Tag Archives: #impeachment

Hawks Must Beware

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The BOE finally sees
That Brexit may not be a breeze
So hawks must beware
As rates they may pare
For doves, though, this act’s sure to please

Two stories from the UK are driving the narrative forward this morning, at least the narrative about the dollar continuing to strengthen. The first, and most impactful, were comments from BOE member, Michael Saunders, who prior to this morning’s speech was seen as one of the more hawkish members of the MPC. However, he explained that regardless of the Brexit outcome, the continuing slowdown in the UK, may require the BOE to cut rates soon. The UK economy has been under considerable pressure for some time and the data shows no signs of reversing. The market has been pricing in a rate cut for a while, although BOE rhetoric, especially from Governor Carney, worked hard to keep the idea of the next move being a rate hike. But no more. If Saunders is in the cutting camp, you can bet that we will see action at the November meeting, even if there is another Brexit postponement.

And speaking of Brexit postponements, Boris won a court victory in Northern Ireland where a lawsuit had been filed claiming a no-deal Brexit was a breach of the Good Friday accords that brought peace to the country. However, the court ruled it was no such thing, rather it was simply a political act. The upshot is this was seen as a further potential step toward a no-deal outcome, adding to the pound’s woes. In the meantime, Johnson’s government is still at odds with Parliament, and is in the midst of another round of talks with the EU to try to get a deal. It seems the odds of that deal are shrinking, although I continue to believe that the EU will blink. The next five weeks will be extremely interesting.

At any rate, once Saunders’ comments hit the tape, the pound quickly fell 0.5%, although it has since regained a bit of that ground. However, it is now trading below 1.23, its weakest level in two weeks, and as more and more investors and traders reintegrate a hard Brexit into their views, you can look for this decline to continue.

Of course, the other big story is the ongoing impeachment exercise in Congress which has caused further uncertainty in markets. As always, it is extremely difficult to trade a political event, especially one without a specific date attached like a vote. As such, it is difficult to even offer an opinion here. Broadly, in the event President Trump was actually removed from office, I expect the initial move would be risk-off but based on the only other impeachment exercise in recent memory, that of President Clinton in 1998, it took an awful long time to get through the process.

Turning to the data, growth in the Eurozone continues to go missing as evidenced by this morning’s confidence data. Economic Confidence fell to its lowest level in four years while the Business Climate and Industrial Confidence both fell more sharply than expected as well. We continue to see a lack of inflationary impulse in France (CPI 1.1%) and weakness remains the predominant theme. While the euro traded lower earlier in the session, it is actually 0.1% higher as I type. However, remember that the single currency has fallen more than 4.4% since the end of June and nearly 2.0% in the past two weeks alone. With the weekend upon us, it is no surprise that short term positions are being pared.

Overall, the dollar is having a mixed session. The yen and pound are vying for worst G10 performers, but the movement remains fairly muted. It seems the yen is benefitting from today’s risk-on feeling, which was just boosted by news that a cease-fire in Yemen is now backed by the Saudis. It is no surprise that oil is lower on the news, with WTI down 1.1%, and equity market have also embraced the news, extending early gains. On the other side of the coin, the mild risk-on flavor has helped the rest of the bunch.

In the EMG space it is also a mixed picture with ZAR suffering the most, -0.35%, as concerns grow over the government’s plans to increase growth. Meanwhile, overnight we saw strength in both PHP and INR (0.45% each) after the Philippine central bank cut rates and followed with a reserve ratio cut to help support the economy. Meanwhile, in India, as the central bank removes restrictions on foreign bond investment, the rupee has benefitted.

But overall, movement has not been large anywhere. US equity futures are pointing higher as we await this morning’s rash of data including: Personal Income (exp 0.4%); Personal Spending (0.3%); Core PCE (1.8%); Durable Goods (-1.0%, 0.2% ex transport); and Michigan Sentiment (92.1). We also hear from two more Fed speakers, Quarles and Harker. Speaking of Fed speakers (sorry), yesterday vice-Chairman Richard Clarida gave a strong indication that the Fed may change their inflation analysis to an average rate over time. This means that they will be comfortable allowing inflation to run hot for a time to offset any period of lower than targeted inflation. Given that inflation has been lower than targeted essentially since they set the target in 2012, if this becomes official policy, you can expect prices to continue to gain more steadily, and you can rule out higher rates anytime soon. In fact, this is quite dovish overall, and something that would work to change my view on the dollar. Essentially, given the history, it means rates may not go up for years! And that is not currently priced into any market, especially not the FX market.

The mixed picture this morning offers no clues for the rest of the day, but my sense is that the dollar is likely to come under further pressure overall, especially if risk is embraced more fully.

Good luck and good weekend
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Good Times Will Endure

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Elections are out of the way
The outcome caused little dismay
Investors seem sure
Good times will endure
With stocks set to rally today

The dollar, however, is weak
Some pundits claim we’ve seen the peak
Still folks at the Fed
See rate hikes ahead
Which could, on those views, havoc wreak

The midterm elections are now past, with expectations largely fulfilled. The Democrats will run the House, while the Senate’s Republican majority has actually grown by four seats to a 53-47 count. At least that’s what appears to be the case at this time, although there are some runoff elections that need yet to be completed in the next weeks. The traditional view of a political split is that gridlock will ensue and very little in the way of new policy will come out of the next Congress. However, in this case, things may not actually work out that way. Consider the fact that President Trump’s populist leanings may well dovetail with Democratic priorities, especially on spending. It wouldn’t be that surprising if the next budget is even more stimulative than the last, especially as by next summer it is highly likely that the US growth impulse will be slowing down somewhat as the effects of the last stimulus fade away. And through it all, there is no indication that the Fed is going to stop raising interest rates, so I might argue that things haven’t changed all that much.

The risks to this view are if the new Democratic majority in the House chooses to use their power to rehash the battles from 2016 or, more disconcertingly for markets, decide that they want to proceed with an Impeachment process against the President. Two things about this issue are that, first, with the Republicans in control of the Senate, there is essentially zero probability that the President would be removed from office, so it would all be for show. But second, as I mentioned yesterday, the last time we saw this movie, in the autumn of 1998, the dollar fell sharply during the proceedings. This is just something to keep in mind as headlines start to flow going forward.

Enough about the elections. The market response overnight showed equity markets feeling a little better, with Europe higher and US futures pointing in the same direction, although APAC markets were largely flat. Meanwhile, the dollar has come under pressure across the board. The latter seems a little counterintuitive, although I guess it is simply a result of the embrasure of risk by investors. There is no need to flock to dollars, or yen for that matter, if expectations turn positive. And that’s what we seem to have seen.

Focusing on the FX market, the dollar is down pretty sharply across the board. Both the euro and the pound are higher by more than 0.5% despite what I would argue was some mildly negative news. In the Eurozone, while German IP was a touch firmer than expected at +0.2%, Retail Sales data throughout the Eurozone was actually quite weak, with both Italian and Austrian data showing contraction while the French managed to just hold on to an unchanged result, and all three coming well short of expectations.

Meanwhile, the pound continues to trade on hopes that a Brexit breakthrough is coming, despite the fact that yesterday’s widely publicized cabinet meeting produced exactly nothing. PM May has two potential problems here; first is the question of actually coming up with a deal that her cabinet can agree to support that also has EU support, a task that has thus far been out of reach. Second, remember that May has a coalition partner, not a majority in Parliament, and the Labor Party is now coming on record that they will vote against any deal. If that is the case, it is entirely possible that it all falls apart and the UK leaves the EU with no deal in place. While the pound has rallied nicely over the past week, up more than 3.5%, I continue to see the downside risks being significantly greater than the upside. Certainly the rally on a deal announcement would be much smaller in magnitude than the decline in the event of a hard Brexit. Hedgers must keep this in mind as they manage their risks.

As to the rest of the G10, the dollar has fallen even further than the euro and pound, with 0.7% pretty common across virtually the entire bloc. The only two exceptions are JPY, with a more modest 0.3% rally and CAD with a similar gain. My sense is the former is all about risk reduction mitigating some of the dollar weakness, while the latter is related to the fact that oil prices continue to fall, having come down nearly 20% from their highs reached in early October.

In the EMG bloc, there is broad dollar weakness as well with IDR leading the way (+1.5%) and ZAR jumping a solid 1.25%. We discussed the IDR story yesterday as investment flows continue to find their way back to the country given its continued strong growth and low inflation. ZAR, on the other hand, has benefitted from the combination of broad dollar weakness and gold’s recent strength, with the “barbarous relic” having rallied more than 4% in the past month. But it is not just those two currencies showing strength this morning; it is a universal dollar down day, with most freely traded currencies rising more than 0.5%.

And that’s really the day overall. There is no US data to be released today, and the Fed is just starting its two-day meeting, although there is no expectation that there will be any policy change regardless of the fact that it has been pushed back a day in deference to Election day yesterday. There is certainly no reason to believe that the dollar will reverse course in the near term, unless we see a significant uptick in US data that might cause the Fed to step up their pace of activity. However, that is not going to happen today, no matter what, and so I would look for the dollar to continue the overnight move and sell off modestly from this morning’s levels. Although I do not believe that the big picture has changed, any dollar strength is likely to be fleeting in the near future.

Good luck
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No Real Direction

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Ahead of the midterm election
The dollar’s had no real direction
Once ballots are tallied
The dollar, which rallied
Before, may be due for rejection

It’s Election Day here in the US, as I’m sure everyone is already aware. The current expectations are for the Democrats to capture the House while the Republicans maintain the Senate, with perhaps a larger majority. Of course, many of you may remember the 2016 Presidential election when expectations proved misguided. My point is, nothing is clear to me at this point, and I will not pontificate on any particular outcome. Rather the question at hand is, what will happen to the dollar once the ballots are counted.

If expectations are borne out, a gridlocked government is likely to put forth significantly less in the way of economic policy initiatives. Given the lack of fiscal policy changes, monetary policy will gain in importance. If there is no additional fiscal stimulus, will the Fed feel compelled to continue tightening as quickly as they have been doing? Will the US economy slow more rapidly than currently projected (remember we are already growing well above most economists’ forecasts for sustainability which hover between 2.0% and 2.5%)? If this is the case, then it would be reasonable to expect the dollar to soften going forward since right now, the dollar’s strength can be largely attributed to a Fed that is tightening faster than most of the market had assumed would be the case.

On the other hand, either of the other two scenarios, the Democrats sweep or the Republicans sweep have much clearer implications for the dollar, at least to my mind. In the event of the former, I would expect the dollar to come under immediate pressure. The probability of impeachment proceedings would rise significantly and with that, the chaos that would occur would almost certainly undermine the dollar. One need only look back twenty years, when a Republican House of Representatives sought to impeach Bill Clinton. From September 1998 through the actual vote in December 1998, the dollar declined roughly 10%. Something like that is entirely realistic.

And if the Republicans were to hold the House and grow their Senate majority, the probability of even more fiscal stimulus would simply force the Fed’s hand further, and may see an even tighter policy response, as their fear of inflation would grow commensurately. A more hawkish Fed, especially in the context of what is a clearly slowing global economic picture, should further support the dollar, with a move toward 1.05 in the euro very viable. Not tomorrow mind you, but over time.

At any rate, for today, there is very little else we can do than wait. So looking at the rest of the world, we see that growth in the Eurozone may not have been quite as bad as feared. The flash PMI numbers reported two weeks ago were worse than the finalized ones reported this morning, but they are still the softest readings in more than two years. Yesterday saw the euro edge slightly higher by the end of the day, but in reality, it has done virtually nothing since November 1st. This is the picture of a market biding its time, with the election clearly the event of note.

Meanwhile, the pound continues to creep higher as there seems to be a growing belief that PM May will be able to convince her cabinet to support her with regard to the Brexit deal she is proposing. Having read about the proposed solution, it appears to me that pro-Brexit cabinet members will have a difficult time supporting anything that allows the EU to have a role in future UK decisions. After all, the idea behind Brexit was to end that process. But politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say, and so I wouldn’t rule out anything. In the end, the pound remains hostage to the Brexit outcome, and nothing has changed in that regard overnight.

As to the rest of the G10, we have seen a mixed picture with AUD and NZD both having a nice day (both higher by ~0.3%) on the back of the RBA’s upgraded forecast for economic growth Down Under. Just like in the US, wages continue to lag what historic models would indicate, but the RBA is further behind the cycle than the US, and so expectations are growing that the next move there will be for higher interest rates. At the same time, CAD and the Skandies have softened a bit this morning, but in reality, overall movement has been modest at best.

In the EMG bloc, the dollar is actually rising pretty uniformly, with ZAR (-0.65%), MXN (-0.25%), KRW (-0.25%) and TRY (-0.9%) leading the way. CNY has edged slightly lower but remains well within recent trading bounds. The exception to the rule is IDR, which has rallied 1.2% after data showed that foreign inflows into both the stock and government bond market had increased significantly in the past several weeks, prompted by an economy growing more than 5.0% with inflation remaining moderate around 3.0%. And remember, the rupiah had fallen as much as 12% from the beginning of the year before the recent little rally, so many investors see a real opportunity.

And that is really all there is. Both equity and bond markets are biding their time as well, as everybody awaits the outcome of the US elections. There is no reason to believe that the market will move much ahead of that outcome this evening, so hedgers might want to take advantage of quiet markets to top up hedges in the event of a surprise tonight.

Good luck
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