Why The Fed Is Trapped: A 1% Increase In Rates Would Result In Up To $2.4 Trillion Of Losses
By Tyler Durden
A funny thing happened as every central bank around the world rushed to stimulate their economy by devaluing their currency in a global FX war that is now 7 years old and getting more violent by the day: with bond yields plunging, and over $10 trillion in global debt now having a negative yield, every fixed income investor starved for yield was pushed into the long end of the bond curve where whatever yield is left in the world of “safe” bonds is to be found. As long as interest rates never go up, this strategy is relatively safe. However, a major risk emerges when central banks start tightening.
To be sure, banks have been eager to front-run any concerns about the Fed’s rate hike by cheering higher rates as precisely what they need to be more profitable, and the market has so far believed and rewarded bank stocks the higher rate hike odds rose. Just this Thursday, speaking at an investor conference James Dimon said that if short-term and long-term rates were to move up by 1 percentage point simultaneously, 70% of the benefit would come from the move in short-term rates. The reason for this is that even if long-term rates remain under pressure, and the curve flattens further, an increase in short-term rates provides an immediate boost to bank profits. That is because many loans are automatically priced against short-term benchmarks like LIBOR and Prime.
What Dimon did not discuss is the P&L impact from the higher yields and dropping bond prices in the long end of the yield curve. And it is here, in the unprecedented duration exposure that central banks have forced everyone into, that the true risk resides.
How big is the risk? According to an analysis by Goldman’s Charles Himmelberg, if rates rise by the Jamie Dimon-referenced 1 percentage point, the market value loss would be between $1 and $2.4 trillion! Putting this loss in context, even the smaller $1trn loss would be over 50% larger than the market value lost in the 1994 bond market selloff in inflation-adjusted terms, and larger than the cumulative credit losses experienced to date in the non-agency residential mortgage backed securities market. And this is only only as a result of a 1% interest rate increase: assuming full normalization of rates to their historical level of 3.5%, and the level of mark-to-market losses climbs to a staggering $3 trillion.
The culprit? The Fed, the same Fed which does not to grasp that by “renormalizing” into the biggest bond bubble in history is assuring massive losses for the financial sector.
The problem is simple: having inflated a gargantuan bond bubble, letting the air out would by definition lead to dramatic consequences not just for bonds but for all other asset classes.
As Goldman shows in the chart below, the growth in total debt outstanding, in constant 2015 dollars, has been unprecedented. The total face value of all US bonds, including Treasuries, Federal agency debt, mortgages, corporates, municipals and ABS, is …read more
Source: Why The Fed Is Trapped: A 1% Increase In Rates Would Result In Up To $2.4 Trillion Of Losses
