It started when Trump hinted that
The capital gains tax was at
A rate much too high
And cuts were close by
His words, thus, a rally begat

Then Germany joined in the fray
As data from their ZEW survey
Exploded much higher
Now stocks are on fire
While havens have faded away

It used to be that you could determine the nature of a nation’s government by their response time to major events. So, autocratic nations were able to respond extremely quickly to negative events because a single man (and it was always a man) made the decisions and those who didn’t follow orders found themselves removed from the situation. Conscientious objection was not a viable alternative. Meanwhile, democratically elected governments always took more time to react because the inherent nature of democratic debate was slow and messy, with everyone needing to make their case, and then a majority formed to move forward.

This broad view of government decision-making was generally true for as long as economies were based on the production of real goods and services. However, that economic model has been essentially retired and replaced by the new concept of financialization. This is the process by which private actors recognize there is more value to be obtained (and with less risk!) if they spend their time and effort re-engineering their balance sheet rather than investing in their underlying business.

The upshot of the financialization of economies is that government response times to crises have been shortened remarkably. (It is important to understand that in this context, central banks, despite their “independence”, are part of the government). So, now even democratically elected governments can respond with alacrity to ongoing crises. This begs the question of whether democratically elected governments have become more autocratic (lockdowns anyone?), or whether this is simply the natural evolution of the democratic process when combined with media tools like Facebook and Twitter, where responses can be formulated and disseminated in minutes.

At any rate, the key observation is that government officials everywhere have taken the combination of financialization and high-speed response quite seriously, and we now get policies floated and implemented in a fraction of the time it used to take. The main reason this can be done is because policies that address financial questions are much easier to implement than policies that address production bottlenecks. After all, it is a lot easier for the Fed to decide to buy Fallen Angels than it is for 535 people, many of whom hate each other, to agree on a package of policies that might help support small businesses and shop owners.

This has been a build-up to help understand the key theme today: risk is back!! Or perhaps, the proper statement is risk-on is back. Last evening, President Trump floated the idea that a capital gains tax cut was just the remedy to help the US economy get back on its feet. But the reality is that the only thing a capital gains tax cut will accomplish is to help boost the stock market further. After all, the S&P 500, after yesterday’s modest 0.3% rally, is still 1.0% below its all-time high. Such lagging performance cannot be tolerated apparently, hence the genesis of this idea. But it was enough to achieve its goal, a further boost in equity markets worldwide.

A quick look at markets overnight shows the Nikkei (+1.9%) and Hang Seng (+2.1%) followed the bullish sentiment, although surprisingly, Shanghai (-1.1%) could not hold onto early gains. Even with that decline, the Shanghai Composite is up more than 5% in the past two weeks, hardly a true laggard. Meanwhile, Europe has really taken the bit in its teeth and is flying this morning, getting a good start from the Asian movement and then responding extremely positively to the German ZEW survey results where the Expectations component printed at 71.5, its highest level since December 2003. So, despite the growth in Covid cases in Germany, the business community is looking forward to robust times in the near future. This was all equity traders and investors needed to see to get going and virtually every European bourse is higher by more than 2.2% this morning. Of course, it would not be a successful outcome if US markets didn’t rise as well, and futures this morning are all green, pointing to between 0.5% (NASDAQ) and 1.0% (DJIA) gains on the opening.

Naturally, the risk on environment has resulted in Treasury bond sales. After all, there is no need to own something as pedantic as a bond when not only are stocks available, but the tax rate on your gains is going to be reduced! And so, 10-year Treasury yields have risen 3bps this morning, and are back at 0.60%, 10bps higher than the new lows seen just one week ago today. And that price behavior is common amongst all European government bond markets, with German bund yields higher by 3.3bps and UK gilts nearly 4bps higher.

But the biggest victim of this move has clearly been gold, which has tumbled 2% this morning and is back below $2000/oz for the first time in a week. There is no question that precious metals markets have been getting a bit frothy, so this pullback is likely simple profit taking and not a change in any trend.

Finally, as we turn to the dollar, the risk-on attitude is playing out in its traditional fashion this morning, with the buck falling against 9 of its G10 counterparts with only the yen weaker versus the dollar. NOK (+0.8%) is the big gainer, rallying on the back of the ongoing rally in oil prices (WTI +2.5%), but we are seeing solid gains of roughly 0.4% across most of the rest of the bloc. The one laggard, aside form JPY (-0.14%), is the pound where the UK released employment data today that simply demonstrated how difficult things are there. This seems to have held the pound back as it is only higher by 0.2% this morning.

In the EMG space, RUB and ZAR (both +0.8%) are the leaders with the former clearly an oil beneficiary, while the latter, despite gold’s decline, has been the beneficiary of the hunt for yield as South Africa continues to have amongst the highest real yields in the world. But pretty much the whole bloc is in the green today as the simple concept of risk-on is the driver.

On the data front, the NFIB Small Business Index disappointed at 98.8, a clear indication that a capital gains tax cut does not seem to be the best solution for the economy. At 8:30 we get PPI (exp -0.7% Y/Y, +0.1% Y/Y core) but not only is this data backwards looking, the Fed has basically told us they don’t care about inflation at all anymore. We also hear from two Fed speakers, Barkin and Daly, but again, there is very little new that is likely to come from their comments.

Today is a risk-on day and after a brief consolidation, the dollar feels like it has further room to decline. Versus the euro, I imagine a test of 1.20 is coming soon, but it is not clear to me how much further we can go from there. As such, for receivables hedgers, adding a little to the mix at current levels is likely to be a good strategy.

Good luck and stay safe
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