Archive for December, 2013

Two Year Auction and Swiss Franc Strength

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

At 100PM New York time (the only time) Jack Lew and his acolytes will sprinkle $32 billion 2 year notes onto the dealer community. This auction should go well. There has been robust buying in the sector by a variety of real money accounts. One dealer noted real money has ...

Caboose Pulling Out of the Station

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Someone sent me this piece from Cumberland Advisors on the case for owning bonds. The author cites the powerful factors of a sharply declining Federal deficit and very low inflation. He concludes that bonds are cheap. The author David Kotok has been around for quite some time and has made ...

JPMorgan Survey

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Via Bloomberg First Word   +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ RATES: JPMorgan Treasury Client Survey for Latest Week 2013-12-17 12:15:59.766 GMT By Robert Elson Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The JPMorgan Treasury Client Survey for the week ended Dec 16 vs week ended Dec 9. * Longs at 15 vs 13 * Neutrals 65 vs 66 * Shorts 20 vs 21 * Net longs -5 vs ...

December 17 2013 Opening

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Prices of Treasury coupon securities are registering very modest gains in overnight trading. The belly of the curve manifests the t biggest gains while the long end languishes. The yield on the 10 year note has declined 1.2 basis points to 2.866. The various intra curve spreads I watch are ...

Crowded Trades

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Via Merrill Lynch Research: The three most "crowded trades" are... ...short Yen, long S&P 500, long US High Yield, according to our panel of 237 investors. Notable asset allocation extremes: net % saying US dollar "undervalued" 2nd highest ever (record was Aug'08); net % UW commodities 3rd highest ever; net % OW ...

The Other Mandate Target

Monday, December 16th, 2013

Ben Steil of the Council on Foreign Relations has posted an interesting article  and graph on the FOMCs inflation mandate. It is galloping away from its target more rapidly than the unemployment rate is approaching its target. He suggests that if the Fed gave each variable equal weight there would ...

Low Volume

Monday, December 16th, 2013

One trader in his evening note commented on the lack of activity today in Treasury market by noting that volume was about 40 percent of normal. So a very sleepy session, indeed.

Volatility

Monday, December 16th, 2013

I  just conversed with an options trader regarding the Federal Reserve meeting and his market. He thinks that some large money managers and hedge funds have been sellers of vol and the street has been happy to buy it. With the meeting two days hence there is quite a bit ...

Treasury Update and Some TIPS Comments

Monday, December 16th, 2013

The Treasury market has turned its tail since I last wrote here and the market is steeper and cheaper. I have not been able to identify a specific source of selling as I make the rounds. This is just (intelligent) surmise but there is a mini supply tsunami this week  ...

Update

Monday, December 16th, 2013

The Treasury market is pretty quiet today and continues to hold on to gains though I believe these are about the cheapest levels of the day. The yield remains about where it was when i wrote early this morning with 5s 30s just below 234 and 10s 30s just below ...