• Home/
  • Fixed Income

David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Fixed Income

    Italy Leaders Whipsaw Markets With Vows of Defiance, Reassurance

    This article by Jerrold Colten and Kevin Costelloe for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    The coalition government’s fiscal plans have been an investor focus all summer, with bond yields pushed higher in response to the coalition government’s expensive election promises. On Friday, Fitch Ratings cited budget concerns as it changed its outlook on Italy to negative from stable -- the overall grade remains two notches above junk.

    Salvini said Monday afternoon that the budget would lower taxes and respect “all the rules,” toning down his earlier rhetoric challenging the European Union’s restrictions. The Italian 10-year bond immediately rose, sending yields down about 5 basis points to 3.18 percent. That compares with 2.7 percent on June 1 when the government was sworn in.

    Finance Minister Giovanni Tria is fighting to contain public spending and he said in an interview with La Repubblica that bonds will rise further when investors see the details of the 2019 budget.

    “Budget stability will be respected,” he said. Tria, an economics professor drafted at a late stage of the coalition negotiations, is trying to rein in the ambitions of Salvini and Luigi Di Maio of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, though he lacks the political muscle of the two populist party leaders. The government is due to set new public- finance and economic-growth targets by Sept. 27 and submit a draft budget to the European Commission by Oct. 15.

    Read entire article

    Morning Tack "Leon Tuey Speaks!"

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Raymond James which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Atlanta Fed Chief Pledges to Oppose Hike Inverting Yield Curve

    This article by Steve Matthews for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Investors see a 90 percent probability of a rate hike at the Fed’s meeting next month and around a 60 percent chance of a fourth move when officials gather in December, according to prices in interest-rate futures markets. As the view that the Fed will keep raising rates has grown, the yield curve has flattened, with short-term yields rising more than long-term ones.

    Bostic, together with several other regional Fed chiefs including St. Louis’s James Bullard, Robert Kaplan in Dallas and Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari, have used this year’s flattening curve to argue that the central bank should tread warily in raising rates all that much further to avoid an inversion.

    History is on their side: Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has always tumbled into recession within a year or two of the curve flipping.

    “There are many, many signals in the economy and we have to pay attention to all of them,’’ Bostic said. “This yield curve will be one.’’

    Read entire article

    Stock Bulls Often Return When Emerging Markets Get This Cheap

    This article by Srinivasan Sivabalan for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here it is in full:

    When emerging-market stocks trade this cheap relative to U.S. equities, a rebound is normally in order.

    The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has traded at a discount to the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index since 2006, but for the past five years its relative valuation has held within a range, with its price-earnings ratio fluctuating between 25 percent below the U.S. gauge at the best of times and 33 percent during the worst.

    The index, the benchmark gauge of developing-nation equities, typically bounces back in a matter of weeks once it reaches the floor. That was certainly the case on three previous occasions: at the height of the Russian currency crisis in 2014; in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s December 2015 decision to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade; and at the end of the technology sell-off last year.

    The index closed at a valuation ratio of 66.37 percent on Friday, or a discount of 33.63 percent to U.S. stocks based on price-to-estimated earnings. On Monday, it rallied 1 percent, the best one-day gain in six weeks.

    Still, past rebounds are no guarantee of future performance and the environment remains fragile for emerging markets.

    Investors can’t know how ugly the U.S. trade war might get, how deeply Fed interest-rate increases will affect developing-nation currencies or where the next political shock will come from.

    But for those convinced of the investment case for emerging markets and willing to wait for the right valuation to resume buying, this could be the moment. Stocks are as cheap now as at any time in the past five years.

    Read entire article

    China Builders Tap Local Bonds at Record-Low Rates on Easing

    This article for Bloomberg News may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Combined bond maturities in onshore and offshore markets for the sector amount to $76.5 billion through the end of 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Builders are expected to tap both markets to meet the refinancing needs.

    "We expect onshore issuance will remain strong after a pick-up in recent months," said Franco Leung, property analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. "Offshore issuance slowed recently, but we expect issuers will continue to tap the offshore bond market given the maturity walls in the coming 6 to 12 months.”

    Read entire article

    A dangerous bubble in corporate debt

    Thanks to a subscriber for this article from the New York Times which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    To help pay for its recently completed $8 billion buyout of the margarine and spreads business of Unilever — since renamed Flora Food Group — KKR, the private equity firm, offered investors 1.1 billion euros (about $1.3 billion) of senior notes with a minimal covenant package. Moody’s rated it 4.99 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the weakest. Nevertheless, investors gobbled them up.

    Or consider the mighty AT&T — now stuffed to the gills with an estimated $180 billion in debt following its $85 billion acquisition of TimeWarner. It is, according to Moody’s, the “most indebted, nongovernment controlled, nonfinancial rated corporate issuer” and one now “beholden to the health of the capital markets.” In other words, the company is so indebted that chances are high it will need continuing access to the credit markets to refinance and pay back its mountain of debt as it becomes due.

    So-called junk bonds — issued by companies with poor credit ratings — historically have yielded around 10 percent or more, to compensate investors for taking the risk of buying the debt of such companies. These days, junk bonds yield around 6.25 percent, meaning that investors — still desperate for yield — have overpaid for these bonds sufficiently to drive down their effective yields to levels that fail to compensate them for the risks they are taking.

    When junk bond yields return to more normal levels, as interest rates rise and investors’ yield-fever breaks, the price of the bonds bought during the feeding frenzy will fall and billions of dollars stand to be lost — by endowments, pension funds and high-yield funds, among others — as bonds across the board are repriced by the market.

    Read entire article

    ECB Must Shield Periphery From Speculation, Italy's Borghi Says

    This article by Lorenzo Totaro for Bloomberg highlights some of the anxieties the Eurozone’s periphery are experienced as the ECB’s bond purchase program winds down. Here is a section:

    With investors turning against Turkey, the government in Rome is trying to avoid Italy being next in line. Italy has had contacts with the ECB to discuss the risk of a speculative attack on its debt, a person familiar with the situation said earlier on Monday.

    Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio sought to tamp down concerns of a selloff. “I don’t see a real risk that this government will be attacked, it’s more a wish of the opposition,” Di Maio said in an interview with newspaper Corriere della Sera.

    “All know the fence that protects the prey will soon be lifted and the financial speculation easily sees the periphery’s debt as an easy target and is positioning itself ahead of the next developments,” lawmaker Borghi said. "It is significant that an external event like Turkey that has nothing to do with Italy unleashes such an effect.”

    Read entire article

    Australia Holds Key Rate as Central Bank Sounds Caution on China

    This note by Micheal Heath for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here it is in full:  

    The RBA has kept rates low in expectation the stance will gradually tighten the labor market and spur wage gains sufficiently to drive faster inflation. But outside strong economic growth and increased demand for construction workers amid an infrastructure boom, there are few signs of this emerging.

    “The bank’s central forecast for the Australian economy remains unchanged,” Lowe said. “GDP growth is expected to average a bit above 3 percent in 2018 and 2019. This should see some further reduction in spare capacity.”

    The RBA maintains its next move is more likely to be up than down; Lowe, since taking the helm in September 2016, has consistently said that an increase will only come once the economy is near full employment and inflation closer to the central bank’s 2-3 percent target midpoint. Markets aren’t pricing in a rate increase for at least another year, according to bets by swaps traders.

    Read entire article

    Jeffrey Gundlach Says We're Getting Closer to a Recession

    Thanks to a subscriber for this interview of Jeff Gundlach which appeared in Barron’s and may be of interest. Here is a section:

    We are getting closer to a recession. When the curve goes flat from the two-year Treasury to the 10-year [meaning that the yields are identical], the recession risk is at least a year away. Recently, that spread was 28 basis points [hundredths of a percentage point], which is pretty close to being flat. It is flashing yellow. It needs to be respected. The other reason to think 2019 might be more problematic is that quantitative tightening has just started. The Fed has started to let bonds roll off its balance sheet [the central bank isn’t buying new bonds when many current holdings mature]. Several billion dollars of bonds per month are coming due, but by October the amount will be up to $50 billion per month.

    At the same time, the Fed has said it intends to keep raising interest rates, probably twice more this year. That, together with the signal from the yield curve and perhaps $600 billion of quantitative tightening, and a budget deficit that is growing, is an issue. The strangest thing is that Congress passed a $280 billion tax cut and spending increases so late in the cycle, and with interest rates rising. It’s like a death wish. The U.S. is taking on hundreds of billions of dollars of debt while raising rates, which means our debt-service payments are going to be under serious pressure to the upside.

    Read entire article