It's official; everyone is now musing about the risk of a Fed "policy mistake" in light of the steadily flattening yield curve in the U.S. I have mused incessantly about this topic in recent weeks, so I will spare you the gory details of my view. It seems clear, though, that if markets were willing to offer the FOMC a rate hike in June for free, they are not going to roll over in September, let alone play along with a potentially fourth hike in December. In other words; the Fed is now on the spot. A swoon in risk assets over the summer—it has been known to happen—coupled with a further decline in long term bond yields would set up an interesting end of the year for the Federales. I am sympathetic to idea of one last deep dive in long-term bond yields to cement the fate of the late-comers to this rally. After all, we can't really talk about a policy mistake at the Fed before we are staring down the barrel of an inversion.
Read MoreMarkets raised a lot of interesting questions last week, and most of them had nothing to do with the French presidential elections. The main talking points were the stumble in oil prices—and other industrial commodities—and the growing anxiety that the stop-go cycle in China is edging towards the former rather than the latter. The main question everyone is asking when the market breaks key levels is whether it is the beginning of a more prolonged move. I am no expert, but if pressed I think oil and commodities will snap back. The chart below shows trailing flows of the DBC commodity ETF, which have been depressed recently. This doesn't preclude a further rout, but it suggests that investors' positioning and sentiment don't favour it. This story is corroborated by CFTC data, which shows that spec positioning in oil have been reduced significantly. This doesn't look like a market which is being caught out complacently long as was the case last time oil was routed.
Read MoreThe sharp fall in oil prices was the most interesting market news last week. It sends a signal that investors are waking up the fact that the brittle OPEC output deal always was going to be challenged by U.S. producers restarting their drills as prices rose. I am no expert, but this does not come as a surprise to me. OPEC is an unstable alliance, and U.S. producers are governed by one thing and one thing only, price. Whatever detente exists in the global oil market, I am pretty sure that it is a fragile one. A significant leg lower in oil could be significant for a number of reasons. It could herald the speedy end of the "reflation trade," which would suit me well. But if it morphs into something more dramatic, we're back to the story of stress in energy high yield debt, default risks, and perhaps liquidity/fund closure risk in the broader corporate bond market. I am not sure that would suit the portfolio one bit.
Read MoreLast week was docile compared with the fun and games we were treated to earlier this month; no imminent Lehman moment at a major European bank and no flash crash in the GBP or other G4 currencies. Still, we had a number of interesting moves in the major asset classes and indices. The continued squeeze in yields probably was the stand-out move. Starting with the benchmark, the U.S. 10-year yield broke range and a move to 2% is starting to look like a good bet in my view. For once, it appears that can we apply relatively plain-vanilla macroeconomic narrative here. Inflation in the U.S.—and indeed globally—is nudging higher and the Fed intends to act accordingly. The slightly more cynical interpretation is that the Federales are desperate to get another hike in before the end of the year, but that underlying fundamentals haven't really changed that much.
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