If this press conference ends with Politico having asked the best question, we have sunk to a new low.

You send Yellen out to comment on the stability of the banking system and you can't even get the camera stable.. I'm about to get sea sick over here

When news flow speeds up like this the best thing to do is the thing that people instinctively want to do least.. slow down. Check twitter/news once a day. Otherwise you get too hyperfocused on absurdly insignificant things relative to the cyclical picture.

IMO something changed with the relationship between the Fed and Timiraos on/around Feb 1st. That was when he (incorrectly) said the fed was going to announce they were pausing after that hike. I think he's largely been using conjecture since then, not direct knowledge from fed.

'Euro liquidity is perfectly addressed.. no issue on that'

I get the feeling that's going to be one of those central banker quotes that we come back to later

Looking more and more like the beginning of the actual recession was February. That's not confirmed yet, of course, but the clock starts ticking. The market will bottom ~3 months before the end of the recession. So: more waiting.

Just my opinion-- the fed planned this lending facility 12 months ago when they started rate hikes. They couldn't announce it back then-- the backlash would have been enormous. They had to wait for the first big depositor scare to conflate the issue.

The gist: Banks can borrow against bonds AT PAR. If you're under water you don't need to sell to access cash. That's a pretty huge deal. The 1 year term limit is irrelevant.

federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre…

Fintwit is using up all of its energy on the collapse of a poorly run 'bank'.

The tide is going out after a mania. Plenty more failures to come-- don't fill yourself up before the main course arrives. We're still on the soup.

When the dust clears, one of the most amazing things will be that people were buying the CAC40 at all-time highs as late as March 2023

'Catastrophically good' NFP

IMO it is always most useful to pay attention to the communication themes/trends that central bankers used. Powell went into this press conference with the goal of emphasizing 'uncertainty' and 'we don't know' in a variety of ways.

LOL.. Clearly, Nick Timiraos asked Powell why they didn't announce they are pausing after this hike because he heard that discussion occurred during the meeting.

Interesting, the first question Powell took looked planted. Clearly seemed to be reading the answer at a couple points-- not how he normally answers questions

Ouch.. this is all you need to see to know Adani is engaging in fraud. The CEO trying to reframe it as an attack on India gives it away.

From ⁦Financial Times⁩

We're seeing the first signs that the equity markets have given up on the fed put (selling off on bad news). Strap in.