How the Treasury refresh may not be catastrophic

June 11, 2023 at 13:10 PM EDT

Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.
The Trend Asset Allocation Model is an asset allocation model that applies trend-following principles based on the inputs of global stock and commodity prices. This model has a shorter time horizon and tends to turn over about 4-6 times a year. The performance and full details of a model portfolio based on the out-of-sample signals of the Trend Model can be found here.

My inner trader uses a trading model, which is a blend of price momentum (is the Trend Model becoming more bullish, or bearish?) and overbought/oversold extremes (don't buy if the trend is overbought, and vice versa). Subscribers receive real-time alerts of model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of the email alerts is updated weekly here. The hypothetical trading record of the trading model of the real-time alerts that began in March 2016 is shown below.

The latest signals of each model are as follows:

Ultimate market timing model: Sell equities (Last changed from “buy” on 26-Mar-2023)*
Trend Model signal: Neutral (Last changed from “bullish” on 17-Mar-2023)*
Trading model: Bearish (Last changed from “neutral” on 02-Jun-2023)*

* The performance chart and model readings have been delayed by a week out of respect to our paying subscribers.

Update schedule: I generally update model readings on my site on weekends. I am also on Twitter at @humblestudent and on Mastodon at @humblestudent@toot.community. Subscribers receive real-time alerts of trading model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of those email alerts is shown here.

Subscribers can access the latest signal in real time here.

A liquidity catastrophe?
Even before the resolution of the debt ceiling impasse, analysts had been warning about the consequences of a post-deal hangover.

It was said that the U.S. Treasury market would see a flood of new issuance which would draw liquidity from the financial system. Such a loss of liquidity would create significant headwinds for the prices of risk assets. Since the conclusion of the debt ceiling deal, the warnings have become a cacophony. Estimates vary, but consensus market expectations call for the issuance of about $1 trillion in Treasury paper over the next three months.

I have warned before about the liquidity impact of new Treasury issuance and I am certainly cognizant of the risks. However, there is a narrow path for a benign resolution of the reset of the U.S. Treasury’s cash balances without significantly affecting the price of risk assets.

The full post can be found here.