Halyard’s Weekly Wrap – 10/22/21

Fed Chairman Powell ended the week by delivering a “wishy washy” overview of the economy and monetary policy at a virtual panel discussion. In fairness, he avoided using the word “transitory” to describe the rising prices that have consumers loudly complaining. Instead, he characterized inflation as being elevated and will likely stay that way for a bit longer. He did acknowledge what we learned from the minutes of the last FOMCC meeting that taper will begin soon and conclude next summer.

Halyard’s Weekly Wrap – 10/15/21

There was much to analyze this week with inflation coming in higher than expected and retail sales surprising to the upside. Equities once again pulled themselves off the mat and appear poised to go at least a few more rounds with greedy and fearful investors. Less obvious but quite telling is the yield curve flattening that took place. The spread between the 2-year note and the 30-year bond has flattened 18 basis points since last Friday. That’s a meaningful move and hints that investors are starting to position for a sooner than advertised interest rate hike.

Halyard’s Weekly Wrap – 10/08/21

At first glance the September unemployment report released on Friday looked wildly disappointing. It’s been described as “Disastrous” at several media outlets. Consensus was looking for 500,000 newly created jobs for the month, and to be honest, we would have taken the over on that bet. Instead the BLS reported that the economy generated 194,000 jobs for the period. 

September 2021 – Monthly Commentary

At the September FOMC meeting Chairman Powell and the Open Market Committee failed to signal a concrete start to tapering open market purchases, but they did inch closer.  Powel described current economic condition as having mostly met the committee’s standard to begin to taper and suggested that an announcement would be made at the November meeting.  It was also announced that the Reverse Repo (RRP) operation designed to sop up excess front end liquidity will be doubled from $80 billion per counterparty to $160 billion.  That totals over $12 trillion dollars if every counterparty maxed out the operation!  The size of outstanding RRP ballooned at quarter end, totaling over $1.6 trillion, a record for the program.

Halyard’s Weekly Wrap – 10/01/21

Fundamentals took a back seat to political in-fighting this week as the Republicans made it clear that they were going to do precious little to assist the Democrat’s goal of lifting the debt ceiling, keeping the government open for business, or passing Biden’s $3.5 trillion social stimulus. Interest rates moved higher across the curve as the uncertainty of fiscal policy spooked bond investors. The new 2-year note auction that was held on Monday was described by one pundit as “gruesome”, given the below average bid-to-cover ratio, and the yield at which it cleared, which was nearly a basis point above the yield asked at auction time. Following the auction, the yield-to-maturity of the 2-year note rose to 0.31%, before drifting back down to 0.266% to close out the week. That’s nearly double where the note traded last summer! Stocks fared worse, with the S&P 500 trading down about 2.5% for the week.