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Thoughts From The Divide: Hold On Tight

BY JON WEBB
“It’s obvious that there’s going to be stress and losses”. The comment is from Janet Yellen’s comments this week and comes from the discussion of the ongoing CRE dumpster fire. Stress and losses aside, the Treasury Secretary was unruffled, following up with the comment, “I hope and believe that this will not end up being a systemic risk to the banking system.” Yellen did admit that size matters. While “The exposure of the largest banks is quite low,… there may be smaller banks that are stressed by these developments” Read more →

Thoughts From The Divide: Regrets

BY JON WEBB
With the Fed in blackout, the market has been left to its own devices to digest this week’s onslaught of economic data. The inflation data was particularly indigestible. CPI numbers came in hotter than expectations, with both Core and Headline higher than forecasts on a YoY basis at 3.8% and 3.2%, respectively: only slightly worse than expected, but worse than expected. The market also had to deal with PPI that was substantially hotter than expected: the month on month came in at 0.6%, double the consensus forecast. Under the surface, goods inflation appeared to once again be rearing its head, accounting for “about two-thirds of the rise in the headline PPI”, courtesy of “a 1.2% surge in goods prices, the biggest increase since August 2023”. (The Houthis are not helping). While the Fed may have taken a temporary vow of silence, Yellen is under no such constraint. Speaking in an interview on Fox, the Treasury secretary said, “I regret saying it, [inflation,] was transitory”, following up with the jab that “I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people” (how long is a piece of string? To be fair, predicting inflation is, apparently, tricky: “there are clear limitations to how far into the future we can forecast inflation”). Read more →

C8 Weekly Bulletin: The asset class ‘du jour’ – corporate bonds!

BY JON WEBB
The latest Financial Times opinion piece 'The Long View' flags investor interest in an exciting new asset class – not crypto, not AI-driven stocks… but newly higher-yielding corporate bonds! January data on ETF inflows certainly underlined the revived US investor appetite for fixed income with overall inflows running slightly of those into equities. Amid this constructive backdrop, USD and EUR corporate bond markets begin 2023 on a robust note.  Read more →
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