Morning Report: Bonds get smashed on a bad CPI report

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flattish after another inflation gauge came in hot. Bonds and MBS are down.

Inflation at the wholesale level rose 0.2% in March and 2.1% YOY, according to the Producer Price Index. If you strip out food and energy, the index rose 0.2% month-over-month and 2.4% year-over-year. While not a disaster like the CPI report yesterday, it isn’t helping the cause, and the 10 year is getting smoked again.

The FOMC minutes from the March meeting did indicate rate cuts were in the near future. While they did note that there might be some seasonality involved with the inflation numbers, the message was steady as she goes.

In discussing the policy outlook, participants judged that the policy rate was likely at its peak for this tightening cycle, and almost all participants judged that it would be appropriate to move policy to a less restrictive stance at some point this year if the economy evolved broadly as they expected. In support of this view, they noted that the disinflation process was continuing along a path that was generally expected to be somewhat uneven. They also pointed to the Committee’s policy actions together with the ongoing improvements in supply conditions as factors working to move supply and demand into better balance. Participants noted indicators pointing to strong economic momentum and disappointing readings on inflation in recent months and commented that they did not expect it would be appropriate to reduce the target range for the federal funds rate until they had gained greater confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward 2 percent.

In addition to the hotter-than-expected CPI print, we also had a pretty lousy 10 year bond auction. The bid-to-cover ratio was an anemic 2.34x, and dealers were forced to buy 25% of the $39 billion issue, which pushed 10 year yields to 4.56%.

Needless to say, the mortgage banks got roughed up yesterday, with Rocket down 13%, UWM down 7%, and Loan Depot down 5%. Mr. Cooper held up reasonably well due to is heavy MSR exposure.

Between all three hawkish events, the Fed Funds futures moved decisively towards higher rates, with the June futures pricing in only a 17% chance of a rate cut, and the December futures pricing in only 1 cut this year. Check out the probabilities from a month ago – markets saw 100 basis points in cuts.

Asking rents rose 1% in March compared to a year ago, according to data from Redfin. They were little changed compared to February at $1,987. The Midwest and the Northeast saw the biggest increases.

17 Responses

  1. Democrats are badly mistaken to believe that all latinos identify with illegal immigrants.

    https://www.axios.com/2024/04/11/poll-latino-support-border-wall-deportations-jumps

    Like

  2. This:

    Interview: Chris Hedges Discusses “Wall Street’s War on Workers”

    Award winning author and correspondent Chris Hedges talks about the origins of the ongoing media campaign against the “white working class”

    Matt Taibbi

    Apr 12, 2024

    “I thought of America: The Farewell Tour when I read White Rural Rage because Hedges did what authors Paul Waldman and Thomas Schaller did not: sit in diners with people like Christine Pagano after their AA meetings and just listen.”

    https://www.racket.news/p/interview-chris-hedges-discusses

    Like

  3. Much like Biden’s alleged competency, the evidence, sadly, has to be hidden.

    https://x.com/theblaze/status/1778525666172178927?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg

    Like

  4. Every accusation is a confession:

    Democratic Party has helped Biden cover his legal bills

    Biden allies have criticized Donald Trump for using campaign funds to pay his own legal bills

    By Matt Viser and Tyler Pager
    April 12, 2024 at 2:13 p.m. EDT

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/12/dnc-pays-biden-legal-fees/

    Like

  5. The cave is now complete:

    House Passes 2-Year Surveillance Law Extension Without Warrant Requirement

    Speaker Mike Johnson scaled back the measure to two years from five after Donald J. Trump had urged Republicans to “kill” it. An effort to require warrants to search for Americans’ messages failed on a tie.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/us/politics/surveillance-bill-fisa.html

    Like

  6. Interesting backstory on Taibbi leaving Rolling Stone:

    I arranged to spend Trump’s presidency covering his White House as a salacious character drama for Rolling Stone. One episode into the monthly series, the story took a turn, in the form of the Russia scandal. As I saw it there were only two possibilities, both very difficult to imagine being true. One was the biggest political espionage story ever: a compromised American president! The other was the biggest intelligence smear/lie ever. Again, hard to believe, but it had to be one or the other, and either would be a massive, all-time scandal.

    In my case I had no problem switching focus, naively thinking my magazine might feel the same. After all, they’d encouraged me to go from cheering Barack Obama’s election in 2008 to writing an 8,000-word exposé on his Citigroup bailout a year later. But Trump changed everything. Eventually I made a formal pitch to Rolling Stone asking for time to investigate, arguing if there was anything crooked in the Russia story, we’d get to be the first “mainstream” outlet to report as much. For the first time there, I was told no.

    By that time I was 47, which suddenly no longer felt young. I’d spent all those years learning two concepts. One, all true stories are newsworthy, a corollary being there’s no true story that’s not newsworthy. The other was the audience decides what to do with information, not us. This system simplified work and made audiences feel respected. It took years to learn to see and appreciate the beauty of the arrangement. All of the sudden I was pushing 50 and told we had to learn a new ethos. I wouldn’t do it, arguing among other things it would backfire even as short-term political strategy, and soon was out the door.

    https://www.racket.news/p/orwell-watch-npr-and-the-death-of

    Like

  7. I love the “I am not in a bubble! And if I am it’s the Times fault!” vibe with this story. Apparantly the author only has two sources of information, the Left and the Far Left.

    Like

    • “If this polling is true, then Trump has run circles around the Times”

      Not necessarily wrong.

      This was interesting to watch:

      Like

      • <b>During the Trump years we had every vital major institution diminished – the courts, the Congress, our national security apparatus, our public health system, in ways that are still sowing chaos, even with Trump gone from office for more than three years.</b>

        The lack of self-awareness is a sight to behold.

        Like

  8. There needs to be more of this in California until the reich-wing facists in charge get it through their heads to change their policy!

    Ditto for the known MAGA Country of Chicago.

    https://x.com/paytonsun/status/1779888484955607363?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg

    Like

Leave a reply to Brent Nyitray Cancel reply