Your corresponding blogger has spent most of his time this week recovering from Covid, which has ruined some otherwise carefully laid plans for this week’s missive. I thought that I’d start slowly then, by dissecting the topic on everyone’s minds this week; the inverted U.S. yield curve. Albert Edwards is absolutely right when he says that: "Once inversion occurs a whole new industry emerges, devoted to dismissing the relevance of the signal.” Albert quotes Juliette Declercq of JDI Research for the argument that this time is indeed different for the 2s10s, mainly because the real yield curve—here the 5s30s TIPS vs the nominal 5s30s—is still upward sloping, even steepening. Albert looks to the Macro Compass—penned by Macro Alf—for the contrasting point that if you use forward 2y yields, the real yield curve is in fact very flat. Albert concludes, perhaps not surprisingly for the ice-age perma-bear that the "Fed funds won’t need to rise much before the Fed crashes the economy and the markets. It is as they say “déjà vu all over again”.
Read MoreEquities seem to be in the throes of the death of a thousand cuts at the moment. The rebound towards the end of January, from the initial swoon, was reversed last week, and at this point a new low is all but certain. There are a number of things troubling equities. Geopolitics are a fickle catalyst for anything, but it has certainly added to the misery in the past few weeks. A Russian incursion in Ukraine remains a distinct risk, an event which would force markets to discount the risk of a more sustained military conflict on the European continent, not to mention a further leap in energy prices. The latter would intensify inflation fears, which are already weighing on markets in the context of the surge in bond yields, and the significant repricing in expectations for monetary policy, for both rates and QE. Investors could do with relief from these headwinds, but I doubt they’ll get it, at least not in Q1.
Read MoreFinancial markets have a tendency to gravitate towards the same narratives over and over, a bit like a good script writer who knows, obviously, that the hero always has to save the cat in the first scene. Core and headline Inflation have soared, and the Fed, as the perennial first mover among the major central banks—curiously flanked by its trusty squire the BOE—is now determined to kill it with rate hikes and QT, having recently abandoned all hope it being ‘transitory’. Cue new scene, and we are witnessing a torrent of forecasters tripping over each other to proclaim that they now think the federales will lift the Fed funds rate by five, six, or even seven, times this year, not to mention shrink its balance sheet by $1T. Markets have been blissfully ignoring the threat of monetary policy tightening, until now. As I type global equities are down 5-to-10% month-to-date in January, and the yield curve is flatter. What comes next?
Read MoreEveryone has a plan until they get kicked in the nuts by a new virus variant, apparently. The speed with which markets deteriorated on Friday on the news that the B.1.1.529 variant—first detected in South Africa and Botswana, but now confirmed in both Europe and Asia—was telling. So is the swiftness with which many countries already are digging deep in the pre-vaccination toolbox of travel restrictions and, inevitably, domestic restrictions of some form. Indeed, even before the new variant, recently renamed ominously to Omicron, arrived on the scene, Europe was inching closer to new restrictions. Austria and Netherlands were in full or semi-lockdown before Friday, and given the direction of numbers in the major economies, it was only a matter of time before more widespread restrictions were introduced. So, here we are; 18 months of rolling lockdowns and travel restrictions, trillion of dollars in public support, and around 70% of the adult population double-jabbed—and shall we say another 10% with immunity from previous infection?—and we’re back to square one. Someone, somewhere, will soon have to start asking questions, but maybe not yet.
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