When Repos Blew Up in 2019, Hedge Funds Were $800 Billion Short U.S. Treasury Futures; Then Margins Blew Out

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 3, 2022 ~

New details have emerged to provide a fuller picture of the turmoil that was taking place in the dark corners of markets when the overnight repo market blew up on September 17, 2019 and the Fed had to run to the rescue with trillions of dollars in cumulative loans that went on for months.

Imagine if you were the Federal Reserve and had been thoroughly disgraced by waging more than a two-year court battle to prevent the press in America from doing its job and publishing the granular details of the Fed’s 2007 to 2010 bailout of Wall Street and its foreign bank derivative counterparties. Then the Fed was further disgraced after losing the court battles when in 2011 the details of the $29 trillion bailout were published. Chances are that the Fed would not be anxious to let the public or Congress hear the latest details of bailing out hedge funds for the one percent that were using leverage of 50 to 1 obtained from the very banks the Fed is supposed to be supervising.

WHOOSH Goes the Fed’s Lowest Lowball Inflation Measure. And Eats Up All Income Gains Plus Some

Powell should pay attention here so he’s better prepared at the next press conference when asked about the impact of inflation on regular Americans.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Fed chair Jerome Powell’s reaction today after he saw the consequences of his reckless monetary policies. Imagined by cartoonist Marco Ricolli for WOLF STREET.

The “core PCE” price index, which excludes food and energy and which understates inflation by the most of all of the government’s inflation measures and which is therefore wisely used by the Fed for its inflation target, spiked by 0.50% in December from November, and by 4.9% year-over-year, the worst inflation reading since 1983, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today. As measured by this lowest lowball inflation measure, inflation, is well over double the Fed’s inflation target:

So Mortgage Rates Hit a 52-Week High... What's Next?

By Chris Igou

Mortgage rates are a key player in today's housing boom...

Low rates make it cheap for potential homebuyers to borrow money. And that’s a big reason why housing is still affordable today, despite the absolute tear we’ve seen in prices since the pandemic began.

That story has been true for years. But some investors are fearful that a surge in 30-year rates could put a damper on demand...

The average 30-year mortgage rate in the U.S. just hit a 52-week high. While that might seem like bad news, though, it's not something to worry about just yet.

This Is How You Profit From NFTs Without Purchasing Them

By Jeff Brown, editor, The Bleeding Edge

By Jeff Brown

Dear Reader,

How much would you pay for a piece of digital art?

It’s a question I’d ask us to consider today.

Many people are making millions in a matter of weeks buying and selling a unique kind of digital asset that we may already be familiar with – non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

For newer readers, NFTs are digital assets that are cryptographically secured and authenticated on a blockchain. We can think of these as digital collectibles.

Artwork, trading cards, exclusive video clips, poems, and similar items can all be “tokenized” and stored on a blockchain.

And what has happened in this space over the last year is simply remarkable…

Let’s take the Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example. It may not be on every reader’s radar.

This is a series of digital collectibles showing humorous drawings of various apes. You might think this sounds silly on its face… but this collection is among the most valuable in the entire NFT market.

One NFT in this collection jumped from $228 to more than $560,000. That’s a 246,501% return.

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Trading Volume Dips; Dogecoin Rallies

Bitcoin traded in a tight range this week, which provided some relief to market participants after a volatile start to the year. The cryptocurrency was roughly flat over the past 24 hours and up about 3% over the past week, compared to a 5% gain in ether.

Some traders and analysts remain cautious despite the brief price bounce off $40,000 earlier this week.

"Price swings are all happening on wafer-thin volumes, which can amplify price movements," Q9 Capital, a Hong Kong-based crypto investing platform, wrote in a briefing on Friday. "No fresh capital is coming in and nobody is willing to sell or buy," Q9 wrote.

"Attempts earlier in the week to form a rebound are encountering more substantial selling, further indicating seller pressure," Alex Kuptsikevich, an analyst at FxPro, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

Kuptsikevich is especially concerned about further declines in ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after bitcoin. If momentum continues to deteriorate, he anticipates a worst-case scenario of $1,300-$1,700 ETH, which is roughly 50% below current price levels.

Highest Goods Inflation Since 1975

By Brian Maher

Today we are thunderstruck, lightningstruck, tonguestruck and dumbstruck…

That is because — by a marvelous miracle of God — the economic experts have finally struck bull’s-eye.

They had divined that December’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) would register 7% year over year.

Word came issuing from the United States Department of Labor this morning. December’s CPI did in fact register 7% year over year.

This 7% acceleration represents the greatest yearly consumer price inflation since 1982… 39 years distant. Reports CNBC:

The IPO Market Will See Fireworks in 2022

By Teeka Tiwari

I worked on Wall Street for 15 years as an executive and then another 10 years as a fund manager.

In 1991, I was the youngest vice president in Shearson Lehman history. And for anyone who doesn’t know, Shearson Lehman was a key player in the initial public offering (IPO) market for a century.

From Shearson Lehman, I went to Cowen & Co. It was recently ranked one of the top IPO banks in the world.

In all that time, I learned a lot about the inner workings of Wall Street. And the biggest lesson was that you never believe what Wall Street says… you look at it what it does instead.

Right now, Wall Street is in love with initial public offerings (IPOs). That’s when a private company lists its shares on a public exchange like the NYSE or Nasdaq.

Last year was the biggest IPO boom on record. More IPOs doubled in their debuts than in any year since the tech boom… And I believe 2022 could be even bigger.