The S&P 500 retreated from resistance at 4100. Reversal below 4000 would warn of another test of primary support at 3500. We remain in a bear market, with 12-month Rate of Change below zero.
The recent rally was caused by falling long-term yields, with 10-year Treasuries testing support at 3.5%. Rising yields are now precipitating a retreat in stocks.
Slowing Treasury issuance, ahead of debt ceiling negotiations, may have contributed to declining yields but this has been offset by foreign sales, notably by the Bank of Japan.
The Treasury yield curve remains inverted, with the 10-Year minus 3-Month at an alarming -0.97%, warning of a recession in 6 to 18 months.
Commercial banks borrow short, with most deposit maturities less than a year, while lending on far longer terms in order to capture the term premium. When the yield curve inverts, net interest margins are compressed, making banks willing to lend only to the most secure borrowers. Credit standards (green below) are being tightened but credit growth (pink) remains strong. Credit growth is likely to decline in the months ahead and would warn that a recession is imminent.
Fed operations reduced liquidity in financial markets but this has been partially offset by Treasury’s running down their General Account (TGA) at the Fed (which injects money into the economy). The net result is a $1.2 trillion reduction in liquidity.
The breakdown is illuminating, with the Fed reducing its balance sheet (blue below) by $469 billion to the end of January, while reverse repo operations (green below) removed $2.4 trillion. Treasury, however, partially offset this by running down their TGA account (red) from $1.8 trillion in July 2020 to $0.5 trillion in January 2023.
The net effect is a fall in the money supply (M2) relative to GDP, from 0.90 to 0.82. But there is still a long way to go. The ratio of M2 to GDP should ideally be a constant, with money supply growing at the same pace as GDP. Lax monetary policy instead allowed money to grow at a faster pace than national income, resulting in high inflation as aggregate demand runs ahead of output.
Conclusion
The primary cause of bull and bear markets is liquidity. Stock prices could well remain high, even while the Fed hikes interest rates, if financial markets are awash with cash. Only when credit growth slows, and the Fed sells more Treasuries, are prices likely to collapse. External factors, like foreign investor sales, may also shrink liquidity but are a lot harder to predict.
The pig is still in the python. The large gap between deposits at commercial banks (blue below) and bank lending to private borrowers (pink) is represented mainly by commercial bank holdings of Treasury and agency securities. Only when that has been worked out of the system will financial conditions be restored to some semblance of normality.
Acknowledgements
Christophe Barraud for the Bloomberg link on BOJ Treasury sales.