Category: Fed, Central Bank and Banking Macro Liquidity

The signal is coming from the ratio of xxxx xxxx to total bank deposits, as reported weekly in the Fed’s composite banking system data. That ratio is at an all-time record, tying the peak reached when the stock market topped out in December 2021. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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It’s only flashing red, not solid red. It means that we must stop, look, and listen for the next few weeks to see if this signal goes full red stop, or back to flashing yellow. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Other indicators similarly suggest caution. They’re not outright bearish for the big picture, but they’re in position to develop that way in the weeks ahead. By the same toke, they are also in position to break out and go higher. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Taken together, it means that the market is at a significant inflection point. The information coming from the banking data in the weeks ahead should give us a significant signal on the market’s intermediate term direction. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

This report shows current charts so that you can see for yourself. I’ll track this data for you in the weeks ahead as we stay on the lookout for something big. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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Dealer fixed income positions have shrunken recently. Is that because they are selling and deleveraging or is it because they must mark to market while their inventories lose value.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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It looks like the latter. Because they have been adding T-bills and taking on a massive amount of new leverage via the private repo route. It’s clear that that leverage is being put to use, and the evidence shows that it’s not going into the bond market. It’s going to stocks.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

But what does it tell us about what the markets will do now? Here’s your answer.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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The private money and credit creation process and the resulting bull market in stocks is at loggerheads with the Fed’s policy of shrinking the balance sheet. Traders and investors are now in clear violation of The First Commandment, Rule Number One, “Don’t fight the Fed.”  The question now becomes who blinks first. The lawbreakers, or the law? Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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A couple of high frequency, real-time measures show us important sources of the money funding this stock market rally. These measures should give us hints of when this process is coming to an end, which will correlate with, if not cause, a stock market top. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

So, if you fight the law, will you win? Here’s the answer. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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That’s right. It’s not the Fed any more. This ain’t the QE era. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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The stock market has mounted a seemingly sustained rally despite the fact that the Fed continues to steadily withdraw money (aka liquidity) from the financial system.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

This is not the good old QE days when the Fed steadily pumped money into the system, and we knew that the market would always rise, except when the Fed paused its pumping. We saw a market hiccup under Janet Yellen’s balance sheet shrinkage program in 2018, but then Panic Jerry set new standards of QE pumping in 2019 and 2020.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

I thought that once the new QT started that the market would be mostly bearish, with occasional rallies. Uh huh. Not. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

I am reminded that in the pre QE days of blessed memory that we often had bull markets with the Fed managing balance sheet growth at a nominal pace of 2-5% per year, year in and year out. But even that is different from today when, yes Virginia, there really is a QT, and the Fed really is shrinking its balance sheet. Except when it isn’t. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Alas, the world is not so simple any more. The system can, when investors and bankers are of a single mind, create ample liquidity on its own simply by self-expanding credit. Bankers can decide to offer more credit. Investors can decide to use it. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Or if asset prices, in this case stock prices, start rising far enough for long enough, players at the stock tables can simply decide to do it on their own. That includes not just the big investors and traders at the tables, but also the dealers running the games. Everybody winks and gets in on the winning action. Prices rise. Rising collateral value means more margin is available. Traders borrow against it. And away we go. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Today the market has an added bonus: massive T-bill issuance by the US Treasury. Here’s where things get perverse. I had expected, wrongly, that the enormous supply would put downward pressure on all asset prices as the market was forced to absorb the new T-bill supply that would come when the debt ceiling was lifted. But my analysis was faulty. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Two things happened that I did not expect. Fortunately, the technical analysis (TA) that I do in tandem with the liquidity side told me a few months ago that it was time to get long stocks. So I followed the TA, while trying to guess at what the liquidity source would be. This was just the opposite of the way things worked under QE, when we knew exactly what the source was, how much was coming and when. The TA naturally followed.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

The first thing that happened is that the big hedge funds hedged away the likelihood that Treasury note and bond prices would fall when the wave of new supply was released onto the market. So far that hedge has worked, by preventing bond prices from falling. I do not think that hedge will work indefinitely, but for now it is, and that’s all they needed to continue speculating on the long side in stocks.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

The second thing that happened, which I neglected to consider in my initial analysis of what would happen when the debt ceiling was lifted, is that T-bills are perfect collateral. They can instantly be used as collateral for repos — repurchase agreements (RPs) – which are very short term loans from banks or the Fed for nearly 100% of the face value of the T-bills. And use it, they have.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

At the same time, money market funds had over $2.3 trillion sitting in the Fed’s Reverse Repo (RRP) slush fund back in April. The Fed’s RRP program takes in excess cash from dealers, banks, and particularly money market funds. I had long noted that it would be used at some point to fund absorption of Treasury issuance and possible to support a rally in stocks. I had warned in these pages for the past year and a half that when the RRP started to decline, look out for stocks to rally.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Voila, here we are. As of Monday, July 3, cash in the RRP slush fund had dropped from $2.275 trillion on May 22 to $1.909 trillion. That’s $356 billion in cash that came out of the RRPs to fund the absorption of the T-bill issuance. Those T-bills became collateral for an increase of private bank to dealer and bank to hedge fund RPs, instantly creating a massive amount of new credit for players to play with. And play they did.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

So here we are in a brave new world of automatic, self-created market finance, which will be indefinitely funded by the issuance of new Treasury securities. The tidal wave of $600 billion of new issuance in 2 months post debt ceiling suspension will slow after July. But we can still expect an average of $100 billion per month in issuance. And instead of new supply always pressuring the market, we must face the fact that the dealers and gamblers at the tables can, at will, increase the use of virtually automatic credit whenever they want to. The T-bills will provide the fodder.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Is this system infinite and unbreakable? Of course not. The longer this goes on and the bigger it gets, the more fragile it becomes…Especially because the Fed, the ECB and BoJ are still working to control inflation. The Fed will continue to shrink its balance sheet, withdrawing cash from the banking system. Its two cohorts are a little less predictable, particularly the BoJ, but as long as the inflation numbers continue to run hot around the world, then the central banks will continue to attempt to drain money from the system by shrinking their balance sheets.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

So there’s that as an offset to the will of the players to continue borrowing and leveraging to drive asset prices higher. This rally will end, and it is likely to end hard, in tears. But for now, we can’t see from liquidity alone, when that will be. There are some things that suggest that the time is growing near for the first big correction. I will continue to monitor the liquidity measures for any hints of reversal, but as always, the technical analysis will determine when we should change tactics, even if, in this new world, it’s not always clear why, at first.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

In this report I present the most current banking, money market fund, and Fed balance sheet charts to illustrate what’s going on, and give us a leg up on specifically what to expect and look out for in the stock and bond markets. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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The Fed’s Reverse Repo (RRP) operations act primarily as a money market fund for money market funds (MMFs.) The MMFs were forced out of their T-bills in 2021-22 because the US Treasury was paying them down. The Treasury redeemed the T-bills and the MMFs got cash back. Not what they wanted. They need to earn interest on those funds.  Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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The MMFs were therefore in trouble. The Fed came to the rescue by opening its RRP operations to the MMFs. Previously, only Primary Dealers could participate. In effect, the Fed began subsidizing MMFs. As the Fed raised the rate it paid on RRPs, that increased the subsidy to MMFs, and their holders, mostly big investors. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

In this program, the MMF’s could place their excess cash with the Fed overnight and get a nice big fat, risk free, interest payment in return. The Fed imagines that money into existence. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

But the interest payments cut into the Fed’s surplus (aka profit). If the Fed loses money, that reduces the amount of surplus and ultimately, the taxpayer ends up paying for that. Nice. Taxpayers fund welfare payments to MMFs which are typically held by the wealthiest of the wealthy anyway. Therefore the Fed’s interest payments on RRPs are welfare for the rich. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

But I digress.

Once the RRPs were opened up to MMFs, RRPs outstanding ballooned. They got up to $2.6 trillion when the Fed rescued those couple of failed banks in March. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Meanwhile, I have constantly warned that when the debt ceiling was lifted and the US Treasury started issuing T-bills again, MMFs would pull cash from RRPs to buy T-bills. It’s now happening. RRP balances have fallen by $275 billion since May 24, as the Treasury has been issuing wads of T-bills, including a net of $175 billion this week. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

The RRPs aren’t funding all of that, but they’re absorbing most of it. With T-bills being perfect collateral, they can be, and are, used for repurchase agreements from banks (RPs) whereby the bank will provide credit up to nearly the amount of the T-bill. RPs are like margin loans in that respect, except that the haircut is almost nothing. So the reintroduction of T-bills into the market provides collateral for more credit. More credit means more money to buy hot paper. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

And they’re buying it. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Some of you have pointed out correctly that MMFs, particularly government MMFs, can only buy T-bills with their cash. But MMFs are only intermediaries. Who holds MMFs? That’s right, major investment institutions, hedge funds, and you and me, aka Ma and Pa investor.
We investors, both big and small, participate in the Fed’s RRP program through these intermediaries. And when we as a group start feeling bullish on balance, for no reason in particular, then we pull money out of MMFs and buy stocks, bonds, real estate etc. etc. etc. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

That’s what is happening now. The rationale for it DOES NOT MATTER. The fact that interest rates are higher now than last October when stocks bottomed, DOES NOT MATTER. The fact that the Fed is still steadily tightening monetary policy via QT DOES NOT MATTER. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

Yet.

QT will matter.

I’ll tell you when, and why, and what it will mean for your dining, listening, and investing pleasure. Non-subscribers, click here for access.

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