Auction Failure Today?
Three weeks ago, when discussing the failed (yes, failed) Maiden Lane 2 auction by the New York Fed, we said: 'Something quite disturbing happened during today's latest attempt by the Fed to sell $3.8 billion in face amount of Maiden Lane 2 assets: it had a busted dutch auction. In fact, the auction was so massively busted, the New York Fed managed to sell only half of the bonds for sale, or $1.898 billion in 36 Cusips of the total 73 Cusips offered for sale." Subsequently we noted the sudden radiosilence from the Fed on this issue on Twitter. To be sure, every MBS trader and the kitchen sink promptly complained that the Fed was saturating the market with toxic AIG garbage, which prompted us to declare that: "unless someone opens up a release valve, we are about to see a massive regurgitation and even more massive repricing of credit risk, first in IG, then in HY and ABX/CMBX, and lastly, and most massively, in equities, which continue to exist in their own world and which are now totally disconnected with HY, which they used to track so very closely." We just got the release valve: from Bloomberg: "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is halting its sales of mortgage bonds acquired in the rescue of American International Group Inc. "Given prevailing market conditions” for residential mortgage-backed securities, “we do not anticipate any sales of bonds in the near term or until such time as the New York Fed deems it will achieve value for the public," Jack Gutt, a New York Fed spokesman said in an e-mail." Uh, what prevailing market conditions: a Nasdaq which has ripped over 100 points in one week (granted on no volume and on unprecedented market manipulation but so what). Regardless, this is a huge slap in the face for the Fed, which has just proven that even in a surging market it can not unwind an amount from its book that is less than 1% of its total asset holdings without actually crashing the market.
We certainly can not wait for BTIG's spin on this news tomorrow.
In the meantime, we remind readers of what we predicted, accurately, on June 9:
If dealers and funds are unable to handle a mere $31 billion MBS portfolio disposition, and its weekly sale (think of its as a reverse repo) is starting to cause massive ripples in the bond market, just what will happen when dealers are forced to hold back the tens of billions in weekly bond auctions they freely flip back to the Fed now. In other words, is the credit market on the verge of a over-saturation implosion (hence the title)?
Good luck with that end of QE2 boys. You will need it.
