Talk to almost any banker, investor or hedge-fund manager
today and one topic is likely to dominate the conversation. It isn’t Greece, or
the U.S. economy, or China, let alone the U.K.’s referendum on European Union
membership. It is the lack of liquidity in the markets and what this
might mean for the world economy—and their businesses. Market veterans say they
have never experienced conditions like it. Banks have become so reluctant to
make markets that it has become hard to execute large trades even in the vast
foreign-exchange and government-bond markets without moving prices, raising
fears investors will take unexpectedly large losses when they try to sell.
The U.S. corporate-bond market has almost doubled to $4.5
trillion since the start of the crisis, yet banks today hold just $50 billion
of bonds compared with $300 billion precrisis. One major European bank has cut
its European government-bond trading book by 75% since 2010 and now quotes
daily prices for just 900 corporate bonds compared with 5,000 precrisis,
according to a senior trader. Even the giant U.S. Treasury market isn’t immune:
Trading volumes have fallen by 10% even as the market has tripled since 2005,
while the proportion of outstanding bonds held by dealers has plummeted to 4%
from 15% precrisis, according to Deutsche Bank research.
Recent violent swings in European government-bond markets
show what can happen when there is a shortage of capital to stabilize markets.
In the past month, the German government-bond market has experienced seven of
its worst trading days in the past 15 years. This follows similar episodes in
U.S. Treasuries and Japanese government-bond markets in 2014 and 2013.
Some investors fear that what has been happening is a dress
rehearsal for the mayhem that will happen when a real shock hits, perhaps
following a Greek default. It is easy to dismiss this as special pleading but
this time the bankers may have a point. There are a number of factors behind this
liquidity shortage, not least that banks may be reluctant to hold what they
suspect may be wildly overvalued assets.
But a large part of the explanation lies in changes to
regulation aimed at addressing weaknesses exposed by the financial crisis. Banks
must now hold vastly more capital, particularly against their trading books.
The ring-fencing of proprietary trading in the U.S. and retail banking in the
U.K. has also squeezed liquidity. Traders fear new EU rules, known as MIFID 2,
will make things worse as it will require most fixed-income securities and
derivatives to be traded on exchanges, which may make banks even more reluctant
to quote prices in illiquid securities.
Some of the resulting liquidity squeeze was clearly
intended: Part of the purpose of regulation was to push risks out of the
banking system and on to its customers. It is also important to note that
worries over secondary-market liquidity hasn’t affected the primary market:
Issuance continues to boom, reflecting investors’ frantic search for yield.
The optimistic view is that over time the market will
innovate its way around the liquidity squeeze. Perhaps trading will migrate to
the futures market and new fixed- income indices, allowing investors to gain
exposure to price moves without having to own the underlying asset. Or perhaps
new private pools of capital such as hedge funds will take the place of
bank-based market makers in providing daily liquidity, although currently they
show little appetite to do so. Or maybe longer-term investors such as insurers
and pension funds will simply step in and hold less liquid assets to maturity,
although this may require a change in the way these businesses are regulated.
An alternative view is that the liquidity squeeze is
symptomatic of less benign changes in the financial landscape. In the 30 years
since the Big Bang reforms in the City of London and the repeal of the
Glass-Steagall Act in the U.S., capital markets have provided the motor for
globalization, underpinned by the liquidity provided by banks. If banks stop
making markets, the risk is that this process goes into reverse: As investors
discover they can’t sell their assets, they may stop buying too, pushing up the
cost and reducing the supply of capital to the primary market.
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