Well, the Fed’s talking heads have been saying a 50 basis point hike was coming in May … and it appeared!
And it looks like 9 rate hikes are a comin’ by February 2023.
The Fed’s Dot Plots shows a cooling of Fed rate hikes by 2024 and beyond.
Here is the path of Balance Sheet peel-off.
The US Treasury actives curve is up by 14 bps at the 10-year tenor and up 17 bps at the 2-year tenor.
The plan will see $30 billion of Treasuries and $17.5 billion on mortgage-backed securities roll off. After three months, the cap for Treasuries will increase to $60 billion and $35 billion for mortgages.
I could read the Fed’s speech on their decision, but since The Fed has been so highly politicized, I don’t really care what they say. Only what they do.
The U.S. Treasury market is showing signs of stress that may have implications for whether the curve keeps steepening.
Over the past month the curve has retraced from an inversion to a steepening driven by a surge in yields on benchmark 10-year bonds. That has led to interesting outlier indications, as traders weigh the outlook for Federal Reserve interest rate increases and inflation.
The US Treasury yield curve has settled-in at 20.383 bps (effectively zero) as The Fed continues its war on inflation.
On the SOFR front, we see SOFR Coupons being slow to benefits from Fed rate hikes. So, SOFR Coupons are behaving like Stouffer’s lasagna, frozen and tasteless.
On the other hand, mortgage rates continue to soar on EXPECTATIONS of Fed rate hikes.
Phoenix AZ leads the top ten at 30.4% with Washington DC lagging at 9.9%.
So, its official. The Federal Reserve is best exemplified by former Yankee/Mets first baseman “Marvelous” Marv Throneberry. When players presented Mets’ manager Casey Stengel with a birthday cake but neglected to give piece of cake to Throneberry, Stengel replied to Throneberry when asked why no cake, “Because I was afraid your were going to drop it.”
Just like The Federal Reserve, the honorary Marv Throneberry of the the global economy.
President Biden (or whoever is pulling his strings) is inflicting a “Medusa Touch” on the US. That is, everything his administration touches turns to stone.
Let’s look at average hourly earnings. Thanks to “progressive” energy policies from Biden, REAL average hourly earnings growth has crashed and burned.
But here is the chart that the Biden Administration touts showing average hourly earnings growth at 5.6% YoY (although I doubt if Jen Psaki would leave out the massive distortion caused by The Federal Reserve’s “Let’s go crazy!” monetary policy.
Another Medusa Touch moment is the reverse repo market. When I wrote about reverse repos before, several people wrote me saying “You don’t understand. This is a temporary problem and will vanish shortly.” However, The Fed’s reverse repo facility has now climbed to an all-time high.
Then we have the disruptive effects of The Federal Reserve deciding for us that mortgage rates are too low and should be higher.
Now look at lithium prices, a key element for electric car batteries. Making the switch from Internal combustion engines to electric motors far more costly.
The list goes on and on.
Suffice it to say, everything the Biden Administration touches turns to stone.
But I wager that the Biden Administration wishes that Hunter Biden’s laptop would turn to stone.
Only an elitist DC bureaucrat like Joe Biden would laugh at inflation that is ruining the lives of millions of Americans.
Rising home prices and The Fed signaling an end to the perpetual punch bowl have resulted in the University of Michigan buying conditions for houses to hit the lowest level since 1982.
While bearish sentiment in markets highest since 2009 in the stock market.
I don’t get why Biden created a “Disinformation Control Board” led by Nina Jankowicz – a disinformation spewer. We already have disinformation media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc., so why create a Federal control board? All in time for the midyear elections!!
If this move by Biden doesn’t terrify you, then you didn’t study history.
Heartaches in heartaches. US GDP growth for Q2 has stumbled to 0.446% as The Fed is launching quantitative tightening (QT) to fight the inflation that they caused in the first place.
According to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow real-time GDP tracker, US GDP growth has stumbled to a meager 0.446%. Despite the massive stimulus from The Federal Reserve and Washington DC’s massive fiscal stimulus.
M2 Money stock YoY skyrocketed during the Covid mini-recession, peaking at 21% during February of 2021. The Dallas Fed manufacturing outlook grew to 38.1 in March 2021.
However, as M2 Money growth has slowed 11%, the Dallas Fed manufacturing outlook has plunged to near zero.
Do you want to see a magic trick? Like how governments shut down the US economy resulting in collapsing office occupancy rates while the price of office buildings rose dramatically (+16.3% since Q2 2020)?
Kastle’s “Back to work barometer” is showing that the 10 city average occupancy rate in the US is now only 42.8% as remote working has caught on. And the fear of yet another Covid mutation is keeping office occupancy below 50%.
Even Washington DC, home of Dr. Anthony Fauci, has only a 37.5% occupancy rate. Of the top 10 cities, Austin TX has the highest office occupancy rate at 62.4%.
So, the magic trick is not why America is so slow to return to the office, but why commercial office prices are rising so fast. Ah, Federal government STIMULYTPO! Aka, The Federal Reserve has been overstimulating the economy since 2008 and particularly since 2020 and Covid.
Speaking of a magic trick, here is how government’s make the average time to foreclosure up to over 7 years in Hawaii and 4.4 years in New York. In simple terms, you can buy a home in New York, never make a mortgage payment and live rent free for an average of 4.4 years.
So, the government’s magic trick is to 1) shut down local economies in fear of Covid, 2) provide excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus to combat the shutdown, 3) watch office building prices soar with stimulus as office occupancy remains below 50%.
Do you want to see a magic trick? Watch The Fed try to tighten monetary easing and NOT crash the economy.
Update for 04/25/2022. 10Y Treasury yields DOWN 8.7 bps.
And commodities are tanking. WTI oil is down 5%, iron ore is down almost 7%.
And the Dow is diving with increased expectations of Fed monetary tightening, but the expectations (green line) have been declining this morning.
As The Fed sings “No sugar tonight” exemplified by the number of expected Fed rate hikes by February 2023 has grown to 10.4. Mortgage rates are now the highest since 2009, but inflation is the highest in 40 years. The result? The REAL 30-year mortgage rate is -3.25%.
REAL average hourly earnings are now a terrible -2.99% YoY thanks to the worst inflation in 40 years. REAL home prices are growing at 11.8% YoY.
Traders are betting that even with the Fed boosting its target for the federal funds rate by 2.5 percentage points this year to 3% won’t be enough to get the inflation rate back down to 2% over the next decade from around 8.5% currently.
In nominal terms, mortgage rates are seemingly trying to rise to 2007 levels (6.5%). But the gap between the 30-year mortgage rate and Fed Funds target rates is back to 2009 levels.
Talk about Fed and Fed government OVER stimulypto! Even REAL US home prices grew at 12% YoY pace while the REAL Fed Funds Target rate is -8.04%.
US President Biden went green and signed executive orders on his first day to limit oil and natural gas exploration of Federal lands and offshore (also, killed the Keystone Pipeline), helping to drive up energy prices and food prices. These orders begat inflation (also caused by the massive Covid relief by the Federal government). The highest inflation in 40 years begat The Federal Reserve signalling a tightening of Fed monetary policy … to fight the problem caused by The Fed in the first place … too much monetary stimulus for too long. Fiscal and monetary fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding
There was an interesting article on MarketWatch entitled “Bond rout exposes Social Security’s insanity.” The headline was “Every dollar of yours that’s invested in the Social Security trust fund is invested in low-yielding government bonds.”
Yes, another disastrous consequence of The Fed’s lax monetary policy since 2008, helping to push Treasury yields extremely low. And REAL Treasury yields into negative territory.
But here we sit today with The Fed threatening to trim their balance sheet and raise rates … to combat the inflation they helped create in the first place. Now we have the 10-year Treasury Note price falling like a paralyzed falcon with expected hate hikes going above rate hikes by February 2023 (based on Fed Funds Futures prices).
Most pension funds also invest heaving in US Treasuries, along with agency Mortgage-backed Securities (AgencyMBS).
We have Federal Reserve of St Louis President James “Bully” Bullard saying that The Fed could raise rates by 75 basis points in May, the Japanese Yen to Dollar is crashing as mortgage rates continue to soar.
Here is a nice summary of The Fed’s massive balance sheet expansion in reaction to Covid (orange line) and the resulting soaring of home prices. Then The Fed signals that they will remove the “punchbowl” and mortgage rates have boomed. And not in a good day.
Today we have the US housing starts report. In a nutshell, 1-unit housing starts (single-family detached) declined -4.4% YoY as mortgage rates skyrocket.
5+ unit (aka, apartment stats rose 7.49% MoM in March while 1-unit starts declined by -1.72% MoM. 1-unit permits fell by -4.81% MoM while 5+ units starts rose by 10.89% MoM.
Soaring home prices coupled with soaring mortgage rates equals … apartment living.
Bear in mind that The Fed STILL have massive monetary stimulypto outstanding!!
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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