Risk takers are not out dancing on the Wall Street this week before the Federal Reserve (Fed) President Powell’s semiannual congressional testimony scheduled for today and tomorrow. Equities are down, oil is down, sovereign bonds are up. And the rally in equities versus a selloff in sovereign bonds is a pattern that we have been seeing since the rebound following the mini banking crisis, and the correlation between stocks and sovereign bonds are reestablished, again, after last year’s visit to the positive territory. This – the return of negative equity-bond correlation – is what we expected to happen this year, but for the exact opposite reason. We were expecting the sovereign bonds to recover, as the US was supposed to be in recession by now, whereas the sovereign bonds were supposed to find buyers as a result of softening, and even reversing Fed policy. But none of it happened. Equities rallied, the Fed became more aggressive on tightening its monetary policy, and now the American housing market starts printing surprisingly positive data, with housing starts and building permits flashing strong figures for May, defying the rising mortgage rates in the US due to the rising Fed rates. I mean housing starts jumped more than 20% in May, but loans for residential real estate slumped. We no longer know what to do with this data, and that’s a cause for concern per se… not understanding the data.
What we know and understand very well, however, is, a strong housing market and tight jobs market will encourage Fed to hike more, and encourage other central banks to do more, as well. But not everyone is as lucky as Powell, because in Britain, the skyrocketing mortgage rates are turning into a serious headache that no one can solve for now. The UK home-loan approvals have been dropping after a post-pandemic peak, the refinancing costs took a lift, and political dispute is gaining momentum with Liberal Democrats asking for a £3 billion mortgage protection package to help people keep their homes, and their mortgages, while Jeremy Hunt says there is no money in the coffers for such fiscal support. The 2-year gilt yield slid below 5% yesterday, as a result of a broad-based flight to safer sovereign bonds, but the relief will likely remain short-lived and the outlook for Gilt market will likely remain negative with further, and significant rate hikes seen on the BoE’s horizon. Released this morning, the British inflation was expected to ease from 8.7% to 8.4% but did not ease… while core inflation unexpectedly jumped past the 7% mark again. These numbers warn that inflationary pressures in the UK are not under control and call for further rate hikes which will further squeeze the British households, without a guarantee of easing inflation. We will see what the BoE will do and say tomorrow, but we know that they now have a few doubts regarding the reliability of their inflation model which was pointing at a steep fall in H2 this year – a scenario that is unlikely to happen. Cable jumped past the 1.28 mark following the inflation data, then rapidly fell back to the pre-data levels. The short-term direction will depend on a broad US dollar appetite, yet the medium-term outlook for the pound-dollar remains positive on the back of more hawkish BoE expectations, compared to the Fed’s, and an advance toward the 1.30 is well possible, especially if the dollar appetite remains soft.
In the US, profit taking and flight to safety before Powell’s testimony sent the S&P500 and Nasdaq stocks lower yesterday. The S&P500 slipped below the 4400 mark, while Nasdaq 100 tipped a toe below the 15000 mark but closed above this level.
The US dollar index traded higher for the 3rd session and is now testing the 50-DMA to the upside, while gold pushed below the 100-DMA as rising US yields and stronger dollar weigh on appetite for non-interest-bearing gold.
Yet, any hawkishness from Powell’s testimony will likely be tempered by counter-expectation that the Fed may be going too fast too far, and could stop hiking before materializing the two rate hikes they revealed last week in their dot plot. It’s true that the surprising data on housing and jobs front don’t give a respite to the Fed, but a part of it is still believed to be the post-pandemic effect. For housing for example, insufficient number of homes due to the rising WFH demand, the retreat in material costs that exploded during the pandemic and the fading supply chain pressures help to explain why the market is not responding to the skyrocketing mortgage rates. But the risk is there – it’s not even hidden, and the meltdowns tend to happen without telling. I mean, no one could tell that the US regional banks would go bankrupt a week before they did! Anyway, the risks are there, but the resilient eco data hints that Jerome Powell will confidently remain hawkish, and that could lead to some further downside correction in US big stocks which are now in overbought market.
