- The Fed has so far saved the stock market from crashing, thanks to massive liquidity, Ed Yardeni said.
- He pointed to the Fed's Bank Term Funding Program, which offers short-term loans to lenders.
- Quelled volatility suggests those loans have worked to stabilize US banks and buoy stock prices.
The Federal Reserve has so far saved the stock market from crashing after the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank last month, thanks to its massive liquidity injections, according to market veteran Ed Yardeni.
In a recent blog post, Yardeni pointed to the Fed's Bank Term Funding Program, which was announced shortly after the crash of Silicon Valley Bank last month. The program offers short-term loans to financial institutions in order to help ease liquidity stress – ensuring banks have enough money on hand in event of a deposit run, which led to SVB's collapse in early March.
"In effect, the Fed Put is back," Yardeni said, comparing the BTFP to the central bank's practice of lowering interest rates in order to buoy stock prices. "Though it is aimed at backstopping the banks this time, which indirectly supports the stock market. The question is whether that will do the trick to stop a credit crunch and a stock market crash. The jury is out, but so far so good."
According to central bank data, the Fed's average total loan balance reached $326.4 billion last week, $311 billion higher than what was seen in the first week of March.
That's the sharpest increase since the 2008 recession, which is "disturbing," Yardeni said. But in the week ending April 5, volumes fell $31.6 billion, a sign liquidity stress is starting to abate. Bank deposit outflows across all commercial banks in the US also fell $107 billion in the seven days ending March 29.
SVB's collapse last month sparked a rapid sell-off in bank and regional bank stocks. But troubled banks have started to regain their footing, partly due to government interventions, like federal regulators backing all of SVB's deposits, and the US Treasury assuring markets the government would continue to protect depositors.
Still, bearish market commentators warn that more pain could be ahead for stocks, as SVB's failure is likely to tighten credit conditions, which could put the economy one step closer to a recession.
DataTrek co-founder Nicholas Colas told Insider that he sees a recession in the next 12 months as inevitable, and JPMorgan's top quant strategist said the collapse of SVB likely meant the Fed was "past the point of no return," suggesting a soft landing was unlikely.