Fears of collateral drought questioned
Have fears of global shortage of high-grade collateral been exaggerated?
As the world braces for several more years of painful deleveraging from the pre-2007 credit excesses, one big fear has been that a shrinking pool of top-rated or AAA assets — due varioulsy to sovereign credit rating downgrades, deteriorating mortgage quality, Basel III banking regulations, central bank reserve accumulation and central clearing of OTC derivatives — has exaggerated the ongoing credit crunch. Along with interbank mistrust, the resulting shortage of high-quality collateral available to be pledged and re-pledged between banks and asset managers, it has been argued, meant the overall amount of credit being generating in the system has been shrinking, pushing up the cost and lowering the availability of borrowing in the real economy. Quantitative easing and bond buying by the world’s major central banks, some economists warned, was only exaggerating that shortage by removing the highest quality collateral from the banking system.
But economists at JPMorgan cast doubt on this. The bank claims that the universe of AAA/AA bonds is actually growing by around $1trillion per year. While central bank reserve managers absorb the lion’s share of this in banking hard currency reserves, JPM reckon they still take less than half of the total created and, even then, some of that top-rated debt does re-enter the system as some central bank reserve managers engage in securities lending.
Citing a recent speech by ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coere dismissing ideas of a collateral shortage in the euro zone, JPM said ECB action in primary covered bond markets and in accepting lower-rated and foreign currency collateral had helped. It added that the average amount of eligible collateral available for Eurosystem liquidity operations was 14.3 trillion euros in the second quarter of 2012 — with 2.5 trillion euros of that put forward as collateral by euro zone banks to be used in the ECB’s repo operations of 1.3 trillion. Critically, the majority of that 2.5 trillion posted at the ECB was either illiquid collateral such as bank loans or collateral associated with peripheral issuers and thus unlikely eligible for use in private repo markets anyway, they added. This process of absorbing low quality collateral in order to free up higher-quality assets for private use has been an approach of both the ECB and Bank of England.
More generally, JPM argues that strict AAA requirements across the financial system are a thing of the past. The likes of tri-party repos in Europe now accepting AA paper, for example, and there are few bond funds left with specific AAA mandates. Similar restrictrions have disappeared for most insurance and pension funds. While central banks have bought some $3.5 trillion of bonds since 2008, they have created about $5 trillion of reserves via QE and long-term repos and that net $1.5 trillion of cash is collateral of the highest quality. Neither did detailed analysis of Basel III liquidity coverage needs or OTC derivatives central clearing needs throw up onerous collateral requirements, they said.
The universe of AAA/AA bonds is actually growing in absolute terms - JPM Join DiscussionAre these (collateral shortage) worries justified? Not in our opinion. The universe of AAA/AA bonds is actually growing in absolute terms. It has grown by $9tr (in the Barcap Multiverse index) since the end of 2008. We expect around $1tr of extra AAA/AA bond supply a year over the coming years due to elevated and persistent government deficits among major developed countries.
Carry currencies to tempt central banks
Central bankers as carry traders? Why not.
As we wrote here yesterday, FX reserves at global central banks may be starting to rise again. That’s a consequence of a pick up in portfolio investment flows in recent weeks and is likely to continue after the U.S. Fed’s announcement of its QE3 money-printing programme.
According to analysts at ING, the Fed’s decision to restart its printing presses will first of all increase liquidity (some of which will find its way into central bank coffers). Second, it also tends to depress volatility and lower volatility encourages the carry trade. Over the next 12 months these two themes will combine as global reserve managers twin their efforts to keep their money safe and still try to make a return, ING predicts, dubbing it a positive carry story.
The first problem is that yields are abysmal on traditional reserve currencies. That means any reserve managers keen to boost returns will try to diversify from the dollar, euro, sterling and yen that constitute 90 percent of global reserves. Back in the spring of 2009 when the Fed scaled up QE1, its move depressed the dollar and drove reserve managers towards the euro, which was the most liquid alternative at the time. ING writes:
This time, however, we are not looking for the same kind of euro pick-up that we saw in 2009. FX reserve managers typically invest in securities rated AA or higher. Even if they extend durations out to the 5-year area of sovereign curves, an average of AA/AAA Eurozone yields only pays 0.75% – exactly the same as Treasuries.5-year UK gilts are not much better at 0.9 % while Japan pays a measly 0.2% on 5-year bonds.
Instead ING analysts reckon FX reserve managers will go for currencies such as the Australian and Canadian dollars. Thanks to slightly better yields, and large, liquid bond markets, a carry basket invested in the Australian, Canadian, Norwegian and Swedish currencies and funded out of the dollar, euro, sterling and yen will have an annualised carry pick up of 1.6%, the analysts say. That sounds pretty modest but according to ING, FX outperformance can deliver returns of over 10% on this basket. They write:
If a major new bout of FX reserve accumulation is to take place, we’re convinced that 90-95% concentration in core currencies has to fall.
International reserve managers are likely to opt in greater numbers for higher-yielding currencies such as the Australian dollar in their bid to diversify their holdings. Join DiscussionEmerging market FX reserves again on rise
One of the big stories of the past decade, that of staggering reserve accummulation by emerging market central banks, appeared to have ground to a halt as global trade and economic growth slumped. But according to Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, reserves are starting to grow again for the first time since mid-2011.
The bank calculates that reserve accumulation by the top-50 emerging central banks should top $108 billion in September after strong inflows of around $13 billion in each of the first two weeks. Look at the graphic below.
So what is the source of these inflows? As BoA/ML points out global trade balances are at their cyclical lows and that is reflected in the dwindling current account surpluses in the developing world. But as risk sentiment has improved in the past six weeks, there has been a pick up in fixed income and equity investment flows to emerging markets, compared to the developed world.
These portfolio flows are likely to increase even more following the Fed’s announcement of an open-ended $40 billion-a-month money-printing programme. BoA/ML writes:
After a gap, emerging markets may again be seeing a rise in central bank reserves. Join DiscussionThe data show that investment capital is being rotated out of developed markets to EM, supporting our view that the financial account has been increasing, even if the current account has not…..Real money flows explain a large share of the recent growth in reserves.
