Rate” is designed to enable the Bank to pursue additional monetary easing in terms of three dimensions, combining a negative interest rate with quantity and quality.

The Bank will lower the short end of the yield curve and will exert further downward pressure on interest rates across the entire yield curve through a combination of a negative interest rate and large-scale purchases of JGBs.

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

Negative-Interest-Rate Effect already Dead, Central Banks Lost Control over Stocks

February 8, 2016

Negative-Interest-Rate Effect already Dead, Central Banks Lost Control over Stocks

And there’s a bitter irony.

The Bank of Japan’s surprise Negative-Interest-Rate party for stocks set a new record: it lasted only two days.

Today a week ago, the Bank of Japan shocked markets into action. As the economy has deteriorated despite years of zero-interest-rate policy and Quantitative and Qualitative Easing (QQE) – a souped-up version of QE – the BOJ announced that it would cut one of its deposit rates from positive 0.1% to negative 0.1%.

Headlines screamed Japan had gone “negative,” that it had joined the NIRPs of Europe – the Eurozone countries, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark. But it was just another desperate move, a head fake, and once the dust would settle, the hot air would go out [read…QE in Japan Nears End: Daiwa Capital Markets].

Now the dust has settled and the hot air has gone out.

On Thursday, January 28, the day before the announcement, the Nikkei closed at 17,041 down 19% from its Abenomics peak of 20,953 in June 2015. Today, it closed even lower.

This situation is a bit of an embarrassment for the BOJ which has pushed Japanese asset managers of all kinds, including pension funds, particularly the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the largest such pension fund in the word, to get off their conservative stance, sell their Japanese Government Bonds which made up the bulk or entirety of their portfolios, and buy risk assets with the proceeds.

This they did, near the peak of the Abenomics bubble. While the BOJ was eagerly mopping up JGBs, the asset managers bought mostly Japanese equities, but they also bought global equities and corporate bonds. And the mere prospect of all this buying, the front-running by hedge funds, and then the actual buying drove up Japanese stock prices in 2014 and early 2015. The bet seemed to work out. Wealth had been created out of nothing.

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

Jeffrey Snider: Kuroda’s Rebuke Came Awfully Swift

October 25, 2015

Jeffrey Snider: Kuroda’s Rebuke Came Awfully Swift

There must be a universal speech template included in the monetary textbook that is shared among the various central banks. On September 28, 2015, Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan, delivered a speech that wasn’t just similar to the press conference Janet Yellen had endured only a week or so before, it was a close enough replica that if stripped of geographic references would have made it impossible to determine who was giving the speech. Kuroda did as Yellen did, making a specific point to emphasize how “robust” the Japanese economy was showing itself in 2015 before trying his best to explain away all the ways in which it was not.

Saying, “First, domestic private demand has continued to be robust” Kuroda then listed factors that were only slightly related to “domestic demand.” Rather than find specific economic accounts performing as he suggested, the Governor was instead reliant on surveys. “Firms’ positive fixed investment stance could be confirmed by various survey results.”

For Japanese households, Kuroda followed as his American counterparts by leading with the declining unemployment rate, assuming its validity and meaningfulness, and then trying to explain why household spending (demand) wasn’t following all that.

In terms of household spending, private consumption is somewhat sluggish recently, reflecting bad weather in the April-June quarter. Nevertheless, as the employment and income situation has continued with its steady improvement and consumer sentiment is on an improving trend, private consumption seems to have remained resilient on the whole.

Consumer “demand” remains “robust” except that it is easily distracted by Japanese weather (obviously not the same storms and snow apparently afflicting the US in the quarter before) and can only charitably be described as “resilient.” As nice as all that may sound, couched carefully as always improving, it doesn’t quite explain the steady and growing chorus expecting and now demanding still more QQE.

– See more at: http://www.cobdencentre.org/2015/10/jeffrey-snider-kurodas-rebuke-came-awfully-swift/#sthash.8lsl2pab.dpuf

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