Tax collections improved in October, but are still well below pre-pandemic levels. The US may look like it’s recovering, but it’s still in the hole it dug when Covid19 first hit. That means that Fed policy isn’t likely to change any time soon.
We’ve had two working theses over the past few months. One is that the Fed is no longer pumping enough cash into dealer accounts to keep an endless bull trend going. Instead, at best, there’s only enough for rotation between stocks and bonds.
The second thesis was that because dealers are so leveraged, any fall in bond prices, reflected in an increase in bond yields, would mean big trouble for the markets.
Last week I was surprised when the US Government’s retail sales data hit a new high. No way, I said.
Well, Way!
Yes, some retailers are seeing booming sales, particularly online, and … wait for it…
Grocery stores. Even after pulling back from the lockdown spike, they’re still up more than 7% year to year.
Now there’s a basis for a thriving, growing US economy.
Not.
The market has the benefit of $115 billion in Fed mid-month QE MBS purchase settlements this week. That would normally be very bullish. It’s notable…
The Fed’s balance sheet has now grown by over $2.8 trillion since March. That’s when the pandemic panic was at its extreme and the Fed…
Tax collections have leveled off at a negative year to year rate. The Fed has gone to Congress begging for fiscal support for the US…
Primary dealers have maintained huge and heavily leveraged long bond positions. They are only lightly hedged. Just today, the bond market is threatening to reverse the long term downtrend in yields/uptrend in prices. It’s bad news for the bond market, and for the system as a whole. And that includes stocks.
The outlook for the most of the rest of October is bullish. But it’s not an endless bull any more.
We have known for a couple of months that there would be a mountain of Treasury supply hitting the market at the end of September. We also knew that Fed QE would be far from adequate to absorb this supply. So I have expected something bearish for stocks at the end of September. This could spill over into the first week of October.
But then things get hairy for bears, with potentially happy days for bulls. Unfortunately, we have a little problem this week. There’s no visibility. We don’t know what they have planned for the next couple weeks. That’s different from usual, where we can usually see ahead for a week or two because we know the Fed’s QE schedule, and also pretty much know how much Treasury supply to expect.
Now, thanks to the exigencies of the past pandemiconomic US Treasury fund raising back in March and April, we don’t have that luxury on Treasury supply, which forces us to surmise some things.
Here they are.
Composite liquidity continues to rise, but at a slower pace than in the second quarter as the Fed has slowed QE. That reduces the cash flowing into Primary Dealer accounts, which in turn contributes to a slowing in secondary liquidity drivers.
“Slowing” is a relative word, however. Historically, the numbers remain gargantuan.
No, something else is holding the market back. Here’s what that something is, and what we’re going to do about it.
