The Most Dangerous Balance Sheet in the World

The Federal Reserve System, America's private central bank, has a problem. Actually, make that two related problems:

  1. Its massively bloated balance sheet shows assets worth $4.5 trillion, and...
  2. In the bank's new era of "transparency," unwinding that balance sheet will disrupt markets.

The Fed has painted itself into a dangerous corner, and the smartest way to get out of it is probably what it's least likely to do.

Here's what markets can expect from Fed decisions and how to play stock and bond markets the way insider Fed members will be instructed to play them...

How Fed Transparency Became a Market Necessity

Historically, Fed officials didn't speak much about prospects for the economy or markets, or about their policy decisions. In fact, they didn't speak much about why they do what they do even when they were conducting open market operations.

As recently as 1987, in his testimony to Congress, then Fed Chair Alan Greenspan explained, "Since I've become a central banker, I've learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said."

That all changed with the 2008 financial crisis.

With markets in free fall, two major investment banks wiped out, and the biggest banks in America essentially insolvent, the Federal Reserve took unprecedented action.

The Fed was providing unlimited liquidity to faltering banks - including foreign banks - and agreed to let both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, two giant investment banks, become commercial banks to get access to the Fed's discount window and liquidity lines. All the while, critics in Congress who blamed the Fed for creating the subprime crisis and then bailing out their bank constituents demanded transparency out of the nation's private central bank.

The cries of "Audit the Fed!" over the Fed's hand in abetting the crisis with its artificially low rates and  bailing out of bad actor banks wafted through Congress. Pretty soon, Fed officials (starting with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke) began a course of greater transparency.

They had to.

Telegraphing low interest rates for the foreseeable future and announcing regularly scheduled "large-scale asset purchases," the Fed's reference to what the rest of the world calls quantitative easing, was the Fed's way of calming markets and letting them know it wasn't going to stop backstopping big banks, the bond market, or equities markets.

Fed transparency had become a market necessity.

But now, expected and demanded transparency is going to backfire on the Fed. It will disrupt the very same markets the Fed had used "announced transparency" to backstop and push higher and higher.

The underlying problem is the $4.5 trillion of "assets" on the Fed's so-called balance sheet.

Those assets are U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds of various maturities and mortgage-backed securities... Presumably, all government-backed "agency" securities.

Fed officials have been testing the waters about moves to unwind their balance sheet since the last Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Recently released meeting minutes revealed that, besides interest rate deliberations, when and how to start unwinding the balance sheet is getting increasing discussion time.

According to public comments and interviews, the Fed would raise short-term interest rates one or two more times this year, then pause rate increases and, alternatively, start reducing its balance sheet. "When we decide to begin to normalize the balance sheet, we might actually decide at the same time to take a little pause in terms of raising short-term interest rates," said New York Fed President William Dudley in an interview on Bloomberg TV last week.

How to wind down the Fed's gigantic portfolio, as the economy moves closer to meeting the Fed's goals of steadily low inflation and maximum sustainable employment, is increasingly becoming more important than timing further rate increases.

That's because, if left alone, interest rates probably wouldn't move much anyway. They could even drift lower. But if the Fed stops buying bonds and lets its balance sheet "run off", interest rates could rise faster than expected and quickly hand bond investors big capital losses, spook the stock market, and potentially push the economy back into recession.

Play the Triggered Sell-Off Like an Insider

The Fed's large-scale asset purchase program is over... At least, as far as adding to its balance sheet.

However, the Fed's still purchasing bonds regularly. As those bonds the Fed's sitting on mature (meaning they stop paying interest to the Fed and the Fed gets back the principal it spent to buy them), it's using that principal to buy equal amounts of bonds to offset the "run off" of steadily maturing bonds.

By not buying bonds to replace maturing securities, the Fed ceases to be a steady bidder for bonds. That means market buyers have to make up the difference. If they don't, issuers of bonds will have to raise rates to attract them. As rates start rising in the free marketplace, and not because the Fed is engineering them gently higher, they could tick a lot higher and faster than expected.

If that happens, bond holders who own trillions of dollars worth of bonds with artificially low coupons (interest rates) will start seeing capital losses on the bonds they hold. When rates rise, existing bond prices fall to levels where if they are sold, their worth (the price an investor pays and the interest rate coupon they get) is almost equal to new bonds being issued with higher rates. That's why bond prices fall when interest rates rise.

The problem the Fed created for itself with its huge balance sheet and its new "forward guidance" transparency is how to unwind its portfolio without tanking bonds and triggering a stock market sell-off at the same time.

In order to not create too much disruption, the easy way to start exiting would be to quietly buy shorter and shorter-term maturity notes and bills with returned money from maturing longer-term bonds.

The average maturity of the Fed's balance sheet assets is seven years.

As longer-term bonds mature, if the Fed, instead of replacing them with equivalent maturity bonds, bought shorter and shorter-term maturity bonds, it could tell markets it's maintaining its balance sheet for the foreseeable future. Then the Fed could unwind it as the short-term paper it owns matures.

Not only would markets not be able to react directly to the Fed's unwinding plans if they weren't announced, if there's a lack of market disruption and the economy continues to muddle along at 1.5% to 2%, the Fed could unwind a few trillion dollars' worth before it's even told markets what it's done.

That would be a huge boost to markets and confidence to know the Fed's emergency powder keg was full again, and that nothing bad had happened while it unloaded its balance sheet.

But it can't do that because of its transparency trap.

The Fed's probably going to announce its moves. But before it tells the world what it's going to do, it will undoubtedly tell the primary dealers that do business directly with the Fed, its insiders club.

Markets will eventually react to what the Fed's telling primary dealers, because the primary dealers will buy and sell securities to position themselves to accommodate what the Fed's going to do.

For example, if the Fed's going to shorten its maturity curve and keep buying replacement securities from primary dealers, the primary dealers will start loading up on the maturity lengths the Fed will buy.

We'll start seeing that reflected in the yield curve, and we'll know what's happening.

I'm watching the auctions and secondary markets for volume indications of who's buying what and how the curve is being shaped. I'll telegraph here what I see happening.

If you have a "heads-up" on what the Fed's doing before it announces it publicly, you can get into the right bills, notes, and bonds... and out of the ones that are being run out (like I plan to do with ETFs). We can jump out of the way of stocks that will get hit and jump into plays that will profit from the Fed's balance sheet moves.

Stay tuned. I'll keep us on the inside.

Donald Trump's $18.7 Million "Secret Investment": President Trump is just one of many billionaires taking advantage of a Great Depression-era "program" to build massive fortunes. A small group of regular Americans have begun to use them as well. And they’re making millions. Could you be next? Read more

The post The Most Dangerous Balance Sheet in the World appeared first on Wall Street Insights & Indictments.

About the Author

Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.

The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.

Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.

Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.

Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.

Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.

Read full bio