Two months ago, in “ETF Issuers Quietly Prepare For Meltdown With Billions In Emergency Liquidity,” we outlined the rather disconcerting circumstances that have led some large fund managers to quietly line up emergency liquidity facilities that can be tapped in the event of a sudden retail exodus from bond funds. 

"The biggest providers of exchange-traded funds, which have been funneling billions of investor dollars into some little-traded corners of the bond market, are bolstering bank credit lines for cash to tap in the event of a market meltdown. Vanguard Group, Guggenheim Investments and First Trust are among U.S. fund companies that have lined up new bank guarantees or expanded ones they already had, recent company filings show," Reuters reported at the time, in a story we suspect did not get the attention it deserved. 

At a base level, these precautionary measures are the result of the interplay between central bank policy and the unintended consequences of the post-crisis regulatory regime. ZIRP creates a hunt a for yield and simultaneously incentivizes companies (especially cash strapped companies) to tap the bond market while borrowing costs remain artificially suppressed. Clearly, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The longer rates on risk free assets remain near, at, or even below zero, the more demand there is for new corporate issuance (the rationale being that at least corporate credit offers some semblance of yield). More demand means rates on corporate credit are driven still lower, and once yields on high grade issues get close to the lower limit, yield-starved investors are then herded into HY.

All of this supply in the primary market comes at a time when liquidity in the secondary market for corporate credit is non-existent thanks to the shrinking dealer books that resulted from the government’s (maybe) well-meaning attempt to crack down on prop trading. The result: a crowded theatre with a tiny exit.

This situation has been exacerbated by the proliferation of bond ETFs which have allowed retail investors to pile into corners of the fixed income world where they might not belong. 

All of the above can be summarized as follows.

"MF assets too large versus dealer inventories" (via Citi)...

... clear evidence of "structural damage in corporate bond trading liquidity" (via JP Morgan)...

... and the rapid growth of bond funds in the post-crisis world (via BIS)...

So given the above, the question is this: if something were to spook the market - a rate hike cycle for instance, or an October revolver raid on HY energy names, or an exogenous geopolitical shock - causing an exodus from these funds, what would happen to prices if fund managers were suddenly forced to transact in size in an illiquid secondary market in order to meet redemptions?

"Nothing good", is the answer. 

The solution is to avoid selling the underlying bonds - even when investors are selling their shares in the funds.

But how is this possible? 

To a certain extent, outflows in one fund can be offset by inflows to another. These "diversifiable flows" are one happy byproduct of the great ETF proliferation. Here's a refresher on how this works courtesy of Barclays.

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Portfolio Products Replace Dealer Inventory

While diversifiable flows limit the risks to portfolio managers in principle, the reality of the high yield market is more complicated. Managers have specific views on tenor, callability, sectors, covenants, and, most importantly, individual credits, such that actually finding buyers for specific bonds can be quite difficult. In the pre-crisis period, dealers ran large inventories that effectively facilitated the netting of flows across funds (Figure 1). A fund with an outflow would sell bonds into the dealer community, and funds with outflows would buy bonds out of the dealer inventory. When inventory is large, the fact that the specific bonds bought and sold did not match was largely irrelevant. Funds with outflows could sell the bonds of their choice, and the funds with inflows could pick investments from the large variety of inventory held by dealers.

The matching problem has become more acute as dealer inventories have declined. Even funds can net flows in principle, dealers are much less willing to warehouse bonds, and are much more likely to buy only when they believe they can quickly offload the risk. Under this scenario, the fact that flows can theoretically be netted is of little practical use to fund managers – actually netting individual bonds is extremely difficult, particularly in the short time frame required by funds offering daily liquidity to end investors.

This is where portfolio products come in. Investors can use portfolio products to fund outflows/invest inflows immediately and execute the necessary single-name bond trades over time as liquidity in the underlying bond market allows (Figure 2). In this scenario, funds with inflows and outflows simply exchange portfolio products, sidestepping the immediate need to trade single-name corporate bonds.

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Ok great, so ETFs provide a kind of "phantom" liquidity if you will. There are two problems with this:

• It only works when flows are diversifiable. Once flows become unidirectional, it all goes out the window.
• It makes the underlying markets even more illiquid.

Here's how we put it last month in "How Fund Managers Use ETF Phantom Liquidity To Avert A Meltdown":

In other words, if I'm a fund manager, the idea that ETFs provide liquidity rests on the assumption that when I experience outflows, someone else will be experiencing inflows and thus I can sell ETFs and avoid offloading my bonds into an illiquid corporate credit market. Put another way: I am depending on new money coming into the market to fund redemptions from previous investors who are exiting the market, all so that I can avoid liquidating assets that are declining in value and that I believe will be difficult to sell. There's a term for that kind of business. It's called a ponzi scheme and just like all other ponzi schemes, when the new money dries up (so, for example, when HY bond ETF flows are all headed in the wrong direction), the only way to meet redemptions is to get what I can for the assets I have and when the market for those assets is thin (as the secondary market for corporate credit most certainly is), I may incur substantial losses. 

Note also that the more often ETFs are used as a way of avoiding the underlying bond market, the more illiquid that market becomes, making the situation still more precarious in the event of a panic.

So what is a fund manager to do? 

This is where we come full circle to the emergency liquidity lines mentioned at the outset. In order to avoid tapping the underlying illiquid bond market in a situation where flows are unidirectional, fund managers may instead pay out redemptions in borrowed cash. 

This is, to quote Citi's Matt King, "creative destruction destroyed."

Only worse.

That is, this represents the willful delay of a long overdue episode of creative destruction layered atop another delay of the much needed Schumpeterian endgame. Stripping out the metaphysics and philosophy references, that can be translated as follows: this strategy is yet another example of delaying the inevitable. If fund managers are forced to tap these liquidity lines it likely means investors have found a reason to sell en masse and if that reason turns out to be something that permanently impairs the value of the underlying bonds (as opposed to a transitory, irrational panic) then all the funds are doing by borrowing to meet redemptions is employing leverage to stave off the recognition of losses, which is ironically the same thing (in principle anyway) that the companies whose bonds they’re holding have done to stay in business. It’s a delay-and-pray scheme designed to avoid selling the debt of companies whose similar delay-and-pray schemes have run their course. 

In closing, it's important to note that no fund manager in the world will be able to line up enough emergency liquidity protection to avoid tapping the corporate credit market in the event of panic selling in the increasingly crowded market for bond funds. 

In other words, when the exodus comes, the illiquidity that's been chasing markets for the better part of seven years will finally catch up, and at that point, all bets are officially off.

International Man's Jeff Thomas points to the unprecedented financial & economic challenges & crises in the indebted developed world .. Thomas is very pessimistic about the retirement situation for Americans, Canadians, Europeans .. he thinks their investments in their pension funds will diminish dramatically in value or disappear .. for example, on U.S. social security, "Ergo, each year, those working will need to be taxed more heavily if the system is to continue. Unfortunately, at some point, we reach the tipping point and the concept itself is no longer viable. After that point, benefits will be reduced and, possibly, eliminated altogether." .. in regard to private pension funds like 401Ks, Thomas sees the risks of a stock market crash as bringing down the value of these funds, even if the funds are so-called "diversified" .. but there's more - there are now new risks from governments desperately in search of funds to keep their operations & public pensions going .. "When governments find themselves on the verge of insolvency, they invariably react the same way: go back to the cash cow for a final milking. Each of the jurisdictions that is in trouble at present, has, in its playbook, the same collection of milking techniques. One of those will have a major impact on pensions: the requirement that pension plans must contain a percentage of government Treasuries .. Legislation will be created to ensure that a percentage be in Treasuries, which are 'guaranteed' .. Sounds good. And people will be grateful. Unfortunately, the body that is providing the guarantee is the same body that has created the economic crisis. And if the government is insolvent, the 'guarantee' will become just one more empty promise. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers have a duty to protect workers invested in their 401(k) plans from mutual funds that perform poorly or are too expensive. By passing this ruling, the US government has the power to seize private pension funds “to protect pensioners”. It also has the authority to dictate how funds may be invested. The way is now paved for the requirement that 401(k)s be invested heavily in US Treasuries."

Economist Satyajit Das sees increasing methods of financial repression being employed by governments as policy options become limited .. Introduced in 1973 by economists Edward Shaw & Ronald McKinnon, the term refers to measures implemented by governments to channel savings & funds to finance the public sector, lower its borrowing costs & liquidate debt .. Das sees new taxes, means testing, user pay surcharges all coming .. "Entitlement liabilities, such as retirement benefits, will be managed by increasing the allowable minimum retirement age, reducing benefit levels, linking to actual contribution by individuals over their working life, and eliminating inflation indexation. Many of these policies will be packaged as socially and ethically progressive initiatives, belying the financial imperatives." .. points out in a 2013 study, the McKinsey Global Institute found that between 2007 & 2012, interest rate & quantitative easing (QE) policies resulted in a net transfer to governments in the United States, Britain & the eurozone of $1.6 trillion (£1.03 trillion), through reduced debt-service costs & increased central bank profits - "The losses were borne by households, pension funds, insurers and foreign investors. Households in these countries together lost $630bn in net interest income, with the major losses being borne by older households with significant interest-bearing assets. Non-financial corporations in these countries also benefited by $710bn through lower debt service costs." .. Das also sees deliberate devaluation as another financial repression mechanism .. regulations are another mechanism: "Governments can legislate minimum mandatory holdings of government securities for banks, pension funds and insurance companies. New liquidity regulations already require increased holdings of government bonds by banks and insurers." .. wealth confiscation is yet another mechanism - seizing savings or pension fund assets like in 2013 when Spain drew €5bn (£3.5bn) from the state’s Social Security Reserve Fund, designed to guarantee pension payments in times of hardship .. nationalizations are yet another mechanism .. "Debt monetization and the resultant loss of purchasing power effectively represent a tax on holders of money and sovereign debt. They redistribute real resources from savers to borrowers and the issuer of the currency, resulting in diminution of wealth over time. This highlights the reliance on financial repression, explicitly seeking to reduce the value of savings. Ultimately, the policies being used to manage the crisis punish frugality and thrift, instead rewarding borrowing, profligacy, excess and waste."

Martin Armstrong: "The game is afoot to eliminate CASH .. Already we see the cancellation of such cards and the issuing of new debit cards. Why? The new cards cannot be used at an ATM outside of Germany to obtain cash. Any attempt to get cash can only be an advance on a credit card .. Little by little, these people are destroying everything that held the world economy together .. This will NEVER END NICELY for they can only think about their immediate needs with no comprehension of the future they are creating .. This is total insanity and we are losing absolutely everything that makes society function .. Once they eliminate CASH, they will have total control over who can buy or sell anything."
It's financial repression gone mad.

Swiss Re video highlights the recent meeting they held with experts voicing concerns about the ongoing use of unconventional policies .. financial repression is causing financial market distortions & poses a serious risk to financial stability .. These unconventional policies have pushed institutional investors into holding government debt. As a result they have less money available for productive investment, such as infrastructure projects .. "It means that there's a global search for yield. That possibly leads to a misallocation of resources," says Douglas Flint, Group Chairman of HSBC .. Jean-Claude Trichet, Chairman of the Group of Thirty affirms the risks.