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Category: Fed, Central Bank and Banking Macro Liquidity

Analysis of the major forces of macro liquidity that drive markets. Click here to subscribe. 90 day risk free trial!

As Good As it Gets, Before the End of Time

Lee Adler

The setup for both bond and stock market bulls will be as good as it gets for the next 3 weeks. So don’t be fooled. Get ready to do some more selling, or short selling, if you’re of that disposition.

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The US Treasury announced in its May Quarterly Refunding statement that it wanted to hold $650 billion in its cash account at the end of Q3. After the April tax windfall, its cash had risen to nearly $1 trillion, so it had to whittle that down by redeeming T-bills. Each month it paid down $100 billion or more of existing T-bills to reach its goal. Finally, last week the Treasury hit the mark. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Based on recent trends I had projected that this would happen in July, and that when it did, the T-bill paydowns would end. Last week the Treasury announced that on June 19 it would issue $15 billion in net new bills its first new bill issuance since just before the April tax windfall began. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

It’s the beginning of the middle of the end. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

This report looks at the trends in Treasury cash, Fed RRPs, the TBACs Treasury supply schedule, and the technical charts of interest rates and bond yields to review how we got here, and estimate how it all plays out, based on known facts and government issuance schedules. And I suggest what you can do about it to protect yourself and play what’s to come. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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Are the Fed and Treasury Geniuses, or Just Lucky? Part One

Lee Adler

We’ve been in a bad bear market in stocks for over 6 months. And a really bad bear market in bonds for almost two years. It could have been worse. Why hasn’t it been? Because even though the Fed hasn’t been absorbing any Treasury supply, supply has been so light that stock and bond prices have reached an  equilibrium range. It’s been volatile. It’s been unsteady. But it hasn’t collapsed.

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In June, the Fed began actually withdrawing cash from the banking system at the rate of $47.5 billion per month. They call it QT, or Quantitative Tightening. $30 billion of that is in Treasuries, and $17.5 billion is in MBS. They plan to double those amounts in September. I’m doubtful they’ll even get through August, but we’ll see.

Reason number one that the end of QE and beginning of QT has not triggered a collapse is that these withdrawals are not simply the opposite of QE. QE was injected into the financial markets directly through the conduit of bond purchases from Primary Dealers. The Fed paid for the purchases by crediting the dealers’ accounts at the Fed with new cash. The dealers than used that cash to accumulate more securities, promote and mark up those securities, and distribute them. As long as the Fed was pumping money into dealer accounts, this process pushed stock and bond prices higher.

Under QT, the withdrawals are not done in trades with Primary Dealers. The money is not sucked directly out of dealer accounts. The QT process only hits the dealers indirectly, and in reduced amounts relative to QT.

The Fed withdraws the money from the financial system by telling the Treasury to repay some of its debt to the Fed. The Treasury must raise the cash to repay the Fed through sales in the market. The buyers of the new paper pay for it by withdrawing cash from their bank accounts. The Treasury sends that cash to the Fed in repayment of the debt. And just like that, the money disappears into the Treasury Black Hole Account.

OK, I kid. It’s not a black hole, but the effect is similar. The Fed sucks the money in, and it disappears from the financial universe. Indeed, the Fed can make it reappear whenever it wants to, but for now, it’s like the South Park episode where Kyle deposits $100 in a new bank account. And it’s gone. The banking system shrinks. There’s more Treasury debt to be absorbed week in and week out, and less cash to absorb it week in and week out. Drip, drip, drip.

Only the boyz have had it good since March. Tax collections have been so enormous on the big quarterly and annual tax due dates that the US Treasury has been able to continue paying down T-bills at a rate in excess of $100 billion per month. Withholding taxes also surged in June.

The result has been that net Treasury supply of coupons less the bill paydowns has only been in the neighborhood of $30 billion over the past month. In April and May, and part of June, the Treasury was actually disgorging cash into the market. It had so much cash it paid down more in T-bills than it issued in coupons. In June it issued only $25 billion net, and over the past 4 weeks only about $35 billion.

The market can handle that. Shakily, yes, but it can absorb that without the Fed’s help.

That all ends now.

This report illustrates how we got here, estimates how it all plays out, based not on conjecture, but known facts and government issuance schedules. And I suggest what you can do about it to protect yourself and play what’s to come.

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Recession? What Recession?

Lee Adler

Federal tax collections rebounded sharply in June, including the all-important withholding taxes. I can’t explain why this happened, nor does it matter. My job is to report the data, and follow wherever it leads.

As Professor Lawrence Berra taught us, you can observe a lot by watching. And the observation that taxes rebounded in June tells us that we are not currently headed into recession.

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But that’s beside the point.

The point, the only point, is that tax revenue rebounded sharply. We will therefore not see an immediate increase in Treasury supply beyond the TBAC’s optimistic forecast. However, that still leaves plenty of coupon supply on the way in the third quarter. The recent rally notwithstanding, the market will have trouble absorbing any net supply at all without the Fed taking its share. And the Fed is not only not taking any, it’s forcing the Treasury to add supply that the public must pay for to repay the Fed for its holdings that it is redeeming.

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Then there’s also the fact of the increasing interest expense of the Federal government. That too will add to the deficit, and add to Treasury supply. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Tax collections are reality — actual hard data, in real time, and not statistically massaged. The economic data will follow with a varying lags. Just like the past month when econ data weakened after I tabulated and reported the collapse in May tax data. I reported that on June 2. Now “everybody” agrees that we’re on the verge of recession. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Except, oops, we’re not. Tax collections are soaring. We will now see the opposite to the process we witnessed last month. The seers and soothsayers are now all looking for signs of recession. They will be gobsmacked when the lagging econ data starts going the other way again. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

And so will the bond market. The xxxxxxxxx in bond prices, and xxxxxxxx in yields, will xxxxxxxx. The recent rally will soon xxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxx xxxxxxxx. The market has given bond sellers and would be bond sellers xxxxxxxxxxxx.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

You have to wonder how the Fed and econ soothsayers will now react to a return to booming data AND booming inflation. I suspect xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx. Some will conclude that inflation expectations are becoming embedded, and that consumers will increase spending now to beat inflation tomorrow. The data suggests that this is already happening. Businesses wouldn’t be increasing payrolls if they weren’t seeing higher sales.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

There are already reports that the Fed is worried about this and is resolved to prevent it. Now the revenue rebound in June suggests that, as usual, not only is the rent too damn high, but the Fed is too damn late. The other fact is that when things finally do slow down, the Fed will again be too late to respond. Instead of being too loose for too long, it will stay too tight too long. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Therefore, the strategic message of this data remains the same. If you xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx. That applies to both bonds and stocks.

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Stocks Are Even More “Oversold” Versus Liquidity

Lee Adler

The thing is, there’s no such thing as “oversold” in a bear market. OK, maybe there is, but it’s at a much lower parameter than that which applied during the 13 year bubble.

Therefore we should not expect the market to turn up from extremes similar to those of the past 12 years. And we should not expect the rebounds to be sustained. They’ll correct the extreme, and then the downtrend to new lows will resume. So, what I wrote previously, recapped below, still applies. Stock prices still look oversold, even more so than in late May when I last updated the CLI.

But the bottom line remains the same. Here’s what it is. Here’s why. And here’s what you might consider doing about it if you want to profit from what lies ahead.

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We Knew QT Would Be Devastating, But You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

Lee Adler

Nothing has changed since I last updated this Fed QT report three weeks ago. I have updated all the charts and details in the body of the report.

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Short term reaction rallies, and dead cat bounces notwithstanding, the intermediate outlook, and longer term, remain bearish, pending xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx. That will follow the coming crash, not precede it. Anyone holding out for that xxxxxx xxxxxxxx is likely to get crushed, battered, steamrolled, destroyed, decimated, and cooked. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Holding and hoping is not a strategy. When Wall Street tells you not to panic, they may as well be deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming train. Smart people don’t panic. They just calmly get the hell out of the way. Cash, despite it being depreciated by inflation, still has utility. When opportunity presents itself, you’re going to need it to take advantage.

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This report will show you in charts and clear discussion, how we got here, where we are, exactly where the markets are headed, and what you can do about it to protect your assets, and even grow your capital in the dangerous, even deadly, months ahead. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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Dealers Assume the Position, as 75 BPs Coming Wednesday

Lee Adler

Primary dealers have finally taken aggressive action to mitigate the losses in their bond portfolios. But it is too late. The damage is done, and the pressure will only get worse as the Fed pulls money out of the banking system and forces the Treasury to borrow even more money to pay off the Fed.

In everything we look at in the Primary Dealer positions and related data we see only stress and more stress. This is unfolding exactly as we expected. There are no secrets here. We knew all this was coming simply by watching the data and Fed policy as we have month in and month out. It only proves again and again, Rule Number One. Don’t fight the Fed.

Shockingly, the Dealers seem not to have followed the Rule, and now they’re screwed, and so is the world of investors. For those who can’t sell short, there are no good options. No pun intended.

Meanwhile, the Fed will need to raise its Fake Funds rate by 75 BP this week to keep up with the market. It’s already there as liquidity conditions tighten rapidly and dramatically.

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The US Economy, Including Jobs, Collapsed in May

Lee Adler

Federal tax collections plunged in May, withholding taxes in particular. Those worried about a slowing economy now have real data to back them up. In fact, the consensus of worried economists isn’t worried enough. That consensus is for a gain of 328,000 jobs, versus 428,000 in April. But regardless of what the BLS’s, seasonally adjusted, randomized, and otherwise statistically tortured non farm payrolls report shows, the reality is much worse.

That reality is tax collections—actual hard data, in real time, and not statistically massaged. And they were down. Big time.

This means that, if reported accurately, subsequent economic data reports will be weak. They should show economic contraction. So the economy is contracting but inflation isn’t yet. Bad combination. But it’s not enough to give the Fed an excuse to reverse policy.

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The Fed typically isn’t quick enough on the trigger to respond to economic trend changes, and it has not yet shown any propensity to rescue the financial markets in this cycle.

I’ve warned about this before. Eventually weakening financial markets would trigger economic weakening. These two facets of the monetary coin are tied at the hip. Central bank tightening triggers visible effects first in the financial markets. But nearly concurrent effects, or at most slightly lagging, occur in economic activity. They’re just not as visible and as obvious at first. Mostly because economic data lags. But also because the initial economic changes are more subtle than the more visible changes in stock and bond prices and yields.

Furthermore, government agency statistical manipulation of the data adds a random element that often creates the misimpression that the economy is doing better or worse than it is. We don’t have that problem with the tax data. It is what it is.

Now we have the first real, hard data that shows that the economy is in fact weakening, along with the financial markets. But we have yet to see any evidence that inflation is coming down.

The Fed is now in that Catch 22 phase that we knew had to come. And because of the fraudulent way that the Federal Government economic reporting agencies report inflation, the popular inflation gauges will lag as inflation moderates.

The Fed will follow the reported data, so it will be slow to respond to disinflation, when it comes, just as it was slow to respond to inflation, even after it was obvious. The Fed just refused to believe. It will likely be equally disbelieving in accepting the first signs of disinflation.

So the adverse monetary conditions are likely to persist until after financial markets have passed the point of no return. Don’t pin your hopes on economic weakness to rescue the markets. Stay focused on monetary policy, and on liquidity. This report show exactly what the real data is telling us. It shows the impact of that, the implications for the trends of stock and bond prices, and it gives you clear analysis about what to do about it to protect, and even grow your capital under these conditions.

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Quantitative Tightening is Here, and the Effect Will Be Devastating

Lee Adler

At its May meeting, the Fed announced the beginning of its program to shrink its balance sheet. That program is colloquially known as QT or Quantitative Tightening. It will begin with reductions of $30 billion per month in its Treasury holdings, and $17.5 billion per month in its MBS holdings. That will last through August. Then in September it plans to go to $60 billion per month in reductions of Treasuries, and $35 billion in reductions of MBS.

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For comparison, under Janet Yellen’s attempt to shrink the Fed’s balance sheet in 2017-2019, the peak monthly reduction was $30 billion per month in Treasuries, and $20 billion in MBS.
That resulted in plenty of havoc in the markets, and Powell was forced to abandon the process in 2019.

This new attempt is a big deal, because through this program, the Fed will actually pull money out of the banking system at a time when the system is already under duress. Inflation is raging, and bond prices have been plummeting, and yields surging, for 22 months. Banks have hidden losses on their books from that. Those losses will start to be recognized as the Fed puts additional pressure on the system.

Stocks have also been cratering. Financial markets are likely to become even weaker than we have already seen as the Fed embarks on this additional level of tightening. As stock and leveraged bond portfolios decline in value, there will be margin calls. And that will exacerbate the situation.

Not only will the Fed now not be the biggest buyer of Treasuries in the market, it will force the US Treasury to issue even more supply. By demanding that the Treasury repay a portion of the money that the Fed lent it via its purchases of Treasury securities, the Fed will force the Treasury to sell more debt to the public to raise the cash to repay the Fed. That cash will then be extinguished. It will leave the banking system and be gone. Poof. Just like that.

At the same time the Treasury will continue to need cash to fund its regular outlays.

Recently, the TBAC (Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee) has raised its forecast for tax revenue and lowered its estimate of Treasury supply. As usual with economic forecasts, they are backward looking and ignore current, actual conditions. The booming tax revenue trend that we saw beginning over a year ago is already showing signs of weakness in the economic component that is hidden by the inflation component. If revenues are not up to expectations, Treasury supply will increase beyond the modest levels that the TBAC expects. But even those levels are sufficient to pressure the markets.

The money to repay the Treasury’s debt to the Fed will have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere will be investors, banks, and dealers. They’ll need to liquidate other securities, and other assets of all kinds.

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This report will show you in charts and clear discussion, how we got here, where we are, exactly where the markets are headed, and what you can do about it to protect your assets, and even grow your capital in the dangerous, even deadly, months ahead. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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Stocks Are Ahead of the Curve

Lee Adler

The gradual flattening of the CLI is now visible. Starting in June, it should turn negative. The Fed will begin literally removing cash from the banking system and the markets in June, when it starts shrinking its balance sheet. That will have ripple effects in at least 3, if not all 4, or the components of the CLI.

In the meantime, however, stock prices have gotten ahead of the curve. They are now oversold versus the historical norms of the liquidity band over the past 13 years. Does it matter? Or is this a new paradigm?

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No question it’s a new paradigm. The Fed has ended, for the foreseeable future, its previous 12 year campaign of aggressively adding money to the financial markets in its program of inflating asset prices.

It had a trial run of this policy once before from October 2017 to December 2018, but stocks were bubbling then and the ECB and BoJ were still printing massively. That help from the rest of the world kept US markets liquified, resulting in a series of overbought readings that lasted 22 months.

The market cracked a bit in the middle of that tightening experiment, and finally fell apart when Covid 19 came around. The Fed then panicked and opened the QE floodgates. Now, we’re reaping the whirlwind from that.

As the Fed persists in tightening, in its fight against CPI inflation, my thought is that if the market can stay overbought versus liquidity for most of 22 months, it can stay oversold against it for just as long. However, with the oversold condition comes the likelihood of vicious vertical spike rallies along the way, as overconfident short sellers load up on their positions.

When they do, and the market starts to rally, they’ll spontaneously combust, driving inexplicably big advances in stock prices. Wall Street will come up with all kinds of recovery narratives to justify those rallies, but they will merely be, as Joe Granville called them, of the genre, “The Rally that Fools the Majority.” I’d make that plural, because of the probability that there will be more than one of those before this bear market is finished.

This report lays out in graphs and clear analysis, just what you should expect in the weeks and month ahead, along with how I’m approaching both the short term tactical aspects, and the longer term strategic approach for both stocks and bonds.

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Dealer Positions Show It’s Not Getting Better and It Should Get Worse

Lee Adler

The conditions for a rally in bonds were there, only the will was missing. That finally showed up last week. Meanwhile, the dealers finally meaningfully increased their short positions in Treasury futures. Voila! There were enough shorts, and enough short covering, to trigger a rally upon the reappointment of the Chairman of the Fed Moral Hazard Bubble, Jerome Powell.

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Of course, any hopes on which this rally are based, are ill placed. Those hopes will not come to fruition. The Fed is hellbent on continuing to tighten, as it must, to meet its mandate to control consumer inflation. It is a long, long way from meeting that mandate.  It’s a long way from engineering any rescues of its bank clients and market fronting strawmen, the Primary Dealers.

Meanwhile the parent companies of the dealers, the big banks, have hundreds of billions of dollars of losses buried in their bond holdings. These are in their long term portfolios, which are not marked to market.

As the Fed begins actually withdrawing cash from the banking system via its “Quantitative Tightening” or QT program, some of these holdings with losses will need to be liquidated. Depending on how the banks structure their bond inventory accounting we may or may not see those losses. But whether we see them or not, they’ll be there, and they will place further strain on the banking system, pressuring the banks to deleverage by selling assets.

That includes their Primary Dealer subsidiaries, who have been reducing, and will likely continue to reduce, their bond inventories. Those inventories have already collapsed, both from selling and from mark to market losses, which are required for dealers.

While this has been going on, there’s been another factor which should have played an ameliorating role. It hasn’t. And we now know that it won’t.

As a result, after a brief respite, market conditions will soon get worse. Here’s why, along with how it will play out, and what to do about it.

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