Tag Archive: Bonds

Three Things About Today’s UST Sell-off, Beginning With Fedwire

2021-02-28

by

2021-02-28

UST Yield Curve, 1990
Three relatively quick observations surrounding today’s UST selloff.1. The intensity. Reflation is the underlying short run basis, but there is ample reason to suspect quite a bit more than that alone given the unexpected interruption in Fedwire yesterday.

Read More »

Nine Percent of GDP Fiscal, Ha! Try Forty

2021-02-25

by

2021-02-25

Japan CPI, 2006-2021
Fear of the ultra-inflationary aspects of fiscal overdrive. This is the current message, but according to what basis? Bigger is better, therefore if the last one didn’t work then the much larger next one absolutely will. So long as you forget there was a last one and when that prior version had been announced it was also given the same benefit of the doubt.

Read More »

For The Dollar, Not How Much But How Long Therefore How Familiar

2021-02-24

by

2021-02-24

US Dollar / Brazilian Real, 2020-2021
Brazil’s stock market was rocked yesterday by politics. The country’s “populist” President, Jair Bolsonaro, said he was going to name an army general who had served with Bolsomito (a nickname given to him by supporters) during that country’s prior military dictatorship as CEO of state-owned oil giant Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Gen. Joaquim Silva e Luna is being installed, allegedly, to facilitate more direct control of the company by the federal...

Read More »

What Might Be In *Another* Market-based Yield Curve Twist?

2021-02-23

by

2021-02-23

Pro forma CES Private Payrolls, 2020-2021
With the UST yield curve currently undergoing its own market-based twist, it’s worth investigating a couple potential reasons for it. On the one hand, the long end, clear cut reflation: markets are not, as is commonly told right now, pricing 1979 Great Inflation #2, rather how the next few years may not be as bad (deflationary) as once thought a few months ago.

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse – Real Rates Finally Make A Move

2021-02-22

by

2021-02-22

Last week was only four days due to the President’s day holiday but it was eventful. The big news of the week was the  spike in interest rates, which according to the press reports I read, “came out of nowhere”. In other words, the writers couldn’t find an obvious cause for a 14 basis point rise in the 10 year Treasury note yield so they just chalked it up to mystery.

Read More »

Eurodollar University’s Making Sense; Episode 46; Part 3: Bill’s Reading On Reflation, And Other Charted Potpourri

2021-02-21

by

2021-02-21

46.3 On the Economic Road to NothingGoodVilleRecent, low consumer price inflation readings combined with falling US Treasury Bill yields are cautionary sign posts that say this reflationary path may not be the road to recovery but a deflationary cul-de-sac.

Read More »

Two Seemingly Opposite Ends Of The Inflation Debate Come Together

2021-02-19

by

2021-02-19

US Import Price Index All Commedities, 2019-2021
It’s worth taking a look at a couple of extremes, and the putting each into wider context of inflation/deflation. As you no doubt surmise, only one is receiving much mainstream attention. The other continues to be overshadowed by…anything else.

Read More »

Politics Get Weird, Markets Don’t Care

2021-01-19

by

2021-01-19

US Personal Income data by YCharts
A mob, led by a shirtless man wearing a Viking helmet, stormed the Capitol building a couple of weeks ago and five people died before order was restored. A man from upstate New York sat in a Senator’s office and smoked a joint. Another roamed the halls of Congress with a Confederate flag.

Read More »

Consumers, Producers, and the Unsettled End of 2020

2021-01-17

by

2021-01-17

U.S. Retail Sales, NSA, Jan 1993 - Jul 2020
The months of November and December aren’t always easily comparable year to year when it comes to American shopping habits. For a retailer, these are the big ones. The Christmas shopping season and the amount of spending which takes place during it makes or breaks the typical year (though last year, there was that whole thing in March and April which has had a say in each’s final annual condition).

Read More »

They’ve Gone Too Far (or have they?)

2021-01-10

by

2021-01-10

Between November 1998 and February 1999, Japan’s government bond (JGB) market was utterly decimated. You want to find an historical example of a real bond rout (no caps nor exclamations necessary), take a look at what happened during those three exhilarating (if you were a government official) months.

Read More »

Inflation Hysteria #2 (Nominal UST)

2020-12-09

by

2020-12-09

UST Yield Curve, 2017-2018
What had given Inflation Hysteria #1 its real punch had been the benchmark 10-year Treasury note. Throughout 2017, despite the unemployment rate in the US, globally synchronized growth being declared around the world (and being declared as some momentously significant development), and whatever other tiny factors acceding to the narrative, longer-term Treasury rates just weren’t buying it.

Read More »

Just Who Is, And Who Is Not, Selling T-Bills

2020-11-29

by

2020-11-29

Are foreigners selling Treasury bills? If they are, this would seem to merit consideration for the reflation argument. After all, the paramount monetary deficiency exposed by March’s GFC2 (and the Fed’s blatant role in making it worse) was the dangerous degree of shortage over the best collateral.

Read More »

Treasury Auctions Are Anything But Sorry Because They’ve Never Been Sorry About Solly

2020-11-28

by

2020-11-28

US TIC, 2010-2020
Twenty years ago, in November 2000, the Treasury Department changed one aspect of the way the government would sell its own debt. Auctions of these and other kinds of securities had been ongoing for decades, back to the twenties, and they had been transformed many times along the way. In the middle of the 1970’s Great Inflation, for example, Treasury gradually phased out all other means for issuing securities, by 1977 relying exclusively on...

Read More »

Extending the Summer Slowdown

2020-11-20

by

2020-11-20

US Retail Sales, 2016-2020
A big splurge in September, and then not much more in October. While it would be consistent for many to focus on the former, instead there is much about the latter which, for once, is feeding growing concerns. Retail sales, American consumer spending on goods, has been the one (outside of economically insignificant housing) bright spot since summer

Read More »

Six Point Nine Times Two Equals What It Had In Twenty Fourteen

2020-11-17

by

2020-11-17

China Industrial Production, 1999-2020
It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.”

Read More »

Counting The Corroborated Stall, Not The Coming Lawfare Election Mess

2020-11-06

by

2020-11-06

CPS Household Survey, 2003-2020
While we wait for the electoral count to be sorted out by what we hope are competent and honest people (not holding our breath), there’s a greater muddle growing where it actually counts and where it’s never fully nor properly accounted. By a large and growing number of accounts, the US economy’s rebound seems to have stalled out back around June or July, an inflection unrelated to COVID case counts, too.

Read More »

Meanwhile, Outside Today’s DC

2020-11-05

by

2020-11-05

German Economy, 2012-2020
With all eyes on Washington DC, today, everyone should instead be focused on Europe. As we’ve written for nearly three years now, for nearly three years Europe has been at the unfortunate forefront of Euro$ #4. We could argue about whether coming out of GFC2 back in March pushed everything into a Reflation #4 – possible – or if this is still just one three-yearlong squeeze of a global dollar shortage.

Read More »

What’s Going On, And Why Late August?

2020-10-29

by

2020-10-29

ICE: US$ Index Futures, DX1
This isn’t about COVID. It’s been building since the end of August, a shift in mood, perception, and reality that began turning things several months before even then. With markets fickle yet again, a lot today, what’s going on here?

Read More »

Who’s Negative? The Marginal American Worker

2020-10-06

by

2020-10-06

CPS Household Survey: Civilian Labor Force Level, 2007-2020
The BLS’s payroll report draws most of the mainstream attention, with the exception of the unemployment rate (especially these days). The government designates the former as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) series, and it intends to measure factors like payrolls (obviously), wages, and earnings from the perspective of the employers, or establishments.

Read More »

Monthly Macro Monitor – September (VIDEO)

2020-10-03

by

2020-10-03

Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun and Alhambra's Bob Williams look at data from the past month and discuss what it means for the economy.

Read More »