Noting that she is "looking very closely at inflation," The Fed's Lael Brainard continued the recent trend of warnings from Fed speakers by noting "asset valuations do look a bit stretched," which seemed to take some of the exuberance out of stocks...
Brainard adds to the list of Fed worriers, as we detailed previously...
There's free-speech and there's Bezos-approved free-speech...
It seems the message is beginning to sink in that the constant liberal media attacks on Trump, 'the right', Russia, and anyone daring to not denigrate any of these - is not welcome among most Americans... (as WSJ noted this week)...
Skepticism toward the media is most often associated with conservatives in Middle America, some of whom eat something other than artisanal sandwiches.
Inflation outlook, rate differentials, projected growth, positioning, quants... there are countless explanations provided daily to explain why bonds trade the way they do. And yet, as Bank of America shows today, as of this moment just over 50% of the global bond market returns can be explained with just one thing: central bank balance sheet changes.
BofA explains:
One day after a mediocre, tailing 10Y reopening, the Treasury held its last Treasury auction for the week, selling $12 billion in 30Y bonds at a yield of 2.936%, above May's 2.87% and the highest since 3.050% in May, tailing the When Issued of 2.926% by 1 basis point. This was the 4th tailing 30Y auction in the past 5.
The internals were unremarkable: the bid-to-cover of 2.31 was virtually unchanged from last month's 2.32, but above the 6 month average of 2.27%. Total bids of $27.9b for $12.3b in bonds sold vs $27.8b in bids for $12.0b in bonds sold at the previous auction
Authored by Yves Smith via Naked Capitalism blog,
The war on cash is escalating. A big driver isn’t central banks who want to be able to inflict negative interest rates on savers, or Treasuries who see cash transactions as hiding revenues from their tax collectors, but the payment networks that want to kill cash (and checks!) as competitors to their oh so terrific (and fee-gouging) credit and debit cards.
However, one bit of good news is there doesn’t appear to be much enthusiasm on the buyer, as in merchant, end.