All Things in Moderation

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are lower after yesterday’s Trump Trade Tweet. Bonds and MBS are up.

Donald Trump sent bonds higher yesterday afternoon with this tweet saying that trade talks had broken down between the US and China, and he was therefore imposing an additional 10% tariff on $300 billion in goods from China. This sent stocks reeling, and the 10 year bond yield down about 10 basis points. MBS were slow to react, however we did have some reprices late in the day. If you look at the box scores above, you’ll see we finally have a 3 handle on the 30 year fixed rate mortgage. Commodities were also slammed, with oil down 8%.

The escalation in the tariff wars caused some strategists to bump up their probabilities of a September rate cut. Goldman’s Jan Hatzius sees a 70% chance of 25bps, 10% of 50, and 20% of no change at the FOMC meeting next month. This was mirrored in the Fed funds futures market, however the 50 basis point cut looks unlikely. They Sep futures are pricing in an 85% chance of another 25 bps. They were pricing in a 56% chance of a rate cut before the tweet came out.

Some of the rally in bonds yesterday was almost certainly due to convexity-related buying, which means hedge adjustment activity. This sort of buying is invariably violent and temporary, which means mortgage backed securities will probably lag the move for a day or two. That said, the path of least resistance for rates remains down, especially since overseas bond yields followed along. The German Bund now yields negative 48 basis points. In fact, their longest term bond – 29 years – is now negative. Think of it: tying your money up for 29 years to get…. absolutely nothing. This is the fixed-income equivalent of buying Salon.com stock at 1000x pageviews in 1999.

Jobs report data dump:

• Nonfarm payrolls up 164k (in line with expectations)
• Unemployment rate 3.%
• Average hourly earnings up 0.3% MOM / 3.2% YOY (better than expectations)
• Labor force participation rate 63%
• Employment / population ratio 60.7%

Overall a good report, and now stock bullish given the Fed’s new posture. Wage growth is picking up and average hourly earnings keep trending upward despite PCE inflation that is stuck in the high teens.

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Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flat after the Fed cut interest rates 25 basis points. Bonds and MBS are up.

The Fed cut the Fed Funds rate by 25 basis points yesterday, which was in line with what the markets were expecting. Bonds sold off (rates higher) initially but eventually worked their way back to unchanged on the day and rates are lower this morning. The volatility in bonds did widen MBS spreads a little, which means that mortgage rates didn’t necessarily follow the 10 year yield lower.

The markets seemed to take the fact that Esther George and Eric Rosengren dissented in stride. Both voted against cutting rates. Jerome Powell’s press conference was a bit surreal given that his body language gave the impression he didn’t actually believe his “insurance cut for maintaining the recovery” narrative very much. If you watch the press conference, you’ll see him struggle with a question from Bloomberg’s Michael McKee regarding how cutting interest rates in an economy awash in capital will have any effect. Powell mentioned slowdowns in Europe and China several times, and that probably gave away the game.  This was a rate cut in response to global weakness, certainly not US economic numbers nor Trump’s jawboning. Since using monetary policy as a tool to help foreign economies is not in the Fed’s job description, he can’t come right out and say it.

You can’t help the feeling that global central banks have engineered a sovereign debt bubble globally and now have no idea what to do about it. Their exit strategy is to create inflation, which would send money out of bonds, but cutting rates is causing bonds to get more expensive, exacerbating the bubble. The result has been a situation that makes zero economic sense: why would anyone pay to lend money, let alone to a government with a debt to GDP ratio of 240% (Japan)? I guess it is one of those things that people will eventually wake up to en masse. In other words, “it won’t matter until it matters, and then it will be the only thing that matters.” But the #1 rule of bubbles is that they go on longer and go further than anyone expects.

The Fed funds futures moved marginally in response to the rate cut. The markets are now pricing in about an 85% chance of one more cut this year, and are handicapping a better than 50% chance of a cut in September.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the FHA is going to announce a move to lower the limit for cash out refinances to 80 LTV from 85 LTV.  “The risk at 85% is more than what we think is appropriate to bear and more than what we think we should expose taxpayers to,” said Keith Becker, the FHA’s chief risk officer. This change will bring FHA loans in line with Fannie and Freddie which cap cash outs at 80%.

In another change, a HUD proposal has been circulated that would reverse an Obama-era standard for fair lending – the disparate impact standard – and replace it with a 5-step framework to demonstrate that discrimination occurred. In other words, it will put the burden of proof back on the regulator to prove the lender intended to discriminate. I don’t have the actual proposal, so there isn’t much to go on quite yet.

In other economic news today, initial jobless claims came in at 215k, construction spending fell 1.3% and the ISM Manufacturing index slipped to 51.2.

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