Stocks Are Dangerously Overvalued With More Rate Hikes To Come

The CPI report shows that inflation has remained stubbornly slow to fall, with the CORE CPI rising at 5.3%, surpassing expectations for 5.2%, creating a problem for the Fed. This will likely lead the Fed to revise its summary of economic projections to show a higher inflation outlook and more rate hikes on the dot plot.

This means that yields across the curve are likely to stay elevated and move higher in the months ahead at a time when liquidity is now being withdrawn from the overall market and equities are dangerously overvalued.

More Rate Hikes

The market is not predicting a June rate hike, with the odds at just 10% as of this writing, and it seems unlikely that Fed will try and surprise the market, given its history. But Fed Fund futures are pricing a nearly 70% chance of a rate hike by July. With the next FOMC meeting coming at the end of July, the Fed will have more data to assess its projected rate path. However, given the hotter core CPI and searing labor market reports, it will probably mean that the dot plot will reflect another rate hike or two in 2023.

The reason is that core inflation is expected to remain sticky, and the Cleveland Fed estimates Core CPI for June at 5.1%. This means the chance the Fed is done raising rates seems slim at this point, and that will likely be reflected in the dot plots when the Summary of Economic Projections comes out.

Additionally, headline CPI on a non-seasonal adjusted basis rose by 0.3% in May. That has inflation rising at a 4.4% annualized rate of change over the past three and six months. This does suggest that it may be challenging to get inflation down now that it is entering this 3% to 4% range. It’s important to remember that CPI on a year over year is measured on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, and using a seasonally adjusted CPI metric to annualize the rate of change may understate actual inflation due to changes in seasonal adjustments, which happened in 2022.

This is why bond yields aren’t coming down and are rising following the CPI report. Especially when looking at the back of the curve, as markets price in a higher for longer monetary policy from the Fed, with the 30-year rate rising back to 3.92%. But more importantly, real rates are pushing higher, with the 10-Yr TIP rate now trading at 1.58% and approaching that critical level of resistance that could lead to a big break out and push to new highs.

The 10-yr TIP is a critical rate to follow because assets such as long duration growth are priced using real rates, with the Nasdaq 100 being key. The spread between the Nasdaq 100 earnings yield and the 10-yr real yield is now at 1.93%, levels not seen since the mid-2000s, when the Nasdaq was in the middle of a valuation reset from the 2000 bubble. More importantly, the Nasdaq 100 earnings yield is 235 bps below the historical average of the last 10 years.

The other piece of the puzzle is that liquidity is now starting to be withdrawn from the Nasdaq 100 futures market, as measured by the depth of the book. The last time the depth of the book declined was back in August of 2022, which also marked a significant top in the market.

The addition and withdrawal of liquidity in the Nasdaq futures market in August 2022 coincided with a move up and down reserve balances held at the Federal Reserve. Currently, reserve balances are likely to decline due to the refill of the Treasury General Account. Further, as we move into the quarter end, the reverse repo activity should begin to climb, leading to lower reserves.

The path for inflation is sticky and will continue not to be smooth, and if the current rate of changes remains, headline inflation could very well begin to accelerate in the second half of 2023 as the base effects of the first half of 2022 wane. Translating into yields staying elevated and leaving stock particularly vulnerable as the equity risk premium gets dangerously narrow and liquidity is withdrawn from the market.

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