The seasonal T-bill paydown tsunami has arrived. Since March 24, $220.8 billion in T-bill paydowns has flooded the market with cash, temporarily overwhelming every bearish structural force. We have been on the alert for this. It happens every year. The…
The seasonal T-bill paydown tsunami has arrived. Since March 24, $220.8 billion in T-bill paydowns has flooded the market with cash, temporarily overwhelming every bearish structural force. We have been on the alert for this. It happens every year. The…
The US Treasury is effectively acting as a massive money printer, but the transmission belt connecting debt issuance to stock market gains is beginning to slip. While seasonal tax revenue provides a temporary liquidity “firehose,” structural regime cha…
Federal tax data tells a story the BLS doesn’t: employment growth is stalling, corporate profits are getting squeezed by tariffs, and a ballooning deficit shows no sign of moderating — with war costs making it worse. That can mean only one thing.
The tide that floated all boats for three years is receding. The perpetual motion machine that debt built is running in reverse. The Treasury basis trade that quietly financed the federal deficit while fueling a three-year equity bull market began unwi…
The Treasury market faces growing fragility as Primary Dealers are forced to absorb a relentless supply of government debt. To manage this “deal with the devil,” dealers have turned to extreme financial engineering, ballooning their leverage through re…
The federal budget deficit continues to expand as government outlays outpace revenue gains. Withholding tax collections grew strongly, belying the BLS nonfarm payrolls data for February. The tax data indicates a stable employment trend.
The Fed is doing just enough. Repo growth has flattened, leverage may be unwinding, and long term liquidity/sentiment measures remain historically extended. Yet nothing has broken. The bull is on life support, and the next 60 days will tell us whether …
The Fed’s ~$50–55B/month in outright T-bill and T-bill buys to replace MBS prepayments has been sufficient to offset the withdrawal of the hedge fund Treasury basis trade. Hedge funds have cut short Treasury futures positions by 600,000 contracts since…
I’m having cataract surgery Tuesday afternoon. Since I’ll be out of commission for a few days, I wanted to give a quick overview of the Treasury supply outlook for the next 3 months.
February is normally a month of big supply because taxpayers expecti…