Federated on Rate Hikes
Federated Investors' CIO of Global Money Markets, Deborah Cunningham recently posted her latest "Month in Cash" column, entitled, "Looking forward -- really! -- to the end of summer." She says, "For most of us, summer is a time to pull back from the hustle and bustle of life. No one -- especially school children and college students -- want to think about it ending. But this year, at least in the financial industry, we are looking forward to September. It is the month that the market expects the Federal Reserve will raise rates for the first time since 2008. For cash managers, that will bring on more celebratory fireworks than the Fourth of July. Anticipation for liftoff has ratcheted up following the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Its statement and economic/rate projections point to a September hike, and also increased the likelihood of an additional rise in December. While this has been our base case for some time, with the housing market heating up, the labor market strengthening, consumer confidence climbing and the poor first quarter long forgotten, it is almost hard to imagine that the hikes wouldn't unfold this way. But inflation is still not quite where the Fed would like to see it, with PCE still below the two percent level. It is hanging in there: not getting worse, but not getting any better. However, at this point, it would take a substantial negative event to postpone the hike, and we don't believe that even a Greek default will do it. In any case, none of the global banks we deal with in the prime or municipal money market portfolios have any meaningful exposure to Greece, and therefore the portfolios won’t be impacted in any way, shape or form. As you know, while the Fed's maneuvers on the longer term are always in the back of our minds, they take a back seat to the daily trading we do with the central bank. Lately, that has become much easier as the Fed's staff has gotten better and better at running the operations. A year-and-a-half into the implementation of the reverse repo program, it finally is running smoothly, issuing enough collateral to keep rates above the floor. And since the Fed started adding term-repo issuances for quarter end, there's been less concern about supply now than there had been. While the Fed will have to navigate the reverse repo program when rates rise, it has $4 trillion on its balance sheet to use if it needs to control the rate more firmly." She continues, "If you have not already read our recent press release laying out our plans for some of our funds in response to the SEC's 2014 money fund rules, please follow this link to do so. Its main news is the announcement of which of our money market funds will classify as retail and thus not required to float their NAV. But it also outlines plans for a series of mergers for some of our prime, municipal and government money market funds. Our weighted average maturity (WAM) for June didn't change much with a range of 40-50 days for government and prime funds."
