The Daily Spark

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  • Corporate financing needs

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    Why does your company not need to borrow money in the next 12 months? That is a question in the latest Fed/Duke CFO survey below, and 80% of companies respond that they don’t need to borrow because they have enough cash on their balance sheets. Only 10% of companies think that interest rates are too high. For more see here.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • EU HY OAS trading wider

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    European high yield spreads have been trading wider, driven by intensifying recession risks, but European equity implied vol has remained relatively subdued. The outlook for Europe is very worrying, and either equity vol has to increase or high yield OAS has to narrow, see chart below.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • Weekend Reading

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    Blanchard and Summers: Bad news for the Fed from the Beveridge space

    https://www.piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/bad-news-fed-beveridge-space

    Just How Big Are Federal Interest Payments?

    https://www.crfb.org/blogs/just-how-big-are-federal-interest-payments

    Fed: The Increase in Inflation Compensation: What’s Up?

    https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/el2022-18.pdf

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • Slowdown watch

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    Inflation this week came in higher than expected at 9.1%, but the list of reasons why inflation will soon be coming down keeps growing, see below. Our weekly Slowdown Watch with daily and weekly indicators for the US economy is available here.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • Oil Price Forecast

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    We have built a model where oil prices are explained by US supply, OPEC supply, World consumption, and lagged oil prices. All variables are statistically significant. With slower economic growth ahead and supply increasing, the model currently forecasts that oil prices will decline over the coming 12 months, see chart below.

    Chart projecting lower oil prices to December 2023
    Source: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • Tracking the employment recovery by industry

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    Since employment declined by 22 million jobs during the pandemic, about 21.5 million jobs have been created. But the distribution of the jobs created has been uneven, with some sectors today having employment above February 2020 levels and others having employment levels below. Most noteworthy was the fast recovery in the goods sector and the current strong growth in jobs in the economy’s service sector. The table shows the level of employment in different industries with February 2020 = 100.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • Credit Duration Changing

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    IG index duration has been declining, and HY index duration has been increasing, see charts below. If inflation starts to come down over the coming months as the consensus expects, this shift has important implications for the expected performance of IG relative to HY in case 10-year rates rally from 3% down to, say, 2%.

    Chart showing a decline in the duration of investment grade bonds
    Source: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist. Note: The measure used is modified duration, which measures the expected change in a bond’s price to a 1% change in interest rates.
    Chart showing increasing duration in high yield bonds
    Source: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist. Note: The measure used is modified duration, which measures the expected change in a bond’s price to a 1% change in interest rates.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • HY spread minus IG spread

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    In this PDF we have re-drawn all our charts for credit spreads and yields going back in time as far as possible, and the bottom line is that the ongoing spread widening is still relatively modest seen in a historical context, see also charts below.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • To get a sustained rally in credit markets and stock markets, we need to see:

    1) evidence that inflation is coming down for 2-3 months from its current peak at almost 9%, and

    2) evidence that we will have a soft landing and not a hard landing.

    Stock markets and credit markets will continue to sell off and volatility will remain high as long as there is uncertainty about when inflation will start to decline and whether we will have a recession or not.

    We discuss this outlook in this PDF, in our latest podcast on Spotify, and my Monday morning 5-minute Weekly Brief videos.

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


  • Weekend reading

    Torsten Sløk

    Apollo Chief Economist

    Europe’s growing league of small corporate bond issuers: new players, different game dynamics

    https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/economic-research/resbull/2022/html/ecb.rb220615~b69a5f0ce5.en.pdf

    ECB: The impact of credit supply shocks in the euro area: market-based financing versus loans

    https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2673~7d8599b01a.en.pdf

    Fed: Volatility in Home Sales and Prices: Supply or Demand?

    https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022041pap.pdf

    See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.


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