Good morning! Markets managed to shrug off the Deutsche Bank headlines on Friday, reversing the flight to quality flows by mid-morning. The balance of the session was fairly quiet by recent standards and investors actually added a little risk heading into...
The focus lately has been on banks, and the massive amount of liquidity they have drawn from the Fed’s discount window is seen as cause for alarm (see chart below). I think there’s another less worrisome explanation and that is that after 2008, banks learned that it’s...
The FOMC delivered a 25 basis point hike to fed funds yesterday in a move that had transitioned to base case for market watchers over the previous few sessions. The policy statement contained several items of note, not the least of which was language stating...
“We’re all quite mad here, you’ll fit right in.” – Alice in Wonderland If you wonder why the Fed would even consider another rate increase as banks hoard cash and lending standards for everything from autos to credit cards to business loans are tightening rapidly,...
Good morning, and happy FOMC day! If you haven’t read Tuck’s post of inscrutables from yesterday evening, please do so…and do not expect me to offer any clarity on the dynamics that have taken hold of the marketplace. Despite the continued fragility of the...
Once again, the weekend offered no respite from the banking drama as Swiss officials announced a plan for UBS to acquire Credit Suisse. Despite earlier assurances that the Swiss National Bank had provided sufficient liquidity for the beleaguered behemoth to...
Another chapter in the banking crises was written overnight when the Swiss National Bank announced that it will lend Credit Suisse up to $54bn in an effort to stabilize its financial underpinnings and assuage investor fear that contagion is imminent. Together...
Treasury yields took another leg lower yesterday as the uncertainty around the banking sector continues to drive investors into safe haven assets. While the number of failures remains at 2 and regulators have offered assurances that depositors will be protected,...
A few weeks ago, I remarked that it was strange that after a 300+ basis point increase in rates, nothing had “broken.” There were no hedge fund blow-ups, no huge trading losses, and no failed banks. I wondered if it was a matter of time, or if the industry and...
Yesterday’s price action was…unintuitive to say the least. Given the limited amount of meaningful data and clear risk event that today’s employment report poses, markets should have been fairly quiet with perhaps a little position squaring to keep things...