March 29, 2023
Good morning,
You can feel it, <Deep Sigh> that’s what markets are all doing this morning. There are no new bank names being escorted to the guillotine. Bonds are virtually unchanged overnight after weeks of extreme daily volatility. The VIX (volatility index) is back down and under 20 again. Currencies and commodities are all showing little change this morning. Stocks are up (Futures are +.80% as of 8am ET) on a strong morning for European and Asian stocks. The hopes of a soft landing in Europe have grabbed investor’s imaginations there, it seems. It will be interesting to see if the overnight gains in Futures will hold once the U.S. cash market gets underway.
All in all, there seems to be a guarded sense of relief in most markets this morning that the bank-liquidity crisis has at least simmered down, if not passed altogether. What matters now is the extent of the deposit flight from small banks (data that will be released on Friday after the close) and the level of take-up from the BTFP (the new Bank Term Funding Program, data Thursday after the close). These two prints will hint if credit conditions in the next few months see “modest” or “significant” tightening. I suspect markets will largely ignore Friday’s inflation data. Lending conditions will have a far greater impact on growth, the jobs market, and inflation from here.
Be well,
Mike