We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
The Greatest Credit Event of All
In just the last few weeks, we've seen two major trades — the Yen carry trade and the short volatility trade — "blow up", even though neither lasted nor took the street down with it. What about the basis trade?
We alluded at the start of the year that the "mother of all credit events" would be a disorderly rise in bond yields leading to dollar debasement. This is the "de-dollarization" that keeps Treasury and Federal Reserve officials up at night — not means of trade being re-routed off the dollar and onto other forms of settlement.
A credit event occurs when a borrower can no longer meet debt obligations, leading to a default, bankruptcy, or restructuring. For example, an insolvent bank being unable to pay depositors in a bank run.
There are two legs to the basis trade: the asset managers who express Treasury exposure via buying futures, and the hedge funds who repo finance cash Treasury purchases. While hedge funds are the marginal buyers of cash Treasuries, it's the asset managers who buy Treasury futures that ultimately hold the risk.
The marginal absorber of cash Treasuries remains the basis trade, but it can run into limits either from a regulatory crack down on hedge funds or limitations on dealer repo financing. New research from TBAC suggests that changes in the credit environment could also threaten the trade.
What asset managers do is effectively take the opposite side of the basis trade by selling cash Treasuries outright and using the proceeds to finance their credit investments. They then add back the Treasury exposure through futures.
That positioning also more directly links the Treasury & credit markets together, as potential losses on credit may lead to deleveraging in Treasury positions as managers de-gross.
It could also lead to liquidity squeezes as managers sell Treasuries to meet redemptions, as credit markets may not be liquid to enough to raise cash. Outside of a systemic or apparent credit event, note that credit spreads have spiked this month.
In the wake of such a risk-off credit event (think: a bank failure), monetary authorities are limited to only a few modes of easing. But the rise of foreign, non-official, unhedged accounts as the marginal buyer for Treasuries means that they are particularly vulnerable to dollar devaluation that results from a policy of easing.
Aggressive rate cuts in the name of providing economic support for example may therefore paradoxically be ill advised insofar as it weakens the dollar against other currencies (like the euro), because said non-official accounts would likely firesale their Treasury holdings as they try to avoid realizing losses, spiking repo financing costs and repo rates as dealer warehousing capacity is pushed to the edge.
That was the case in March 2020, when risk-off paradoxically led to a spike in yields, as Treasury holders aggressively sold their securities for cash. Although this time, it may be to preserve foreign capital against unhedged Treasury losses.
(Disclaimer: this is a theoretical but plausible example).
6/6
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Source
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🌆 Market News Digest
[July 3, 2026 EST]
🔥 Top Stories
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At his second inaugural, U.S. President Donald Trump pronounced his hope “that our recent presidential election will be remembered as the greatest and most consequential election in the history of our country.” By losing his Gulf war, Trump has achieved that goal. His choice to launch a campaign against Iran was encouraged by others, but fully his own. It has led to a reversal that marks a strategic calamity far greater than the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War.
Defeat in the Iranian war looks, on the surface, nothing like other U.S. military defeats. The speed of the war and its remoteness have lent an air of unreality to the whole endeavor. The White House has not been burned, as it was in 1814; there have not been protests against a nonexistent draft. The absence of substantial U.S. casualties in this conflict also masks the scale of the U.S. defeat. To be sure, the war has been deadly: Thousands of Iranians, ...
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The report says Trump is concerned that renewed military conflict could hurt the chances of a diplomatic resolution and of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, and that he’s shown willingness to let indirect talks in Qatar run past the August 18 deadline. He is said to be fine with continuing limited strikes on Iranian targets if Tehran violates the current temporary deal - as it already has, repeatedly.
How are those negotiations going?
Not well. It seems JD Vance’s “historic” face-to-face achievement was a one-off. Washington has been quietly downgraded from talking to the Great Satan to negotiating with the Little Satan instead - a senior Qatari official confirmed that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Qatari officials in Doha, but there are currently no high-level U.S.-Iran meetings ...
