Newsclips
The World Passes China in Infections
March 16, 2020
The latest infection and death counts paint a depressing picture. They help explain the chaos in financial markets.
The latest infection and death counts paint a depressing picture. They help explain the chaos in financial markets.
Today's topics include central banks had a busy weekend, Kevin Warsh lays out his view for a Fed credit facility, liquidity issues, ratings downgrades, do circuit breakers help calm the markets?, gauging the odds of recession, Chinese economic data, banks suspend buybacks, making the case for short selling bans and market closures, deglobalization, and airlines hit the hardest.
It looks like the dealers want and need the Fed's liquidity, but too many regulators and rules are keeping them illiquid.
It should come as no surprise that Trump's approval rating and odds of winning the election are moving against him.
Friday, the 13th, between 7:45AM ET and 9:00AM ET the Fed will offer the massive sum of $1.175 trillion in liquidity (repo) in an attempt to help dysfunctional financial markets. If it works, and liquidity returns, financial markets should resemble normalcy. If it does not, and continued liquidation and illiquidity remain, the next option might be a temporary closure of financial markets.
Today's topics include here comes the Fed...again, the ECB attempts to correct Lagarde's gaffe, rising yields amidst plummeting stocks, can monetary stimulus help?, updating the odds of Fed rate cuts, the quickest bear market in history, up jumps the VIX, crude oil's turf war, and cryptocurrencies were not immune from yesterday's carnage.
To-date, 354 companies in the S&P 500 have mentioned the words 'coronavirus' or 'COVID-19' in their quarterly earnings reports, transcripts, presentations, or press releases.
Bonds notched two of their best daily total returns in history recently, quickly followed by the worst daily total return on record.
For a long time, bonds from the energy industry made up the largest component of the BofA/Merrill High Yield Index. After this week's carnage, they now rank third behind health care and telecom.
Kraft Heinz and Macy's recently joined the ranks of fallen angels.