The Chinese sense of humor was evident as they raised short term interest rates on Christmas Day by 25 basis points. (
Bloomberg) What is interesting about this Saturday surprise is what happened a few days before with their
failed treasury bill auction.
The ministry sold 16.76 billion yuan ($2.53 billion) of 91- day securities, falling short of the planned 20 billion yuan target, according to traders at the lead underwriters of government debt, who asked not to be identified. The average winning yield was 3.6769 percent, according to the traders. That compared with 3.22 percent on the debt of similar maturity in the secondary market yesterday.
Since the Chinese central bank was not able to drain enough cash out of the markets via Tbill sales, they raised interest rates instead. One possible reason why the Tbill auction was not well received is there appears to be other demands on short term money in the Chinese banking system. Short term bank repo rates are spiking higher as the year comes to a close. Why buy 3 month Tbills at 3.7% when you can lend out at
5.60% in the 3 month repo market?
As you can see there were spikes in the repo rates just before the end of previous quarter ends and I wonder how much of this current rise is due to squaring the books before year end. We'll know soon. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment