Not much relief, after all

Relief that came with the news of a temporary avoidance of a potential government shutdown remained short lived. Sentiment in stocks markets turned rapidly sour, both in Europe and in the US, while the US treasury yields didn’t even react positively to the no shutdown news in the first place. The selloff in the US 10-year bonds accelerated instead; the 10-year yield hit the 4.70% mark, whereas the 2-year yield remained steady-ish at around the 5.10% level, as the Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell didn’t say much regarding the future of the monetary policy yesterday, but his colleagues continued to sound hawkish. Fed’s Michelle Bowman said that multiple more interest rate hikes could be needed to tame inflation, while Micheal Barr repeated that the rates are likely restrictive enough, but they should stay higher for longer. Sufficiently hawkish words combined to a set of still-contracting-but-better-than-expected manufacturing PMI data justified the positive pressure on US sovereigns.  

The gap between the US 2 and 10-year yields is now closing, but not necessarily for ‘good’ reasons. Normally, you would’ve expected the short-term yields to ease more rapidly than the long-term yields when approaching the end of a tightening cycle, with the expectations of future rate cuts kicking in. But what we see today is bear steepening where the 10-year yield accelerates faster than the 2-year yield. The latter suggests rising inflation expectations where investors prefer to buy short-term papers and to wait for the rate hikes to end before returning to long-term papers. The US political uncertainties and a potential government shutdown before the end of the year, and an eventual US credit downgrade likely add an additional downside pressure in long dated US papers.  

The rising yields do no good to stocks. But interestingly, yesterday, the S&P 500 closed flat but the more rate-sensitive Nasdaq stocks were up. The US dollar index extended gains past the 107 level; the index has now recovered half of losses it recorded since a year ago, when the dollar depreciation had started.  

The AUDUSD extended losses to the lowest levels since last November as the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) maintained its policy rate unchanged at the first meeting under its new Governor Michelle Bullock. This is the 4th consecutive month pause for the RBA. The bank said that there may be more tightening in the horizon to bring inflation back to the 2-3% range (inflation currently stands at 5.2%). But the fact that Australians biggest trading partner, China, is not doing well, the fact that real estate market in Australia is battered by rising rates and the fact that the Chinese property crisis is now taking a toll on Australia’s steel exports toward China are factors that could keep Australian growth below target and prevent the RBA from hiking further. If China doesn’t get well soon, Australia will see its iron ore revenues, among others, melt in the next few years, and that’s negative for the Aussie in the medium run. 

Elsewhere, the EURUSD sank below the 1.05 level on the back of accelerated dollar purchases and softening European Central Bank (ECB) expectations following last week’s lower-than-expected inflation figures. Cable slipped below a critical Fibonacci support yesterday, and is headed toward the 1.20 psychological mark. The weakening pound is not bad news for the British FTSE100, as around 80% of the FTSE100 companies’ revenues come from abroad, and they are dollar denominated. Plus, cheaper sterling makes the energy-rich FTSE100 more affordable for foreign investors. Even though FTSE100 fell with sliding oil prices yesterday - and this year’s performance is less than ideal compared to European and American - London’s stock market is closing the gap with Paris, and rising oil prices and waning appetite for luxury stuff could well offer London its status of Europe’s biggest stock market, yet again. 

Speaking of oil prices, crude oil sank below $90pb level yesterday, partly due to the overbought market conditions that resulted from a more than a 40% rally since end of June, and partly because the ‘higher for longer rates’ expectations increased odds for recession.