I recently saw a post from r/DDIntoGME which had said that essentially, if the overnight reverse repo lending that’s been going on keeps going in the same pattern it has been, it is going to start reaching its “maximum” amount of lending(500 BIllion) around Friday.
I wanted to piggyback off of that post because it brought to my mind the question, “What would genuinely happen once it reached its maximum? Would the whole system go kaboom?” Well, to answer that question, let’s try to understand the context here a bit first.
In these reverse repo agreements, the FED is selling bonds to banks (which are presumably lent to HFs) which takes AWAY liquidity(cash money) from the market as the banks are paying cash for the bonds. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing given the amount of liquidity that was added TO the market from stimulus checks and overall money supply being at all time highs.
EDIT: Clarified on the liquidity part as it wasn’t as clear
What’s causing the proverbial wrench in the gears here are that these hedgies are overleverged to the tits from not only shorting the treasuries bond market, but also having shit for mortgage backed securities in the housing market, and naked shorting a whole bunch of other stocks with unlimited leverage, with the pure intention of driving multiple companies to bankruptcy.
Here’s where it gets really bad: these banks and hedgefunds absolutely NEED these bonds as collateral because they have overleveraged so hard there aren’t enough bonds to go around, most likely multiple times over; the FED is in possession of a lot of these bonds so by temporarily allowing banks to come into possession of them they can kick the can down the road, but what happens when the maximum amount of lending is reached?
Let’s walk through the process:
- As time goes on, theoretically either more counterparties would need bonds as collateral or the existing counterparties would need MORE bonds to post as collateral to keep kicking the can down the road and prevent being margin called.
- Someone gets margin called as they can’t post enough collateral (theoretically bonds lent by the FED), causing a cascade of margin calls across the bonds market leading to a short squeeze of treasury bonds from liquidation.
- The liquidation of various securities (such as stock postions) coupled with the spike in treasuries bond price would lead to a stock market crash, leading to even MORE margin calls from overleveraged short positions(some even within the same firms that got margin called before, this is probably where Citadel would be in this scenario as they shorted both the treasury bonds market and meme stocks)
- Short squeeze of all meme stocks from forced liquidation as the tendieman cometh.
(This part is edited as of edit 3) How soon would this be able to happen? Well, this still remains more of a theoretical unfortunately. Since after some kind redditors corrected me and I found out the 500 billion limit was for repo agreements only and that the reverse repo agreement is limited to 80 billion per counterparty (as of right now there is an estimated 7.2 billion per counterparty, read edit 3 to see why), it would seem there’s a while before it gets to that point, IF it gets to that point. I doubt the FED would accept lending 80 billion per counterparty (there’s 54 counterparties as of the most current agreement), so in my opinion I feel like the only way we see this happen is if someone gets margin called, or the FED stops accepting to lend as many bonds to counterparties. The more likely option, believe it or not is that someone (maybe a certain hedgie Citadel 😉) gets margin called. The FED doesn’t really have enough of a reason to say “hey you look fucked and giving you bonds doesn’t look like it’ll help”, so that would leave the margin call option. Given the other catalysts Citadel and co have to watch out for in the near future (T + 21 today, gamestop earnings, the shareholder meetings, how fucked they are in the housing market, the list goes on), I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a margin call happen soon that would trip some wires in the bonds market and cause a short squeeze that leads to the MOASS.
Hope this jumbled mess made some sense to you all, as I’m writing this now its about midnight so I wouldn’t be surprised if I happened to make a couple of mistakes when writing this out. If anything, I’ll hang out in the comments and make some edits along the way. 🙂
Edit: people were asking about the source post I pulled the limit from so I’ve linked it below. Give that OP some love!
Edit 2: I’ve seen some questions asking if cash can just be used as collateral instead for treasury bonds. Now, this may be wrong so take this answer with a grain of salt, but as far as I understand, you need treasury bonds as collateral to prevent being margin called from shorting treasury bonds. These are government bonds, which people have invested in with the idea that their money is safe and sound. If at any point they need to take money out of, say a 10 year bond, but all of a sudden the bond disappeared, thats ALL of their money gone.. and I doubt the US wants THAT to happen because of what it means for the US economy.
Edit 3(Edited once again): There’s some talk about the 500 billion cap being for repo agreements only and not reverse repo agreements, after researching more and some friendly redditors correcting me in the comments about it I saw that it seems like this is the case as the reverse repo cap had been virtually removed in 2013. The only type of cap I see is that there is a maximum of 80 billion per counterparty when it comes to reverse repo overnight agreements. Given there are currently 54 counterparties as of the latest agreement of 394 billion, there’s an average of 7.2 billion per counterparty as of right now. However, I genuinely doubt the FED would accept lending 54 counterparties 80 BILLION each. That would be over 4 trillion used daily in bonds lent out. A margin call by other means would be more likely to happen in my opinion.
Edit 4: I’ve seen a lot of questions asking if the FED would just raise the limit to try to kick the can down the road, and I don’t think they would do that for a couple of reasons. The first is that I presume they have the foresight (unlike the greedy hedgefunds) to see that many people’s finances are being put at risk so they would rather have this end sooner than later. That, and they stand to gain a lot from squeezing hedgefunds and liquidating. The main argument that comes to my mind is that when the MOASS happens and everyone gets their tendies they are going to be able to get some nice tax money off of that (a lot of rich people hide their wealth in offshore accounts so they don’t have to pay as many taxes, so its good for some of this money to be in the hands of retail).
Source post I got the upper limit from:
FED links about the reverse repo/ repo agreements: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/domestic-market-operations/monetary-policy-implementation/repo-reverse-repo-agreements/repurchase-agreement-operational-details