SVB’s rescue means the Fed won’t hike rates in March, says Goldman Sachs

After a frantic regulators-to-the-rescue weekend that sparked a rally for U.S. equity futures on Sunday night, the atmosphere has turned more cautious, except for still-partying tech futures. That’s as lots of banks are in the red ahead of Monday’s open.

Nervous investors may be wary of more shoes dropping following the Silicon Valley Bank fallout that is resurfacing great financial crisis memories for some more long-toothed traders. And no rest for the wicked as the?next update on consumer prices hits Tuesday.

Read:?SVB collapse means look out for more stock-market volatility, say analysts.

Here’s Jim Reid and a team of strategists at Deutsche Bank, neatly summing up a whirlwind few days: “SVB’s woes are a combination of one of the largest hiking cycles in history, one of the most inverted curves in history, one of the biggest bubbles in tech in history bursting, and the runaway growth of private capital. The one missing ingredient not involved here is a U.S. recession.”

It’s just more of the boom-bust cycle we’re stuck in, says Reid. “That being…?too much stimulus -> very high inflation and an asset bubble -> aggressive central bank hikes -> inverted curves -> tighter lending standards/accidents -> recession.”

Onto our?call of the day?from Goldman Sachs, where economists say the rescue of SVB and other depositors will tie the Fed’s hands next week.

“In light of recent stress in the banking system, we no longer expect the FOMC to deliver a rate hike at its March 22 meeting with considerable uncertainty about the path beyond March,” said a team led by chief economist Jan Hatzius in a note to clients late Sunday.

Hatzius and Co. had expected a 25-basis point hike next week. “We have left unchanged our expectation that the FOMC will deliver 25bp hikes in May, June and July and now expect a 5.25-5.5% terminal rate, though we see considerable uncertainty about the path,” they said.

They clearly aren’t alone as Fed fund futures indicate the chances of the Fed hiking interest rates by 50 basis points next week have fallen from 70% to zero in recent days.

But some say the Wall Street banking behemoth is getting ahead of itself:

Capital Economics, meanwhile, is siding with Goldman here: “Even if the authorities are successful at putting a firewall around the problems at SVB and Signature Bank, the lags with which policy operates are a reason to adopt a more gradual approach to policy tightening from here,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist.

Note, Goldman also said that while the Fed has stemmed the panic over SVB and Signature Bank, it remains to be seen whether the FDIC would similarly address other such lenders if they were smaller than the two banks in question.

Last word and perhaps a testiment to nervousness around banks, goes to Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management who told clients this: “We remain least preferred on financials in our US strategy and recommend investors who have above-benchmark weights in global financials (15% of the MSCI ACWI) to revisit their exposure.”

The markets

After soaring late Sunday in the wake of measures to curb SVB panic, Nasdaq-100 futures?NQ00,?0.26%?are higher, S&P 500 futures?ES00,?-0.37%?are flat, but Dow futures?YM00,?-0.67%?are?in the red.?The two-year Treasury yield?TMUBMUSD02Y,?4.163%?is down 31 basis points to 4.284%, the dollar?DXY,?-0.38%?is off 0.4% and gold?GC00,?1.62%?is up $28.30 to $1,895.80 an ounce.?For more market updates plus actionable trade ideas for stocks, options and crypto, subscribe to?MarketDiem by Investor’s Business Daily.

The buzz

The FDIC said it has transferred all deposits of Silicon Valley Bank to a?newly-created, “bridge bank”?— Silicon Valley Bank N.A. — naming a Tim Mayopoulos, a former president and CEO of the Federal National Mortgage Association, as CEO.

That’s after a hectic weekend, in which U.S. regulators promised Silicon Valley Bank?SIVB,?-60.41%?depositors?will have access to their money, with no fallout for U.S. taxpayers, though share and bondholders appear to be out of luck. Depositors of crypto-friendly New York-based Signature Bank?SBNY,?-22.87%,?closed Sunday by its state regulator, have received similar guarantees. The Fed also announced?a new emergency loan program for banks in trouble?to ease contagion risk.

But there’s some chaos for banks on both sides of the Atlantic. Tainted by similarities to SVB, First Republic Bank?FRC,?-14.84%?is down 60%, despite?getting a Fed and JPMorgan funding boost?and reassurances by its founder and CEO on Sunday. Stock of PacWest Bancorp?PACW,?-37.91%?is down 37% and that of Western Alliance?WAL,?-20.88%?is off 51%. PNC Financial?PNC,?-0.51%?is down just 2% after?an upgrade from Citigroup.

Read:?Stablecoin issuer Circle to transfer $3.3 billion in cash held at Silicon Valley Bank to BNY Mellon

SVB’s U.K. arm has been?bought for ￡1?by HSBC?HSBC,?-3.84%?HSBA,?-4.35%?in a deal brokered by the country’s Treasury and Bank of England. U.S.-listed HSBC shares are down 2%, while Credit Suisse shares?CS,?-3.97%?CSGN,?-12.42%?are off 9%,?hitting a new record low.

BILL Holdings?BILL,?-14.90%?stock is up 4%, with the software company getting a boost from the SVB measures, after saying it has some exposure to the troubled bank.

Shares of pharma group Provention Bio?PRVB,?-7.59%?are up 260% in premarket trading after French drugmaker Sanofi?SAN,?-1.44%?said it would buy the fellow pharma group in a deal worth $2.9 billion.

Pharma giant Pfizer?PFE,?-0.18%?said it pay $429 a share in cash for Seagen?SGEN,?-0.59%,?a deal worth $43 billion?that is driving shares of the cancer biotech company up 18%.

Applied Materials?AMAT,?-2.26%?hiked its dividend by 23% and?increased its buyback program by $10 billion.?Shares are up 1%.

Apart from CPI on Tuesday, the week will also bring other important data including retail sales, producer prices, housing updates and the Empire State manufacturing survey.

Best of the web

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The chart

The tickers

These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m.:

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