Just after a selection of Fed officials identified as for much more aggressive tightening to combat inflation, the central bank’s minutes from its March assembly indicated common settlement to shrink its substantial balance sheet by $95 billion for each thirty day period.
The minutes also showed Fed officers have been considering larger-than-typical amount hikes of 50 foundation points immediately after a 25 foundation level elevate previous month, the very first improve in extra than a few years.
2. Important Treasury yield distribute remains inverted immediately after jobless promises information
Traditionally, these inversions have took place prior to financial recessions. With the employment marketplace robust, the Fed might have place to gradual the economic climate to struggle inflation — threading the needle on its dual mandate of fostering maximum work and managing rates. The central lender is predicted to hike premiums at all six of its remaining meetings this 12 months. The dimensions of people will increase are the actual query.
A funeral assistance worker looks at bodies of civilians, gathered from streets to area cemetery, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine proceeds, in the city of Bucha, outside Kyiv, Ukraine April 6, 2022.
Stringer | Reuters
Ukraine on Thursday appealed to NATO for additional weapons in its struggle from Russia to help avert additional atrocities like those reported in Bucha, just outside the house of Kyiv. Western countries have supplied Ukraine with moveable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, but they have been hesitant to provide plane, tanks or any other gear that would need training to use.
Russian forces, which failed to speedily get Ukraine’s capital, are regrouping for an offensive in jap Ukraine, the place Moscow early in its incursion recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk spots as independent states.
— CNBC reporters Yun Li, Jeff Cox, Samantha Subin, Hannah Miao, Jesse Pound, Elliot Smith and Silvia Amaro as well as The Affiliated Push contributed to this report.
— Indication up now for the CNBC Investing Club to adhere to Jim Cramer’s each individual stock shift. Observe the broader marketplace action like a pro on CNBC Professional.
Stocks fell for a second working day on Wednesday and premiums soared to new heights right after the Federal Reserve gave more advice on how speedy it will tighten financial plan to battle inflation, increasing considerations it may well gradual the economic system.
The Dow Jones Industrial Ordinary fell 144.67 factors, or .42{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}, to 34,496.51. The S&P 500 slid .97{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} to 4,481.15, and the Nasdaq Composite sank an additional 2.22{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} to 13,888.82 immediately after falling about 2.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} on Tuesday.
“It was a warning to any individual who thinks that the Fed is likely to be extra dovish in their fight towards inflation,” stated Quincy Krosby, main equity strategist at LPL Economic. “Their information is, ‘You’re improper.'”
The Fed’s release of its assembly minutes indicated on Wednesday afternoon that officers “typically agreed” it need to shrink its equilibrium sheet by $95 billion for each thirty day period. The minutes also confirmed central bank officers were being thinking of larger sized price hikes than the usual 25-foundation-place, or quarter-level, increments. Shares dipped to session lows just after the release of the minutes but bounced back somewhat to close the day.
“Lots of contributors famous that — with inflation effectively earlier mentioned the Committee’s aim, inflationary pitfalls to the upside, and the federal funds price very well below participants’ estimates of its longer-operate level — they would have most well-liked a 50 basis place enhance in the goal array for the federal resources amount at this meeting,” the minutes explained.
Meanwhile, the 10-calendar year Treasury yield jumped previously mentioned 2.65{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} to a 3-calendar year higher on Wednesday and remained close to that large following the launch of the Fed meeting minutes. The level finished Monday at 2.40{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. The minutes were from the Fed’s March conference when it elevated prices by a quarter issue and indicated six additional hikes of that magnitude have been coming this 12 months.
“I imagine the inventory current market is finding the strategy that $60 billion Treasurys and $35 billion in home loans is setting up to get authentic,” reported James Caron of Morgan Stanley Financial investment Management. “If they do a further 50 foundation points hike in Could and yet another 50 in June, it is really starting to get additional actual. It is surely not a tailwind for stocks.”
Tech shares led Wednesday’s slide, slipping all over again for a next day as traders rotated out of the group and braced for greater costs to sluggish the overall economy. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Tesla contributed to the sector’s decrease. Chipmakers like Nvidia and Marvell Technology also continued their descent, falling about 5.9{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} and 2.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}, respectively.
Traders ongoing to look for for shares with stable profits, shying absent from all those offering long run progress. Utilities, wellbeing treatment and purchaser staples sectors continued to climb Wednesday, with Amgen and Johnson & Johnson rising extra than 2{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} just about every. Purchaser staples this sort of as Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble inched far more than 1{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} larger. Walmart jumped 2.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}.
“These days and yesterday you’re seriously beginning to see the equity marketplace catch up with the bond current market,” said Chris Zaccarelli, CIO at Unbiased Advisor Alliance. “And by that, I suggest equities are beginning to rate in a a lot more aggressive Fed. You might be starting off to see a bid for basic safety, you happen to be seeing that common danger-off shift.”
Inventory picks and investing developments from CNBC Pro:
Officials in latest times have tried using to warn buyers even speedier policy tightening could be ahead. The findings, coupled with latest remarks from Fed Governor Lael Brainard and other individuals, seemed to sign that sentiment.
Earlier Wednesday, Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker said that he is “acutely concerned” about soaring inflation, noting that he expects “a series of deliberate, methodical hikes as the yr proceeds and the info evolve.”
His reviews come less than a day following Brainard indicated support for higher fascination charges and stated a “speedy” reduction of the central bank’s stability sheet could arrive as before long as May well. The remarks pushed shares reduce in the previous session.
“It is of paramount significance to get inflation down,” Brainard stated in the course of a Minneapolis Fed webinar. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly echoed related sentiments toward inflation on Tuesday.
“What that implies for the marketplaces are ongoing volatility around the uncertainty to greater costs and reduced-revenue cash move stocks, growth variety stocks possibly continuing to get discounted as fees increase,” Cliff Corso of Advisors Asset Management stated on CNBC’s “Globally Exchange.”
Earnings in advance
Traders were also bracing Wednesday for the start out of the corporate earnings season.
“Total, the U.S. equities market probably has 5{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} upside from these likes between now and the close of the 12 months,” Kostin explained. “Really should we be likely into a recession it will be significant downside, but which is not the base situation suitable now.”
— CNBC’s Patti Domm and Jeff Cox contributed reporting
“‘It’s really hard to know how a great deal the U.S. Federal Reserve will need to do to get inflation less than handle. But a single point is specified: To be helpful, it’ll have to inflict far more losses on inventory and bond investors than it has so much.’”
— Monthly bill Dudley, previous New York Fed president
That’s William Dudley, the former president of the potent New York Fed, arguing in a visitor column at Bloomberg that his previous colleagues will not get a deal with on inflation that’s functioning at all over a 40-year large until they make buyers put up with.
There are myriad uncertainties the Fed have to navigate, he acknowledged, such as the effect of easing offer-chain disruptions and a traditionally tight labor marketplace. But the consequences of the Fed’s tightening of monetary policy on monetary ailments — and the the influence that tightening will have on economic action — is a single of the major unknowns, Dudley wrote.
Compared with quite a few other economies, the U.S. doesn’t reply straight to modifications in shorter-phrase desire fees, Dudley mentioned, partly for the reason that most U.S. home prospective buyers have extensive-expression, preset-fee mortgages. But numerous U.S. homes, also in contrast to other countries, have a significant amount of money of their prosperity in equities, which helps make them delicate to money conditions.
Dudley’s simply call for the Fed to inflict losses on traders stands in contrast to the longstanding idea of a figurative Fed place, the concept that the central lender would halt monetary tightening or normally ride to the rescue in the celebration of major losses in monetary markets. Dudley, who ran the New York Fed from 2009 to 2018, was earlier main U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs and is now a senior investigation scholar at Princeton University’s Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Investors have talked of a figurative Fed put considering the fact that at least the October 1987 inventory-sector crash prompted the Alan Greenspan-led central bank to decreased fascination fees. An precise set option is a monetary by-product that provides the holder the proper but not the obligation to provide the fundamental asset at a set level, identified as the strike rate, serving as an insurance coverage from a market decrease.
Shares have missing floor in 2022, partly in response to the Fed’s signals that it is prepared to be aggressive in elevating curiosity fees and shrinking its harmony sheet to get inflation beneath regulate. But losses continue being modest, with the S&P 500
SPX, -.97{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}
fewer than 7{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} away from its Jan. 3 history close as of Tuesday’s complete. The Dow Jones Industrial Typical
DJIA, -.42{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}
is down 5.1{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} for the 12 months to day, while the Nasdaq Composite
COMP, -2.22{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996},
built up of a lot more fee-sensitive tech and progress shares, has fallen far more than 11{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}.
The pain has been much more powerful in the bond market. Treasury yields, which shift the reverse way of rates, have soared, albeit from traditionally lower concentrations. Initial-quarter losses in the bond marketplace ended up the worst in a quarter century.
Continue to, the 10-calendar year Treasury generate
TMUBMUSD10Y, 2.598{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}
previously mentioned 2.5{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} stays up all-around just .75 proportion position from a 12 months ago and remains effectively under the inflation charge, Dudley stated. That is due to the fact traders expect bigger short-term costs to undermine financial expansion and drive the Fed to reverse program in 2024 and 2025, he mentioned — “but these quite expectations are avoiding the tightening of economical ailments that would make these an final result far more likely.”
Have to have to Know: Here’s the very first Wall Road economic downturn get in touch with of the new inflation period
Investors should listen to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Dudley stated, who has obviously stated that money problems have to tighten.
“If this doesn’t transpire on its have (which would seem not likely), the Fed will have to shock the sector to reach the wanted reaction,” Dudley said. That would mean mountaineering prices substantially larger than marketplace participants at present anticipate simply because the Fed, “one way or another, to get inflation less than control…will need to have to press bond yields higher and inventory charges reduced.”
Sam Bankman-Fried cut an unlikely figure as he took the stage on the final morning of this year’s big derivatives-industry conference in Boca Raton, Florida. Sporting a grey T-shirt, khaki shorts and sneakers, his mane of curly hair untamed, the 30-year-old chief executive of FTX looked more like a student who had just rolled out of bed to grab breakfast at his college cafeteria than the boss of an international cryptocurrency exchange valued at $32bn.
Adding to incongruity at the Futures Industry Association event was that Bankman-Fried was engaging in a one-on-one chat with Alex Rodriguez, the retired American baseball star, broadcaster and business executive known as A-Rod. Standing a good six inches taller than his interlocutor and still fit at 46, the one-time fiancé of Jennifer Lopez was every inch a red-carpet celebrity in his dark suit, white shirt and power tie.
But it was A-Rod who was out of his league.
Bankman-Fried had already stolen the show at the March gathering with a groundbreaking proposal to US regulators to automate risk management in financial markets — using practices developed for digital assets. FTX says it plans to start with a small market — leveraged futures contracts for cryptocurrencies. But it raises the possibility of a brave new world in which traditional brokers would be replaced by computers, and machines would make margin calls in 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week trade.
As he compared notes with Rodriguez, Bankman-Fried stuck to a futuristic vision, holding forth at length on the “really beautiful experience” of using some of the new protocols being built on blockchains, the distributed ledger technology underpinning cryptocurrencies. By the time he finished, the former New York Yankees slugger was a gushing fan. “This guy is way too smart,” he said.
The warm reception given to the young man in short trousers by the folks in suits at the Florida pow-wow was something of a surprise. Bankman-Fried and his industry are controversial. An American citizen, he is a paper billionaire many times over based on his majority interest — his exact holding has not been disclosed — in an international crypto exchange that is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and operates with a licence issued by the Bahamas. His three-person board has one outside director, a lawyer in its corporate home country.
The crypto business faces headwinds on multiple fronts. Gary Gensler, US Securities and Exchange Commission chair, has said there is a “great deal of hype and spin” about how digital assets work and a lack of investor protections in the “Wild West” markets where they trade. Lesser authorities have wondered how coins named after little dogs or non-fungible tokens depicting bored apes could be worth so much. Hopes that bitcoin would function as a kind of digital gold have been undercut by its difficult-to-explain price movements in crises.
Yet Bankman-Fried created a buzz in Boca by focusing less on what is being traded on exchanges such as FTX and more on how it is being traded — the implication being that the gold might be in the new financial plumbing itself rather than what flows through it. In the process, he took a far different approach to dealing with the government than his more combative brethren in the libertarian-leaning crypto community. He invited oversight and sought a dialogue with the regulators — which he has received.
Rostin Behnam, chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives markets, addressed the FTX proposal in a speech at the same event. While pledging to be “careful, patient and deliberative with this request”, Behnam also expressed public admiration for the ideas behind Bankman-Fried’s argument.
“The request represents an innovative proposal that deserves careful consideration,” Behnam said, adding: “It has never been, nor should it ever be our job to choose winners or losers in the industry. Only the market and the customer can do that.”
Trading day and night
The CFTC itself set the stage for Bankman-Fried’s star turn only five days before the conference. On March 10, it issued a request for public comment on a proposal by the US derivatives arm of FTX to allow a small US futures exchange it bought last year to offer leveraged futures contracts.
The products it currently offers to retail investors are — to use the industry lingo — “fully collateralized,” meaning FTX takes no credit risk. With leveraged futures there is a big difference. These contracts enable investors to take large positions while putting up a fraction of the value of the trade, known as margin. The leverage means investors can get more bang for their buck if things go right. The margin functions ensure that a soured bet and default doesn’t cascade through the financial system.
The novel part of the FTX proposal is how it deals with margin. In today’s markets, brokers known as futures commission merchants, or FCMs, collect margin and make sure customers have enough of it to support their positions. If they do not, FCMs ask for more money, usually overnight, or advance funds to special customers to keep them in the game.
FCMs also contribute to guarantee funds at clearing houses — third parties that stand between buyers and sellers of futures — to “mutualise” losses in a major default. FCMs hold $456bn in customer funds, the CFTC says, with the two biggest being arms of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
FTX is seeking to bypass the brokers and use an approach that has evolved in the do-it-yourself, 24/7 crypto trade. In this world, digital assets move on computer networks that have no opening or closing times, or any of the traditional gatekeepers that were required by older technologies.
Under the FTX plan, customers would deposit collateral in FTX accounts — cash or crypto — and be responsible for keeping enough on hand to cover margin requirements at all times. Margin levels would be calculated every 30 seconds. If the margin falls too low, FTX would start liquidating the position in seconds, selling it off in 10 per cent increments or, in worst-case scenarios, offering it to “backstop liquidity providers who agree ahead of time to accept a set amount”. FTX also promised to put $250mn of cash into a guarantee fund.
FTX officials argue that the current practice of asking for margin creates a world of unsecured credit in which FCMs basically hope the customer will pay at some point. Their automated system would be safer, they say. Liquidations would be more frequent, but less ruinous. As proof, they pointed to the ability of their three-year-old international exchange to survive the ferocious volatility of digital asset prices.
“From a risk perspective, and this gets lost sometimes in discussions, I think our proposal is, in some senses, much more conservative . . . than the norm,” Bankman-Fried said in a Financial Times interview.
Don Wilson, chief executive of DRW, one of the world’s biggest derivatives traders, says his group has been “trading this way for some time in the crypto space” and has grown to like the 24/7 action. Because it can be moved around at all hours, crypto is very handy collateral for leveraged players looking to act quickly in the markets.
“One of the things that blockchain technology enables is more efficient and more real-time exchange of collateral. Once you have the ability to move collateral in a nearly instantaneous manner, then you can rethink the way you’re doing your margining,” he says.
“We have to manage the collateral in real time and we’ve never got closed out of a position [liquidated],” he explains. “People who don’t have the collateral get closed out of their positions and that’s a good thing. That reduces systemic risk and once you get it to the ability to very efficiently close out positions . . . now do you really even need an intermediary?”
Getting rid of gatekeepers
The case for human intermediation in futures markets took a real-time blow as industry executives met in Boca Raton. Across the Atlantic, the London Metal Exchange halted nickel trading for a week — and cancelled a day of trades — after a big bearish bet by Chinese metals tycoon Xiang Guangda backfired and left him facing huge margin calls. Activity only resumed after Xiang struck an agreement with banking counterparties including JPMorgan and Standard Chartered to keep his position open.
The debacle pointed to a hole in the defences erected by global regulators in response to the 2008 financial crisis and the role that opaque derivatives trading played in it. Officials pushed for more central clearing of trades and tougher margin requirements as a backstop for the system. But regulators were never able to construct a real-time risk management dashboard that would enable them to spot a big market player building up a dangerously large leveraged position.
As the LME reeled, FTX was making a well-timed sales pitch that it could fill the gap. Regulators would be able to log on to its website and see “to the penny” the “total amount of risk in the system”, FTX claimed. Some of that data could even be shared with the public, Bankman-Fried said.
“I think it would be cool to have a public dashboard that makes much more of this clear,” he says. “We know how much collateral exactly is in the system. We are custodying it. We have internal metrics and we have alarms that go off if that changes internally. We just haven’t made it public.”
Weekly newsletter
For the latest news and views on fintech from the FT’s network of correspondents around the world, sign up to our weekly newsletter #fintechFT
The turbulence in commodities markets that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine also gave FTX a chance to make the case for round-the-clock trading. As ruinous as that might be for the work-life balance of industry participants, it would allow investors and the financial system to adjust as quickly as possible to the outbreak of war or other disasters, the company argues.
“It’s not like waiting till Monday means you didn’t have risk over the weekend. It was there. You just were intentionally not paying attention to it,” says Bankman-Fried. “You can have more continuous deleveraging. You don’t have to have these three-day gaps in which war can break out.”
Not everyone, of course, is as enthusiastic. Craig Pirrong, a University of Houston finance professor, says he fears the mechanical FTX approach could prove “destabilising”, exacerbating market moves in either direction and possibly creating opportunities for bad actors to manipulate prices in hopes of triggering liquidations. He suggests the CFTC adds a “shock absorber” to the FTX system to slow down the action when necessary.
“This is a double-edged sword. There is a trade-off here,” he says. “Innovation should be allowed, but the potential issue with this innovation should be recognised and the CFTC should get ready to mitigate it.”
The CFTC has signalled it is going to take its time in deciding what to do. In a sign of the intense debate to come, the regulator has extended the original comment period on the FTX proposal by 30 days, to May 11. Market participants are already asking about the reliability of the FTX plan for back-up liquidity providers or whether it would concentrate risk in too few hands. Because futures are used by farmers and ranchers to hedge risks, agricultural interests could weigh in, complicating matters politically.
The FCMs are another wildcard. FTX officials are taking pains to say that investors who want to retain their brokers can trade through them at their exchange. FTX does not mean to suggest that “just because we allow for disintermediation, there has to be disintermediation”, says Brett Harrison, president of FTX.US.
But the traditional players are unlikely to be happy. After a long period of decline — in which the number of FCMs fell from 178 at the end of the 2005 to 61 in the latest CFTC survey — prospects for the business are looking up. Rising interest rates would make it more profitable to hold customer balances, says Carl Gilmore, president of Integritas Financial Consulting, who adds: “Don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of FCMs complaining about this in the next few weeks.”
The regulation fight
Whatever happens, the FTX proposal and the debate it has stirred marks a new phase in the drama over crypto regulation, which to this point has recalled Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, at least in the US.
In an executive order on crypto this year, Joe Biden signalled both his determination to regulate the industry — and the delays to come. The president’s declaration was short on details and long on studies. It will be months before detailed proposals emerge from his administration. Although a bipartisan group of legislators is discussing how to deal with crypto, final action on Capitol Hill will take time.
As a result, no single US regulator oversees the spot market in digital assets. While the CFTC takes an interest in crypto derivatives, there is a raging debate on Gensler’s assertion that many cryptocurrencies are securities under US law, making them fair game for the SEC. Most crypto exchanges in the US operate with money transmitter licenses.
“Would we like Congress to pass a bill that clarifies everything? Absolutely,” says Bankman-Fried, the son of two Stanford law school professors. “But that could take years.”
In the meantime, FTX is taking regulatory matters into its own hands. Bankman-Fried has already suggested to Congress that the CFTC should be made the regulator for all digital assets in US spot and derivatives markets. With its proposal to the CFTC, FTX is prodding its preferred regulator into action that could establish key rules of the road for traders.
“We would love to have more clarity around the right way to get licensed and registered for digital assets,” says Bankman-Fried. “I do think this is an attempt for us to find what seems like the best oversight that can be given, given the structure that exists today.”
Comedian and writer Larry David starred in a Super Bowl ad for FTX
Bankman-Fried started FTX only three years ago, first setting up an international exchange and then one for US users. The larger international operation is now worth more than Deutsche Bank or Credit Suisse, based on its $32bn valuation in a January funding round that included Japan’s SoftBank and Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Down the road from Boca Raton, the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association play in the FTX Arena. Larry David stars in the company’s commercials. The FTX chief executive has even mused about growing big enough to buy Goldman Sachs.
Bankman-Fried has made the scale of his ambitions clear to officials considering his proposal. In a letter sent to regulators in February by one of his in-house lawyers — one of several former CFTC employees working at FTX — the government was put on notice that he is only getting started.
“FTX plans to lead futures markets in the United States into the 21st century,” wrote Brian Mulherin, general counsel of FTX US Derivatives.
This article first appeared in the Morning Brief. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe
Monday, April 4, 2022
“Cash is trash,” billionaire Ray Dalio told me in a chat recently (more on that below). And he may be right as it pertains to the current investing backdrop.
Cash allocations are almost two times more than last year’s levels, according to new data out of Bank of America. The data looks at the average recommended allocation to stocks and cash by sell-side strategists.
After recommended cash allocations hit a low of 2.5{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} last August, they have jumped to 4.1{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} today. BofA says this is a “big” move.
At the same time, sentiment on stocks has declined for three straight months as investors digest worrisome headlines on inflation, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and weakening corporate profit margins.
While investors holding more cash appears like a negative for stocks at first blush, it’s actually not historically, points out BofA strategist Savita Subramanian.
“What we have found is that consensus Wall Street strategists are a very reliable contrarian indicator. When they are telling you to dial down your equity exposure and increase your allocation to cash, that’s actually net bullish. What we found is that when the bulk of evidence is telling you to be more cautious and defensive, probably all of that information is priced into the market and the market is more likely to surprise in the opposite direction,” Subramanian said on Yahoo Finance Live.
So on that score, trash cash and maybe put $1,000 into GameStop and another $1,000 into a boring as all hell dividend-paying company (note: this is NOT investment advice). YOLO!
Happy trading!
Odds and ends
One-on-one with Ray Dalio: I had the chance to catch up with Bridgewater Associates founder and co-chief investment officer Ray Dalio. So be on the lookout for a lot of “stuff” hitting Yahoo Finance today from that lengthy chat, which comes as a new post on YouTube from Dalio titled “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” nears an eye-popping 10 million views. But here is one quote from Dalio that left me thinking — and perhaps should leave you thinking as well. “I think that most likely what we’re going to have is a period of stagflation. And then you have to understand how to build a portfolio that’s balanced for that kind of an environment.”
Tweet of the morning: Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood isn’t keen on more interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, as seen in a new tweet. It makes sense, as the last thing any exec at Tesla, Coinbase, Teladoc, Roku, and Zoom (the top five holdings in Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF) wants to see is a higher cost of capital as they continue to try to take over the world. Speaking of Wood’s long-time favorite, Tesla, the company posted first quarter deliveries of 310,000 versus Street estimates for 312,000. The miss may not derail the stock, as Wedbush analyst Dan Ives notes: “The bears will point to Tesla missing headline Street estimates although we believe the supply/logistics issues for Tesla in the goodbye last week of the quarter were piling up and most investors will look through the slight official headline miss on deliveries. We remain steadfastly bullish on the Tesla story and believe when factoring in all the manufacturing headwind dynamics this was a modestly bullish print.”
Starbucks: Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson officially steps down today, handing the coffee ship off to the company’s iconic founder and failed presidential candidate Howard Schultz. Here’s a list of a few key moments from Johnson’s tenure: 1) launching sous vide egg bites in 2017 — these things are great on the go; 2) launching the unicorn frappe in 2017 — this drink was Instagram pic gold; 3) tweaking the Starbucks rewards program in 2019 that caused a social media uproar; 4) announcing in 2020 a plan to close 400 company operated stores — this was long overdue; 5) debuting a decision in mid-March to rid the company of single-use cups — get ready to bring your $75 Yeti bottle to Starbucks; 6) unionizing at Starbucks was born under Johnson’s tenure (expert reporting by Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero on this); 7) lifting of hourly pay at Starbucks to more than $15 an hour; 8) halting Schultz’s expensive pet project of opening up giant Roastery stores in major cities.
The keys to Starbucks are now back in Schultz’s pocket. He loves writing blog posts (and internal memos as seen today, in which he announced Starbucks is halting stock buybacks), and I suspect we will get a few of them (likely targeted at cooling the union movement) before he heads back off into retirement before the end of 2022 (assuming he doesn’t decide to stay on as CEO). I will offer this dose of advice to Howard. The most important thing you could do for the future of Starbucks is to spend the next three months on the road visiting Starbucks stores across the world and listening to what employees are going through right now. This in many respects is a different company than when you left in 2017, in large part because of the aftershocks of the pandemic but also due to missteps by Starbucks. So you must actually hear the workers and then implement a plan for the next decade from there — and it’s not just giving them a few extra dollars an hour, it’s also about total quality of life.
Secondarily, Starbucks has lost a lot of great executive talent in the last decade (see Walgreens new CEO Roz Brewer, a former top Starbucks exec). I wish you well Howard, you know how to reach me (just don’t cancel my free birthday drink for writing this please — I intend to use it today).
Miscellaneous: One part personally therapeutic, one part fun and informative for investors. That’s my hot takeaway from hopping on “The Business Essential” podcast hosted by Kartik Raghuram. Give it a listen on Spotify. (Yes, we talk about gas prices).
What pandemic? The WSJ reports that as of today, JPMorgan “planned to discontinue other measures such as mandatory testing for the unvaccinated or asking employees to report COVID-19 infections. It added that it would discontinue its policy of hiring only vaccinated individuals.”
OK then. As Julie Hyman and I talked about after the jobs report on Friday, it’s likely the strong upward revisions and 5.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} increase in wages puts the Fed in play for a 50 basis point rate hike at its May 3-4 meeting. “The case for 50, barring any negative surprise between now and the next meeting, has grown,” San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly told the FT.
10:00 a.m. ET: Factory orders, February (-0.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} expected, 1.4{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in January)
10:00 a.m. ET: Durable goods orders, February final (-2.2{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} expected, -2.2{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in prior print)
10:00 a.m. ET: Durable goods orders, excluding transportation, February final (-0.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} expected, -0.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in prior print)
10:00 a.m. ET: Non-defense capital goods orders, excluding aircraft, February final (-0.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in prior print)
10:00 a.m. ET: Non-defense capital goods shipments excluding aircraft (0.5{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in prior print)
Earnings
No notable reports scheduled for release
Politics
President Biden will appear alongside some big rigs at the White House at 1:45 p.m. ET to tout the administration’s plan for truckers and their work to strengthen supply chains . Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will appear alongside Biden.
The nomination of Supreme Court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is set to advance as the Judiciary Committee gathers at 10:00 a.m. ET to vote on her nomination. She is expected to receive a full Senate vote by the week’s end.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler will deliver keynote remarks at a symposium on “The Future of Crypto & Digital Assets” hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET
Top News
European markets mixed as EU prepares fresh Russia sanctions [Yahoo Finance UK]
Starbucks’ Schultz announces halt to stock repurchasing program as he returns [Reuters]
UK regulators to review LME halt to chaotic trading [Reuters]
Tesla unable to restart Shanghai production on Monday: Internal memo [Reuters]
Yahoo Finance Highlights
Supply chains: ‘Nearshoring’ could be the answer to America’s logistics problems, Deloitte exec says
Student loans: Mom slams Purdue ISA offering as son deals with nearly $100,000 in debt
NIL: Michigan basketball player explains how he built a lucrative TikTok empire
—
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
For most of its existence, the yield curve on US Treasuries — an upward-sloping line on a graph that describes the amount paid out by US government bonds — has been an extremely prosaic thing, of interest only to traders in financial markets. Very occasionally, however, it changes shape and when it does so it becomes of interest to everyone, because it is one of the things economists use to predict an impending recession.
The normal rule is that the investors who lend money to the US government (by buying the Treasury bonds) expect it to pay more to borrow for longer, just like a mortgage provider will typically offer a higher fixed rate on a ten-year mortgage than it will on a two-year mortgage. Very rarely, however, this rule will be flipped, as the near future becomes less predictable and so investors shy away from short-term debt — or gravitate to long-term debt — and the yield curve inverts.
That happened earlier this week, very briefly, for the first time since 2019.
On Tuesday (29 March) one of the most closely-watched yield curves, between two-year and ten-year Treasuries, inverted for a few moments. The amount that investors were asking the US government to pay in return for lending money to it over a ten-year period briefly fell below the amount they were asking of it to lend for two years, admittedly by a tiny amount: 0.03 basis points, a basis point being one hundredth of a percentage point. This brief, tiny change is nonetheless significant because it signifies investors’ confidence in the most consequential economic question: the ability of the world’s largest economy to pay its debts.
This particular yield curve (as opposed to the one between five-year and 30-year Treasuries, which has been inverted for some time) is also watched closely by economists because it has previously done a very good job of predicting recessions. One 2015 study found that 85 per cent of recessions over the past 158 years had happened after an inversion of the yield curve between two-year and ten-year Treasuries.
Other canaries are also chirping. The same study found that all but two of the 33 recessions since the late 1850s had happened after the Federal Reserve had hiked interest rates, and futures traders are predicting that over the next year the Fed will raise rates to 2.6 per cent, up from 0.33 per cent today, according to Reuters data. Meanwhile, economists at the US banking giant Wells Fargo have put the chances of a recession by the end of 2023 at about 30 per cent.
Content from our partners
Not everyone sees the inversion as a harbinger of economic doom, however. Adrian Lowery, an analyst at Bestinvest, points out that the inversion was “brief and narrow” and that the complex factors at play — the war in Ukraine, countries emerging from lockdown and high inflation — might be distorting the markets. “The usual rules might not apply,” he says. The question now is whether it will happen again, and for how long.
