Ex-Hedge Fund Portfolio Manager, Full-Time Parent, Data Scientist and Rates Trader
We’re not supposed to be talking about chaos in $ funding markets in the same breath as the wreckage occasionally wrought in emerging markets. We’re definitely not supposed to be saying “the collapse in the Argentine Peso was barely 1/3 of what we just saw in the market that the Fed controls…” Yet here we are. Again.
I tend to think about coverage of “Liquidity and the Funding Market” in the same way as “Child Stars of the 90s and the Eurotrash Nightclub Scene”. If they’re making headlines these days, it’s not because things are going well for Liquidity; it’s because they’ve been discovered face-down in a miasmic pool of ever-deepening turpitude & even their best friends are starting to get really, REALLY worried…
The interest rates market is recovering lost ground from last wk’s smoking carnage on the back of a monster move in the oil market over the weekend. It’s important to understand why this matters for rates, especially given current conditions in the bond market.
Two weeks ago, I wrote that the front-end of the interest rates curve was in serious trouble – given that policymakers were keenly aware of their deficiency in handling any selloff; more so than any point I could recall in my two+ decades of Treasury trading.Today, we’ve just witnessed what qualifies as easily the largest 2wk move in the front-end of the Treasury market in 10+ years. So what happened, exactly?
Perhaps you’re wondering, having read breathless press accounts of what to expect from today’s ECB, what a “bazooka” buys you these days in Europe?
Well, Turns Out… A “Bazooka” Ain’t All That It Used to Be.
Thanks to policy-induced crowding-in of Treasuries, the front-end of the curve is now doing exactly what the Fed feared the most. A nightmare scenario of cutting rates… and nobody caring. Positive historical skew has made them a popular diversifying asset for the momentum crowd – and that’s exactly why we should be concerned.