For several months, I’ve been positing the idea that when the Treasury gets its cash level down to the legally required limit, the stock and bond markets would be in big trouble. The risk of a crash would be as great as it ever is. I posted an expected time window (in subscriber version)  where it would be a good time to get out of both the stock and bond markets.

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That conclusion came from the idea that:

• Primary Dealers were overleveraged in their fixed income portfolios.

• That the market has been artificially buoyed by the Treasury paying down T-bills. It has now injected $620 billion into the accounts of dealers and investors since February 23.

• That when the Treasury reaches the required cash level of XXX billion (reported in subscriber report), the paydowns will stop.

• That record levels of deficit spending would then no longer be partly funded out of the Treasury’s cash on hand. That would require a dramatic increase in debt issuance.

At first I estimated that that would happen in xxxx (see subscriber version), but lately I’ve pushed that estimate back to xxxx (subscriber version). At that point, the increase in Treasury debt supply would supposedly begin to push bond prices down both in Treasuries, MBS, and corporates.

Highly leveraged dealers would then face forced selling as they were required to meet collateral calls on the inventories they had financed with repurchase agreements (repos). Repos are just a fancy kind of short term borrowing to finance securities purchases, similar to when we use margin debt to buy stocks.

All of that still looks likely to happen. But instead of a crash, I can now see the possible outline of more of a “muddle-through” scenario. I still expect trouble to arrive around xxxxx (in subscriber version), with maybe a few weeks of Wile E. Coyote market action.

But maybe that trouble won’t be quite as bad as I first thought.

There are two reasons for that. Discussion in subscriber version.

The end of Treasury paydowns will, no doubt, cause yields to rise over a short period of time. And that could have been catastrophic.

But lo and behold, we see Primary Dealer data that suggests it won’t be as bad as I had feared. I show that data in a couple of tables and charts in this report.

We won’t know for sure until we get there. I’m still looking at xxxx (in subscriber report) as a likely top in the markets. We’ll just have to see how conditions evolve over the next (time period in report), and take action accordingly. For now, while the Treasury continues to pay down outstanding T-bills, we can follow this strategy (discussed in report).

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

Every time there’s a critical problem in the banking system due to banker malfeasance, the Fed steps in to paper it over and reward the criminals.

That’s why we focus on the Fed more than anything else. Regular review of the banking indicators was useful once upon a time. The Fed has rendered them irrelevant. But I promised to keep an eye on them, and it has been 5 months since we last looked. That’s enough time that, if anything material has changed, we need to know about it. So herein is a review, our first since last December.

In this report, I highlight the charts. Because there are so many, I’ve attempted to minimize the verbiage. I talk too much. The charts really speak for themselves.

The bottom line is that the system remains extremely vulnerable to a decline in Treasury prices that is  coming in xxx (subscribers only). Likewise, the return of optimism in commercial real estate is problematic. The banks are taking no precautions. There’s no sign of recognition of the looming losses.

It means that the entire banking system could be destabilized in xxxxx (subscribers only). The Fed will have to act, massively. History shows that the Fed won’t act in time to prevent a breach of the system. History also shows that the Fed has the power to ultimately make its actions give the appearance of stabilization, leading to the return of animal spirits.

But I don’t know if it will work yet again, and we can at least expect a significant break first. So here’s what I would do (subscribers only).

Now here’s a review of the banking indicator charts.

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

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) is a gang of Primary Dealers and other big investment firms that tells the US Treasury once each quarter how much paper it will need to issue, and when. It provides an estimate of issuance by date and type for the current quarter and the next one. It does so every February, May, August, and November, near the beginning of the month.

The TBAC just issued its reports for the current quarter last week. The report confirms what we expect, a massive supply increase coming. We know exactly when it’s coming, and have a pretty good idea of when it should start to cause problems for the stock and bond markets. With that knowledge, we can now prepare for action to take advantage.

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