MI2 PartnersThoughts From The Divide: Trump twists, Powell sticks

Last week, we mentioned how busy the news cycle had been, what with riots in LA, another Boeing crash, and speculation of Israeli military action against Iran. The speculation was right on the money, but you couldn’t tell if you were just looking at markets.
BY JON WEBB

MI2 Partners

Jun 20, 2025

Last week (TFTD: “Know when to Fold‘Em”), we mentioned how busy the news cycle had been, what with riots in LA, another Boeing crash, and speculation of Israeli military action against Iran. The speculation was right on the money, but you couldn’t tell if you were just looking at markets. Yes, oil is markedly higher, but there was little evidence of significant stresses in FX, Equity or Bond markets. Even the shekel showed remarkably little evidence of stress!

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Thoughts From The Divide: Little Tweaks and Adjustments

BY JON WEBB
“I actually think we’re going to see inflation be choppy, and I expect that we’ll see employment stay robust.” As we noted back in May, “one swallow does not make spring”. But if we are to follow the advice of Keynes/Samuelson, when information changes, we should adjust our conclusions. Blast! The trick is, of course, balancing the two ideas to adjust conclusions when the evidence suggests such an adjustment is appropriate: you might call it Bayesian inference. The above quote from Bostic illustrates the problem, with the Atlanta Fed head implicitly stating that he will be ignoring any hot inflation prints. Read more →

Thoughts From The Divide: Tricks

BY JON WEBB
Perhaps it’s just us, but as the spooky season returns and jack-o-lanterns bedeck porches, we notice that markets and commentators also seem a bit skittish. Maybe it’s the looming election, or perhaps the geopolitical horror shows, but folk seem surprisingly easy to spook. Case in point was the hullabaloo around the $44bn jump in US (government) debt. The hue and cry of folk such as ZeroHedge were enough to get more mainstream interest, including the owner of X and a son of FP Trump, to take notice. The jump is seasonal, as Constan and others pointed out, rather than some ghoulish trick, but of course it’s easy to make fun of those who took fright. But perhaps this misses the point about horror movies. Some argue that the genre works for some because it allows them to push their boundaries and learn the limits of their fears. If that describes you, we recommend reading the CBO Long-Term Budget Outlook. For others, referred to as “dark copers”, the appeal of horror movies might lie in “anxiety or fear that they’re feeling in their life, and they use scary genres like horror to kind of work through those feelings”. Read more →

Thoughts From the Divide:  Subjest to Change

BY JON WEBB
As the saying goes, “needs must when the devil drives”. We have no problem understanding the Fed’s decision to announce (at 7pm last night) that the details of the BTFP program needed to be altered. The problem was the overly juicy arbitrage, whereby banks could use the BTFP window to flip cash from the Fed into the RRP and pocket the not-insubstantial difference. We were impressed by the chutzpah involved in arbitraging two Fed facilities! Read more →
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