Archive for February, 2017

Data Dissection

Tuesday, February 28th, 2017

Via Stephen Stanley at Amherst Pierpont Securities: Real GDP in Q4 was slightly weaker than expected, coming in unrevised at 1.9%.  The shortfall relative to my expectations reflects the old saying “a few billion here and a few billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money.”  There were ...

Durable Goods

Monday, February 27th, 2017

Via Stephen Stanley at Amherst Pierpont Securities: rable goods orders in January were not far from expectations.  The January changes were a bit weaker than projected, but there were upward revisions to December that were largely offsetting.  Given how volatile this dataset typically is, the January report is close enough to ...

Index Extension

Monday, February 27th, 2017

Via a fully paid up subscriber: Bloomberg Barclays duration extension estimates as of Feb. 23 are unchanged from Feb. 15 estimates: • U.S. Treasury: 0.11yrs • U.S. Agency: 0.08yrs • U.S. Credit: 0.07yrs • U.S. Govt/Credit: 0.10yrs • U.S. MBS: 0.09yrs • U.S. Aggregate: 0.09yrs • U.S. High Yield: 0.07yrs

Overnight Credit Trading

Tuesday, February 21st, 2017

Via Bloomberg: IG CREDIT: Lowest Volume Since Jan. vs Huge Volume Prior 3 Days 2017-02-21 11:15:49.518 GMT By Robert Elson (Bloomberg) -- Secondary IG trading ended with a Trace count of $13.5b Friday vs $24b Thursday, $18.2b last Friday. It was the lowest volume session since $12.8b Jan. 3. * 10-DMA $19.9b; 10-Friday moving avg $13.2b * 144a ...

Credit Pipeline

Tuesday, February 21st, 2017

Via Bloomberg: IG CREDIT PIPELINE: 2 to Price, Adds/Updates PH, TXN, MOS, MCY 2017-02-21 10:53:05.763 GMT By Robert Elson (Bloomberg) -- 2 Yankee deals came forward overnight and are set to price today. Domestic names are expected to be added to the mix as 86% of dealers, in a Bloomberg News survey, look for at least $15b-$20b ...

Spread Widening

Tuesday, February 21st, 2017

An excerpt from morning note by Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman: The 10-year French premium over Germany has widened to 80 bp, the most since August 2012.  It has risen nearly 14 bp since the middle of last week.  The two-year spread is also widening.  It is at 44 bp ...

Mega Deals

Thursday, February 16th, 2017

Via Bloomberg: IG CREDIT: A History of Mega IG Deals 2017-02-15 19:01:26.409 GMT By Nico Grant (Bloomberg) -- Just two months into 2017, and there has been one mega investment-grade deal and three more that have come close. Investors have gotten used to issuance sizes of $15b or more over the past two years, but it wasn’t ...

Yellen Dissected

Tuesday, February 14th, 2017

Via Stephen Stanley at Amherst Pierpont Securities: Chair Yellen’s prepared testimony is in my view easily the most hawkish message that she has ever delivered in her tenure as Fed Chair.  She stopped short of promising a rate hike in March, but she did more than enough to put March on ...

Scoping Out Yellen Testimony

Monday, February 13th, 2017

Via Stephen Stanley at Amherst Pierpont Securities: Chair Yellen’s semi-annual monetary policy testimony is likely to be an important venue for the near-term outlook for Fed policy.  The written testimony will probably be Yellen’s last scripted word before the March FOMC meeting, so if Yellen and the Committee perceive that a ...

More Data Dissected

Friday, February 3rd, 2017

Via Stephen Stanley at Amherst Pierpont Securities: The ISM non-manufacturing survey data were broadly steady in January.  The headline measure was essentially unchanged at 56.5.  The new orders and production components were down 2 points and half a point respectively.  In contrast, the employment gauge increased by 2 points.  After a ...