They did the absolute minimum to appear to be able to say they are dong something. With official inflation nearing 8%, this is nowhere near enough. SO far equity markets agree this is effectively nothing
It is hard to define exactly what a "Eurodollar" is, but for now assume that a Eurodollar is a bank deposit in a jurisdiction not subject to the Fed's authority. ("Eurodollar" has nothing to do with Euro the currency. People are surprised that "dollars" exist outside the authority of the Fed.)
A Eurodollar future is a contract to borrow a "Eurodollar" for typically 3 months some time in the future. The price of the future is quoted as (100 - interest rate). For example, the Sep 2023 contract (called GEU3) is currently priced at 97.225, meaning that people are agreeing to lend money for 3 months in Sep 2023 at a 2.775% interest rate. Now to my point: the Eurodollar futures curve is currently inverted starting in Sep 2023. For example, the price of the GEU4 future (Sep 2024) is 97.50, implying a 2.50% interest rate, or a rate cut in GP's parlance relatively to Sep 2023.
Why would you pay attention to Eurodollar futures? For one thing, the notional value of all futures is about $12T. (This market used to be larger than the Treasury bond market until Congress fixed the problem.) Like all markets, it may be right or wrong, but if you strongly believe that rates will not be cut between 2023 and 2024, there is a ton of money to be made in that market. The curve started getting nervous, with small inversions of 1-4 basis points, in December 2021, and the inversion has grown larger since. The inversion peak-to-through was ~30bp yesterday and is ~40bp after the Fed's announcement today.
Good question. Those who understand this stuff (not me) are busy making money and don't write about it. Nevertheless, I think that these papers [1,2] by Pozsar offer a fabulous overview of the contemporary money market.
It's only nowhere near enough if you view the process as something other than a huge charade. Take a look at the predicted inflation to see how little the monetary policy "experts" have a clue.
They are going slow. It will take years to get back to pre-covid levels (2.5%-ish), which were low as it is. We haven't had a historically "normal" rate since the mid 2000's (4 to 5% ish.) There will no doubt be another crisis before we get anywhere near there.
That is silly. With mere speculation of interest rate increase, housing sales have already started to slow down. With every 25 bps increase, real asset interest rates will go much higher, causing much more slowdown in sales, GDP and inflation.
If fed accelerates rate increases, we are very likely to see a recession. Which will automatically reduce demand for goods and services and thus inflation.
But reducing inflation by causing mass unemployment will lead to other problems.
The exotic mortgage products (e.g. reverse ARMs) have essentially disappeared, people's homes are well capitalized, lending standards are much higher than they were, there's very low levels of home equity debt, overall debt payments as a percent of household income are at very low levels.
The people waiting for a housing crash are going to wait a long time. This one chart sums it up well:
Mortgage debt service payments as a percent of disposable income are near all-time lows and at roughly 1/2 the number of the GFC peak. Since the vast majority of home loans are fixed -- what's the mechanism for rate hikes to cause a housing crash?
Yeah but that's an overall lowering of debt servicing as a percent of disposable income. The only part that hasn't dropped much is consumer debt.
Plus while reverse amortization might be less common, ARMs generally are still very popular and you'll see a hike in overall debt service associated with rising interest rates.
I don't know what's gonna happen with the housing market and I don't think it'll crash either but I think part of the reason is because private equity has bought a huge amount of housing - BlackRock bought what, 10-15% of the houses sold in 2020?
ARMs actually aren't very popular - fewer than 15% of new mortgages are ARM.
> BlackRock bought what, 10-15% of the houses sold in 2020?
People vastly overestimate how large players like Blackrock are. There are something like 80 million single-family homes in the US. Of these, Blackrock owns 80 thousand. If they bought every one of those homes in 2020 (they didn't) - it would represent more like 1% of homes sold that year. And of course there are millions of condos not figured into my denominator. They're huge, but way under 1% of purchases.
Good point but it works against your overall argument - the investors who buy 10-20% of houses are far less sophisticated than Blackrock and far more likely to start panic selling when their Airbnb income can’t pay their bills.
Of the 80 million single family homes in the US, how many are sold each year? For your math to work (80,000 as 1%) it would have to be 8,000,000 or 10% of the overall supply.
I can actually answer for you - roughly 820,000 single family homes were sold in 2020.
So if BlackRock bought 80,000 homes then, that'd be about 10%.
My (very amateur) understanding of the housing issue is that its primarily a problem of supply. Since houses have been redefined from a dwelling to a financial investment, there is strong pressure on political policy to encourage asset appreciation. That means NIMBYism and corporate REITs are acting as two wealthy and highly-motivated special interest groups in favor of making new development nigh-impossible.
Or at least, so I've been lead to believe. All I know for sure is I can't by a third of the sq. ft my older sibling could 8 years ago.
I would think a lot of people might be rushing to get a mortgage before rates go up.
Whatever the reasons, home prices are ridiculously inflated right now. They’ll need to go down for first time home buyers to have a chance, so at some point there will be pressure for home prices to drop. For what it’s worth I’m in a rural part of the country and it’s not just a city problem.
The people who should not have been buying houses are now renting. Home prices in my area are higher than they were in 2008. Prices will still drop when interest rates rise - that's how it works. It's good that people will be able to keep their homes this time around, but that doesn't mean it's not a bubble.
Every person in the US who has had their purchasing power destroyed over the past ~18 months.
Unfortunately, most people were/are too drunk on (maybe temporary) housing and stock market gains to care.
Cheap money, free money and rampant speculation could all have easily been cut off a year ago and we would have had a much “softer landing”. Now we’re in a much more precarious position and may end up fighting stagflation possibly causing years long general economic malaise.
I legitimately want my home value to tank. I'm sick of paying taxes on a 275k home value that will never, ever, ever sell for that much. I wish it could go back to 80-100k, regardless of whatever "equity" that costs me. I'm in my permanent home, not an investment property.