Thursday, September 30, 2021
Bitcoin rises 5.2% to $43,717
from Forex News https://www.investing.com/news/forex-news/bitcoin-rises-52-to-43717-2631712
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Dollar to End Month Near One-Year Highs as Yields Flourish in September
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New money: Central banks lay out operating manual for digital cash
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US GDP, Weekly Claims & US Open – LIVE
It’s been a week, month and even Quarter dominated by the rally in Yields and the spectre of inflation, onto the Central Banks tilting more towards hawks as tapering time frames and even rate rises were on the agenda.
Click here to access our Economic Calendar
Disclaimer: This material is provided as a general marketing communication for information purposes only and does not constitute an independent investment research. Nothing in this communication contains, or should be considered as containing, an investment advice or an investment recommendation or a solicitation for the purpose of buying or selling of any financial instrument. All information provided is gathered from reputable sources and any information containing an indication of past performance is not a guarantee or reliable indicator of future performance. Users acknowledge that any investment in Leveraged Products is characterized by a certain degree of uncertainty and that any investment of this nature involves a high level of risk for which the users are solely responsible and liable. We assume no liability for any loss arising from any investment made based on the information provided in this communication. This communication must not be reproduced or further distributed without our prior written permission.
from HF Analysis /274663/
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What is the US “debt ceiling” and what happens if it is not raised?
Somewhat unusually, the US government has a self-imposed legal limit on the amount of money it can borrow to fund itself. This is called the “debt ceiling”. If it looks like the government needs to spend more than this limit, then that must be authorised in Congress. If Congress fails to authorise a new limit, the government must stop spending money. All activity funded by the federal government comes to a sudden halt.
In less polarised times, a rise would usually be approved with little fuss. But for the last decade or so, the debt ceiling has been used as a political weapon, with opposition politicians happy to use the threat of a government shutdown to further their own aims, score political points, or just cause trouble.
The House of Representatives – the lower chamber of the US government – has already passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling. But it must now pass a vote in the Senate, where the Democratic Party has 50 of the 100 seats, plus the vice president’s vote. To pass, however, the bill needs 60 votes.
An attempt to pass the bill on Monday failed to get enough votes in the Senate. A second attempt on Tuesday also failed. And Republicans have also blocked a way for the Democrats to raise the ceiling alone. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell blocked a motion by Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, that would have allowed an increase with a simple majority vote.
Why is the debt ceiling so important?
The federal government is heavily reliant on debt. More often than not, it spends more than it earns from taxation. To cover the shortfall, the government borrows. Sounds simple. But the US breached that limit on 1 August, prompting the Treasury to take some “extraordinary measures.”
But even those extraordinary measures are not permanent, and at some point the government will run out of money. The Treasury estimates that date to be 18 October because “at that point, we expect the Treasury would be left with very limited resources that would be depleted quickly,” US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders this week.
Raising the debt ceiling is important, as it makes it less likely the US will plunge into recession or default on its debt. The world’s largest economy defaulting on its debt would be a terrifying concept that would hit global financial markets hard. Such a default would probably send the dollar tumbling. Spending on many critical programmes would come to a halt.
What is the latest position?
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell insists that Republicans will not support raising the limit. This is similar to what happened in 2011 between Republicans and the Obama administration. The spat back then eventually prompted the US’ credit rating to be downgraded for the first time.
While arguments over debt ceilings are common, it’s a bit more surprising that it is happening this year as the pandemic has meant the US government pouring billions more dollars into the economy than it normally would. US Federal debt is currently at about $28.43trn, higher than the current debt ceiling of $28.4trn.
The Republicans are opposed to raising the ceiling as they believe it will pave the way for Democrats to pass their $3.5trn Build Back Better spending package.
Can the Democrats still raise the debt ceiling alone?
Biden can technically still raise the ceiling alone, albeit through drastic means. Democrats could use the budget reconciliation process to foster a majority vote in the Senate. Biden’s $1.9trn stimulus package was passed in this manner earlier this year.
And according to David Super, Georgetown University’s law professor, the best solution may be to just eliminate the debt ceiling entirely. “The Congressional Budget Act gives Democrats the chance to do a stand-alone reconciliation bill on the debt limit if they want,” he told the Washington Post.
So, the Democrats could form a reconciliation bill and create another bill that cancels the debt limit. But these options are a last resort for the Biden administration.
Has the US defaulted before?
The US government has defaulted on its debt before. As Forbes points out, the US defaulted on some Treasury bills in 1979.
The default was temporary though, as the Treasury did eventually pay the investors after a short delay. A default by the US government in current times is almost certainly going to leave much longer lasting damage.
What effect will a further delay or default have on the markets?
A default by the US government would send shockwaves across the world.
As Beth Ann Bovino, chief US economist at S&P Global Ratings, points out: “The impact of a default by the US government on its debts would be worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, devastating markets and the economy.”
Such a collapse would also hit the US bond market which until now has been seen as the ultimate safe haven.
And not even the US Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, thinks the economy can weather such a scenario. John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said it could lead to an “extreme kind of reaction in markets”.
And according to Moody’s Analytics, gridlocked discussions regarding the debt ceiling could take six million jobs out of the economy, cause the unemployment rate to climb from 5% to 9% and cause the stockmarket to lose a third of its value.
If you are an investor, the best thing you can do is to not panic. It is likely that the US government will come to some sort of agreement, albeit with a delay. After all, nobody actually wants the world’s largest economy to default.
from Moneyweek RSS Feed https://moneyweek.com/economy/us-economy/603926/what-is-the-us-debt-ceiling-and-what-happens-if-it-is-not-raised
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Rising bond yields are unnerving markets and it could get worse before it gets better
A quick reminder before we get started this morning –don’t miss our webinar on Wednesday 20 October with BlackRock Smaller Companies trust.
I’ll be talking to manager Roland Arnold about his views on the outlook for the UK’s smaller companies against the current turbulent backdrop. Don’t miss it – register free here, and you’ll be able to watch it later even if you can’t tune in on the day.
Markets have been jittery over the past month. We haven’t seen a crash – or anything like a crash – but the relentless rise of the S&P 500, for example, has taken a bit of a knock. It last hit a new high on 6 September, and it’s been drifting lower since.
The best word for asset markets as a whole is probably “unsettled”. So what’s going on?
What’s rattling markets?
The pound has tanked in recent days. Energy prices are rocketing – oil hitting new eight-year highs, natural gas going through the roof. Gold is having a dreary time of it.
Equity markets are mixed – the FTSE 100 likes weak sterling and strong oil, so it’s doing better than most, but both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are struggling to regain their momentum, while Japan’s Nikkei is also wobbling around the 30,000 mark.
And then of course, there’s the big boss market of them all – the US Treasury market. US government bonds have been falling in price, which means yields have been going up.
As Dominic noted yesterday, this is not an easy environment for an investor to navigate. But what lies at the heart of this present discombobulation? I want to try to pick it apart a bit today.
Unless you’re a short-term trader, you really don’t need to worry about the odd bit of market quicksand. But it is helpful to wrap your head around the long-term trends so that you can work out if you need to make more significant adjustments to your asset allocation.
The big picture issue is straightforward: investors have grown used to trading in markets which are underpinned by the presence of central bankers who are willing and able to buy government bonds – the foundation assets on which all else rests – at whatever price is on offer.
This has suppressed volatility, and it has helped to keep interest rates low.
The one big risk to this comfy world is, and always has been, the return of inflation. If the outside world is disinflationary or even deflationary, then central banks can print what they like. You’ll create lots of distortions – rampant wealth inequality for one – and what Austrian-School economists would describe as “malinvestment”, but you won’t breach your inflation target. And that matters, because it means you can keep going with the money printing and the volatility suppression.
The problem now is that inflation is returning, and it’s returning fast. It’s already gone beyond the early definitions of “transitory”. Transitory no longer defines a specific time period so much as a specific type of inflation.
As long as soaring costs don’t get passed into the wider economy (mainly via ingrained wage rises), central bankers hope that supply chains will eventually fix themselves and that, in the meantime, they can wait it out.
But it’s clear that they are nervous about all this. The word “transitory” remains, but the more they say it, the greater the sense that they are just whistling past the economic graveyard.
This is why you are seeing central bankers still saying “transitory” even as they’re becoming steadily more hawkish at the edges. And the market doesn’t like that.
Bond yields could spike higher
One of the most obvious reflections of this is the rise in bond yields. The US ten-year bond has gone up from 1.3% to 1.5% in the last two weeks. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s been quite a fast move, and when you have as much debt to roll over as the US does, every basis point (that is, 0.01%) counts.
This in turn is driving the US dollar higher (which, incidentally, is the more significant reason for the pound’s weakness – there are two sides to every forex trade, remember?)
It’s a very clear response to the fear that the Federal Reserve is going to start cutting back on the amount of quantitative easing (QE) it does (“tapering”).
Mohammed El-Erian, a man who presumably understands his bond markets, given that he was high up at bond fund giant Pimco for a long time, wrote about this in the FT yesterday.
The danger, he says, is that we might see “yields suddenly ‘gapping’ upwards given that we are starting with a combination of very low yields and extremely one-sided market positioning.”
Unfortunately, El-Erian doesn’t really have much to offer (in this piece at least) beyond diagnosing the problem. In effect, markets might have another taper tantrum.
So what would that mean? Central banks – the Fed specifically – will want any transition to go smoothly. This is why Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, has been at pains to emphasise that the taper is entirely separate to interest rate rises. He’s pitching it more as a way to unwind emergency support, rather than as a runway towards higher rates.
You can see why Powell might think this. Ironically enough, past doses of quantitative easing (QE) have in fact pushed bond yields higher, and they’ve fallen as QE has ended. However, I wonder if that environment has now changed. Back then, markets feared deflation. So when QE ended, they acted as though the economy was going to collapse and piled into the perceived safety of Treasuries.
However, if markets are getting worried about inflation – and they seem to be – then the risk is that QE is now suppressing rather than underpinning yields. In other words, the only thing stopping markets from pricing more inflation into the bond markets is the Fed’s presence.
What does it all mean? Well, I still suspect that when push comes to shove, financial repression will be the order of the day. Regardless of what happens with inflation, global bond markets simply cannot be allowed to reprice to more “normal” levels because that would literally bankrupt most nations.
There’s an interesting quote from Powell, speaking at a virtual conference of central bankers yesterday hosted by the European Central Bank. Powell was asked at one point whether the US had “overdone” it with public spending and monetary policy during the covid pandemic.
Here’s how he replied: “I think the historical record is thick with examples of undergoing it, and pretty much in every cycle, we just tend to underestimate the damage and underestimate the need for a response. I think we’ve avoided that this time.”
That’s very telling. I think it demonstrates where the central bank mindset is these days. We might be going through a wobble right now, but when push comes to shove, the instinct will be to step in.
We’ll probably need another market spasm before that. Maybe we’ll get one in October, as is traditional.
Anyway – if you haven’t already subscribed to MoneyWeek magazine, now’s probably a good time to do so.
from Moneyweek RSS Feed https://moneyweek.com/investments/bonds/government-bonds/603925/rising-bond-yields-are-unnerving-markets
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Market Spotlight: Trading US Unemployment Claims
from Tickmill Expert Blog - Forex Traders Blog https://www.tickmill.com/blog/market-spotlight-trading-us-unemployment-claims"
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GBP Falls As BOE Pushes Back Growth Forecasts
from Tickmill Expert Blog - Forex Traders Blog https://www.tickmill.com/blog/gbp-falls-as-boe-pushes-back-growth-forecasts"
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Sterling remains pressured even as GDP bounces
GBPUSD, H1
UK GDP revised sharply higher in the final reading. The quarterly growth rate was boosted to 5.5% from 4.8% previously, which left the annual rate at 23.6% y/y. The annual comparison is of course distorted by virus developments, but nevertheless the numbers look positive, and while the breakdown showed that government consumption accounted for a part of the revision, the external balance also looked more healthy, with exports rising 6.2% q/q and imports a mere 2.4% q/q.
The picture will likely be different in the third quarter and in particular the fourth, as national delivery problems and the phasing out of the furlough scheme and temporary benefit payments today will weigh on consumption going forward. Against that background, the Q2 GDP reading looks pretty much outdated and won’t change the BoE outlook. Governor Bailey may have signalled that rate could rise even as asset purchases continue, he is likely to wait until next year before actually moving even if inflation looks high.
Cable, after two consecutive significant daily falls and with the pair printing new 2021 lows and testing 1.3400, the recovery continues to be capped by the 21-hour EMA, and trades at 1.3436. The MACD signal line is showing signs of life, but it did that yesterday too, RSI remains weak at 39.40. EURGBP holds for a third day over 0.8600 and trades at 0.8635, even GBPJPY, with a Yen under pressure – trades at 150.25, over 230 pips below Tuesday’s high.
Click here to access our Economic Calendar
Stuart Cowell
Head Market Analyst
Disclaimer: This material is provided as a general marketing communication for information purposes only and does not constitute an independent investment research. Nothing in this communication contains, or should be considered as containing, an investment advice or an investment recommendation or a solicitation for the purpose of buying or selling of any financial instrument. All information provided is gathered from reputable sources and any information containing an indication of past performance is not a guarantee or reliable indicator of future performance. Users acknowledge that any investment in Leveraged Products is characterized by a certain degree of uncertainty and that any investment of this nature involves a high level of risk for which the users are solely responsible and liable. We assume no liability for any loss arising from any investment made based on the information provided in this communication. This communication must not be reproduced or further distributed without our prior written permission.
from HF Analysis /274644/
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The Crude Chronicles - Episode 108
from Tickmill Expert Blog - Forex Traders Blog https://www.tickmill.com/blog/the-crude-chronicles-episode-108"
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Myanmar military blames economic situation on COVID-19 waves
from Forex News https://www.investing.com/news/forex-news/myanmar-military-blames-economic-situation-on-covid19-waves-2630659
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USDJPY is close to a pivot, potential for bounce
from Tickmill Expert Blog - Forex Traders Blog https://www.tickmill.com/blog/usdjpy-is-close-to-a-pivot-potential-for-bounce"
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Investment Bank Outlook 30-09-2021
from Tickmill Expert Blog - Forex Traders Blog https://www.tickmill.com/blog/investment-bank-outlook-30-09-2021"
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Market Update – September 30 – Inflation remains a major issue!
Market News
- Global central bank officials stuck to cautious optimism at the ECB conference on central banking and data releases overnight were mixed. – Lagarde stressed the “reopening of the economy”.
- Traders are still cautious, while keeping a weary eye on US budget talks, as a deadline to keep running is approaching amid last minute political wrangling in Washington.
- China PMI readings mixed – manufacturing PMI unexpected signalled contraction, while the Caixin PMI came in stronger. Japan production as well as retail sales disappointed, while Australia building permits jumped. UK GDP revised sharply higher in the final reading.
- Yields steadied (US 10-year rate stymied the drop in rates at 1.51%).
- Equities supported by the drop in Treasury yields which enticed buyers back into equities, especially with beliefs the recent declines were overdone. JPN225 down -0.1%, USA500 outperforming at 4398, USA100 slipped -0.24%.
- USOil steadied at the mid of $74 mark.
- “A combination of higher U.S. yields, impending Fed tapering and skittish markets around the debt ceiling have fuelled this move (in the dollar),” as Westpac analysts wrote.
- FX markets – Strong USD, while GBP and EUR selling off sharply yesterday – USDJPY – 112.00, Cable 1.3409, EURUSD 1.1588.
Today – Today’s data calendar is pretty busy and includes German labour market data and the preliminary inflation report for Germany, but key will be the US GDP and PCE number.
Biggest mover as of 07:45 GMT – USDJPY (+0.48%) Reached 112 for the first time since January 2020. Eventhough the overall outlook turned positive, intraday consolidation prevails as fast MAs flattened along with RSI and a bearish crossed formed by Stochastic. MACD lines however sustains positive bias. ATR (H1) at 0.085 and ATR (D) at 0.583.
Click here to access our Economic Calendar
Andria Pichidi
Market Analyst
Disclaimer: This material is provided as a general marketing communication for information purposes only and does not constitute an independent investment research. Nothing in this communication contains, or should be considered as containing, an investment advice or an investment recommendation or a solicitation for the purpose of buying or selling of any financial instrument. All information provided is gathered from reputable sources and any information containing an indication of past performance is not a guarantee or reliable indicator of future performance. Users acknowledge that any investment in Leveraged Products is characterized by a certain degree of uncertainty and that any investment of this nature involves a high level of risk for which the users are solely responsible and liable. We assume no liability for any loss arising from any investment made based on the information provided in this communication. This communication must not be reproduced or further distributed without our prior written permission.
from HF Analysis /274623/
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