© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A man buys fish at a market in Tokyo, Japan March 3, 2023. REUTERS/Androniki Christodoulou/File Photo

By Takahiko Wada and Leika Kihara

TOKYO (Reuters) -Core consumer inflation in Japan’s capital slowed in May, but a key index stripping away the effect of fuel hit a four-decade high, underscoring broadening price pressure that may keep alive expectations of a withdrawal of ultra-loose monetary policy.

The data for Tokyo, which is seen as a leading indicator of nationwide trends, showed companies continued to pass on rising costs to households in a sign inflationary pressure could last longer than the Bank of Japan (BOJ) projects.

The Tokyo core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes volatile fresh food but includes fuel costs, rose 3.2% in May from a year earlier, government data showed on Friday, roughly matching a median market forecast for a 3.3% gain.

While inflation slowed from the previous month’s 3.5%, it stayed above the BOJ’s 2% target for a full year as steady food price gains offset falling fuel costs, the data showed.

An index that strips away both fresh food and fuel costs rose 3.9% in May from a year earlier, marking the fastest pace of increase since April 1982 when Japan was experiencing an asset-inflated bubble.

“Inflation already appears to be overshooting the BOJ’s forecasts. Prospects of higher wages are prodding more firms to pass on rising labour costs through price hikes,” said Takuya Hoshino, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

“Depending on how upcoming data plays out, there’s a chance the BOJ could respond to elevated inflation with a tweak to its ultra-loose policy,” he said.

Separate data released on Friday showed the price service companies charge each other rose 1.6% in April from a year earlier, marking the 26th straight month of gains, as the economy’s re-opening from pandemic curbs boosted tourism demand.

Japan’s economy is finally recovering from the scars of the COVID-19 pandemic, though risks of a global slowdown and rising food prices hang over the outlook for exports and consumption.

With inflation already exceeding its target, markets are rife with speculation the BOJ could soon phase out ultra-loose monetary policy under new governor Kazuo Ueda.

Ueda has repeatedly said inflation will slow in coming months as cost-push factors dissipate, and that the BOJ will maintain ultra-loose policy until stronger wage growth ensures Japan can sustainably see inflation hit its 2% target.

But he told a group interview on Thursday that the BOJ will “act swiftly” if its inflation projection proves wrong, and could tweak policy if the cost of stimulus outweighs the merits.

In a Reuters poll released on Friday more than half of the analysts surveyed expect the BOJ to start unwinding its yield curve control (YCC) policy by end-July, such as by raising the current 0.5% cap set for the 10-year government bond yield.

The BOJ will review its quarterly growth and inflation forecasts at a two-day policy meeting concluding on July 28.

Under projections made in April, the central bank expects core consumer inflation to hit 1.8% in the current fiscal year ending in March 2024. That is much lower than a 2.3% forecast in a poll released on May 15 by think tank Japan Center for Economic Research.

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Wall Street entrance to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is seen in New York City, U.S., November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Saeed Azhar and Davide Barbuscia

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Anxiety is increasing in parts of Wall Street that rely on Treasury securities to function, with some traders starting to avoid U.S. government debt that comes due in June and others preparing to deal with securities at risk of default.

U.S. President Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy are closing in on a deal that would raise the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling for two years while capping spending on most items, as a June 1 “X date” approaches for when the Treasury Department has said it could run out of money to pay its bills.

Treasury securities are used widely as collateral across markets. A key question for market participants is how would bonds that are maturing next month be treated if a deal is not reached in time and the Treasury is unable to pay principal and interest on debt.

One such area is the $4 trillion repurchase, or repo, market, for short-term funding used by banks, money market funds and others to borrow and lend. Some counterparties, including banks, were shying away from Treasury bills maturing in June in bilateral repos, where the trade is between two parties, said an executive at a U.S. fund manager who decline to be named. There are 14 T-bills maturing in June.

Scott Skyrm, executive vice president for fixed income and repo at broker-dealer Curvature Securities, said some repo buyers or cash lenders did not want to accept any bills maturing within a year. Skyrm said stress began to appear in the market at the start of May, with some lenders refusing to accept Treasury bills that they perceived as at risk of delayed payments in some types of trades. He declined to name buyers who were not accepting T-bills.

“I don’t think counterparties want to deal with collateral around the X-date,” said Jason England, global bonds portfolio manager at Janus Henderson.

An executive at an independent broker-dealer in the repo market who declined to be named said they were still financing Treasury securities for now. Their focus, instead, was on rewiring their systems in anticipation of steps that the Federal Reserve and Treasury might take to prevent a default. The executive said they expected to work through the weekend to get their systems in place.

At least three big banks that deal directly with the New York Fed in its implementation of monetary policy were also accepting all Treasury securities, three sources familiar with the situation said.

The dislocations in the repo market, a crucial source of funding for day-to-day operations of many financial institutions, come amid growing stress in financial markets as talks drag on in Washington. A default could have devastating consequences, as the $24.3 trillion treasuries market underpins not just the U.S. but the global economic order. 

To be sure, a default remains a distant possibility. Many market participants expect the Treasury will be able to continue to pay its bills after the June 1 date as it could conserve cash in other ways to prioritize debt payments. 

In the case that it needs to delay payments on some securities that are maturing, expert groups have suggested in the past that Treasury could help markets to keep functioning by extending the so-called “operational maturity date.” The proposal, detailed in a December 2021 contingency planning document prepared by an expert group, calls for extending the maturities of securities at risk of default by one day at a time.

That could allow the security to be technically traded and available for settlement on the Fedwire Securities Service system used for government debt. However, the group warned that it would need many broker-dealers to adjust their trading systems to also be able to do so and the consequences of a delay in payments on securities would still be severe. 

The broker-dealer executive said the process was cumbersome because maturity dates subsumed several other calculations about the value of the security. Extending the maturities required the firm to “basically break their own system,” the executive said. 

Even so, allowing the security to default would be worse. “If you don’t extend the date, I really don’t know what happens,” the executive added.

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. dollar banknotes are displayed in this illustration taken, February 14, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

By Shankar Ramakrishnan and Nell Mackenzie

(Reuters) -A measure of U.S. default risk is flashing red as talks over the government’s debt ceiling drag on, with speculation driven by the lure of a quick profit inflating the value of the derivative, market strategists and investors said.

Spreads on U.S. government one-year credit default swaps (CDS) – market-based gauges of the risk of a default – widened to 175 basis points, an all-time high, earlier in May on rising fears lawmakers could not reach a debt ceiling deal.

Those spreads were at 160 basis points on Thursday, according to S&P Global (NYSE:) Market Intelligence data, slightly lower than a close of 162 on Wednesday, but still signaling investor concerns as the debt ceiling talks continued.

The low-cost, high-reward mechanics of how CDS would pay out has attracted hedge funds and speculators to the trade, according to analysts, investors and bankers.

“The instruments are … unusually attractive to buyers because the cost of the bonds that would be delivered into a default-triggered settlement auction have plunged in value over the last year,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay, noting that it was due to the U.S. Federal Reserve raising rates.

CDS were now trading more like interest rate put options than the true insurance contracts that they are, meaning “the implied risk of a default remains far lower than can be inferred from spreads alone,” he said.

CDS spreads have risen quickly this month – from roughly 80-90 basis points in March and 17 basis points at the beginning of the year – as the debt ceiling fight intensified.

The implied probability of a U.S. sovereign default – a measure of the probability using CDS spreads versus the value of the underlying bond – was still very low in the 3-4% area compared to the 6-7% area in 2011 during a similar legislative standoff on the same borrowing limit when CDS levels also spiked but only up to a high of 80 basis points, according to Reuters calculations.

In a potential CDS payout – after a non-payment event is determined – the price of the cheapest to deliver bond is typically used to settle the derivative contract, and those bonds have been priced significantly lower due to the low-coupon issuance in mid-2020, when yields were near record lows. 

    Wilfred Daye, CEO of Samara Alpha Management, an alternative asset manager, said in case of a sovereign default, those buying the insurance at current rates would expect a high payout. If the sovereign did not default, they would lose the premium which was roughly 1-2% paid to buy the insurance.

“If the payout was just 5 times nobody would be doing it, but when you have 25 times payout, people want to bet on it,” said Daye.

One derivatives banker based in Europe said hedge funds normally known for trading sovereign debt on macroeconomic signals made up the biggest buyers of protection. 

These funds began buying CDS protection on the U.S. government taking over the trade from more traditional bond trading credit firms after the risk of a U.S sovereign default grew, one investor who declined to be named said. 

The average ticket size on some of these trades ranged between $20-25 million, said the banker. Insurance was being bought by hedge funds and sold by some Asian and European accounts who had bought protection earlier when spreads on such insurance were trading at low levels.

For Athanassios Diplas, an ex-CDS trader, the extent of the damage a default would cause was difficult to grasp, given the wide use of Treasury bonds and bills as collateral.

“The use of T-bills is so prevalent,” he said.