Quirks or kinks in the eurodollar futures curve are nothing new, materializing from time to time as much for technical reasons as anything else. Still, there are those instances – such as June 2018 – when these represent meaningful changes in outlook and condition. Back in the middle of that year, the sudden inversion in the curve along the 2020-21 [...]
Six months ago, the US was still reporting 226K new cases of COVID a day, a rate that would peak in the first half of January at over 300k. Daily deaths also peaked in those first two weeks of the new year at over 4000. The economy was still struggling to recover, most restaurants surviving on takeout traffic, and no [...]
Following this morning’s Treasury bill auctions, each of the last three for the three shortest maturities (4-week, 8-week, 13-week) have each priced to yield less than the new reverse repo “floor” rate set by the Federal Reserve last Thursday. The first two of those, a 4-week and an 8-week, took place on the new RRP’s first day. The latest is [...]
Initially, the dots got all the attention. Though these things are beyond hopeless, the media needs them to write up its account of a more fruitful monetary policy outcome because markets continue to discount that entirely. Dots look like inflationary success if possibly even now more likely, whereas yields and especially bills have (re)taken a more skeptical approach pricing almost [...]
It isn’t all base effects, or even all that much of them. Though these were higher in May 2021 than they had been in April, US consumer prices have accelerated regardless. According to the BLS and its latest CPI estimates, the net change in its headline index last month from last May was an excitable 4.99% (unadjusted). That’s the highest [...]
Back on February 25, Treasury auctioned 7-year notes and it did not go (as) well. Maybe you remember us saying something about it, and then again and again and… The prevailing view then – and now – was reflation hadn’t just accelerated, the true inflation long-promised by so much “money printing” (or at least by those who equate bank reserves [...]
I am very much prone to bludgeoning several long-deceased equines, and given what’s really going on with the Fed's reverse repo (and nearly all commentary unhelpful surrounding it) this gives me yet another chance to really reuse my cudgel on at least two of them. This another opportunity to fixate more upon bank reserves, a forever topic until everyone learns [...]
Why are Treasury bills the best of the best, the purest of the most pristine? The better part of the answer comes in the form of a mere three letters: O, T, and R. Those happen to stand for on-the-run which in repo simply means dependably liquid. OTR securities are those most recently auctioned thereby the specific securities which have [...]
For what it ever may have been worth, you have to at least acknowledge the Federal Reserve really did put its (own limited use form of) money where its abundant mouth had been. The entire story of the crisis era and then post-crisis experience of “abundant reserves” indicated a monetary situation (liquidity, colloquially) where supposedly money was beyond sufficient. Too [...]
Treasury Secretaries, like Federal Reserve Chairmen, they don’t talk much about or pay much attention to the market’s need for collateral. They may pay some, but not specifically collateral if only under the vaguely defined category of “market consideration” when setting auction supply. Collateral shortages have come and gone, however dreadful, never eliciting a direct response insofar as supply has [...]
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