SignalPlus Morning Briefing 29 Aug 2022
Good morning and welcome to SignalPlus's daily commentary.
Obviously quite a bit more to unpack this morning than usual. Without repeating a lot that has been said already, our TLDR is that Chairman Powell deliberately delivered a short 8-min speech that surgically removed any explicit pivot biases that the equity market had built-in since July.
Statements such as:
are plainly written, direct, and encompassing to the point of leaving no doubt for any dovish interpretation. Such brevity and clarity are rare occurrences for their one-sidedness, and the tone of the delivery was probably what had surprised the market the most, including ourselves. I think Exhibit below does a fantastic visualization of the hawkish undertone that was delivered.
Market reaction was violent in equities with stocks seeing the biggest sell off since mid-June, with all 11 S&P sectors down substantially. Crypto followed the overall price action in macro with most of major coins down over 10%; but IV somehow is quite sticky reflecting the market had priced in such high volatility already ahead of the events. However, as is usually the case, fixed income investors were much more prepared going in, with the curve rallying down just a couple of bp on the session. Rate hike expectations adjusted up to about 64bp for September (right in the middle of 50 vs 75bp), and 2023 shifting only about 10bp higher on a terminal basis.
On a weekly basis, US fixed income was remarkably contained and resilient vs the move in stocks as well as the energy driven collapse in European bond prices.
Swaption vol markets confirmed this move with a ~0.5 bp/day sell off in implied vol levels over the latter half of the week.
Finally, commodities and G10 FX underperformed the USD despite higher energy prices, which, when combined with the bull flattening move in USTs, are reflective of slowdown and recession fears ahead.
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Looking ahead this week, there's going to be a lot of wood to chop while the market is still reeling from the carnage from last week. Data wise, we'll have Dallas Fed Manufacturing on Monday, House Price Index, Conference Board Consumer Confidence, and JOLTS Jobs data on Tuesday, Chicago PMI on Wednesday, ISM Manufacturing on Thursday, and the all-important NFP on Friday. On Fed speakers, we have Brainard speaking on Monday, Barkin and Williams on Tuesday, Mester on Wednesday, Bostic on Friday, and it'll be interesting to see if the Fed speakers will try to walk back or simply further reiterate Powell's comments throughout the week.
On the non-data side, we'll have month-end rebalancing on Tuesday, which might see heavy US equity selling pressures from pensions vs fixed income buyer as modelled by Citi.
Unfortunately, to complicate matters further, the caps on the Fed's QT balance sheet reduction are set to double in September to a combined $95bln/month, though the actual numbers will probably be 10-15bln lower due to the slower pace of MBS paydowns. It's worth noting that the previous month's scheduled reduction did not come anywhere close to the targets, due in large to the timing of the final MBS reinvestment flows that will finally cease by the end of September.
Regardless, this will be the fastest pace that the Fed's balance sheet would be set to decline in history with an uncertain market impact, and the Street expects that the cash requirements will have to be fulfilled with increased T-Bill issuance, given that coupon refunding sizes have already been finalized for the upcoming quarter.
Finally, perhaps more so than any time recently - good luck and good trading to everyone this week!
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