Happy September!!
Starting now, the US Fed is to run off its balance sheet (reduce liquidity in the banking system via ‘Quantitative Tapering’) by $95 billion a month–double the amount they were supposed to have been withdrawing (QT) since the start of June.
In reality, though, rather than shrink its holdings by $45 billion a month for June, July and August, the Fed reduced by a total of $52 billion ($17 billion per month). So, this month, stepping up to $95 billion will not be doubling the QT rate to date but rather a 5.5x increase in the liquidity withdrawal rate.
Hedgeye analyst Josh Steiner makes some lucid observations about this in Still Feeling Bullish?:
So, as a reminder, the Fed has QT’d to the tune of $52B in total over the last 3 months (a ~60bps reduction in its securities holdings) and the S&P 500 is down ~4.1% over that timeframe. In the four months between now and year-end the Fed is supposed to QT by $380B, a roughly 450bps reduction in securities holdings.
No doubt, tightening resolve will eventually crumble with housing, commodity, stock and corporate debt prices. But, with the US midterm elections coming up on November 8 and consumer price inflation (lagging indicator) recently measuring at 40-year highs, inflation is the primary bogey now. Propping up asset prices is a distant and conflicting goal to that.
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