Risk Makes a Comeback

Investors are feeling more at ease with the uncertainty facing global market.  The AUD/JPY exchange rate—a popular FX carry trade and risk metric—has moved off of its recent lows of less than 74 to a level of 79.4.  At the same time, 3M LIBOR halted its climb, and has remained fairly steady around 0.54%, albeit still more than double early March levels.  Investors growing appetite for risk partially stems from a successful Spanish three year government bond auction last week, which received a surprisingly strong bid to cover of 2.1, while still yielding an elevated 3.3%–compared to less than 2% for bonds of a similar duration in March.  Spain is scheduled to reopen EUR3.5bn of 10Y and 30Y bonds on June 17^th.  With a relatively quiet week on the data front—barring the auctions in Spain and a European summit on Thursday—traders will likely continue adding on risk, pushing European spreads down; US Treasury yields up, all boding well for growth correlated assets, including equities.