Author
regime
The chair's first Jackson Hole keynote lands the same morning as the payrolls benchmark revision, after Monday's reports of a Treasury willing to defend its own long end. The desk publishes its tests first: what confirms the migration, what re-arms September, what counts against the framework.
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Treasury is at least doubling its long-bond buybacks from 9 September, and the increase expires on 4 November. The flow is worth single-digit basis points. The signal is the issuer widening the exit the morning after the quietest queue of the year, with long yields at 2007 highs.
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The desk's pre-registered reversal trigger fired: September rate-rise pricing settled below half at three consecutive sessions, and the late-July dissents now read as the high-water mark of hike pricing. This note scores that miss first, on the published words. It then documents what replaced i…
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Copper earned its doctorate by reading the growth cycle early. At a record $13,552 a tonne, the desk asks what it is actually diagnosing now, and what real assets genuinely hedge.
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A carry trade earns a small, steady income in exchange for an occasional, sudden, large loss. The desk explains the mechanics, why unwinds turn violent, and what USD/JPY did in 2024 and since.
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r-star is the line between tight and loose policy, and nobody can see it. The desk explains what sets the neutral rate, why estimates are bands not numbers, and what the real policy rate says today.
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Inversion has preceded most modern US recessions, but the danger has tended to follow the un-inversion, and the record 2022-24 inversion bent the rule further. The desk explains the machinery and the trap.
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A currency's strength is a relative price, not a verdict on a single economy. The desk decodes the DXY, the four forces that move the dollar and the smile framework it reads them through.
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Systematic macro trades rules; discretionary macro trades judgement. Each fails in its own characteristic way, and those failure modes often differ. The desk explains why it runs both.
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A long yield is the expected path of short rates plus the term premium. Only the first obeys the Fed. The desk explains the second layer, and why it set a floor under long rates.
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Three committees held inside seventy-two hours: the Fed 9-3, the Bank of England 6-3, the Bank of Japan 8-1. All seven dissents were votes for higher rates; not one member anywhere voted for a cut. September stayed majority-priced through soft US data, and the desk scores the week, error included.
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The Fed held 3.50 to 3.75 on a nine-to-three vote: Hammack, Kashkari and Logan dissented for a rise and the statement named energy supply shocks. By evening a September rise was majority-priced at 60%, above anything July reached. A hold that leaves the next rise majority-priced is the ratchet.
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