Geopolitics Take a Back Seat to the YOLO Trade

Russia was severed from the world financial system over the weekend.  Its central bank was barred from accessing its reserves that are held in the U.S. or U.S. dollars, the U.S. and E.U. are working out the details about how to remove Russian banks from the SWIFT payments system, and a wide range of countries have implemented other sanctions.  I can’t think of a precedent for excising a country’s finances in such a manner, let alone the world’s 11^th largest economy.  It would seem to be quite a risky and problematic endeavor.  Not if you ask U.S. equity traders, apparently. 

Overnight markets reacted as one would have expected.  There was a significant flight to safety, with active buying in haven currencies, gold, and U.S. Treasuries.  Two- and five-year yields remain 11 basis points (bp) lower, while 10- and 30-years are down 9 and 7 bp respectively.  Global equities sold off overnight, with U.S. equity indices opening over 2% lower before steadily recovering overnight.  The Russian ruble fell by over 20% and the country’s stock exchange never opened. 

Traders with long memories had good reason to be wary.  Major dislocations mean that someone is likely to have the wrong positions.  Worse, if they are held in a leveraged account, a move of sufficient magnitude is likely to require margin calls and/or forced closeouts.  If those forced closeouts are of sufficient size, they have a nasty way of metastasizing in unexpected ways.

An Axios article this morning offered a reminder that a Russian default in August 1998 triggered the Long Term Capital Management crisis that followed just a month later.  Lenders have become far more wary about extending the sort of loans that allowed LTCM to create a global financial contagion[i], but last year’s Archegos situation showed that outsized risks can still lurk in unexpected corners.  It would be quite understandable that markets would be wondering whether there would be large funds that might be in susceptible situations.

Somewhere during the morning, equity traders decided that the risks were overstated.  Overnight futures had pared most of their declines before U.S. markets opened, then moved steadily higher throughout the morning.  Led by mega-caps, the NASDAQ 100 Index (NDX) turned higher by mid-morning and the S&P 500 (SPX) flirted with unchanged levels around midday.  One could assert that investors were enthusiastic that Fed Funds futures were now indicating just a single 25 bp rate hike at the upcoming March meeting and only similar hikes at each of the following meetings, but money markets had been moving in that direction for several days. 

I view the enthusiasm in major indices to be a continuation of the bounce that we saw last week with an eye to month-end position squaring.  Stock traders appear to have followed the adage “buy to the sound of cannons”, and there was definitely logic to that tactic.  Markets appeared to have discounted a series of dire scenarios and rallied when the first round of sanctions were perceived as rather mild.   Yet with the weekend’s sanctions seeming much more stringent than those originally proposed, the traders who bought last week’s dip seemed disinclined to sell the current rip.

That said, Mr. Market is displaying a split personality around midday today.  Bond yields remain lower, gold remains higher, as does the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX).  Yet some of best performers are among the riskiest assets available.  Bitcoin rallied as much as 10% and meme stocks are almost all higher.  Tesla (TSLA) is best performing of the most heavily weighted index components.  The YOLO trade is co-existing with the flight to safety.

It could be that this is a feature of the current investing climate.  Those who have been through several financial crises and cycles see that the episodes affecting the Russian economy and oil prices have the distinct possibility to spiral in unexpected, nasty ways.  Meanwhile, those who are newer to the market and don’t subscribe to market orthodoxy see little to upset their favorite stocks.  One could argue that higher oil prices are a boon to TSLA and an inability to access major currencies provides a boost to crypto adoption.  Why those would be a boon to AMC or Gamestop (GME), eludes me though.  Those who listen to the message of the market need to decide which of the conflicting messages will ultimately be correct.

[i] Odd anecdote – I took the train to work one morning during the crisis when the conductor announced “Next stop, Greenwich, home of everyone’s favorite hedge fun