Category: 1 – Liquidity Trader- Money Trends

Correction: In paragraph 4 I have corrected the line about the dealers’ net position to “net long.” In the original version I inadvertently wrote “net short.” That was an error. Sorry for the confusion! 

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The Fed provides us with a tremendous amount of information and data. Some of it is highly useful. Most is not, from my perspective of trying to figure out how it will influence, or even to some extent control, market direction.

One area of useful information is the data that the New York Fed publishes every week with a 9 day lag on Primary Dealer positions and financing. The dealers run the markets, after all, so it’s good to have some insight into their positioning and leverage. It can, at times, give us a heads up that trouble may be brewing. We saw that over the past year as the dealers began to reduce their massive, and massively leveraged, fixed income portfolios.

I have pointed out that that was a huge problem, because a decline in bond prices could put them under water again, just as during the pandemic panic of March 2020. The problem was so big then that the even more massive Fed bailout looked as though it wasn’t working for about 8 days. Then it did work, and the market turned. But it was a close call.

In recent months we saw the decline in the dealers bond positions, but they were still net long and still leveraged. I warned that as bond prices fell and yields rose, their profits would be pressured, and if it continued, their capital could be wiped out again.

The dealers are really just hollow shells acting as strawmen for the Fed, buying Treasuries from the US government, and MBS from Fannie and Freddie and the FHA on the Fed’s behalf. Meanwhile they play side games accumulating, marking up, and marketing all manner of other assets, particularly stocks.

But now the Fed is getting out of the buying business. No more backstopping the dealers with constant massive funding. Meanwhile, the dealers are still REQUIRED, by virtue of their status as Primary Dealers, to still buy Treasuries.

How exactly will they be able to do that without steadily being cashed out by the Fed to the tune of a hundred and some billion per month, month in and month out?

The Fed will probably tell us tomorrow that it’s going to zero purchases after March.  The dealers must keep buying. There are only two ways they can fulfill that responsibility. They’ll either have to sell stuff first. Stuff, as in other Treasuries, other fixed income instruments, OR, drum roll please…… Stocks! Or they will need to borrow more money, that is, increase their leverage even more.

We’ve seen all of those processes in action in the past two weeks. We’ve also seen them report lower than expected profits. Why? Because they’re getting their asses kicked on those massively leveraged net long positions in fixed income.

And the Fed thinks that it can just withdraw from supporting the market with its massive money printing operations to buy virtually all of the debt the US government issues? Well as I told you before, oh, you can’t do that!

This little demonstration we’ve gotten over the past two weeks is just a taste of what’s to come until the market again forces the Fed to reverse course. We don’t know where or when that will be, so for now we just rely on Rules Number One and Number Two.

1. Don’t fight the Fed. and,
2. The trend is your friend aka, don’t fight the tape

Bounces in both the bond and stock notwithstanding, the Fed’s policy is clear, and the trend is clear.

In the last version of this Primary Dealer update in December I wrote, “At the very least, we need to be prepared for a sharp selloff in stocks, and what should turn into a resumption of the bear market in Treasuries.” 

Nailed it.

Find out what to expect now and what we’re doing about it in this report.

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It’s that time of the month and that time of the quarter when all should be well for the markets. Except it’s not.

“That time of the month” is the Fed’s regular once a month MBS settlement week at mid month. This month it runs January 13-20, with total settlements of $90 billion. That’s still a big number, but it isn’t doing much good. And it will shrivel over the next several months as the Fed cuts new MBS purchases and replacement purchase shrivel due to rising mortgage rates. Therefore, right now is as good as it gets for the bond market, and secondarily for stocks.

It’s also the week for quarterly estimated Federal income taxes to come in from individual filers and corporations. That shrinks the monthly deficit in January. In normal times it would result in a surplus for the month. Typically the Treasury would then pay off some maturing T-bills, and the holders of those bills would be stuck with excess cash. Some of them roll that out to longer dated paper and a few even buy stocks. So it’s typically a short term bullish seasonal influence around the third week of January.

This year, not so much. The Treasury still is trying to refill its cash account and has $160 billion to go to reach its stated goal of holding $650 billion in cash. So the “January effect,” which is really just bullish seasonality resulting from the regular January T-bill paydowns, looks like a non starter this year. The performance of the stock and bond markets so far in January are a testament to that.

If the market doesn’t perk up over the next few days, then here’s what we have to look forward to.

February will be worse. xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx (subscriber version). February always runs the largest cash deficit of the year as tax receipts dwindle and cash outlays mushroom due to the February tax refund bulge. The Treasury often draws from its cash account to pay for that, rather than issue new debt. But this year, the Treasury is trying to raise more cash. There’s going to be a ton of new Treasury supply in February and that will pressure not only the xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx, but should have a secondary impact on xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx. This report describes those impacts, and their timing.

My mantra is the same. I’m xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx (subscriber version) bonds. I’m looking for stocks to short over the next few weeks for what should be a bearish month in February. I’ll post those in Technical Trader updates as they come up.

With the Fed cutting QE to zero, or so it says, the rest of the year could be xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx(subscriber version). The Fed is worried about inflation. Rightfully so. A little too late, but what else is new.  Might it now be willing to pull a “Volcker,” allowing rates to soar, and allowing the chips to fall where they may? If they dare try it, the market’s retribution will be xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx.

I’ll keep you updated on the developments and outlook. Get the full story in the subscriber version.

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The debt limit has been raised. The Treasury has flooded the market with supply, and will continue to do so for another month or two. But there’s been no disaster in the market. The Fed’s RRP slush fund, designed to absorb the flood of supply, has even grown, thanks to year end window dressing.

Even after that window is undressed this week, there will still be around $1.6 trillion in that fund to start. That is overnight liquid money that holders will use to buy new Treasury issuance. The RRPs will gradually be drawn down. But there’s enough there to absorb the ongoing supply bulge that the government needs to issue to rebuild its cash and repay the internal accounts it raided while the debt limit was in place.

We don’t know exactly how much more the government needs to get its internal accounts back to normal, but it could achieve that purpose very quickly given the availability of the RRP fund. It holds more than enough cash to fund that issuance.

That RRP fund, with it’s baseline starting point of approximately $1.6 trillion also gives the Fed cover to wind down QE to zero in March. The Fed will cut QE, and everything will look hunky dory. Wall Street will conclude that “tapering” QE was no big deal. Market complacency will be thick. Get out your carving knives.

Once the Fed has cut QE to zero, and RRP holders decide that they will spend no more to support the market, is that when the crisis begins?  No, not immediately.

First, there will be the annual tax windfall that occurs in March and April, when corporate and individual income taxes for the preceding year come in. The Treasury always uses that cash to temporarily pay down outstanding debt. The holders of that debt get money back. They use that cash to buy longer term paper, and in some cases to buy stocks. So we get a seasonal rally every year in March and April.

But in late May, the Treasury starts net borrowing again. Then we watch. We watch to see how that RRP fund is doing. Once it turns flat, and there’s no more QE, and the seasonal tax windfall cash has been spent, that’s when the trouble starts in the market.

Sell in May and go away? This report tells you why that might be a good idea. The report shows what to expect for both stocks and bonds, along with the why’s and wherefores, likely timing, to give you a clear grasp on on a strategy and tactics that might make sense for you.  Get the full story in the subscriber version.

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FREE REPORT – Proof of How QE Works – Fed to Primary Dealers, to Markets, To Money

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The conditions we were looking for last month have happened.

11/21/21 Whether there’s a default or not, the debt ceiling will be lifted, probably sooner rather than later. When it is, a tsunami of Treasuries will flood the market, mostly in T-bills. But there could also be a huge slug of makeup supply at the long end. That would send bond prices into the dumpster, and T-bill rates and bond yields flying.

How much chaos would the Fed bear before issuing another huge emergency round of QE? That’s the question, ultimately. But in the interim, the event that everyone would see as a positive, raising the debt limit, could be the quintessential “sell the news” trigger leading to a broad based crash in all asset classes.

This is what we need to be on the lookout for as this saga progresses. Therefore, I still don’t want to xxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxx (subscriber version). From the liquidity perspective, I hate the intermediate term outlook for xxxx.

But I’m still comfortable following the trend on stocks, remaining long until the market tells us otherwise, especially if that happens around the lifting of the debt limit.

So that’s where we are. Will it? This report has the answer.

The debt ceiling was lifted yesterday, December 16, and stocks have been getting pounded for the last two days. This could be the moment we’ve all been waiting for, in terms of market action in stocks. I’ll address that in more detail in the Technical Trader reports.

Right now in the third week of the month we’re in peak QE week, as the Fed settles its MBS purchases this week. It’s the most bullish QE vs. supply imbalance we’re ever going to have. This is the end my friends. I can’t believe, but we’re on the Eve of Destruction.

That’s because the Treasury will now issue a massive amount of new supply in a very short period of time. It has a goal that calls for raising $600 billion to restore its cash account to the desired level. Plus it must raise additional funds – who knows how much – to repay other internal government accounts it raided to stay below the debt ceiling.

It means that there will be a lot of supply, A LOT, over the next couple of months.

What’s worse, the Fed is cutting its QE purchases at the same time. Talk about a Perfect Storm. Fed QE has funded more than 100% of the Treasury market in recent months. The norm since the Fed began QE in 2009 has been 85-90%. When it cuts QE to zero in March, it will still have a small amount of MBS replacement purchases, but that won’t even be a rounding error in terms of the amount of debt the market will need to fund.

The canny Fed and Treasury have, however, created a $1.6 trillion slush fund to help absorb those Treasuries. It’s the Fed’s RRP program, where money market funds, banks, and dealers can deposit the cash they got back from the T-bill paydowns that they got from the US Treasury since February. This report has the charts to show exactly how that worked. The correlation is perfect.

The Treasury paid off that paper systematically so that it would stay under the debt ceiling. That money is now just sitting there in overnight, same as cash, RRPs, waiting to re-absorb all the new Treasury supply that’s on the way.

Or is it? Nobody is forcing the money managers holding those RRP funds to rebuy Treasuries. They may like holding riskless Fed RRPs even more than they like holding Treasuries. So maybe not all of that $1.6 trillion will be available to absorb new supply. That’s where the problems start. When the RRP holders decide they’ve had enough. The slush fund won’t last forever. We’re tracking it closely and should know exactly when it is signaling a big problem.

Of course the Fed could force the issue, by ending the RRP program, but there’s still the point where that fund hits zero, and simply isn’t there to absorb new supply. At that point the market would face an intractable problem. Lots of supply and no ready cash to absorb it. We know exactly what would probably happen then, because we know the positioning of the Primary Dealers at all times.

Rates and yields would xxxxxxx xxx xxxx (subscriber version). Bonds would xx xxxxxxx (subscriber version). Dealers and banks would xxxxxxx xxx xxxx. Massive Fed intervention xxxxxxx xxx xxxxx  xxxxxx.

We should soon be able to estimate the timing of that.

For now, I really don’t foresee a way out of this. Only the timing is in question. I’m staying away from the xxxxxxx xxx xxxx (subscriber version), and looking for xxxxxxx xx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxx.

Get the rest of the story and ideas on how to handle what’s to come  spelled out and illustrated in the subscriber version.

Subscribers, click here to download the report.

Subscription Plans

KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW, before the Street does, read Lee Adler’s Liquidity Trader risk free for 90 days!

Act on real-time reality!

FREE REPORT – Proof of How QE Works – Fed to Primary Dealers, to Markets, To Money