Author: Lee Adler

Market rallies continue to be supported by adequate liquidity, but there are chinks in the armor. Nothing outright says “Sell now,” but there are warning signs that say, xxxx xxxx now. It’s probably too late. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

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One item to watch closely is repo usage. Repo growth is absolutely necessary in this market to fund an uptrend in stock prices. And Repo has been dropping like a rock since peaking at the end of September. So far, there’s just a break of the short-term trend, which isn’t significant in the big picture, but it could be if it continues, or backs and fills for a while and then breaks down. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

We also need to watch the Fed’s RRP slush fund as it approaches zero. That will become one less bullish prop for the markets. It has been a form of deferred QE, or strategic QE reserve, stored up from the old days when the Fed pumped so much money into the system, $2.5 trillion of it wasn’t able to be deployed. Now that RRP money is almost all gone, absorbed by a couple years of Treasury issuance. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

Meanwhile, total money is still surging, so there’s still plenty of cash around. That’s a reflection of the market generating profits, and money growth, on its own. But it’s not a matter of sufficiency. It’s a matter of willingness to deploy, and that’s at an all time high. The question is how much farther can that willingness be stretched as prices rise higher and higher. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

The markets are creating money with no help from the Fed. That’s strictly a matter of sentiment, or call it animal spirits. And that can change. That change is what we are looking for in this liquidity data. Right now the markets are especially vulnerable to sentiment changing. Stock prices are more extended versus money supply than at any point in history. Which means that the risk of a sentiment change is higher than at any point in history. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

For now, the stock market remains a xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx. The bond market has probably already made xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx, but it will be a jagged path that will depend in part on the supply schedule. Yields began to soar as bond prices plunged in recent weeks. But thanks in part to light Treasury coupon issuance this week, ……… Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

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Market rallies continue to be well supported by adequate liquidity, but the end is drawing closer. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

Subscribers, click here to download the report.

There are forces that could begin to hamper the price uptrend around the end of October. The first one is a large Treasury coupon issuance that will suck up liquidity at the end of the month. It will be interesting to see to what extent buyers use repo to fund the absorption of that paper. If they opt not to on balance, prices will fall and yields will rise. That could lead to problems for other asset prices. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

Meanwhile, the issuance of T-bills will moderate because the Treasury has excess cash on hand. T-bills serve as perfect collateral for repo borrowing that supports both economic activity and asset price speculation. They are instantly convertible into money. As long as animal spirits are raging, speculators and others will borrow against those bills and the money will get spent on goods, services, and asset speculation. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

We have seen that the more T-bill issuance the merrier. We might guess then, that any reduction in bill issuance might hamper that speculative impulse. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

A big source of money supporting the stock market rally has been the Fed’s RRP slush fund facility. It has been steadily spent down for the past 18 months. It rebuilt by a couple hundred billion at the end of the third quarter (window dressing), and hasn’t dropped back as sharply as I guessed last week it would. There’s still around $325 billion in that facility. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

That’s money that can be used to fund asset purchases, including Treasuries and stocks. If that facility xxxxxx xxxxxxxx, it means that money is being used to xxxxxxx xxxxxxx, other xxxxxx xxxxxxxx, xxx stocks. We have long seen a correlation between declining RRPs outstanding and rising stock prices as holders of the RRPs use the money to buy stocks at the margin. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

At some point that facility will run dry, either in absolute terms, or when the last holders decide that they’re not going anywhere. That will happen in xxxx months. When it does, it should be bearish. For asset prices to continue rising, investors, dealers, and traders will need to fund purchases out of other cash and borrowing. With the constant barrage of Treasury supply it will be a tall order to maintain rising prices. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

Finally, there’s the issue of whether stocks are overbought relative to total money. In terms of bank deposits only, the answer is xxxxxx. But in terms of total available money, it’s xxxxxxxxx. It was in June, but that has xxxxxxx. So we’re waiting for a more definitive sign that animal spirits are xxxxxxxxx. Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

Given the degrees of extension that we’ve seen in the past 6 months, any rollover in these measures now is likely to signal a major market peak. We’re not there yet, but it is week to week. I’ll keep you updated when the first signs appear.  Non-subscribers, click here for access. 

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