Highlights

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2023
March 06, 2023
SGH Insight

Monday Morning Notes, 3/6/23

If You Don’t Have Time This Morning

Powell will be on Capitol Hill this week for his semi-annual monetary policy testimony. He will present to the House on Tuesday and the Senate on Wednesday. Powell will stick to hawkish themes, but will he be more hawkish than what’s already priced into rates? Powell will reiterate that inflation remains too high and emphasize that even after the series of rate hikes this cycle there is still more work to be done. I expect he will add that if inflation or growth data continue to surprise on the upside, the Fed will hike higher and remain at that level longer than it currently expects.
Market Validation
Dow Jones 3/7/2023

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said strong and sustained economic activity to start this year could prompt central bank
officials to accelerate interest-rate increases and will likely lead them to lift rates more than they expected to combat high inflation.

We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting," Mr. Powell said. "Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy."

Since officials last met on Feb. 1, several economic reports have revealed hiring, spending and inflation were hotter in January than expected, and data revisions showed inflation and demand for labor didn't slow as much as initially reported late last year.

Mr. Powell said data on hiring, spending, factory production and inflation partly reversed softening trends seen just a few weeks ago. Some of the upswing could reflect unseasonably warm January weather that can interfere with seasonal adjustments to economic data, he said.

"Still, the breadth of the reversal along with revisions to the previous quarter suggests that inflationary pressures are running higher than expected at the time of our previous [policy-setting] meeting," Mr. Powell said.

Read Full Report
February 21, 2023
SGH Insight
Tuesday Morning Notes
Whereas the Fed expected the economy would continue slowing this year, incoming data indicates that first quarter activity firmed. Worse though for the Fed, inflation also firmed, and now it threatens to decelerate more slowly than the Fed, and markets, expected. Both point to a higher terminal rate, and Fed officials increasingly recognize that they will not be able to pause as quickly as they anticipated. We think there is enough momentum in the economy to bring policy rates to a peak of 5.625%. If the Fed continues with 25bp rate hikes, that takes us out to the July meeting, but of course the actual outcome, as well as the pace, are data dependent. July is a long way off still; at this juncture, we are waiting for the next round of data to give the Fed additional direction.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/24/23
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauges unexpectedly accelerated in January and consumer spending surged after a year-end slump, adding pressure on policymakers to keep ratcheting up interest rates.
The personal consumption expenditures price index rose 5.4% from a year earlier and the core metric was up 4.7%, both marking pickups after several months of declines. Consumer spending, adjusted for prices, jumped 1.1% from the prior month, the most in nearly two years, after consecutive declines.
US stock futures fell and Treasury yields rose as traders firmed up bets that the Fed will raise interest rates by a quarter-point at each of the next three meetings. Investors also expect a higher terminal fed funds rate.
*FED SWAPS PRICE IN PEAK POLICY RATE OF 5.45% IN JULY 2023
Read Full Report
February 14, 2023
SGH Insight
We think the Fed will need to raise the terminal rate, and market participants increasingly think the same. Markets have priced in a roughly 50% chance of a June rate hike. This helps the Fed in that it puts upward pressure on long rates, but only if the Fed follows the markets. We remind readers that while the Fed acknowledges it could continue to hike rates, it has not yet concluded that it needs to guide the terminal rate higher. I think the Fed does not want to raise rates past 5.125%, it leans toward the idea that “longer for higher” will be good enough and sees the SEP inflation forecast as “aspirational” in that, although unsaid, it thinks it can settle for an optimal control-type outcome with ongoing elevated inflation (see our Monday 2/13/22 note). All that said, we think stronger growth will eventually force the Fed’s hand, and we look forward to this week’s numbers on housing and retail sales to see if they will fall in line with our expectations.

Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/15/ 23

US retail sales rose in January by the most in nearly two years, signaling robust consumer demand that could bolster the Federal Reserve’s resolve to keep raising interest rates in the face of persistent inflation.
The value of overall retail purchases increased 3% in a broad advance — the most since March 2021 — after a 1.1% drop in the prior month, Commerce Department data showed Wednesday. Excluding gasoline and autos, retail sales rose 2.6%, also the biggest increase in nearly two years. The figures aren’t adjusted for inflation.
The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 2% advance in total retail sales.
All 13 retail categories rose last month, led by motor vehicles, furniture and restaurants. The report showed vehicle sales climbed 5.9% in January. The value of sales at gasoline stations were unchanged.
The report showed US consumers got off to a good start in 2023, rebounding from a spending slowdown at the end of last year. A resilient labor market marked by historically low unemployment and solid wage gains has allowed many Americans to keep spending on goods and services even as borrowing costs rise and inflation remains elevated.


Read Full Report
February 13, 2023
SGH Insight
Watching inflation breakevens rise this week primed me to think along these lines. For instance, the two-year breakeven is up about 70bp since January 19, with about 40bp of that coming after the January employment report:
If the Fed is really pursuing the 2.7% core-PCE number in 2025 estimated by the Cleveland Fed paper, breakevens have room to move higher after adjusting for the average difference of 30bp or so between PCE and CPI inflation, and even higher after adjusting for a lower path of unemployment. And remember the Fed now signals that it doesn’t need to see unemployment rise. Indeed, as noted above the Fed began looking for the pause in October 2022 when doves first identified 4.625% as the stopping point. Since then, unemployment has fallen from 3.7% to 3.4% and the Fed has yet to guide market expectations higher than they were in October. That’s what we call “revealed preference.” Regardless of this paper, I am watching to see if inflation breakevens generally climb higher in a stronger growth environment until the Fed meaningfully guides the terminal rate higher.

Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/21/23
Treasuries extended their slump Tuesday, with key benchmark yields pushing to new highs for the year amid growing sentiment that the Federal Reserve’s tightening is far from over.
Yields on both 5- and 10-year Treasury notes cracked new peaks for 2023, with the shorter tenor carving out fresh ground above the 4% mark. Across all maturities yields were up at least 10 basis points. Swaps showed firming conviction for higher Fed rates, with the market indicating three more 25-basis point hikes coming at each of the central bank’s policy gatherings through June.
The 10-year benchmark rate rose as much as 13 basis points to around 3.95%, spurred higher in US trading as purchasing managers index readings for services and manufacturing came in stronger than expected. Two-year breakeven rates — a gauge of inflation expectations — have advanced to the highest since November and are threatening to breach the psychological level of 3%.
Read Full Report
February 06, 2023
SGH Insight
We expect another 25bp rate hike in March and an upward revision to the SEP dots. The SEP dots will move up a minimum of 25bp, which means rate hikes in May and June and a minimum terminal rate of 5.375%. That said, if my take on this data is correct, the Fed will eventually need to compensate for downshifting to 25bp rate hikes with a meaningfully higher terminal rate to bring financial conditions to an appropriately tight level. I don’t think limping the terminal rate up 25bp at a time will tighten financial conditions sufficiently. I think the terminal rate needs to be revised up by 75bp for the Fed to get a handle on the evolving situation, but the Fed isn’t anywhere near there yet.

Markets participants still price in rate cuts beginning in July. That pricing feels very vulnerable after last week. If the economy is re-accelerating, the Fed will still be hiking in July, and rate cuts won’t happen until 2024. That said, I sympathize with market participants here. The Fed has a credibility problem after it tipped its hand last week. It’s making a run for the soft landing when the unemployment rate is still falling. Can we really believe it won’t turn course to protect jobs the instant the unemployment rate starts to rise?

Market Validation
Bloomberg - 2/6/23
German and Italian notes erased all their gains that followed last week’s European Central Bank and Federal Reserve decisions, when the market latched on to what appeared to be a dovish tilt. Treasuries also fell as traders ramped up their bets on future tightening, fully pricing the upper bound of the Fed Funds target rate reaching 5.25% for the first time since November. It currently sits at 4.75%.
Read Full Report
February 06, 2023
SGH Insight
As to Beijing’s immediate response, a senior government official takes the strident position that:

The Chinese side will not allow Blinken to visit China until the US side gives a reasonable and detailed explanation for the shooting down of the Chinese airship, compensates, and returns the airship debris to China. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s planned visit to China in April will [otherwise] also fall through.

Washington is clearly not going to return the pieces or compensate Beijing for shooting down a spy balloon, similar to a balloon which has been reportedly sighted over Latin America, and surveillance balloons which it appears have been sighted in the past over Japan as well.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/ 8/ 23

A prominent Chinese diplomat said the US should return debris from the balloon it shot down because it is the Asian nation’s property, putting the decision over the aircraft’s remains in Washington’s hands.
“If you pick up something on the street, you should return it to the owner, if you know who the owner is,” said Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France. Beijing maintains that the aircraft was a civilian climate research vehicle, though the US says it was for surveillance.

“If the Americans don’t want to return it, that’s their decision. This demonstrates their dishonesty,” Lu said in an interview with French news channel LCI on Monday, according to a transcript posted on the Chinese embassy’s official WeChat account on Wednesday.
Read Full Report
February 06, 2023
SGH Insight
We expect another 25bp rate hike in March and an upward revision to the SEP dots. The SEP dots will move up a minimum of 25bp, which means rate hikes in May and June and a minimum terminal rate of 5.375%. That said, if my take on this data is correct, the Fed will eventually need to compensate for downshifting to 25bp rate hikes with a meaningfully higher terminal rate to bring financial conditions to an appropriately tight level. I don’t think limping the terminal rate up 25bp at a time will tighten financial conditions sufficiently. I think the terminal rate needs to be revised up by 75bp for the Fed to get a handle on the evolving situation, but the Fed isn’t anywhere near there yet.

Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/16/23
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said she saw a compelling case for rolling out another 50 basis point hike earlier this month and the US central bank has to be prepared to move interest rates higher if inflation remains stubbornly high.
“At this juncture, the incoming data have not changed my view that we will need to bring the fed funds rate above 5% and hold it there for some time,” Mester said Thursday in remarks prepared for an event organized by the Global Interdependence Center and the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. “Indeed, at our meeting two weeks ago, setting aside what financial market participants expected us to do, I saw a compelling economic case for a 50 basis-point increase, which would have brought the top of the target range to 5%.”
Read Full Report
February 02, 2023
SGH Insight
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will hike another 25 basis points to 3.35% on Tuesday and resume tough talk on inflation after data in the final months of last year showed prices reversed direction and rose to 7.8%, the highest level since 1990.
The year-over-year consumer price index for the December quarter outcome, though still shy of the Bank’s projected 8% peak, follows a 7.3% rise in the prior quarter and was accompanied by 8.4% inflation in the relatively new monthly CPI index from 7.3% in the prior month.
Though the RBA board will likely entertain discussion of a 50bp move at the meeting with a view to seeing that represented in the minutes due February 21, the Bank is largely resigned to finishing out its hiking cycle in 25bp increments.
Its forward guidance in the accompanying press release will warn of further adjustment, though it will continue to counsel that it is not on a pre-set course and take account of lagged and full effects of what will then likely be 325bp of tightening since May 2022. With evidence that prices are still running hot, the Bank cannot afford to sit on its hands to wait for supply side pressures to ease.
Another 25bp hike to 3.6% is likely at its March 7 meeting which may represent a point to pause if the inflation data relent, but it still may not prove to be the terminal rate of this hiking cycle. The next set of inflation reads (January CPI due March 1 and Q1 CPI out April 24) will help inform the Bank whether prices have peaked.
Market Validation
Dow Jones 2/21/23

The board of the Reserve Bank of Australia debated
raising official interest rates by 50 basis points at its policy meeting on
Feb. 7, noting that recent wages and prices data have exceeded expectations.

In minutes of the policy meeting published Tuesday, the RBA said that the
final decision to deliver only a 25-basis-point increase was determined by the
fact that interest rates have been increased substantially since May 2022.

"With interest rates already having been adjusted substantially, there was
less need to move by 50 basis points at this meeting," the minutes said.

The argument for a 50-basis-point hike stemmed from the concern that there has
been a pattern of incoming prices and wages data exceeding expectations, the
minutes said.



Read Full Report
February 02, 2023
SGH Insight
Market Participants Moving Past the Fed

The Fed stepped down to 25bp rate hikes today as expected and signaled more to come. We think a March rate hike is a virtual lock and odds of a May hike underpriced by market participants. Still, we acknowledge that a May rate hike is a bet on a reacceleration of economic activity. As we expected, however, Powell did not try to guide the terminal rate higher, and if the Fed isn’t ready to move in that direction, it needs to just accept an easing of financial conditions.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/3/23

Treasuries Extend Slide After ISM Services Data Beats Estimate

Treasury yields peak at highest levels of the session across tenors after January ISM services beats estimate. Yields across the front end and belly of the curve rise as much as 17bp on the session, while the 2s10s and 5s30s spreads re-flatten, back to near the lows of the day.

US 10-year yields around 3.53% and cheaper by 13.5bp on the day with 2s10s, 5s30s spreads flatter by 2.5bp and 7bp versus Thursday’s close Fed-dated OIS is pricing in around 24bp of rate hikes at the March policy meeting and a combined 39bp over the next two meetings, up from the 32bp priced as of Thursday’s close


WSJ 2/3/23

Traders See Higher Rates After Booming Jobs Report

Bettors piled in to wager that the Federal Reserve would have to take interest rates higher than previously expected after January's jobs report showed a resiliently hot labor market.
Traders see the Fed taking the federal funds rate as high as 4.95% in July before cutting it to 4.59% by year-end.

Another quarter-point rate increase is now widely expected in March, while a further one in May is becoming more likely but remains split with the Fed pausing.

Ahead of Friday's data, traders expected the policy rate to touch just below 4.9%, followed by two rate cuts in the second half of the year. That would leave the benchmark rate below 4.5% at year-end.
Read Full Report
February 02, 2023
SGH Insight
Moving on to the May 4 meeting, by which point the ECB benchmark rate will be at 3%, Lagarde backed off from an explicit commitment to another 50 bp hike. That said, she was as clear as she could be that from this distance the ECB in all probability will hike rates again, by 25 or even 50, and that more may follow.
Does that mean we have reached the “pinnacle, peak” in rates after March, Lagarde asked rhetorically, to which she answered, “No, no, no, no,” and pointed to the ECB’s assessment that it will still have some ground to cover, even after the March hike, before it gets to the rate that is appropriately restrictive to bring inflation down to 2% in a timely manner.
Likewise, when Lagarde discussed the range of possibilities at the May meeting, she said it could be 25, it could be 50, but carefully steered clear of saying it could be zero, even if this is in theory always a possibility.
Indeed, while refusing to be drawn into comparison with the US, Lagarde, acknowledging the drop in energy and headline inflation (“inflationary pressures are more balanced”), said she would “certainly” not say the disinflationary process is in play in the eurozone.
In short, we believe fading the 3.25% priced at this time by markets for the ECB peak rate is in all likelihood a very good one-way bet
Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/7/23
Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel warned not to underestimate the euro region’s consumer-price challenge and said more “significant” interest-rate increases will be required, according to Boersen-Zeitung.

“If we let up too soon, there’s a great danger that inflation becomes sustained,” Nagel told the German newspaper in an interview published Tuesday. “From my perspective today, more significant rate increases will be needed.” Joachim Nagel

Since they began tightening, policymakers have often used the label “significant” as shorthand to describe half-point interest-rate shifts. The ECB delivered such an increase last week, taking the deposit rate to 2.5%, and President Christine Lagarde flagged another one for March.

She also said that the ECB will then evaluate the subsequent path of its monetary policy. Nagel offered a more forceful view, arguing that the intention to raise rates by 50 basis points next month is “a strong commitment to a consequent monetary policy” and that even so, “I don’t see that our work is done with this rate hike in March"

Bloomberg 2/2/2023

European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel said there’s been little effect to date from an unprecedented bout of monetary-policy tightening aimed at taming inflation
.
The growth in consumer prices still has momentum, with the level of underlying inflation extraordinarily high, Schnabel told a webcast on Tuesday. The recent slowdown in the headline number isn’t down to ECB policy, she said.

“You can’t say that monetary policy is having such an impact that we can hope for inflation to reach our 2% target in the medium term,” Schnabel said. “We’ll closely look at what’s happening on labor markets, what’s happening to investments, how the economy develops overall.”
Read Full Report
January 30, 2023
SGH Insight
Fed Speak and Discussion

The FOMC will hike rates 25bp this week and signal that this won’t be the last hike of the cycle.

The Fed will need to update the FOMC statement to address the deceleration in the pace of rate hikes. This line was already stale when the Fed repeated it in the December FOMC statement after slowing to a 50bp rate hike:

In determining the pace of future increases in the target range, the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments.

Left unanswered was the policy guidance of which of these elements justified slowing to 50bp. After stepping down again to 25bp, the Fed could in theory just drop this line entirely, but we think it more likely the Fed will update the language to explain that it is appropriate to proceed with a slower pace of rate hikes given the cumulative tightening in place and the softer, though still elevated, inflation numbers and indications of slower growth. Such language would be consistent with recent Fedspeak.

Similarly, the language regarding “ongoing increases” in the policy rate also feels stale, but I have lower conviction that it changes. This sentence indicates the rate hike cycle is still open-ended...

...Bottom Line
The Fed will hike rates 25bp this week and point to more rate hikes in the future. Powell will reiterate that the job isn’t done, inflation remains too high, the labor market remains too tight, and that the Fed will continue to hike rates as needed to restore price stability. I think this commentary will cover largely familiar ground and should sound unambiguously hawkish. Still, we can’t see that Powell will move expectations for the terminal rate higher. Policy rates now sit in restrictive territory, the Fed sees evidence of slower growth, inflation though high has softened and created more confidence the peak is behind us, and the Fed thinks the full impact of cumulative policy still lies ahead. The scope for large jumps in the terminal rate like last year are limited by the downshift to 25bp. There is limited room for the Fed to tighten financial conditions if it won’t raise the expected terminal rate. We are particularly attentive to Powell’s view of what needs to happen in the labor market to sustain disinflationary trends. Fed speakers have drifted toward a more dovish take on unemployment that we believe market participants will interpret as sharply reducing the odds of recession. We want to see if Powell accepts or rejects that line of thought.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/1/23

Immediate Key Takeaways From FOMC Decision

Here are the immediate key takeaways:

Federal Open Market Committee raises benchmark rate by 25 basis points, as expected, to target range of 4.5%-4.75%; marks a step down from December’s 50 basis-point hike and the four straight 75 basis-point moves before that
Statement repeats prior language that “ongoing increases” in main rate will be appropriate while saying Fed will consider “extent of future increases,” a slight change from the prior language on the “pace” of hikes
Language suggests Fed inclined toward quarter-point rate hikes at next two meetings in March and May, rather than toward a pause after March
Fed says “inflation has eased somewhat but remains elevated” and removes prior references to causes of inflation including the pandemic; also omits a prior reference to considering “public health” as a factor in decision-making Decision is unanimous

Chair Powell press conference 2/1/23

>> CHAIR JEROME POWELL: So, we raised rates 4.5% points and we are talking about a couple more rate hikes to get to the level we think is appropriately restrictive. Why do we think that is appropriately necessary? Because inflation is running hot. We are taking into account long and variable lags. We are thinking about that. Really, the story we are telling about inflation to ourselves and the way we understand it, basically the three things I have just gone through a couple times. Again, we don't see it effecting the services sector, ex-housing, yet. Our assessment is that we are not very far from that level. We don't know that, though. We don't know that. We are living in a world of significant uncertainty. I would look across the rate, the spectrum of rates and see that real rates are now operative. We are -- by an appropriate set of measures or positive across the yield curve. I think policy is restrictive. We are trying to make a fine judgment about how much is restrictive enough. That is all. That is why we are slowing down to 25 basis points. We will be occasionally watching the committee, inflation and the process of the disinflationary process.
Read Full Report
January 30, 2023
SGH Insight
The BOE wants to step back down to a pace of 25bp increments to give it more flexibility to either pause or continue if the data dictate it should but it needs credible reasoning to do so.

Though this week’s messaging will focus on the “primacy” of the 2% inflation goal the reality is the BOE only has one or two more 25bp moves left to do before it concludes its campaign.



Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/16/2023
Bank of England Chief Economist Huw Pill signaled policy makers are ready to reduce the speed of their interest rate increases, saying there’s a risk of “overtightening” if the pace over the past few months is maintained.
The official who sits on the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee also said the labor market has shown signs of loosening, a suggestion that upward pressure on inflation from pay rises may be easing.
The remarks in the text of a speech given at Warwick University are the clearest sign yet that the BOE may endorse a quarter point increase at its March meeting — or even a pause in the quickest cycle of rate rises in three decades.
“Continuing to raise rates at the pace and magnitude seen over the past year would eventually – and perhaps soon – imply that monetary policy had cumulatively been tightened too much,” Pill said, according to a text released by the BOE in London on Thursday.

Read Full Report
January 17, 2023
SGH Insight
Late last week an article came out flagging the possibility that after a 50 bp hike at the next ECB meeting on February 2, and another 50 bps on March 16, lifting the benchmark deposit rate from 2.0% to 3.0%, the “doves” within the ECB’s Governing Council might push to slow the pace of rate hikes to 25 bp increments at the following meeting on May 4.

Whether there is a stepdown or not in May, when policy rates are at 3%, is an entirely reasonable question to ask, and it may not even have to result from a Manichean struggle between doves and hawks as analysts like to frame such stories. The more debatable question to us is where the landing zone will be once the ECB crosses the 3% threshold, a zone which we continue to expect will end up in the 3.5% to 4% region.

Today, markets were jolted by a Bloomberg news article saying the ECB may consider a 25 bp hike -- not in May -- but as early as at the March meeting, when rates will be at 2.5%.

Filled with caveats (“the prospect for 50 remains likely”), that article does not capture the dynamics that matter at the ECB, and only serves to needlessly shake some positions out on the back of what has been a powerful, and very cyclically different, downdraft in US rates.

A 25 bp hike in March flies entirely in the face of the eurozone’s inflation dynamics, rate position, and explicit guidance from ECB President Christine Lagarde and a host of her colleagues after what was in fact a seminal, hawkish meeting on December 15. Unless there is a truly dramatic and completely unforeseen change in the world, it is simply not going to happen.
Market Validation
2/2/23

Monetary policy decisions

The Governing Council will stay the course in raising interest rates significantly at a steady pace and in keeping them at levels that are sufficiently restrictive to ensure a timely return of inflation to its 2% medium-term target. Accordingly, the Governing Council today decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 50 basis points and it expects to raise them further. In view of the underlying inflation pressures, the Governing Council intends to raise interest rates by another 50 basis points at its next monetary policy meeting in March and it will then evaluate the subsequent path of its monetary policy. Keeping interest rates at restrictive levels will over time reduce inflation by dampening demand and will also guard against the risk of a persistent upward shift in inflation expectations. In any event, the Governing Council’s future policy rate decisions will continue to be data-dependent and follow a meeting-by-meeting approach.

Bloomberg 1/18/23

Villeroy Says Lagarde’s Half-Point ECB Guidance Still Valid
French official won’t speculate on size of March rate increase
Moderating inflation has prompted talk of smaller hikes

Guidance from European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde that borrowing costs will continue to be lifted in half-point steps for some time still holds, according to Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau.
Speaking to Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Bank of France chief said it’s too soon to talk about the size of the likely interest-rate increase in March, after people familiar with officials’ thinking told Bloomberg that moderating inflation and declining energy prices may warrant a smaller hike.
“We said very clearly we still decide meeting by meeting, we are data driven, so it’s much too early to speculate about what we will do in March,” Villeroy said. “Let me remind you of the words of President Lagarde at her last press conference in December: We should expect to raise rates at a pace of 50 basis points for a period of time. Well, these words are still valid today.”
Lagarde on Dec. 15:
“So we will continue that at a steady pace. Based on the information that we have available today, that predicates another 50-basis-point rate hike at our next meeting, and possibly at the one after that, and possibly thereafter, but everything will also be determined by the review of data. So don’t assume that it’s a one-shot 50; it’s more than that.”
Read Full Report
January 13, 2023
SGH Insight
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will tilt guidance toward an April exit of ultra easy policy at next week’s meeting as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida prepares to hand over the reins to a new Governor ahead of Haruhiko Kuroda’s departure before April 8.
A breach of the BOJ’s upper limit on 10-year government bond yields (JGB) Friday, forced a round of central bank bond buying and has increased pressure on the nine-member board to move again after it raised the upper limit on the 10-year yield to 0.5% from 0.25% in December.
Whether the BOJ opts to tweak the limit again at this or at the March 9-10 meeting, we expect the BOJ to eliminate yield curve control (YCC) during April, once Kuroda’s successor takes office.
At his December post meeting press conference, Kuroda stridently characterized the move as a technical tweak to improve market functioning. Since 2016 the BOJ has operated the YCC limits to achieve its 2% inflation target. The policy is a band set around the 0% target to allow long-term rates to move up or down by 0.50bp.
The January 17-18 meeting has been billed as a “technical” discussion to prepare the market for the BOJ to end its curve control policy (YCC) before April, once Kuroda’s successor takes office.
In particular the BOJ is uncomfortable with the kink in the curve, an inversion that shows a gap between seven- to nine-year yields and 10-year yields. In addition to how to correct ongoing market distortions from YCC, the meeting agenda will include an upward revision to the outlook for consumer prices and support further bond purchases.
Market Validation
MT Newswire 1/18/23

Bank of Japan Defies Market Speculators, But Pressure to End YCC
(MT Newswires)
The Bank of Japan defied market pressure and kept its ultra-low interest rate policy firmly in place after a two-day monetary policy meeting that ended today.

The yen fell and yields on Japan's government bonds plunged on the news, while stocks surged on the prospect of continued low rates.

But with current BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda only in office until April, speculation of imminent change to the bank’s policy regime is unlikely to go away.
Read Full Report
January 09, 2023
SGH Insight
The employment report sent mixed messages between solid job growth, a low unemployment rate, and weaker wage growth. While this may appear to be a “Goldilocks” outcome, that’s only the case if it encourages the Fed to back down from its current policy direction. That’s not going to happen just yet. The Fed can’t really back down without revising downward the 2023 dots, which is not crazy if the then high but now lower wage growth drove December’s 50bp increase in the SEP policy rate forecast, but that is not something Powell wants to do anytime soon. That would be as good as a rate cut from the market’s perspective.

Fedspeak will not yet retreat from the December SEP. Once the Fed digs itself in on a position, it takes a great deal of time and evidence to dig it out. One report isn’t going to do it. More likely it would take the totality of the data between now and the March meeting to convince the Fed it went too far with the December SEP, but even then, that view creates a potentially disastrous communications challenge for the Fed as I will explain below.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 1/9/23

Daly Sees Fed Raising Rates Above 5% But How Far Is Unclear
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said she expects the central bank to raise interest rates to somewhere above 5% before pausing, though the ultimate level is unclear and will depend on incoming data on inflation.
As for the Fed’s next meeting at the end of the month, the central bank could either raise rates by 50 basis points for a second straight time or slow down to a quarter-point hike, Daly said Monday in a live-streamed interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Mary Daly
“Doing it in more gradual steps does give you the ability to respond to incoming information,” said Daly, who doesn’t vote on rates this year. She stressed that it’s too early to “declare victory” over persistent inflation.

*BOSTIC: VERY HESITANT TO DECLARE VICTORY IN BID TO COOL PRICES
*BOSTIC:SERVICES INFLATION HAS PASSED GOODS INFLATION AS PROBLEM
*BOSTIC SEES LIKELIHOOD SERVICES INFLATION WILL PROVE PERSISTENT
Read Full Report
January 06, 2023
SGH Insight
Where the ECB will need to firm up its communications is in why the ratcheting up of rate hike expectations, as this stepped-up hawkishness is coming at a time when they are finally seeing some glimmers of hope in the ever elusive “peak inflation” narrative. Otherwise, we suspect, markets, and indeed many governors, will continue to misread data, inflation risks, and even mislead on the ECB reaction function.
That headline inflation relief is from nose-bleed levels and driven largely by energy prices finally coming off, but it is some relief, nevertheless. ECB officials have indeed been looking for inflation to come down around the first quarter of this year, and markets will understandably be cheered to see any confirmation of continued signs that it is, indeed, finally coming down.
But markets would be well advised against leaning too much on that narrative, as they tried to do after last November’s CPI reports. This “Phase Two” of the ECB tightening cycle, a markedly more hawkish reaction function than many in the markets or even across the Council itself were hoping for, is, as we have been writing repeatedly, entirely about shaking out the dreaded and far more problematic, underlying, core inflationary pressures that have been creeping up.
This bears repeating: “Phase Two,” if we want to call it that, is all about hitting underlying inflationary pressures.
The hawks at the ECB, including notably Isabel Schnabel at the Executive Board, have been warning about these pressures now for months, and their materialization is now coming through in spades — even in the Chief Economist’s staff economic forecast.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 1/9/23

European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said price pressures in the euro area will remain elevated even if surging energy costs are starting to ease.
“This is not conclusive for the overall inflation dynamic,” Lane told a panel discussion in New Orleans. The original energy shock resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine and pandemic reopening effects will feed into wages “for the next two or three years,” he said.
Euro-area inflation slowed to 9.2% in December, more than economists had predicted, according to data released Friday. The slowdown was driven by energy, though a measure of price growth that strips out such volatile items reached a record 5.2%.

With wage increases so far falling short of these price gains, there’s now a gap that will “keep pressure on inflation for the next number of years,” Lane said.
Still, if the slowdown in energy costs persists, it should over time feed into “less pressure on food inflation, less pressure on core inflation,” Lane said. “We should recognize that but, of course, we also should recognize the uncertainty about the future path of energy prices.”
The ECB raised borrowing costs by 250 basis points last year and pledged that more hikes will follow. Simulations show that the current level of interest rates isn’t enough to return inflation to the 2% target in a timely manner, Lane said.

Bloomberg 1/9/23

The European Central Bank predicts wage
growth — a key indicator of where inflation is headed — will be
“very strong” in the coming quarters, strengthening the case for
more interest-rate hikes.
A study of salary developments since the start of the
pandemic shows underlying pay growth has been “relatively
moderate” and is currently close to its long-term trend, the
institution said Monday in an article to be published in its
Economic Bulletin.
Even so, “looking ahead, wage growth over the next few
quarters is expected to be very strong compared with historical
patterns,” it said. “This reflects robust labor markets that so
far haven’t been substantially affected by the slowing of the
economy, increases in national minimum wages and some catch-up
between wages and high rates of inflation.”

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January 03, 2023
SGH Insight
The Fed’s level of commitment to slowing growth and raising the unemployment rate will determine the path of policy and economic activity this year. I sometimes think that we fail to appreciate the depth of the Fed’s hawkishness as revealed by the December Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). On one hand, a slowing in the pace of rate hikes with the terminal rate in sight appears to be a dovish shift. But hawkishness is not really about the pace or extent of rate hikes, it’s about the willingness to endure elevated unemployment to restore price stability.
Market Validation
Fed minutes: No rate cuts in 2023, inflation risk remains in focus
Wed, January 4, 2023
No Federal Reserve officials thought it’d be appropriate to begin cutting rates in 2023, and officials worried easing financial conditions could complicate the central bank's efforts to bring down inflation, according to internal discussions at the Fed's policy meeting three weeks ago.
Minutes from the central bank's December policy meeting released Wednesday showed while Fed officials welcomed easing October inflation data, they stressed it would take substantially more evidence of progress to be confident inflation was coming down in a sustained manner.
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2022
December 22, 2022
SGH Insight
Final Thoughts Ahead of the Holidays
This is how I am thinking about the economy and the Fed as we approach the New Year:
The Fed is very certain it needs to loosen labor markets to prevent another year of rapid wage growth, and that requires a substantially higher unemployment rate by the end of next year. It sees wages as ultimately driving inflation, and that the current disinflation will not be sustained in 2024 if it can’t bring wage growth under control. The labor market resilience has surprised the Fed, and it believes it needs to keep tightening until it sees clear evidence that the labor market is in retreat. Only then can the Fed be confident it will bring inflation under control over the longer run.
Market Validation
WSJ 1/5/23

Fed Officials Warn on Their Resolve
Minutes of December meeting show fear that market rallies would pressure rates upward
Federal Reserve officials offered uncharacteristically blunt words of warning to investors that cautioned against underestimating the central bank's determination to hold interest rates at higher levels to bring down inflation.
Minutes of the Fed's policy meeting last month, released Wednesday, highlighted the tricky communications task that has vexed the central bank over the past six months.
The Fed's rapid rate increases last year have fanned investors' hopes that inflation will slow quickly over the coming year. In the run-up to the December meeting, longer-term bond yields tumbled, reflecting both optimism about a speedy decline in inflation and fears of a recession this year.
But many Fed officials are anxious they won't be able to defeat inflation unless they can slow the economy by tightening financial conditions, such as by raising borrowing costs or lowering stock prices.
Any market rallies that ease financial conditions threaten to hinder officials' effort to cool hiring and wage growth. That, in turn, could prompt them to continue lifting rates or holding them at higher levels for longer, increasing the risk of a deeper or longer economic downturn.
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December 20, 2022
SGH Insight
We still expect Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will tap Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya, (nicknamed internally “Mr. BOJ” and “the Emperor”), to the position in the next few weeks.

Behind the scenes, Amamiya, 61, a career central banker of 37 years has been integral to smoothing his own boss’s succession plans.

A classically trained pianist who continues to practice his musical craft and who once considered a career in music, Amamiya has been instrumental to the design and development of the BOJ’s easing programs including YCC over more than two decades. He is a gifted debater who has developed key relationships with government officials and senior banking and industry leaders alike.

Importantly and perhaps in some contrast to Kuroda, Amamiya is regarded as flexible and not bound by precedent – qualities sure to resonate with Kishida’s ambition to partner with a central bank chief who will be nimble enough to transition policy as the economy continues to improve.
Market Validation
Bloomberg- 4/6/2023

The Japanese government has approached Masayoshi Amamiya, the Bank of Japan’s deputy governor, about potentially succeeding Haruhiko Kuroda as head of the central bank, Nikkei Asia reported, citing unnamed sources. Officials from the government and ruling coalition have held discussions with Amamiya, according to the report. Nikkei said a BOJ representative declined to comment.
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December 15, 2022
SGH Insight
And while Lagarde did not place a number on that elusive “terminal rate,” we believe, as we wrote in SGH 11/30/22, “ECB: A Major Disconnect with Markets,” that means the ECB is increasingly eyeing a 3.5%-4% landing zone when all is said and done.
Market Validation
Bloomberg 2/21/23

Money markets add to ECB tightening wagers, fully pricing a half-point ECB rate hike at the March 16 policy decision for the first time.
A 50bps hike is priced versus 49.5bps on Monday; 3.76% peak rate is expected by October, 4bps higher than the prior day.




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