RBC: "Commence Pain Trade"
By Tyler Durden
Having warned last week that the market is close to a violent unwind of the Trumpflation momentum trade, today RCB’s head of cross-asset strat, Charlie McElliggott, takes a victory lap following Trump’s overnight comments that the dollar is “too strong”, while slamming the Border-Adjustment Tax – a key catalyst for a dollar stronger as much as 15% in the future – and warned that the start of the “pain trade” has arrived.
The full note from RBC’s Charlie McElligott
TRUMP DUMPS BORDER-ADJUSTED TAX, “LONG DOLLAR” TRADES UNDER PRESSURE
Commence “pain trade.”
Let us begin today by taking it back to last Wednesday’s now-prophetic “RBC Big Picture” note:
“Fundamentally with the USD bull-case, this is a large part of why there is SO much focus on key items like the border-adjusted tax element of the Trump policy push. A large part of the Dollar’s strength (beyond ‘just’ the data) post- the election has been based upon this, where if the corporate tax rate were cut to say 20%, the Dollar would by economic theory have to then appreciate 20% (and of course too, an additional ‘tax factor’ driving the USD bull-thesis is that a meaningful chunk of $2.5T of profits held overseas by US corporates would be repatriated following a ‘business friendly’ incentive package / one-time cut to the repatriation tax to say 8-10%).
There is a view though within some verticals of the business community is that the border-adjusted system represents a very significant risk (consumer retail most notably) to their businesses / the broad economy as imports become more expensive and will create trade distortions (while the CBO itself says that the border-adjusted system would NOT reduce the trade deficit, which is a driver of its political popularity). There is so much discourse on this issue currently on this topic within the C-suite in fact some in policy circles are now saying they believe it appears increasingly likely that the ‘full’ border tax adjustment (currently in the Houses’ version of the bill) ends up being watered down to a sort of “relocation penalty” (which would likely then appear in the Senate-version of the bill).
Again, this is all a hypothetical, but if some of this ‘sense’ around said USD ‘bull driver’ turning potentially bearish was to ‘leak’ into the market, it would take some of the air out of the “long USD” trade–and that is where things could go off the rails. If the Dollar broke lower, its likely too that bonds and duration would rally; defensives (staples, utes, reits) and growth (tech / biotech / discret) squeeze against crowded value unwinding (fins, energy, indus); yen and euro would squeeze mightily; gold squeezes while copper pukes in a favorite commodities ‘pair’ unwind; HY could reverse weaker vs IG (currently everybody long CCC vs BB on the high beta trade)…this would be the theoretical path to our next pain-trade or even VaR shock.”
…AND SCENE.
Overnight, we see that Donald Trump has indeed talked-down the …read more
Source: RBC: "Commence Pain Trade"
