China Deleveraging Hits Corporate Bonds As Cascade Effect Begins

Following the market lockdown during October’s Party Congress, many commentators were disturbed by the continued rise in Chinese government bond yields as we returned to “business as usual”, with the 10-year rising to 4%. At the beginning of this month, we discussed the sell-off (see “China: Shadow Bank Inflows Are Critical To Sustain The Ponzi…But They’re Falling”) and noted a useful insight from the Wall Street Journal.

An important anomaly to note about the bond rout: as government bonds sold off, yields on less-liquid, unsecured Chinese corporate bonds barely moved.

That is atypical in an environment of rising rates – usually, bond investors shed their less-liquid holdings and hold on to assets that are more easily tradable, like government debt.

The question was…why had corporate bond yields barely moved? The answer, according to the WSJ, was that China’s deleveraging policy led to redemptions in the shadow banking sector, e.g. in the notorious $4 trillion Wealth Management Products (WMP) sector. Faced with redemptions, shadow banks had to sell something…quickly…and highly liquid government bonds were the “easiest option”. Furthermore…and this is potentially significant…the WSJ noted.

Meanwhile, the nonbanks have held on to their higher-yielding corporate bonds, which at least have the benefit of helping them to maintain high returns.

Not any more (see below).

We agreed with the WSJ’s explanation at the time, but noted that the government bond sell-off was actually a sign of the unravelling of the WMP Ponzi scheme. The Chinese authorities are wise to the Ponzi which is why they announced the overhaul of shadow banking and WMPs last Friday (see “A ‘New Era’ In Chinese Regulation Means Turmoil For $15 Trillion In China’s ‘Shadows”). However, the new regulations don’t kick in until mid-2019, a sign to us that when they looked “under the bonnet”, they didn’t like what they saw.