The TwentyFour Blog

The building trend of consolidation in the European banking sector is important for several reasons, and could create further opportunities for bondholders.

The quantity of cash parked in money market funds has been at the forefront of investors’ minds for some time now. The surge of inflows for these short term risk-free instruments as rates rose was no surprise considering they now yield more than a single-B rated high yield corporate was offering just a few years ago.

Ten years ago this month, Mario Draghi gave a speech to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Eurofi Financial Forum making the case for reforming securitisation regulation in order to revive the asset-backed securities (ABS) market in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Uncertainty is over, it was a 50 basis points (bps) move. As we mentioned in our previous blog, the most important take away from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting would be their assessment of the economy.

While the majority of headlines have concerned whether the Fed will do 25bp or 50bp to kick off its cutting cycle, we think this is only one part of the discussion – and not necessarily the most important one.

Yesterday the European Central Bank (ECB) delivered a 25 basis point (bp) cut, their second in the current easing cycle and in line with market consensus.

With the Federal Reserve (Fed) set to begin its long-awaited interest rate easing cycle at next week’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Wednesday’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation report for August was the last big economic release investors could comb for clues as to the size of the first cut.

Earlier this week the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) proposed scrapping Additional Tier 1 (AT1) instruments and not replacing them with any other form of junior debt, with the consultation paper suggesting that instead Australian banks could fill their 1.50% AT1 allowance with a combination of Tier 2 (1.25%) and Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital (0.25%).

We struggle to recall a more eagerly awaited US labour market report than that published last week. Stakes were high given the previous report showed a steep rise in unemployment and caused market mayhem in early August, but anyone hoping for a conclusive picture was left disappointed as a mixed set of figures left the strength of the US economy open to interpretation.

Any market participants hoping for a quiet few days to ease back into “work mode” after the summer break have had to rapidly adjust their expectations.

Given almost half of the world’s population resides in a country staging an election this year, 2024 was always likely to throw up a series of political headlines.

The start of the school year ordinarily also marks the end of summer for the primary bond markets as issuance restarts, though this year feels rather different.